=Its only excuse.=--Impurity or immorality finds expression in a public sense in the Social Evil or prostitution, the only known excuse for which is the plea that it has always existed, is a necessary evil and hence cannot be suppressed but must remain, under such regulatory measures as may be adopted. There are those of us, however, who believe that this is a false theory, not well founded in fact, and that as other great evils, in favor of which the same suave arguments were made, have from time to time been wiped out, even so can this ogre of public vice be suppressed. It is not claimed that all private or clandestine vice can be entirely annihilated, but its public phase can be and must be up-rooted if civilization is to advance. There are those who even now prophesy that America in licentiousness and graft is going the way of ancient nations long since dead, and that her days are numbered if these evils are not speedily checked. =Two colossal blunders.=--The scope of this article will not permit going into the history of the Social Evil, or, indeed, taking up the history of the movement that has risen to combat it, but in order to form a foundation for the discussion we must call attention to the two colossal blunders which have perpetuated this evil throughout past centuries and enabled it to [Illustration: B. S. STEADWELL.--President World’s Federation of Purity, and Editor of “The Light.”] attain to its present proportions. These questions may be discussed with even greater fullness in other pages of this book, but it is fitting that attention be directed to them here. =False modesty.=--The first mistake which was made in dealing with this particular evil was to place a ban of silence upon it, upon everything that could refer to it, and upon our whole sexual relations, nature and life. The results were not happy. Nothing could have been done more conducive to the growth of the evil. It brought in and developed the reign of false modesty, of prudery. Concealment is not cure. This evil craves darkness rather than light, and thrives upon silence and secrecy. A Turkish missionary wrote me some years ago that in his country where women must appear with their faces completely covered, the grossest immoralities were practiced by wives, undetected, in the very presence of their own husbands. Many of our present-day customs in pleasures and dress which form strong temptations for our young men and young women, are a direct result of this “conspiracy of silence.” Here is a foundation stone upon which the whole miserable system of immorality rests.