In the “Reports of the Select Committee”, etc. we find given as cause of prostitution:[142] [[342]]
England.
| Concubines abandoned by their lovers | 360 |
| Girls seduced under promise of marriage | 806 |
| 1,166 | |
| 37.9% of a total of 3,076. |
In his “Minderjährige Verbrecher” L. Ferriani gives the following:[143]
Italy.
| Seduction by a lover | 1,653 |
| Seduction,, by,, employer | 927 |
| 2,580 | |
| 24.7% of a total of 10,422. |
The statistics cited show, then, that the cause named occupies a quite considerable place in the etiology of prostitution. This cause is entirely a consequence of the existing social conditions, which maintain the dependent position of woman, and of marriage, which brings it about that every woman living with a man as with a husband is despised, even when the union is due to inclination, and that life is made very hard for her, especially if a child is born of the union. However, it must be added, that this applies especially to the women of the middle classes, and that “free love” and the child that is the fruit of it, are not at all so despised among the proletariat, for, as we have seen above, the bases of the present legal monogamy have not so great an importance there.[144]
However this cause of prostitution only makes itself felt when the woman to whom it applies is also deprived of all pecuniary means. And so we come to the third category in the etiology of prostitution.
c. Poverty. As the statistics already cited have shown, almost all prostitutes spring from the classes without fortune, and the great majority of them have been at first working-women or domestics, and consequently have belonged to families without fortune. If such women, for any reason whatever, cannot find work, they are thrown into poverty. As this happens constantly in society, poor women find themselves forced into prostitution. The facts are there to prove it. In treating of the etiology of prostitution Parent-Duchatelet gives the following figures:[145] [[343]]