The children on Randall’s Island may be classified according to the rule already adopted in reference to disease in the nursery hospital there; namely, to assume that one half owe, if not their existence, certainly their support from public funds to causes that originated in vice. The nursery, exclusive of the hospital, cost during last year $60,000, one half of which must, in accordance with the previous estimate, be charged to prostitution; namely, $30,000 per year, or $577 per week.
The final charge arises from the police and judiciary expenses of the city of New York, of which it is believed that ten per cent. is caused by prostitution and its concomitant crimes and sufferings. The aggregate forms a large amount, and will be rather a surmise than an assertion. The maintenance of police-officers and station-houses, of police-justices and their court-rooms, of the city judge and recorder, with their respective courts, of the city and district prisons, and numerous contingent expenses, can not be less than two million dollars a year. The percentage chargeable to prostitution will therefore be $200,000 per year, or $4000 per week.
Thus much for preliminary explanations. It will now be possible to present the reader with a tabular statement of the weekly and yearly cost of the system of prostitution existing in the metropolis of the New World. Those who have followed us through this argument, and noted the facts upon which every calculation is based, will bear witness that nothing has been exaggerated, that no dollar is debited to the vice without strong presumptive evidence to support such charge, and that the endeavor has been throughout rather to underestimate than exceed the bounds of strict probability. Upon this ground the attention of the public is earnestly requested to the first exposition ever attempted of the amount paid by citizens of and visitors to New York for illicit sexual gratification.
Recapitulation.
| Expenditure. | Weekly outlay. | Yearly outlay. | ||
| Individual Expenses: | ||||
| Paid to prostitutes | $60,000 | $3,120,000 | ||
| Spent for wine and liquor by visitors | 40,000 | 2,080,000 | ||
| Paid by visitors to houses of assignation | 12,600 | 655,200 | ||
| Spent for wine and liquor by visitors to houses of assignation | 5,000 | 260,000 | ||
| Spent in dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer stores frequented by prostitutes and their friends | 4,530 | 235,560 | ||
| Medical Expenses: | ||||
| Island Hospital, Blackwell’s Island | 438 | 22,750 | ||
| Bellevue"New York | 135 | 7,000 | ||
| Nursery"Randall’s Island | 163 | 8,500 | ||
| Emigrants’ Hospital, Ward’s Island | 136 | 7,075 | ||
| New York City Hospital, New York | 159 | 8,260 | ||
| Dispensaries | 728 | |||
| King’s County Hospital, Long Island | 145 | 7,530 | ||
| Brooklyn City"" | 89 | 4,644 | ||
| Seamen’s Retreat, Staten Island | 203 | 10,540 | ||
| Private medical assistance | 5,928 | 308,108 | ||
| Vagrancy and Pauper Expenses: | ||||
| Work-house, Blackwell’s Island | 585 | 30,400 | ||
| Penitentiary"" | 462 | 24,030 | ||
| Alms-house"" | 303 | 15,750 | ||
| Nursery, Randall’s Island | 577 | 30,000 | ||
| Police and Judiciary Expenses: | ||||
| Proportion of aggregate | 4,000 | 200,000 | ||
| Totals | $135,467 | $7,036,075 |
The footings of the columns show the total expense to be
| Weekly | $135,467 | |
| Yearly | $7,036,075 |
over SEVEN MILLIONS of dollars! or nearly as much as the annual municipal expenditure of New York City.
Comment upon these figures would be superfluous. They present the monetary effects of prostitution in a convincing point of view, and will prepare the reader for an attentive perusal of the suggested remedial measures which form the subject of the next chapter. The American mind is said to be proverbially open to argument based upon dollars and cents. Without giving an unqualified assent to the proposition, we may be permitted to hope that financial considerations, combined with the claims of benevolence and humanity, the appeals of virtue and morality, the demands of public health, and the future physical well-being of the community at large, will exercise that influence on the public mind which is necessary to the accomplishment of any valuable practical result from the present investigation.