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 classes, 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 punishing 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 prostitution. 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 prostitute class, 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 classes in regard to this vice. Our wealthy classes, we believe, and certainly our middle classes, have a higher sentiment in regard to the purity both of man and woman than any similar classes in the civilized world. More persons relatively marry, and marriages are happier. This is equally true of the upper laboring classes. 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.
As a simple, practical measure to save from vice the girls of the honest poor, nothing has ever been equal to the Industrial School.
Along with our effort for homeless boys, I early attempted to found a comprehensive organization of Schools for the needy and ragged little girls of the city.
Though our Free Schools are open to all, experience has taught that vast numbers of children are so ill-clothed and destitute that they are ashamed to attend these excellent places of instruction; or their mothers are obliged to employ them during parts of the day; or they are begging, or engaged in street occupations, and will not attend, or, if they do, attend very irregularly. Very many are playing about the docks or idling in the streets.