The introduction into Europe of this American system is, in the first place, a problem of the organisation of the law courts, inasmuch as the Children’s Court combines the functions of an ordinary law court with those of a Board of Guardianship. In the second place, the problem is one of the reform of criminal law, since the Children’s Courts would be of no value without the power to place children on probation. In such countries as Hungary, in which the authority exercising guardianship is not a law court, but a specialised administrative body, the judge who has to try a child charged with a criminal offence is not empowered to exercise any of the functions of a Board of Guardianship. In those countries in Europe in which it is possible to effect the necessary changes in the organisation of the law courts, and to secure the necessary reforms in criminal law, and where suitable judges for the Children’s Courts are available (the personality of these judges is, of course, a matter of fundamental importance), the introduction of Children’s Courts is possible. In Europe the American example is more and more appreciated and imitated; of recent years advances in this direction have been made in almost every civilised country, not even excepting England, whose legal development is essentially conservative. In the application of these ideas we find numerous differences; in Germany, for instance, several systems are in vogue. The general introduction of the Children’s Courts into Europe is certain to ensue, inasmuch as the conditions which have led to their introduction in America obtain equally in Europe.
[CHAPTER III]
PROSTITUTION
The Causes of Prostitution.—As in every commercial transaction, so also in the women-market, two factors are decisive—supply and demand. The demand arises from the fact that to men of the upper classes marriage has become difficult or impossible. Whereas in the case of the lower classes of the population, concubinage offers a substitute for marriage, so that for the men of the lower classes prostitution may be regarded as superfluous, in the case of men of the upper classes prostitution is practically the only available substitute for marriage, so that these men are led to purchase casual and temporary wives from among the women of the lower classes. The supply depends upon poverty, which is the principal cause of prostitution. By this it is not meant to imply that actual destitution is usually the direct and immediate cause of the adoption of a life of prostitution. It is rather that a number of factors, the outcome or the accompaniments of poverty, combine to place girls in a position very favourable to their becoming prostitutes. The environment in which proletarian children live is an unfavourable one in the matter of sexual relationships. It is one which prepares girls for prostitution, and makes them very liable to adopt this mode of life. They are forced to live in a single room with the other members of a large family, with strangers, and even casual night-lodgers—a room in which they all cook, eat, sleep, and practise sexual intercourse. The girls even have to share a common bed. Thus there is no place in their experience for the sentiment of shame. In addition, proletarian children often form evil associations at a very early age, and become acquainted in very early childhood and in the dirtiest possible manner with all the circumstances of the sexual life—with the most offensive and unclean, the most abnormal and morbid excrescences of the disordered sexual life. Many women would never have sunk into the slough of prostitution had their upbringing been a different one. Often enough the pressure of poverty even leads parents to make money out of the procurement of their own children.
The great majority of prostitutes are recruited from the class of young maid-servants. Maid-servants pass their childhood in country villages. Even to-day, in some countries, most of them can neither read nor write. They are not only unintelligent, but thoroughly simple; naturally they are easily seduced. In the country circles from which the great majority of them come, premarital sexual intercourse is hardly regarded as immoral, and is an almost universal custom. The girls bring these ideas with them to the town, with results that are necessarily disastrous. In most cases they are completely cut off from their parental homes, and lack the firm support given by a well-ordered family life, are sent from the country into a strange and incomprehensible world, and live under one roof with persons belonging to a social class by whose members they are regarded as being of inferior birth. They pass their new lives in a circle in which the demands are far higher than they have been accustomed to; imitatively, they soon come to share these demands, but can satisfy them only by the supplementary earnings of shame. By the men of the household, most often by their employer or his sons, they are seduced, and then left to fend for themselves. They seldom stay long in one situation; and when out of employment, especially if they have formed bad associations, they are exposed to the gravest moral dangers. Their hours of work are unlimited, and for this reason they wish to live as intensely as possible during the few and scanty hours of liberty. Their legal position is a very unfavourable one, and it is practically impossible for them to organise themselves in a trade union. They form a servile class. Their personal desires are continually repressed, and even this is but a preparation for their subsequent profession, in which servility and repression will be their fate.
Prostitution and Child-Protection.—Prostitution explains and favours the development of numerous factors which make the work of child-protection an ever-existing need. These factors are: (a) criminal offences against persons under age; (b) venereal diseases; (c) a fall in women’s wages, and a consequent fall in men’s wages also; (d) corruption of the sexual morals of juveniles; (e) the fact that prostitutes, though somewhat exceptionally, bear children.
(a) The definite purpose of certain criminal offences committed against women under age is simply to supply fresh and new wares for the market of prostitution. For it is not only or mainly women who, in respect of physical beauty, age, or of some other circumstance, are of comparatively little value, that become prostitutes. Among the men who have recourse to prostitutes are some who can pay high fees, and therefore demand an article of high quality. Among these latter, there are, of course, some who actually prefer experienced prostitutes. But most of them demand especially physical beauty, and this is more likely to be possessed by younger women than by older ones. A considerable proportion of prostitutes are under legal age; a large majority of them have entered the career of professional prostitution before coming of age. An adult woman is much less likely than one under age to become a prostitute. Statistical data bearing on this question are, however, lacking. The white-slave traffic has to-day attained gigantic proportions; the sources of this traffic are supplied by professional procurement, a branch of industry in which many thousands are engaged. It is obvious that the young girls who will attract the attention of the professional procurer or procuress will, for the most part, belong to the proletariat.