Practically all the figures in the above concern profits derived from the sale of the bodies of women. In addition, the exploiters—owners and madames mainly—derive further gain (by no means inconsiderable in amount) from such items as the sale to their women, at exorbitant prices, of clothing and other feminine requirements. Huge as these immediate profits of exploitation are, they are enormously increased by the vast sums made from the sale of intoxicating drinks, which business has been shown to be so closely allied with prostitution, and by abnormal rentals received for the use of all kinds of property for purposes of prostitution. Even then, the stupendous although unknown figure involved in the maintenance of this army of upwards of 15,000 women in New York City fails to indicate what prostitution costs society. For perhaps the greatest cost of all is yet to be mentioned, namely, disease. Wherever prostitution exists, there venereal disease flourishes,—maiming, incapacitating the participants surely, and not infrequently innocent ones in close association with them.
Reliable and complete statistics as to the prevalence of venereal disease, its consequences immediate and remote, are not to be had. In the absence of compulsory reporting, it is impossible to estimate the number of cases under treatment by physicians; in addition to these, large numbers endeavor to conceal the truth by foolishly resorting to quacks, advertised nostrums, etc. Figures obtainable from hospitals represent, therefore, only a fraction, probably an inconsiderable fraction, of those afflicted; as far as they go, a careful study elicits the following facts:
During the year 1911, 522,722 cases of all kinds were treated in 17 dispensaries in New York City; 15,781, or 3.01 percent of these cases, were venereally affected. The hospitals of the city possess few beds for the reception of venereal patients; nevertheless, 5,380 persons—6.33 per cent of all cases treated in 13 different hospitals—were venereally affected, about two-thirds male, one-third female. These infections occur at any time from the first to the seventieth year,—the period of greatest frequency being between 16 and 30 years of age: between 16 and 20, 796 were males and 369 females; between 21 and 25, 1,182 and 454, respectively; between 26 and 30, 692 and 268.
For several reasons these figures are far from suggesting the actual extent of venereal infection,—in the first place, because, as above stated, the hospitals receive but a fraction of the sufferers; in the second, because accurate diagnosis has only recently become feasible. The percentages increase heavily as soon as the more delicate and reliable tests devised by Wassermann and others are applied. For example, 308 adults were admitted to the medical wards of a certain New York hospital during the months of January, February, and March, 1913; though the Wassermann test for syphilis was made in the case of only 166 of these, 38, i. e., 23 percent of those examined, gave positive results; this is equivalent to 12.3 percent of the entire 308. Had the test been applied to all adults admitted, undoubtedly the ratio of syphilitic infection would have been higher still. As a matter of fact, the test as usually performed does not disclose all cases of infection; so that the prevalence of disease is actually greater than the tests indicate.
The civil state of the patients in the cases first mentioned is shown in the following table:
| Males | Females | |||||||||
| single | married | widowers | single | married | widows | |||||
| 640 | 2950 | 57 | 589 | 802 | 90 | |||||
From the standpoint of occupation, every social class is represented,—necessarily so, inasmuch as every social class figures in the phenomena of prostitution. The occupations given by male patients were as follows: professional, 52; clerical and official, 307; mercantile and trading, 250; public entertainment, 120; personal service, police and military, 186; laboring and servant, 1,181; manufacturing and mechanical industry, 932; agricultural, transportation, and other outdoor employments, 645; no occupations, 58; classified as unknown, 8; children, 11; congenital origin, 31; schoolboys, 10; students, 10. The occupations of female patients are as follows: professional, 46; domestic and personal, 1,144; trade and transportation, 109; manufacturing and mechanical, 86; no occupations, 72; unknown, 9; schoolgirls, 21; children, 76.
In respect to the disease with which they were afflicted, 413 of the 1,563 females suffered from syphilis; 1,036 from gonorrhœa; 9 from chancroids, and 105 from complications. Eight hundred and eighty-three of the men were suffering from syphilis; 1,445 from gonorrhœa; 203 from chancroids, and 1,276 from complications.
It needs no argument to show that the cost of prostitution is enormously augmented even by the amount of disease accounted for in the preceding discussion; as this represents but a small part of the whole, the totals thus reached require to be multiplied by a large factor. But the reckoning would still be incomplete, even if we knew the actual volume of syphilis, gonorrhœa and chancre; for there would remain to be included the remote effects, not less certainly due to venereal affection, and even more fateful and costly than the immediate manifestations,—paralysis, sterility, miscarriage, deformity, degeneracy, insanity,—curses that stretch even “unto the third and fourth generations.” From the effort to translate such losses into dollars and cents, the boldest calculator may well shrink: yet they are a part,—a certain, inevitable part—of the cost of prostitution.