The customers found in the fifty-cent vice resorts already described are usually longshoremen, truck drivers, street cleaners, coal heavers, soldiers and sailors, recently landed immigrants of low moral standards, and laborers of all kinds. Their treatment of the women is not infrequently brutal,—usually perhaps in consequence of intoxication. To one- and two-dollar houses resort men and boys who earn ten, twenty, twenty-five or more dollars per week. They are proprietors of small business enterprises, clerks, bookkeepers, bartenders, barbers, tailors, waiters, soldiers, sailors, messengers in banks, members of social and political clubs or of benefit organizations. Saturday and Sunday are the popular nights with men of this type. The owners and madames provide extra “goods” to “take care of the trade” on such occasions. This fact was brought out many times during the investigation as the workers went from one house to the other counting the inmates. A house that early in the week contained only ten or twelve inmates would on Saturday and Sunday have its numbers increased to fifteen and twenty-five. This was especially true in resorts like those on Sixth Avenue.[178]
I have in mind one prominent organization[179] whose members are regular customers in houses of this grade. Many of the rank and file are themselves owners and pimps, who joined the club in order to advertise their houses and women to their associates. Another organization[180] of similar character has a membership of about 500 young men whose ages range from twenty-one to thirty. They are fond of attending boxing contests, wrestling bouts, athletic meets and public dances. After such exhibitions or “affairs” they go in groups of five or ten to the houses, spending long hours in promiscuous orgies. Owners make a specialty of catering to clubs of this character. When they give public balls, “rackets,” “chowder parties,” or other outings, the madames, buying tickets liberally, attend with their best looking inmates or with runners to drum up trade. After the ball or outing is over, groups of men and boys follow them back to their quarters.
The proprietors of the highest priced houses are very cautious in the conduct of their business. There is no promiscuous intermingling of customers in a common receiving parlor where the men huddle on a bench awaiting their turn, or sit in chairs gaping at each other unashamed. Separate parlors are used for display; privacy is carefully guarded. In order to make doubly sure that their visits will not be known, prominent customers occasionally hire an entire establishment. An instance is cited in which a well-to-do patron remained three days in such a resort. At times, however, men are utterly reckless: they have been known to leave their business cards behind them, or their signatures in books or on presents given to the inmates or the madame. One such individual is the New York agent for a famous automobile concern; another is the manager of a company which manufactures a well-known typewriter; another travels about from city to city selling hats; while still a fourth is connected with a celebrated watch company.
A numerous but pathetic group is that made up of young clerks who, living alone in unattractive quarters, find in professional prostitutes companions in the company of whom a night’s revel offsets the dullness of their lives at other times. There are thousands of these men in New York. No home ties restrain them; no home associations fill their time or thought. Their rooms are fit only to sleep in; close friends they have few or none. You can watch them on the streets any evening. Hour after hour they gaze at the passing throng; at length they fling themselves into the current,—no longer silent and alone.
No small part of the business is the so-called “out of town” trade. It has been conservatively estimated that over 250,000 visitors enter this city every day in the year for business or for pleasure. This great host visit the theaters, parks, seashore resorts, museums; they trade in stores and shops, and some of them, before they return to their homes, become customers in vice resorts. They, too, include all social classes: soldiers and sailors, traveling men and buyers, men in attendance on business, political or fraternal gatherings and conventions, and mere pleasure seekers.
It is impossible to estimate the number of men and boys who become customers in vice resorts in Manhattan during the course of one year. On the basis of data actually on file, it may be assumed that inmates of resorts and women on the street trade with between ten and fifteen men per day. This statement is corroborated by data secured by the Vice Commission in Chicago, where the average was found to be 15 per day for 18 inmates in one house covering a period of 22 months,[181] as well as by data obtained in Syracuse, New York, where the average number of customers entertained by one inmate during a period of 6 months was 12.[182] Taking the lower figures as the basis of calculation, if the 15,000 professional prostitutes of Manhattan entertain ten guests apiece, the customers total at least 150,000 persons every day.
THE BUSINESS OF PROSTITUTION; ITS COST