Library Collections: Document: Full Text

As for the feminine element, there is a small, probably very small, number who are sexual perverts; but Professor Johnson declares that the victim of force or fraud, or of adverse social and economic conditions, soon reaches a point where she cannot be distinguished from the congenital pervert. By far the larger number of prostitutes were originally not different from normal women; one type is thus described: --

"There is a large class of women who may be said to have been trained for prostitution from earliest childhood. Foundlings and orphans and the offspring of the miserably poor, they grow up in wretched tenements, contaminated by constant familiarity with vice in its lowest forms. Without training, mental or moral, they remain ignorant and disagreeable, slovenly and uncouth, good for nothing in the social and economic organism. When half matured, they fall the willing victims of their male associates and inevitably drift into prostitution." (71)

Another section consists of those whose wages are often not enough for a living, much less to afford any pleasure. These are the "occasional prostitutes" which are said to outnumber the permanent class in Berlin. A third class, more common in American cities, consists of those attracted by the appearance of luxury and ease of the life of a mistress and disinclined to the low-paid and monotonous labor which alone they can perform. These two latter sections without resources or industrial competence are inordinately desirous of marriage, and are, therefore, the more easily induced to become mistresses, or seduced under promise of marriage. It is most significant that not less than one-fourth of the prostitutes in New York City have been domestic servants -- a class of workers who have no normal home life or pleasures of their own and who must go upon the street to be courted. (72)

In the discussion of remedial measures it is customary to enumerate only three ways of dealing with the social evil-absolute freedom, entire prohibition, and reglementation. The first is not to be tolerated in modern society, the second has never been successfully enforced, even supposing that people could be made virtuous by law; and thus there is apparently left only the system of regulation which generally prevails in Europe. There is, in fact, a fourth measure termed the "moral control" of vice which partakes of the essence of both prohibition and regulation. The object of reglementation is to check disease, and its essential features are the periodical examination of the prostitute and treatment in lock hospitals for venereal diseases. (73) Aside from the legal difficulties which would arise in this country if the prostitute would not voluntarily submit to examination and treatment, there is the far greater one of suppressing clandestine prostitution. In those cities of Europe where reglementation is most effectively organized, the clandestine and the unregistered women far outnumber those under the control of the Morals police. Moreover, the public prostitute is not the only or even the chief source of contagion. It is generally conceded that the clandestine prostitute is the more dangerous from a sanitary standpoint, and Dr. Prince A. Morrow says of the masculine factor: --

"The health officer of a port might as well attempt to prevent the importation of infectious disease from a plague infected vessel by quarantining the infected women while permitting the infected men to go free." (74)

Nor does European experience show that reglementation has been to any considerable extent effective in its primary aim of checking disease. Professor Johnson, quoting the most trustworthy authorities, finally concludes that they claim for it "merely a modicum of good, or look upon it as a stock upon which really useful control may be grafted." (75)

Without pursuing further the results of foreign experiments, it is enough to say that reglementation is wholly impracticable for the reason that an American community would be hostile to it. The Anglo-Saxon attitude is illustrated in the English Contagious Diseases Acts in 1866-1877 and the experiment in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1870-1874, which were both overthrown by the extreme opposition of public opinion. Even if practicable and desirable, reglementation involves the arrest of any woman on suspicion, a degree of arbitrary police power, an interference with personal liberty, and a fundamental injustice, which would not be tolerated in this country.

Under the title of "Moral Control," the Committee of Fifteen, and the leaders in the movement for Prophylaxis, have agreed upon certain preventive and ameliorative measures, based upon the elements of agreement in all parties, and making moral rather than sanitary considerations of paramount importance. The Committee of Fifteen recommends: (1) Strenuous efforts to prevent in the tene-ment houses the overcrowding which they believe to be the prolific source of sexual immorality; (2) the provision of purer and more elevating forms of amusement to supplant the attractions which stimulate sensuality; (3) the improvement of the material conditions of the wage-earning class, especially of young wage-earning women; and finally they regard a better system of moral education as an imperative necessity. They point out that in the whole of Greater New York there were in 1902 only twenty-six hospital beds available for women suffering from venereal diseases and recommend an increase of such facilities on grounds of public health. They recommend further that minors who are notoriously debauched be confined in asylums and reformatories; and above all, they recommend a change in the attitude of the law, which at present regards prostitution as a crime. On this point the Committee declares: --