A feeble-minded girl was found to be one of 13 illegitimate children to whom her mentally deficient mother had given birth. P. 46.
Over-crowding in rooms, tenements, and neighborhoods is an obvious menace. In congested sections of the lower part of New York, large families, to which these girls belong, were herded into two or three narrow rooms, 12 in three small rooms, seven in two rooms, or a family of five eating and sleeping and living in a single room. P. 55.
Have we realized that every feeble-minded girl is a potential prostitute? Have we realized that feeble-minded mothers give birth to large numbers of children doomed to mental deficiency? Have we realized what this will ultimately mean in deterioration of human stock and in the complication of social problems? To stop the stream which is bringing into prostitution large numbers of mentally deficient girls and women, we must safe-guard these girls and prevent them from having offspring. Evidence presented to the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded in Great Britain, and careful studies in America, show conclusively that mental deficiency tends strongly to be inherited, and that feeble-minded mothers are more prolific than normal women. P. 267.
DOWNWARD PATHS. An Inquiry into the Causes which Contribute to the Making of the Prostitute. With a foreword by A. Maude Royden. T. Bell & Sons, Ltd. London.
It is astonishing to find experts denying the element of economic pressure as a factor in the creation of the prostitute. It is an influence constantly present and it is only when we interpret it to mean actual physical starvation that we can say it is rarely a determining factor. Economic pressure does not begin with starvation, it ends there. There is again the long strain of underfeeding and overwork, of the absence of interest, variety and color, and all that makes life worth living to a human being. Poverty often means isolation, and isolation the absence of all those ties which keep us in our place in the social order, and make it worth while to preserve our self-respect. To be without this is to be constantly in danger and it is economic pressure which has thrust many over the brink of the precipice, though few would say their fall was due to actual starvation. P. 10.
Intimately connected with this aspect of the question is that of home and housing, especially of the child. The age at which children are first corrupted is almost incredibly early, until we consider the nature of the surroundings in which they grow up. Insufficient space, over-crowding, the herding together of all ages and both sexes, these things break down the barriers of a natural modesty and reserve. Where decency is practically impossible, unchastity will follow, and follow almost as a matter of course. There are certainly natural defences in the right instincts of young people brought up in the right kind of home, which we look for in vain among those who have never had space enough for growth, or privacy enough for refinement. P. 11.
We must allot to bad housing and over-crowding a foremost place, not only as undermining the physical health which conduces to normal sexual relationship, but also as a danger to the wholesome innocence of youth. P. 21.
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon persons interested in the housing problem that over-crowding means a violation of childhood in every degree, from the indecencies of mere childish horse-play to complete debauchery. P. 22.
There are two types of feeble-minded girls who are almost inevitably destined to prostitution. There is first the large proportion whose sexual inclinations are abnormally strong, or whose power of self-control over natural impulses is abnormally weak. 2—There is the large class who are non-resistant. They have no active impulse to seek out men, but they will yield to any one who approaches them. There are three important factors that drive the feeble-minded into prostitution by excluding them from other occupations. 1—They often lose their characters at a very early age. A marked characteristic of the feeble-minded is the precocity of their sexual impulse. 2—It is easy enough for any feeble-minded girl to get and keep light, unskilled work at girl’s wages, but not so easy for her to pass like the girl of normal intelligence, from girl’s to woman’s work at the age of 17 or 18, for she is rarely worth woman’s wages. Therefore she finds herself bored by monotonous work and low pay just at the time that she is particularly attractive to man, and her sexual impulses are at their strongest. Very naturally the feeble-minded girl with her incapacity to perceive the consequences turns from her unsatisfying employment to the new life of excitement and easy gain that offers itself. 3—If feeble-minded girls do succeed in getting respectable situations they are very likely to lose them because of their lack of intelligence and general inefficiency. And even if they should discharge their duties in a satisfactory manner they have a curious distaste for staying for any time in one place, and tend to drift from situation to situation. P. 127–128.
Another characteristic of the feeble-minded is their notorious fertility. The superior fertility of the feeble-minded has been proved beyond dispute by statistical inquiry.