But the causes of prostitution or social vice are varied. In the fall of the year large numbers of young girls come to the city in search of employment. This is often the most trying period in their lives. If they happen to find work, all is well; but if not or even after they have been thrown out of employment, or when pinched for money to buy dress or pay living expenses, they go out on the street, it means their ruin. The temptations in the way of friendless girls in a great city are so numerous that unless they are surrounded and even fortified by moral and religious influences, they readily succumb to the forces of evil within six months after their arrival. I have been informed on good authority that certain men are continually on the lookout for such girls, and after the first or second introduction, use a ticket to the playhouse and a late supper, or a piece of money or jewelry to bring about their ruin. Men who have finally landed in prison have boasted of having seduced ten to twenty such girls within a few years.
The modest amount of salary that ordinary girls receive in wages does not admit of their saving anything for a dull season. As a result hundreds of girls yield readily to evil influences and are soon borne down the swift currents of temptation into shame and ruin; and when they find themselves shunned by old friends, many of them end their days by suicide.
In the Tombs and district prisons may be seen almost daily large numbers of women who have been taken from the street or from “dives” and other dens of iniquity after the police have raided such places. After a few years the prostitute becomes a repulsive, degraded and besotted specimen of humanity and sometimes a hardened criminal. Nemesis follows the unfortunate and unhappy female till she ends her days in the Potter’s Field. It is indeed sad to chronicle these things, but they are nevertheless true.
We must not forget that women are naturally of a finer temperament than men, and are therefore more susceptible to the influences of the evil one. Young girls seem kinder, more gentle, more accessible to appeals made by the sterner sex, and as a rule, are more easily caught in the “traps” set for them by human degenerates. Some women love dress and jewelry passionately. And many of them will do anything to secure them. If they are employed in stores, offices or factories, and they appeal to the foreman for an increase of wages, he may inform them that Miss So-and-So gets along on the same salary, but he offers to introduce them to male friends, who will aid them financially, but who often prove to be their ruin.
The Cadet System
In police parlance the “Cadet system” is the application of modern methods in fostering and promoting the work of a procurer who secures victims for the brothel. The system goes back to the days of Greek and Roman degeneracy. But we are dealing at the present time, not with European or even Asiatic conditions, but with New York at the beginning of the twentieth century.
How the term “Cadet” originated is hard to tell, as there seems to be no connection between a young man who is being educated for the military service and the man who provides for the sensual gratification of the abandoned herd.
The most guarded estimate of the number of prostitutions in Greater New York is put down at 70,000, yet there is no accurate information on the subject.
It is the opinion of good authorities that the Raines Law has done more to make the life of the prostitute and her male sensualist respectable in New York than any other ten causes. A large number of the saloons that go under that name are classed by keen observers as brothels of the worst kind. The Raines-Law-saloon-hotel gives a cloak of quasi-respectability to the brothel and makes prostitution attractive and profitable, and the rumseller for a small fee condones the crime against the sexes.
Frequently the city Cadet goes into another state, like Pennsylvania or Maryland, and advertising in some local paper for girls to work in a hotel or factory, he offers good wages and is willing to pay all expenses to the city. The result is that he has a dozen applications out of which he selects five or six of the most attractive ones. After he reaches the city, they are turned over to human devils and afterwards sold to brothel keepers at prices varying from $100 to $200 each.