Part 9 (1/2)
SHOULD LICENSES BE ALLOWED?
The question of the best mode of legally controlling the great evil of prost.i.tution, and confining its bad physical effects, is a very difficult one.
The merely philosophical inquirer, or even the physician, regarding humanity ”in the broad,” comes naturally to the conclusion that this offense is one of the inevitable evils which always have followed, and always will follow, the track of civilization; that it is to be looked upon, like small-pox or scarlet fever, as a disease of civilized man, and is to be treated accordingly, by physical and scientific means, and must be controlled, as it cannot be uprooted, by legislation. Or they regard it as they do intoxication, as the effect of a misdirected natural desire, which is everywhere thought to be a legitimate object both of permission or recognition by government, as well as of check by rigid laws.
If medical men, their minds are almost exclusively directed toward the frightful effects on society and upon the innocent, of the diseases which attend this offense. They see that legislation would at once check the ravages from these terrible maladies, and that a system of licenses such as is practiced in the Continental cities would prevent them from spreading through society and punis.h.i.+ng those who had never sinned. As scientific healers of human maladies, they feel that anything is a gain which lessens human suffering, controls disease, and keeps up the general health of the community. Their position, too, has been strengthened by the foolish and superst.i.tious arguments of their opponents. It has been claimed that syphilitic disorders are a peculiar and supernatural punishment for sin and wrong-doing; that by interfering with their legitimate action on the guilty, we presume to diminish the punishments inflicted by the Almighty; and, in so far as we cure or restrain these diseases, we lessen one great sanction which nature and Providence have placed before the infraction of the law of virtue.
The medical man, however, replies very pertinently that he has nothing to do with the Divine sanctions; that his business is to cure human diseases and lessen human suffering wherever he find them; and that gout, or rheumatism, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, are as much ”punishments” as the diseases of this vice. If he refused to visit a patient whenever he thought that his sins had brought upon him his diseases, he would have very little occupation, and mankind would receive very little alleviation from the medical art. Nor is he even called upon to refuse to cure a patient who, he knows, will immediately begin again his evil courses. The physician is not a judge or an executioner. He has nothing to do but to cure and alleviate. Influenced by this aspect of his duty, the medical man almost universally advocates licenses to prost.i.tutes, based on medical examination, and a strict legal control of the partic.i.p.ants in this offense.
On the other hand, those of us who deal with the moral aspects of the case, and who know the cla.s.s that are ruined body and soul by this criminal business, have a profound dread of anything which, to the young, should appear to legalize or approve, or even recognize it. The worst evil in prost.i.tution is to the woman, and the worst element in that is moral rather than physical.
The man has the tremendous responsibility on his soul of doing his part in helping to plunge a human being into the lowest depths of misery and moral degradation. He has also all the moral responsibility which the Divine law of purity places on each individual, and the farther burden of possibly causing disease hereafter to the innocent and virtuous.
But the woman who pursues this as a business has seldom any hope in this world, either of mental or moral health. The cla.s.s, as a cla.s.s, are the most desperate and unfortunate which reformatory agencies ever touch.
Now, any friend of the well-being of society, knowing the strength of men's pa.s.sions, and the utter misery and degradation of these victims of them, will dread any public measure or legislation which will tend to weaken the respect of young men for virtue, or to make this offense looked upon as permissible, or which will add to the number of these wretched women by diminis.h.i.+ng the public and legal condemnation of their debasing traffic.
Among the large cla.s.s of poor and ignorant girls in a large city who are always just on the line between virtue and vice, who can say how many more would be plunged into this abyss of misery by an apparent legal approval or recognition of the offense through a system of license?
Among the thousand young men who are under incessant temptations in a city like this, who can say how many are saved by the consciousness that this offense is looked upon both by morality and law as an offense, and is not even recognized as permissible and legal? A city license const.i.tutes a profession of prost.i.tutes. The law and opinion recognize them. The evil becomes more fixed by its public recognition.
It is true that prost.i.tution will always, in all probability, attend civilization; but so will all other sins and offenses. It may be possible, however, to diminish and control it. It is already immensely checked in this country, as compared with continental countries, partly through economical and partly through moral causes. It has been diminished among the daughters of the lowest poor in this city by the ”Industrial Schools.” Why should it be increased and established by legal recognition?
We admit that the present condition of the whole matter in New York is terrible. The humanity and science which ought to minister to the prost.i.tute as freely as to any other cla.s.s, are refused to her by the public, unless she apply as a pauper. The consequence is, that the fearful diseases which follow this offense, like avenging Furies, have spread through not only this cla.s.s of women, but have been communicated to the virtuous and innocent, and are undermining the health of society.
This fact is notorious to physicians.
Now we think a reasonable ”middle course” might be pursued in this matter; that, for instance, greater conveniences for medical attendance and advice in the city (and not on Blackwell's Island) might be afforded by our authorities to this cla.s.s, both as a matter of humanity and as a safeguard to the public health. If there was a hospital or a dispensary for such cases within the city, it would avoid the disgrace and publicity of each patient reporting herself to the court as a pauper, and then being sent to the Island Hospital. Hundreds more would present themselves for attendance and treatment than do now, and the public health be proportionately improved. No moral sanction would thus be given to this demoralizing and degrading business. The simple duties of humanity would be performed.
The advocates of the license system would still reply, however, that such a hospital would not meet the evil; that Law only can separate the sickly from the healthy, and thus guard society from the pestilence; and the only law which could accomplish this would be a strict system of license. The friend of public order, however, would urge that a wise legislator cannot consider physical well-being alone: he must regard also the moral tendencies of laws; and the influence of a license system for prost.i.tution is plainly toward recognizing this offense as legal or permissible. It removes indirectly one of the safeguards of virtue.
Perhaps the _reductio ad absurdum_ in the relation of the State with a criminal cla.s.s, and of the Church with the State, was never so absurdly shown as in the Berlin license laws for prost.i.tutes, twenty years since.
According to these, in their final result, no woman could be a prost.i.tute who had not partaken of the communion!--that is, the _Schein,_ or license, was never given to this business any more than to any other, except on evidence of the person's having been ”confirmed,”
or being a member of the State Church, that is, a citizen! This cla.s.sing, however, the trade of prost.i.tution with peddling, or any other business needing a license, did not in the least tend, so far as we have ever heard, to elevate the women, or save them from moral and mental degradation. On the contrary, the universal law of Providence that man or woman must live by labor, and that any unnatural subst.i.tute for it saps and weakens all power and vigor, applies to this cla.s.s in Continental cities as much as here. Without doubt, too, wherever the Germanic races are, no degree of legalizing this traffic can utterly do away with the public sentence of scorn against the female partic.i.p.ants in it; and the contempt of the virtuous naturally depresses the vicious.
The ”public woman” has a far greater chance of recovery in France or Italy than in Germany, England, or America. Still, the wise legislator, though regretting the depression which this public sentiment causes to the vicious cla.s.ses, cannot but value it as a safeguard of virtue, and will be very cautious how he weakens it by legislation.
There is, no doubt, some force in the position that the non-licensing of these houses is in some degree a terror to the community, and that the cautious and prudent are kept from the offense through fear of possible consequences in disease and infection. This, however, does not seem to us an object which legislators can hold before them as compared with the duties of humanity in curing and preventing disease and pestilence. They have nothing to do with adding to the natural penalties of sin, or with punis.h.i.+ng sinners. They are concerned only with human law. But they have the right, and, as it seems to us, the duty, so to legislate as not to encourage so great an evil as this of prost.i.tution. And licensing, it seems to us, has that tendency. It certainly has had it in Paris, where it has been tried to its full extent, and surely no one could claim the population of that city as a model to any nation, whether in physical or moral power.
Bad as London is in this matter--not, however, so much through defect of licensing as through want of a proper street-police--we do not believe there is so wide-spread a degradation among poor women as in Berlin.
New York, in our judgment, is superior to any great city in its smaller prost.i.tute cla.s.s, and the virtue of its laboring poor. Something of this, of course, is due to our superior economical conditions; something to the immense energy and large means thrown into our preventive agencies, but much also to the public opinion prevailing in all cla.s.ses in regard to this vice. Our wealthy cla.s.ses, we believe, and certainly our middle cla.s.ses, have a higher sentiment in regard to the purity both of man and woman than any similar cla.s.ses in the civilized world. More persons relatively marry, and marriages are happier. This is equally true of the upper laboring cla.s.ses. If it is not true of the lowest poor, this results from two great local evils--Overcrowding, and the bad influences of Emigration. Still, even with these, the poor of New York compare favorably in virtue with those of Paris, Berlin, or Vienna. Now, how large a part of the public opinion which thus preserves both ends of society from vice may be due to the fact that we have not recognized the greatest offense against purity by any permissive legislation? The business is still regarded, in law, as outside of good morals and not even to be tacitly allowed by license.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BEST PREVENTIVE OF VICE AMONG CHILDREN.
INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.