I have said that there are large numbers. Estimates vary enormously as to what proportion of men resort to prostitutes. More facts are badly wanted, but the Chicago Vice Commission of 1911, a commission instituted and carried out by the municipality, states that the number of prostitutes in the city who do nothing else is approximately 5000. It is impossible even to estimate the number of casual and clandestine prostitutes, but they are certainly many. To arrive at some estimate, the commission takes only the 1012 inmates of certain houses, from whose books it appeared that there was a nightly average of fifteen men per inmate,[4] and this gives the total of 5,540,700 visits per year. It does not seem likely that Chicago is singular, and until we have trustworthy evidence to the contrary, these facts form almost the only basis for estimating the extent of these practices.
When we come to the question whether prostitution is an evil, we shall find that some of the consequences are evil in themselves, and some are evil because of the way society treats them. There can be no possible doubt that the practice is of the greatest injury to the health of the women engaged in it. Those who persist in it die young, though here the Chicago Commission suggests there has been exaggeration. The injury to the health of the men might be decreased if there were no disgrace attached to the practice, and if medical advice were always invoked and carefully followed; there would still, however, be considerable risk to the health of the men, even if excess were not added, as a cause of disease. The injury to the health of wives is very grave indeed, and those who will take the trouble to consult such books as Social Diseases and Marriage, by Prince A. Morrow, M.D., or Hygiene and Morality, by Lavinia L. Dock (Secretary of the International Council of Nurses), will find there justification enough for the statement that prostitution is not only an evil, but it is the evil which is felt most disastrously by women of all ages and classes. It affects the children, who are afflicted with many ghastly diseases, as a result of their father’s conduct; it affects the wives, who, besides the moral suffering they may endure, are frequently rendered barren, and themselves diseased; it affects all women wage-earners and, through them, men wage-earners. Concerning the moral evil, a whole book might and I hope will be written, from a modern standpoint. A great deal of purity-preaching fails because it is out of touch with modern minds. If you want men to have a horror of using a woman merely “as a convenience,” if you want women to resent such a use of themselves, you will have to replace semi-savage tabus with science. And this is not to say that religion has nothing to do here. For those who believe in a God who made things must believe He meant us to find out His law. There is a sense in which the sneer of the Pharisee is bare truth, and “this people that knoweth not the law is accursed.”
People have called it a “necessary evil,” and we shall do well to inquire what they mean by “necessary,” for they generally use it in at least two senses: (1) necessary for the health of men; (2) a necessary consequence of the evil nature of men and women. It is impossible to believe that, if it is necessary for the health of men, it can also be evil. It is impossible to believe that a state of affairs can be natural in which the health of men can only be secured by the degradation, barrenness, disease and early death of women and children. Prostitution in itself is degrading to both sexes, and cannot be necessary. What people mean is that sexual intercourse is necessary for the health of men, and that if they cannot have enough of it within marriage, it is necessary that they should have it outside marriage. If we regard marriage as a divine institution, it is impossible to believe that a good God would have made it necessary to desecrate this divine institution. If we regard marriage as a human institution, it is for us to adapt it to human needs and so arrange society that men and women should have the intercourse necessary for their health. The truth is that sexual intercourse is as necessary for women as for men, and the opportunity of bearing children just as much part of the wider scope that we desire for women as opportunities for education and wage-earning. Because women have always been in subjection, however, their needs have always been overlooked, and not only law but custom has ignored them.
If one wife were not sufficient for a man, we should recognise the fact and not outlaw the women who are rendering a service. There are about 3⅛ millions of unmarried men over 20 in England. Since we know that a very large proportion of them do not forgo sexual intercourse, this argues an immense discrepancy between our professions with regard to marriage and our performance. If social conditions were altered, should we not find that a large number of women at present unmarried would be willing to enter into relations of love and affection with men, and might not this greatly diminish the “necessity” for prostitutes? We can most of us imagine a state of things infinitely preferable to the present, in which the virginity of some 3¼ millions of women is secured by the holocaust of the remaining quarter of a million, and all the attendant evils and disasters to the rest of humanity. What does the bachelor condition of so many men betoken? That they cannot, or will not undertake marriage. Is it not time that some serious thought were given to finding out what is wrong with marriage, or with women, or with men, or with all three?
But when “necessary” is used to signify the “necessary consequence of evil human nature,” there is some truth in that; if we add, “and of evil human institutions,” we may say that we have got the whole truth. If human nature and human institutions are evil in this direction, can we not alter them? Women certainly will not be content, with their new knowledge and their growing powers, to sit down helpless before these evils. We may be quite certain that they are going to move very seriously, and it is to the interests of men and of the whole community that there should be sympathy and understanding and co-operation between men and women reformers. Women must beware of allowing themselves to be infected, when they obtain more power, with the brutality which has for ages robbed law of its moral sanctions, or with the legalism which has robbed conduct of the grace of the spirit. The social evil is largely the result of brutality, and brutal punishments are no remedy, even if you can persuade men to inflict them. We do relapse periodically into brutality, such as the introducing of flogging into a recent Act. But it is remarkable that this particular lapse occurred in a measure that had been hung up for a very long time and that was terribly overdue; therefore feeling was exasperated and the measure was finally pushed through on a wave of emotionalism when Members of Parliament scarcely dared oppose the flogging, lest they should be accused of sympathy with the offenders. One could not help feeling that a good many men found, in the easy enactment of flogging, relief from the necessity of thinking out and carrying out the far more difficult and searching reforms which might have some permanent effect. The flogging clause was detestable, both for what it did and for what it prevented being done. It is a matter for regret that women did not oppose it, as women; but brutality has had its effect on them too. If women were admitted to full citizenship there might be more hope that reforms could be carried gradually and thoughtfully. As it is, women must be excused for seizing any temporary breeze of emotionalism (such as was caused by the death of W. T. Stead) to move on their ship of reform from the doldrums where it lies neglected.
It is not reasonable to say off-hand that legislation can do nothing to diminish the social evil, and a good deal of nonsense is talked about not making men good by Act of Parliament. The causes of prostitution are very many and complex, and though direct repressive legislation has always been worse than useless, because its only effect has been to harry and persecute and degrade still further the unhappy women, yet there are many directions in which legislation could touch the causes.
The movement, now already strongly on the way, for further knowledge is one of the most hopeful of all. Most thinking people are now agreed that children should be taught the nature of their bodies, and respect and care for them, and the only questions are how to give the teaching, by whom and at what age. Adult women, as well as men, should also know something of the pathology of sex, so that they can guard themselves, and so that men may realise more than they do now the fearful suffering which their excesses entail on the innocent. Purity has been preached to boys and men far too much as a vague ideal. If the results of lust appeared to them in their true form of hideous cruelty and cowardice, it would make the most thoughtless pause. Girls must no longer be taught that subservience and sacrifice to men is woman’s virtue; boys must be taught to take a pride in a woman’s pride, achievement and independence. The incredibly mean jealousy of these which we frequently see, has its roots far back in childish days when “only a girl” was a phrase that passed unrebuked by the mother. If a girl has not learned to value herself, to respect her own body and soul, and dedicate them to some worthy purpose, what wonder if she sells for cash that for which she herself has so little value? The cult of the “womanly” woman is for much in the venality of women. Besides this property of whispering humbleness, she is to be all softness and weakness and yielding grace, and she is to be so unlettered and inexperienced that the veriest scoundrel can impose upon her. The law does much to encourage this low status of women, and until women have attained full citizenship, it is not to be wondered at if young men grow up with a slight contempt for them.
The fact that a woman can sell herself tends, as we have seen, to keep women’s wages down, and the temptation to add to her income is increased by the low wages. This is a vicious circle, from which escape can only be made by raising wages, since you cannot directly stop prostitution. The fact that men will probably always be richer than women, and that men very much desire women, will perhaps always prevent the total disappearance of prostitution, but at least we know that if we make it possible for every woman to live decently, there will be an immense reduction. It is in the highest degree unlikely that there are many women who would deliberately choose the horrible life. They drift, fall and are pushed into it and then cannot get out. One hears stories of actual starvation leading to it. These may be true, but there are far more cases (and this is proved by the fact that domestic servants and daughters at home form the largest classes of recruits) where the natural love of pleasure and finery, the natural sex attraction, and in many cases aversion from hard or monotonous work have been the temptations. It is an appalling thought that these, which are, at worst, faults and weaknesses, should be seized hold of by men, to make, of what should be a woman—
“A cipher of man’s changeless sum
Of lust, past, present and to come,”