CHAPTER II
Trade in Women
It is necessary to define clearly the practical form of evil which is now under consideration, and to the effects of which the consciences of men and women must be roused. Ordinary immorality is not the demoralization of the slums—that horrible result of monopoly and speculation in land, where human beings are herded together like pigs—a condition into which the bargains of trade hardly enter. Neither is it the practice of free lust—a practice where unlimited liberty is claimed by both men and women to indulge the impulses of sexual caprice. Ordinary immorality is the distinct, deliberate application to women of the trading system of money values governed by unlimited competition. In this system activity, opportunity, and cleverness carry the day; conscientiousness and spiritual aspiration are out of place; innocence and ignorance constitute weakness, and, of course, go to the wall.
Ordinary immorality or fornication, assuming the female body to be an article of merchandise, necessarily subjects this merchandise to those fluctuations of the market, those variations in demand and supply, and that tyranny of capital over labour which destroy freedom of contract.
It may be urged that women ‘consent’ to be purchased, and that therefore there is a radical difference between the purchase of the bodies of men and women, which the anti-slavery movement has pronounced illegal, and the purchase of women by men which we are now considering. The sophistry of such evasion will be apparent if the question of ‘consent’ and the specious hypocrisy generally involved in freedom of contract be closely examined. Freedom of contract can only take place between those who in certain essential particulars are equals. The parties to any contract must be so far equals in intelligence, that they can equally understand any risks that may be run, and clearly foresee the probable results of the bargain; and they must be so far equals in social position, that neither party is compelled by the pressure of circumstances or the fear of want, to accept conditions which are unjust or unwise. No freedom of contract is possible where this degree of intellectual and practical equality does not exist. Freedom implies responsibility. There is no freedom if both parties are not free. Any insistence upon consent to a bargain ignorantly or forcibly made is fraud. It is fraud darkened by varying degrees of cruelty, proportioned to the superiority of intelligence and independence possessed by the stronger party in the bargain.
The grave error of excusing purchase by the plea of consent, is fully shown when the relations of capital to labour in the present system of competitive industry are understood. We are now so far removed from the primitive trade of barter, where values were determined by necessities, that first principles are commonly lost sight of. Generations have passed, during which ideas about wealth have become confused through complicated exchanges, stored-up labour inherited by those who no longer labour, violent seizures in the past or cunning ones in the present, with constantly changing standards or ideals. The quite new standard of converting everything into a money value, and measuring its value by money, has taken the place of older methods. As a result, money has become the autocrat of industry. Character, talent, activity still possess their uses, but only as the servants of money or capital, which have practically become interchangeable terms. The weaker portions of the human race are ever more and more deeply crushed down by the misery of a limitless competitive system, which is not based on the legitimate foundations of trust, freedom, and sympathy, and which consequently, by placing money as the irresponsible governor of the industrial world, makes the hypocrisy of so-called ‘freedom of contract’ the most bitter mockery.
It is necessary to realize the overwhelming and illegitimate power of money in the present day, if the condition of any grade is to be justly judged, and the responsibilities for the evils of a vicious trade rightly apportioned. In the terrible trade which converts the human body into a marketable commodity, it is no figure of speech, but a very weighty fact, that vicious men are the capitalists. The responsibility of that position must be recognised.
In judging either of the parties concerned in the trade, the question, ‘Who are the capitalists or paymasters?’ is the point to be insisted on. This is the fundamental fact to be steadily borne in mind—whether we consider the demoralized women who consent to the conversion of their bodies into merchandise; or the wholesale traders who organize to meet a demand increasing beyond the power of individuals to supply; or the State which connives at the trade; or society which condones it—the capital on which this nefarious traffic rests is supplied by licentious men. This is the great economic fact on which the whole system rests. All legislation and all benevolent effort that do not recognise this fundamental fact, will hopelessly wander in the labyrinth of evil trade, with no clue to direct their energies aright. From this unnatural employment of capital, two other economic evils directly arise—viz., first, the discouragement of honest industry; second, an unfair competition with male labour.
The discouragement of honest industry is a very serious economic evil. Any discouragement to patient industry, thrift, and self-control is direct encouragement to reckless improvidence, vicious indulgence, and the creation of a dangerously increasing predatory horde. Through obstacles to honest labour, our prisons are now filled with criminals, our streets with the vicious, and our work-houses with paupers. The industrious workers are taxed beyond endurance to support the institutions rendered necessary by the suicidal policy of degrading labour.
The discouraging difficulties which now surround all honest industry press with increased force upon women’s labour, and compel a moral heroism to resist the special temptation which crowds upon them.
It is now a fact that in every large city, no woman with any pretension to natural attractiveness can fail to meet a purchaser. There are men who think it neither shame nor wrong to purchase for shillings or pounds, as the case may be, a temporary physical gratification, without reflection upon the inevitable results, individual and social, of their temporary action. The knowledge that money may be gained so easily, spreads from woman to woman. The contrast between the ease with which the wages of sin may be gained, and the laborious, even crushing methods of honest industry, becomes an ever present and burning temptation to working women.