V.

PROSTITUTION.

"The Social Evil" is the title of a book published under the direction of "The Committee of Fifteen," appointed in the fall of 1900 by the chamber of commerce of the city of New York. It commences with the following lines: "Prostitution is a phenomenon coextensive with civilized society. Barbarous and semi-barbarous peoples have at times been free from it. The ancient Germans, we are told, tolerated no prostitution in their midst; and there are said to be Siberian and African tribes to-day of which the same thing is true. But no sooner has a people attained a moderate degree of civilization than this social curse has fallen upon it; nor has any race reached a point of moral elevation where this form of vice has disappeared...." "Like the pauper, the prostitute is a creature of civilization, and like the pauper, will continue to thrust her undesirable presence upon society."

While this is true in the main, yet it must be accepted with some modification. For it is not civilization per se that is the mother of prostitution, but the economic conditions as they have developed in connection with civilization. It would be sad indeed, if we were forced to conclude that civilization will never be able to cast from it that terrible companion. Fortunately, civilization is not dependent on the continued existence of the prevailing economic system, and we may reasonably entertain

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the hope that some future time will witness the death of prostitution.

It is certain that religious prostitution, that is prostitution as a religious rite, as it was practiced by the Assyrians, Babylonians and other semitic nations, even among the ancient Hebrews, is not known to have prevailed in an earlier period than that of the upper status of barbarism, or in the beginning of civilization. Yet, when and how it originated, we do not know. From an economic standpoint, however, there is nothing in it akin to modern prostitution.

We are informed by ancient writers that in primitive Rome and Egypt girls sold their favors prior to marriage in order to procure a dowry, and that this practice was not considered dishonorable. (In Japan a similar custom is still prevalent.) In this case the purpose is proof that it took place in an advanced state of cultural progress, for in earlier stages women were not required to have a dowry, the husband rather paying for his wife. It was quite late in the progress of civilization, when prostitution became a vocation and its followers social outcasts.

Even if we did not know quite well that the sense of modesty and the obligation of chastity as a moral conception are the product of the evolution of the human race, and almost unknown in the lowest stages of savagery, we could not for a moment seek the reason for the absence of prostitution among savages and barbarians in their higher state of morality. Although we are apt to misconstrue, many of their customs, it would be absurd to ascribe to them a moral sense SO much higher developed than that of civilization, that it would exclude the possibility of prostitution.

There can be no question about the moral sentiment in reference to prostitution. Through all the centuries of its existence moral sentiment has become more and more inimical to it without being able to expurgate it. Consequently there must be a force in human society stronger than the moral force. Undoubtedly there are cases of perversity and uncontrolableness of natural impulses, but such cases are not numerous enough to account for the fearful extent of prostitution. Such cases excepted, I doubt whether a single prostitute can be found, who would not a thousand times prefer a life of decency and respectability to a life of shame, if she were not prevented by the adversity of economic conditions.

It is in the difference of the economic conditions where we have to search for the reason of the absence of prostitution among savages and barbarians and its presence in civilization. There was no place for it in a society which had no economic classes; it cannot exist where there are no rich and no poor. The tribal relations and the gentile organization with its communistic arrangements offered no soil for the growth of that detestable institution. Nor would the form of the family existing then permit of its appearance. The soil was prepared for it with the introduction of private ownership in land with all its economic and social consequences.

Mr. Alvin S. Johnson, assistant professor of economics at Columbia University the author of the aforementioned book, who has carefully investigated the subject says: "In the first place 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, moral or mental, they remain ignorant and disagreeable, slovenly and uncouth, good for nothing in the social organism. When half matured, they fall the willing victims of their male associates, and inevitably drift into prostitution."

"Another form is closely connected with the appearance of women in industry. In many cities there are great classes of women without any resources excepting their earnings as needle-women, day workers, domestics or factory hands. These earnings are often so small as barely to suffice for the urgent needs of the day. A season of non-employment presents them with the alternative of starvation or prostitution. These form the 'occasional prostitutes,' who, according to Blaschko (an eminent German physician and writer on this subject) far outnumber all others in the city of Berlin. When employment is again to be had, they withdraw from the life of shame, if its irregularities have not incapacitated them for honorable labor."

"A third class, one which is more or less typical of American prostitution, is made up of those who cannot be said to be driven into prostitution either by absolute want or by exceptionally pernicious surroundings. They may be employed at living wages, but the prospect of continuing from year to year with no change from tedious and irksome labor creates discontent and eventually rebellion. They, too, are impregnated with the view that individual happiness is the end of life, and their lives bring them no happiness and promise them none. The circumstances of city life make it possible for them

to experiment with immorality without losing such social standing, as they may have, and thus many of them drift gradually into professional prostitution."

The prostitute is the helpless victim of modern economic conditions, not industry alone. Among the hundreds of thousands of saleswomen and typewriters there are comparatively few who receive a compensation sufficient for their support. Fortunate are those of them who have parents, or other relatives with whom they can live. I know of a large retail house, whose proprietor in several cases, when the girl asking a situation, said that she could not live on the wages offered, answered with the cynical question: "Have you no male friend to help you out?"

Undoubtedly there is, as Mr. Johnson says, a large class of women, growing up in contaminating, wretched surroundings, in poverty and vice. Poverty, however, is the crime of society, a crime for which no individual in particular can be held responsible. Our economic system produces poverty with absolute certainty. There may always be reasons why poverty strikes certain persons, reasons which by no means, always make the person blameless, but as a general rule, the reasons are beyond individual control, and if it is not the one person, that remains poor, it will be another. Without the presence of a poor class the wage system could not exist and the existence of poverty is the inevitable consequence of an economic system in which millions are compelled to compete with each other for employment bringing not more than a bare living. With equally unerring certainty, however, poverty breeds vice and crime.

Equally of an economic character as the reasons are