The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

by William W. Sanger

But if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened. This is the policy to which civilized communities are tending, and to aid the movement it is needful that the subject be examined, even at the risk of the world’s contumely.

In some of the countries of Continental Europe the examination has been made, and the natural consequences of a searching and philosophical investigation are there seen in legislation, which aims not to dam a wild torrent, but to lead it where its rage may be harmlessly spent. When a mighty river overflows its banks, the uncontrollable flood works wide-spread ruin and devastation along its course; but the same river, confined to its natural channel, may be of immense service in carrying off a vast amount of filth and debris that otherwise would cause pestilence and death. In this Western hemisphere, and in the mother-country, Anglo-Saxon prudery has stood aloof from inquiring into a vice which every one admits to be offensive to the moral sense of the people, and has submitted to an accumulation of evils rather than seek to abate them, until the suffering and the wrong have become so boldly defined that they force themselves upon the public eye.

Assuredly it is high time to inaugurate a new line of action; to cast aside as unworthy those puerile doubts of propriety and expediency which have stood in the way of an onward progress. The very meaning of the word “propriety” supplies an argument in favor of the proposed course. Conventionally, it has been construed to mean an indefinite something which every person has moulded to suit his own predilections. Upon the same principle that a man who makes his living dishonestly would consider it a glaring impropriety to examine the laws of fraud, has the world decided it an outrage against propriety to inquire into a vice which many secretly practice, but all publicly condemn. Reasoning like this has been too often applied, and with too great an effect. Can there possibly be an impropriety in investigating a vice which threatens the purity and peace of the community, because in so doing unpleasant facts will be disclosed? Is there not a far more striking inconsistency in supinely allowing the same vice to exist and increase, without hinderance or examination?

Again: it must be conceded that the demands of propriety are universal. They are not restricted to any person or place, but press with equal force upon every member of the community in every possible situation. The common welfare is involved in their general application, and he well merits the good opinion of his fellow-men who points them to a case where propriety is outraged, and asks their aid to apply the remedy. In a word, propriety demands an exposure of all acts of impropriety, and the application of the needful cure.

Then the question arises, In what form shall the exposure be made? Truth admits of but one reply. It must be so explicit as to leave no doubt of its meaning; it must be so guarded as not to offend in its application. If the first of these rules is not observed, any disclosure will be worthless; if the remarks are vague, indefinite, or generalized, no good result can accrue. Take a simple illustration. It conveys no determinate idea to a benevolent man to say, “There is distress in a certain city;” but point him to the particular locality, and give him the precise circumstances, and his sympathy is at once aroused and effectively exerted. The same rule is equally applicable to a monster vice and to an individual hardship, and upon this principle have the disclosures of the following pages been based. The idea has been to particularize sufficiently to draw attention, but not enough to gratify a prurient inclination; to exhibit the evil in a truthful aspect, but not in a fascinating form. None can doubt the truth of Pope’s well-known lines:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The endeavor should be to fulfill the imperative demands of propriety, without disturbing the conventional prejudices implied by the same word.

Then, as to expediency, or the fitness to effect some good end. It must be admitted that the mere fact of proving prostitution capable of control is a good object, and it is apparent that such proof can not be afforded while the vice remains a myth. Something must be known of its haunts and its customs ere any one can decide in what shape a supervisory power can be best applied. This knowledge must be obtained in defiance of deep-rooted prejudices. Commonplace objections about the danger of touching impure objects are best met by the remark that to the pure all things are pure. Though benevolence may at times lead its devotees through scenes where moral purity is shocked, and to neighborhoods where filth and obscenity vitiate the very air they breathe, there is no contamination to those whose motives are good. Inexpediency has been urged as often and as falsely as impropriety. In their application to this subject, both are perverted from their legitimate meaning; both are made subservient to a false taste, or a mawkish sensibility which fears to encounter an imaginary danger.

The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and, reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances. One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures.

Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night; the swindler, who defrauds the honest trader by false representations; the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy trade—these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices.