But, seriously, such a state of ignorance is most deplorable. To give an idea of the facilities for acquiring education in the various countries from which these prostitutes reach us, the following statement from the United States Census for 1850[381] is submitted:
The ratio of persons receiving education is as follows:
| United States, | 1 | to | every | 5 | of | total | population. |
| Denmark, | 1 | " | " | 5 | " | " | " |
| Sweden, | 1 | " | " | 6 | " | " | " |
| Prussia, | 1 | " | " | 6 | " | " | " |
| Norway, | 1 | " | " | 7 | " | " | " |
| Great Britain, | 1 | " | " | 8 | " | " | " |
| France, | 1 | " | " | 10 | " | " | " |
| Austria, | 1 | " | " | 13 | " | " | " |
| Holland, | 1 | " | " | 14 | " | " | " |
| Ireland, | 1 | " | " | 14 | " | " | " |
The following is a fair average estimate of the acquirements of native and foreign-born prostitutes:
| Degree of Education. | Natives. | Foreigners. | ||||||
| Can read and write well | 25 | per | cent. | 10 | per | cent. | ||
| """"imperfectly | 50 | " | " | 50 | " | " | ||
| Uneducated | 25 | " | " | 40 | " | " | ||
| 100 | 100 | |||||||
The average of educational facilities in the United States is as one to five; in European countries it is one to ten. In other words, every one in this country has twice the opportunities for education compared with those born in the Old World: opportunities which, in the cases of these women at least, have not been improved to their full extent. Of those who claim to be well educated, the United States show more than the average. In the class imperfectly educated, foreigners show one half of their number, and the superior advantages in this country only produce exactly the same proportion. The proportion of those uneducated is not much more favorable in natives than in foreigners. Some allowances must be made, however, in this calculation, for the fact that many children of foreign birth arrive here at an early age, and gain such education as they possess in American institutions; but even this will but slightly affect the disproportion alluded to. But no possible modification of the facts can be conceived sufficient to excuse the negligence of the parents or friends of one fourth of the native-born prostitutes in this city at the present day, when education may be obtained literally “without money and without price.”
Sectarian bigotry must be held responsible for much of this offense. “If our children can not be educated as we please, they shall not be educated at all. If they must not read the books we wish, they shall never learn the alphabet,” is, in effect, if not in words, the language of thousands in this country to-day. What are the results of this cruel policy? The children go forth into the world: the boys, to earn a precarious living by the sweat of their brow; the girls, condemned to the most servile work in any family where their stupidity may find a shelter, until they meet with some man of their own mental calibre, whom they marry, and forthwith bring up their unfortunate children in the same manner in which they themselves were reared. This is the brightest view of the future of ignorant children; the darker shades are depicted in the annals of vice and crime—may be seen daily in our prisons, hospitals, poor-houses, and pauper burying-grounds.
The picture is not overdrawn; nor will the reply so common in this generation, “These are the children of foreigners,” serve to exonerate the parents; for even if all the uneducated native women who have answered these questions were born of foreign parentage, a fact which must be proved before it is admitted, but which we are not inclined to concede, yet they were born on our soil, where public schools were open to receive them, and their intelligence would enhance the credit of the land in the same proportion that their ignorance diminishes it. A love of their adopted country, its institutions and its fame, is not too much to ask of parents who derive their maintenance from its resources. It is a libel upon the parental instinct (it can not be called feeling) to allow any child in the United States to arrive at years of maturity without acquiring a good plain, solid education. Fathers or mothers who pursue such a course as this would consider themselves unjustly accused if told they were training their daughters to become prostitutes, but such is the fact. It is scarcely possible to imagine any thing so likely to lead a woman from the paths of rectitude as ignorance, coupled with the conviction that such ignorance is an insurmountable barrier to her progress in life; it drives her to intoxication to drown her reflections, and from intoxication to prostitution the transition is easy and almost certain.
Here, then, are a number of young women thrown into society every year without the least education; untrained for good, and only fit for evil. Ignorant of their duties to themselves or to the world; with sensibilities callous because they have never been cultivated; with faculties on a level with the inferior animals from the same cause, they are expected to succeed in life! It would be as consistent to take a man who had never seen a steam-engine, and give him the control of a locomotive and a train of cars without anticipating an accident, as it is to presume in this day of knowledge that an uneducated man or woman can ever become a respectable and useful member of society.
Could our liberal facilities for education be duly improved, much would be done to prevent the vice of prostitution. No classical or extraordinary tuition is required to accomplish this end; merely common sense rightly cultivated, and conscience enlightened and developed, so as to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, will do much to aid a woman to pass unscathed through trials which constantly ruin the ignorant.