| Natives | 98·59 | per cent. | |
| Foreigners | ·94 | " | |
| Unknown nativities | ·47 | " | |
| 100 | " |
The slave population are (for all practical purposes) entirely native.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
NEW YORK.—REMEDIAL MEASURES.
Effects of Prohibition.—Required Change of Policy.—Governmental Obligations.—Prostitution augmented by Seclusion.—Impossibility of benevolent Assistance.—Necessity of sanitary Regulations.—Yellow Fever.—Effect of remedial Measures in Paris.—Syphilitic Infection not a local Question.—Present Measures to check Syphilis.—Island Hospital, Blackwell’s Island.—Mode of Admission.—Vagrancy Commitment “on Confession,” and its Action on Blackwell’s Island.—Pecuniary Results.—Moral Effects.—Perpetuation of Disease.—Inadequacy of Present Arrangements.—Discharges.—Writs of Habeas Corpus and Certiorari, how obtained, and their Effects.—Public Responsibility.—Proposed medical and police Surveillance.—Requirements.—Hospital Arrangements to be entirely separated from punitive Institutions.—Medical Visitation.—Power to place diseased Women under Treatment and detain them till cured.—Refutation of Objections.—Quack Advertisers.—Constitution of Medical Bureau.—Duties of Examiners.—License System.—Probable Effects of Surveillance.—Expenses of the proposed Plan.—Agitation in England.—The London Times on Prostitution.—Objections considered.—Report from Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital on Prostitution and Syphilis.—Report from Resident Physician, Randall’s Island, on Constitutional Syphilis.—Reliability of Statistics.—Resumé of substantiated Facts.
Having traced the causes and delineated the extent and effects of the evil of prostitution as it exists in New York at the present time, an evident duty is to inquire what measures can be devised to stay the march of this desolating plague in its ravages on the health and morals of the public. This is a problem the solution of which has for centuries interested philanthropists and statesmen in different countries. They commenced with the theory that vice could be suppressed by statutory enactments, and the crushing-out process was vigorously tried under various auspices, until experience demonstrated that it virtually increased and aggravated the evil it was intended to suppress. At subsequent periods, however, different measures have been adopted with different results.
It will be necessary, in the first place, to consider the effect of stringent prohibitory measures. The records given in the previous chapters of this work show what these have attempted, and they also show at the same time the uselessness of endeavoring to eradicate prostitution by compulsory legislation. The lash, the dungeon, the rack, and the stake have each been tried, and all have proved equally powerless to accomplish the object. Admitting that, in religion, morals, or politics, it is impossible to force concurrence in any particular sentiment, while a kindly persuasive plan may lead to its adoption; admitting that all attempts to compel prostitutes to be virtuous have notoriously failed; has not the time arrived for a change of policy? If, in direct ratio to the stringency of prohibitory measures, the vice sought to be exterminated has steadily increased, does not reason suggest the expediency of resorting to other measures for its suppression?
It has been said that “History is philosophy teaching by example,” and, if such instruction is well considered, none can fail to see therein an unanswerable argument against excessive severity in this matter. The several statutes proscribing prostitution have been detailed, and their specific results given, as gathered from the experience of various countries. At the time these laws were in force, it is hardly probable that their authors regarded them as unsusceptible of improvement; and the question now arises for decision, in this age of general progress, is it not our duty to try the effect of some other line of action in this country?