Upon continuous blackmail accounts, "The New York Times" became an advocate against the Mann Act. In 1915 the paper published an editorial pointing out how the act led to extortion. In 1916 it labeled the Mann Act "The Blackmail Act", arguing that its dangers had been clear from the start as the act could make a harmless spree or simple elopement a crime. The paper also called the "blackmail that resulted from the Mann Act [...] worse than the prostitution it sought to suppress".