DENOUNCING THE POLITICIANS WHO PROTECT THE DIVES
The author and his band of noble workers fighting the evil in the very heart of the vice district
JAMES BRONSON REYNOLDS
Special investigator for President Roosevelt
But we must not stop there. These poor girls do not live over at the most ten or fifteen years and a large proportion of them perhaps take their own lives. But if you could see the line of men that I saw the other night passing through one of these fifteen-cent lodging houses, lined up as they passed through to take their couch for the night, where over two hundred of these men passed by, and a large proportion of these men showing ulcers and other superficial stigmata of the venereal diseases! They represent the under world, the under dogs of society, the men who are down and out, who years ago visited the houses of ill-fame and got the disease and are now ekeing out their lives, hoping for the end to come—many of them.
But we can look further for victims. I believe that only a small proportion of the women who are in the houses of ill-fame—only a small proportion—make their way there of their own volition, and that small proportion are of the degenerate class who are born with a screw loose somewhere. From their babyhood they who are born with this taint—and we could, perhaps, trace that taint back—but born with that taint, they gradually go into that life—but they make a small proportion. The rest of them are either betrayed into that sort of a life, their lives ruined because they trusted some man, or they are bartered into it through this nefarious white slave traffic.
All lewd women are diseased some of the time and some lewd women are diseased all of the time. Now, whether the lewd woman is of the clandestine type or a professional in the house of ill-fame, it does not matter. Some say the clandestine is the more dangerous. Why? Because no attempt is made to have medical care. . . . That doesn't get at the real condition at all, and so she retains disease in her body and gives it to every one perhaps who visits her for months to come. When that is in a woman's system, it is almost impossible to eradicate. It is shocking, but we must know the facts. Statistics show that of the operations on women in the hospitals of New York City year before last for the removal of one or both ovaries, sixty-five per cent of those operations were brought about and necessitated because of gonorrheal infection.
WOMAN IN THE AUDIENCE: And most of them were married women.
DR. HALL: A considerable proportion of them were from the house of ill-fame. No small proportion of them were lawfully wedded, high minded, wives and mothers. Now, it is not customary for a doctor to say to a woman going to the hospital, "Madam, your difficulty is of a venereal origin"—no, he says, "I find an abcess. You must get to the hospital as soon as possible or you probably will lose your life. It is a question of life and death to get to the hospital and have an operation." If the doctor had said to this woman in every case "This is is of gonorrheal origin," you can imagine what the woman would say who knew she had led an innocent, pure life. She would say "Why?"—"You must have got it from some man." "But I never have had any contact with any man but my lawfully wedded husband." "Well, you must have got it from your lawfully wedded husband then."
Our standards are not high enough. Why a lawfully wedded husband should fix it up with his conscience to act so basely towards his wife we have yet to find out. But it is a wrong standard and I am glad to be able to say to the wives and mothers in this audience that almost without exception when I say to young men "Fellows, isn't it time that we have a single standard of purity for men and women?" they respond the same way you have responded and it is a question of education and we must keep it up.
Fathers and mothers in this audience—and I see there are probably grandfathers and grandmothers—let us see to it that our children are instructed in these matters by telling them the truth in early childhood, and then when they get older—girls fourteen or fifteen years old—let their mothers take them into their confidence and tell them some of these things, tell them the truth and endeavor to protect them against the wiles of tempters out in society.