Part 11 (1/2)
”Those women are prost.i.tutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of the s.e.xual act and make of this a profession.”[5]
In fact, Banger goes further; he maintains that the act of prost.i.tution is ”intrinsically equal to that of a man or woman who contracts a marriage for economic reasons.”
Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as thousands of girls cannot marry, our stupid social customs condemn them either to a life of celibacy or prost.i.tution. Human nature a.s.serts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.
Society considers the s.e.x experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and n.o.ble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prost.i.tution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on s.e.x matters, which alleged ”innocence,” together with an overwrought and stifled s.e.x nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.
Not that the gratification of s.e.x must needs lead to prost.i.tution; it is the cruel, heartless, criminal persecution of those who dare divert from the beaten paths, which is responsible for it.
Girls, mere children, work in crowded, over-heated rooms ten to twelve hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a constant over-excited s.e.x state. Many of these girls have no home or comforts of any kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap amus.e.m.e.nt is the only means of forgetting their daily routine. This naturally brings them into close proximity with the other s.e.x. It is hard to say which of the two factors brings the girl's over-s.e.xed condition to a climax, but it is certainly the most natural thing that a climax should result. That is the first step toward prost.i.tution. Nor is the girl to be held responsible for it. On the contrary, it is altogether the fault of society, the fault of our lack of understanding, of our lack of appreciation of life in the making; especially is it the criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity, because she has gone from the ”path of virtue”; that is, because her first s.e.x experience has taken place without the sanction of the Church.
The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition is such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up, instead of dragging her down. Thus society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of. The meanest, most depraved and decrepit man still considers himself too good to take as his wife the woman whose grace he was quite willing to buy, even though he might thereby save her from a life of horror. Nor can she turn to her own sister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own position is in many respects even more deplorable than her sister's of the street.
”The wife who married for money, compared with the prost.i.tute,” says Havelock Ellis, ”is the true scab. She is paid less, gives much more in return in labor and care, and is absolutely bound to her master. The prost.i.tute never signs away the right over her own person, she retains her freedom and personal rights, nor is she always compelled to submit to a man's embrace.”
Nor does the better-than-thou woman realize the apologist claim of Lecky that ”though she may be the supreme type of vice, she is also the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, happy homes would be polluted, unnatural and harmful practice would abound.”
Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-half of the human race for the sake of some miserable inst.i.tution which they can not outgrow. As a matter of fact, prost.i.tution is no more a safeguard for the purity of the home than rigid laws are a safeguard against prost.i.tution. Fully fifty per cent. of married men are patrons of brothels. It is through this virtuous element that the married women-nay, even the children-are infected with venereal diseases. Yet society has not a word of condemnation for the man, while no law is too monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless victim. She is not only preyed upon by those who use her, but she is also absolutely at the mercy of every policeman and miserable detective on the beat, the officials at the station house, the authorities in every prison.
In a recent book by a woman who was for twelve years the mistress of a ”house,” are to be found the following figures: ”The authorities compelled me to pay every month fines between $14.70 to $29.70, the girls would pay from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police.” Considering that the writer did her business in a small city, that the amounts she gives do not include extra bribes and fines, one can readily see the tremendous revenue the police department derives from the blood money of its victims, whom it will not even protect. Woe to those who refuse to pay their toll; they would be rounded up like cattle, ”if only to make a favorable impression upon the good citizens of the city, or if the powers needed extra money on the side. For the warped mind who believes that a fallen woman is incapable of human emotion it would be impossible to realize the grief, the disgrace, the tears, the wounded pride that was ours every time we were pulled in.”
Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has a kept a ”house” should be able to feel that way? But stranger still that a good Christian world should bleed and fleece such women, and give them nothing in return except obloquy and persecution. Oh, for the charity of a Christian world!
Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How would America ever retain her virtue if Europe did not help her out? I will not deny that this may be the case in some instances, any more than I will deny that there are emissaries of Germany and other countries luring economic slaves into America; but I absolutely deny that prost.i.tution is recruited to any appreciable extent from Europe. It may be true that the majority of prost.i.tutes in New York City are foreigners, but that is because the majority of the population is foreign. The moment we go to any other American city, to Chicago or the Middle West, we shall find that the number of foreign prost.i.tutes is by far a minority.
Equally exaggerated is the belief that the majority of street girls in this city were engaged in this business before they came to America. Most of the girls speak excellent English, are Americanized in habits and appearance,-a thing absolutely impossible unless they had lived in this country many years. That is, they were driven into prost.i.tution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American custom for excessive display of finery and clothes, which, of course, necessitates money,-money that cannot be earned in shops or factories.
In other words, there is no reason to believe that any set of men would go to the risk and expense of getting foreign products, when American conditions are overflooding the market with thousands of girls. On the other hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove that the export of American girls for the purpose of prost.i.tution is by no means a small factor.
Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-a.s.sistant State Attorney of Cook County, Ill., makes the open charge that New England girls are s.h.i.+pped to Panama for the express use of men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr. Roe adds that ”there seems to be an underground railroad between Boston and Was.h.i.+ngton which many girls travel.” Is it not significant that the railroad should lead to the very seat of Federal authority? That Mr. Roe said more than was desired in certain quarters is proved by the fact that he lost his position. It is not practical for men in office to tell tales from school.
The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there are no brothels in the Ca.n.a.l Zone. That is the usual avenue of escape for a hypocritical world that dares not face the truth. Not in the Ca.n.a.l Zone, not in the city limits,-therefore prost.i.tution does not exist.
Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson Reynolds, who has made a thorough study of the white slave traffic in Asia. As a staunch American citizen and friend of the future Napoleon of America, Theodore Roosevelt, he is surely the last to discredit the virtue of his country. Yet we are informed by him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama, the Augean stables of American vice are located. There American prost.i.tutes have made themselves so conspicuous that in the Orient ”American girl” is synonymous with prost.i.tute. Mr. Reynolds reminds his countrymen that while Americans in China are under the protection of our consular representatives, the Chinese in America have no protection at all. Every one who knows the brutal and barbarous persecution Chinese and j.a.panese endure on the Pacific Coast, will agree with Mr. Reynolds.
In view of the above facts it is rather absurd to point to Europe as the swamp whence come all the social diseases of America. Just as absurd is it to proclaim the myth that the Jews furnish the largest contingent of willing prey. I am sure that no one will accuse me of nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say that I have developed out of them, as out of many other prejudices. If, therefore, I resent the statement that Jewish prost.i.tutes are imported, it is not because of any Judaistic sympathies, but because of the facts inherent in the lives of these people. No one but the most superficial will claim that Jewish girls migrate to strange lands, unless they have some tie or relation that brings them there. The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent years she had never left home, not even so far as the next village or town, except it were to visit some relative. Is it then credible that Jewish girls would leave their parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange lands, through the influence and promises of strange forces? Go to any of the large incoming steamers and see for yourself if these girls do not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk. There may be exceptions, of course, but to state that large numbers of Jewish girls are imported for prost.i.tution, or any other purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology.
Those who sit in a gla.s.s house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American gla.s.s house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.
To ascribe the increase in prost.i.tution to alleged importation, to the growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highly superficial. I have already referred to the former. As to the cadet system, abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it is essentially a phase of modern prost.i.tution,-a phase accentuated by suppression and graft, resulting from sporadic crusades against the social evil.
The procurer is no doubt a poor specimen of the human family, but in what manner is he more despicable than the policeman who takes the last cent from the street walker, and then locks her up in the station house? Why is the cadet more criminal, or a greater menace to society, than the owners of department stores and factories, who grow fat on the sweat of their victims, only to drive them to the streets? I make no plea for the cadet, but I fail to see why he should be mercilessly hounded, while the real perpetrators of all social iniquity enjoy immunity and respect. Then, too, it is well to remember that it is not the cadet who makes the prost.i.tute. It is our sham and hypocrisy that create both the prost.i.tute and the cadet.
Until 1894 very little was known in America of the procurer. Then we were attacked by an epidemic of virtue. Vice was to be abolished, the country purified at all cost. The social cancer was therefore driven out of sight, but deeper into the body. Keepers of brothels, as well as their unfortunate victims, were turned over to the tender mercies of the police. The inevitable consequence of exorbitant bribes, and the penitentiary, followed.
While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they represented a certain monetary value, the girls now found themselves on the street, absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police. Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection, these girls naturally proved an easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of the spirit of our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the direct outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and attempted suppression of prost.i.tution. It were sheer folly to confound this modern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter.