“In Frankfurt, at the end of last month, among 226 persons under the observation of the police des mœurs (that is, not reckoning secret prostitution), 98 were female factory employees. Since for their necessary bare support (food and sleeping accommodation only), the minimum daily sum needed is 1·25 marks, it appears that the wages which can be earned by female employees of 1·50 to 1·80 marks can hardly suffice to provide for all their needs. It would seem, therefore, that the lowness of their earnings must play some part in the matter under discussion.”
The reports of the industrial councillors of Düsseldorf, Posen, Stettin, Neuss, Barmen, Elberfeld, Gladbach, Erfurt, etc., have a similar signification.
Important in relation to the incontrovertible connexion between material poverty and prostitution is the fact that in the majority of cases the prostitution of female factory employees is only occasional, and not professional prostitution—that is to say, such women have recourse to prostitution only when compelled thereto by deficient means.
As regards genuine professional prostitution, female factory employees, who live in a state of comparative freedom, contribute a smaller contingent of recruits than maidservants, whose position is always a more dependent one, and who are much less experienced in the struggle for existence, although, generally speaking, they live in better conditions. From a computation based upon figures for the years 1855, 1873, and 1898 (those for 1855 and 1898 relating to far too small a number of cases), Blaschko derives the opinion that formerly female factory employees provided a greater number of recruits to prostitution than they do at present; but that, on the contrary, the contribution of maidservants to the ranks of professional prostitution has enormously increased. This assertion cannot pass without contradiction. Gross-Hoffinger, in the work previously mentioned, pointed out that the class of maidservants was the true nucleus of prostitution, and devoted to this fact a long and illuminating chapter of his book. And at about the same time (1848) Lippert also wrote (op. cit., p. 79): “The principal sources of prostitution are maidservants, sempstresses, flower-girls, tailoresses, hairdressers, shop-girls, and barmaids.” (Gross-Hoffinger himself emphasizes the word “maidservants.”)
We see, therefore, that the preponderance of ex-maidservants in the ranks of professional prostitution is by no means a new phenomenon, although, possibly, that preponderance is even greater now than it was in former times. And though in isolated instances it may happen that simple poverty forces a maidservant to become a prostitute, this explanation does not suffice for the generality of cases. The same reservation must be made in respect of seduction and illegitimate motherhood as causes of prostitution. And in so far as poverty is a cause, we must speak rather of relative poverty, poverty which has more of a subjective than an objective character.
Schiller rightly remarks, in his admirable essay on the “Prevention of Prostitution,” that in respect of prostitutes who have been maidservants, in the majority of cases there can be no question of insufficient wages and actual poverty (if we except the badly paid servants in public-houses, laundry-maids, and a few others), since the maidservant receives, in addition to her wages, free board and lodging, and therefore is in a much better position than the majority of female factory employees and of women engaged in home industries. Notwithstanding this, maidservants supply the largest proportion of prostitutes.
The majority of maidservants come from the country, where lax views prevail regarding sexual relationships. In addition, girls usually come to town when still very young. The want of education and experience of life is, in their case, very striking; and this is increased by their permanently dependent position, in contrast with the early independence of the town factory-women, who are speedily initiated into all the possible evils of town life. In addition, there comes into the question an influence which hitherto has been underestimated: the love of finery. Among maidservants this is especially powerful, since, in this respect, they are continually exposed to suggestive influences, arising from the clothing of their mistresses. This love of dress, in association with a far greater unscrupulousness in sexual matters than exists among workwomen, drives many servant-girls, even without real poverty, to prostitution. After they have lost their place, after they have acquired a distaste for work, have given birth to an illegitimate child, or have been infected with venereal disease, they very readily enter the ranks of professional prostitution.
This subjective psychological factor plays nearly as great a rôle as the economic factor. Blaschko himself draws attention to the fact that, in proportion to the hundreds of thousands of women who are compelled to earn their bread by hard, badly paid toil, the number of those who ultimately become prostitutes is really almost infinitesimally small; and that, therefore, we must regard as accessory causes of prostitution, defective will-power, want of industry, of perseverance, and of moral instincts, and, finally, also—and here Lombroso is justified—congenital deficiency. Hellpach is right when, in his most readable essay on “Prostitution and Prostitutes” (Berlin, 1905), he lays the principal stress on this “social-psychological” explanation of prostitution, and regards the purely economic factor as “the ultimate turning-point” in the fatal road that leads to prostitution. (Earlier than Hellpach, Anton Baumgarten attempted to give a social-psychological explanation of prostitution. See his essays, containing much valuable material, “Police and Prostitution,” and “The Relations of Prostitution to Crime,” published in the eighth and eleventh volumes respectively of the “Archives of Criminal Anthropology.”)
We must, therefore, hold firmly to the fact that the most diverse and heterogeneous vital conditions may ultimately lead to prostitution. Among these, lack of education, premature habituation to sexual depravation by casual observation and by deliberate seduction, play an important rôle. And these causes are themselves to a large extent secondary to the miserable housing conditions in great towns, recently so dramatically described by von Pfeiffer and Kampffmeyer.
“It is easier,” says Pfeiffer, “to thunder against immorality from the top of a lofty tower, than it is to resist every allurement in dull, narrow dwellings, in the midst of poverty and deprivation.... The lodger flirts with the wife; the married or free-loving pair, also living in the house, do not wait to begin their caresses until the children are out of the way. The children are witnesses of many scenes which are little adapted to the preservation of pure morals; they see things which they later come to regard as matters of course, and when they have the opportunity they act in the same way themselves, for they have not learned otherwise, and they think that every one does the same....