Pool rooms and cigar stores offer peculiar facilities for young boys of the neighborhood to become acquainted with the life of the underworld. Even before leaving school, boys often frequent them; soon some of them join little cliques and gangs formed by the criminal element. They become pickpockets or ordinary crooks. If endowed by nature with large muscles and an instinct for fighting, they become preliminary boxers and gradually develop into the gang members or political guerillas who do such valiant service at the polls on primary or election day. From the ranks of these the pimp is developed. As neighborhood boys they have little difficulty in securing girls who, like themselves, are adventurous, or already immoral. It therefore becomes easy either to trap a girl and ruin her, or to “break in” the already immoral girl to a life of professional prostitution under protection.
It is a strange fact, but it is true, that prostitutes often select young men whom they see in front of pool rooms and cigar stores and actually invite them to become their pimps and share the proceeds of their business. A young boy about eighteen years of age was standing near the entrance of a pool room on Second Avenue one hot afternoon in August, 1912, jauntily puffing a cigarette as a stranger passed with a man who had lived in the neighborhood many years. “See that kid?” said the man. “A young prostitute on the avenue has picked him out for her pimp. They grew up together and both have gone on the bum. She was ‘lined up’ about a year ago by a gang that ‘hangs out’ in a cigar store on East 14th Street. Since then she has been a regular prostitute.”
There is another group of miscellaneous places, different from those referred to above, namely, the natural channels through which the varied life of a great city passes. These are freely used by the prostitute. Attention is called to them simply to emphasize the fact that wherever groups of people meet for innocent pleasure or for business, there the prostitute lingers to ply her trade. Such places include subway and railway stations, hotel lobbies, entrances to department stores, ferry slips, and post office buildings. Prostitutes find these crowded thoroughfares excellent centers in which to solicit or to make “dates.” Pimps and procurers also frequent such places to “pick up” adventurous girls who are alone or in pairs, out for pleasure or excitement.[86]
(3) THE STREETS
The streets of Manhattan are openly used by prostitutes for soliciting. During the period of this investigation, street walking has been most conspicuous in certain localities which may be roughly described as follows:
Broadway, from West 27th to West 68th, and the side streets from West 26th to West 64th;
Sixth Avenue, from West 16th to West 45th, and the side streets from West 25th to West 31st;
Seventh Avenue, from West 24th to West 42nd;
Columbus Avenue, from West 59th to West 66th;
Columbus and Eighth Avenues, from West 99th to West 125th;