Chapter XI · THE OUTCOME OF EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

If the preceding pages may be assumed to have exhibited the present condition of prostitution in Europe, the reader need not be long detained for the purpose of summarizing the main inferences to be drawn from them. It must be clear that prostitution is far more widespread than superficial appearances indicate; that its roots strike deep, socially and individually; that police regulation has proved unnecessary, in so far as the keeping of order is concerned, and positively harmful in its bearing on the problem of venereal disease. Further elaboration of these points would involve needless iteration. But we may well ask whether European experience suggests any broader reflections with which this study may appropriately be brought to a close.

Whatever one may hold as to ultimate dealings with the subject, it is clear that prostitution is at any rate a modifiable phenomenon. For example, no matter what conditions exist at this very moment, they are capable of aggravation. If bordells are established and allowed a free hand in procuring inmates and business, if a community ceases to be concerned as to the condition of the streets, as to the conduct of the liquor and amusement traffic; there is no doubt that under these circumstances the number of prostitutes and the volume of business 396transacted by them would at once increase, and in consequence, also the amount of waste and disease traceable thereto.

The converse of the proposition is equally true. If prostitution and its evils can by social arrangements be increased, they can also by social arrangements be lessened. If unhampered exploitation and prominence make matters worse, then interference with exploitation and prominence makes matters better. I am not suggesting that such interference has unlimited possibilities. Making every allowance, however, I believe that the student of prostitution in Europe is warranted in declaring that, with the suppression of bordells and of the white slave traffic, and the maintenance of improved external order, a substantial amount of good has been accomplished, even if new problems have simultaneously developed in consequence of the growth of cities and the accumulation of wealth; further, it may safely be maintained that these efforts have not yet reached their limit.

What are we fairly justified in expecting from directly repressive action on the part of the community? Prostitution is, as I endeavored to show in the chapters on demand and supply, a phenomenon arising out of the complicated interaction of personal factors and social conditions. Looked at from this point of view, the attempt to stamp it out completely by summary, even though persistent, action, cannot be hopefully regarded. The instrument which a municipality must use to that end is the police. Now the police is an instrument which, serving, as it does, many useful purposes, must be preserved as nearly intact as may be. We have seen that contact with 397prostitution threatens its integrity and efficiency. On the police, therefore, no more can be laid than it is capable of bearing. Just what this load is must be separately determined for every community and, in large cities, for different parts of the same community. Where the general level of administration and discipline is high, more can be safely demanded than in communities in which the level is lower; where public sentiment is active and definite, the burden may be further increased; where local organizations observe, complain and follow up, the danger of a police breakdown is still further diminished.

It is evident, however, that, even amidst favorable general conditions, the very nature of the instrument employed involves, under the complicated conditions of modern life, limitations against which one soon runs. Police repression can be directed mainly against professional prostitution and its exploiters. Unquestionably it has a valuable function to discharge in removing stimulation and reducing suggestion, as also in minimizing opportunities for demoralization. But in so far as the prostitute herself is personally concerned, repression becomes operative only after the woman has been wrecked. It penalizes an accomplished fact. Powerless to crush this fact out of existence, powerless for the most part to transform the fact, sheer repression might still hope to deter the beginner by its forbidding prospect; but unfortunately, the beginner is less affected by the penalties awaiting her, because she never believes, at the start, that she is destined to end in the mire. If, therefore, prostitutes are manufactured by unschooled human nature and imperfect social institutions, they cannot in the mass 398be stamped out by brute force; they must be prevented rather than suppressed,—prevented, too, on both sides, in the sense that the sources of supply must be closed and the demand diverted into other channels.

Moreover, repression, in order to realize its full possibilities, requires an abundance of institutional facilities such as now nowhere exist. I have repeatedly adverted to the utter futility of the fines and short term sentences hitherto generally imposed. Repression, successful up to the limits of its inherent possibilities, must involve the endeavor to wean the professional prostitute from one way of living and to equip her for another. Reformatories, labor-colonies, hospitals and similar institutions have, therefore, to be made adequate to the load which an aggressive policy places upon them. At this moment no city sustains even what it now requires.

It is a further limitation of the repressive policy, as ordinarily conceived, that it operates almost altogether upon the woman. We are reminded of the dual nature of prostitution. It involves two partners. Imagine every brothel closed, every street-walker incarcerated. To the extent that stimulation and suggestion have by these measures been reduced, demand has suffered a check. But a strong demand still remains, unaffected by repressive measures directed merely against dissolute women. Certain stimuli have been removed; otherwise appetite is left where it was. Its gratification is impeded,—made more difficult and more expensive. But these are not insuperable obstacles in the presence of that volume of supply which, if inoffensive, is hardly reached by repressive police measures. Indeed, part of what was 399offensive is changed in form rather than entirely driven from the market.

Repression encounters difficulty at still another point. Prostitution is all too frequently a parasitic phenomenon that attaches itself to other phenomena, sometimes innocuous, sometimes necessary, sometimes part and parcel of national life or social tradition. Street-walking and the bordell are not thus intertwined with other activities; they represent prostitution in its barest, simplest, most undisguised form, and as such may be, with comparative ease, successfully attacked by police methods. But when prostitution insinuates itself into the ordinary life of the community, subtly, inoffensively, imperceptibly taking advantage of the forms in which business is transacted, social life carried on, or recreation enjoyed,—then the difficulties in the way of effective action are more serious. The cruder forms of prostitution are easily reached;—easily, I say, because, even though the task has been nowhere achieved, there is, in the nature of the case, no reason why a well-governed community should fail to achieve it; but the subtler forms present problems so different in kind that in dealing with them agencies and influences of a totally different character must be employed.

I do not mean that repression will have accomplished little. On the contrary, important good is achieved at the moment and still more in the long run. But prostitution as a formidable problem will still remain. Repression is, on the whole, what physicians call symptomatic treatment; it may achieve something more than alleviate the ravages, but it does not cure the disease. 400It does not necessarily decrease the thing in the same ratio in which it alters appearances.

What would conceivably happen in a city like London if the police, spurred and controlled by an active popular impulse, accomplished all that could be humanly expected? Street-walking of a provocative character would disappear; the advertised brothel would cease to exist; the public house (saloon) would strictly enforce the law against the harboring of prostitutes; the obvious forms of spurious employment would be dispersed,—rendered more circumspect and much less readily accessible; prostitutes would disappear from the lobby and promenade of the variety theaters, etc. The pimp, the exploiter, the third-party interest would be severely checked and, with that, the tropical growth due to them. We may also assume that a vigorous and adequate hygienic policy would lessen the volume of disease, and effect quicker and completer cures. In a word, prostitution as an offensive and aggressive activity would be more or less done for; and the loss through disease would be minimized.

What would be gained? The inducement to enter the life or to persist in it would be lessened; the total volume of business and the volume transacted by any one woman would be decreased; the financial waste would be less; the amount of disease disseminated would be less; the demoralization of the woman would often be less complete, less overwhelming, less irretrievable: surely, very important gains.

Well drawn, well codified, well executed laws could accomplish this. Any civilized society utilizing the resources and instrumentalities that every such society has 401within its reach, can, if really so minded, ultimately reduce prostitution and its ravages so far by direct action.

It is well worth doing; it is, humanly speaking, a possible undertaking, even though, I repeat, nowhere as yet by any means accomplished. Let us not, however, deceive ourselves into thinking that such a direct frontal attack absolves us from effort in other and different directions. Further achievement depends upon alterations in the constitution of society and its component parts. In so far as prostitution is the outcome of ignorance, laws and police are powerless; only knowledge will aid. In so far as prostitution is the outcome of mental or moral defect, laws and police are powerless; only the intelligent guardianship of the state will avail. In so far as prostitution is the outcome of natural impulses denied a legitimate expression, only a rationalized social life will really forestall it. In so far as prostitution is due to alcohol, to illegitimacy, to broken homes, to bad homes, to low wages, to wretched industrial conditions—to any or all of the particular phenomena respecting which the modern conscience is becoming sensitive,—only a transformation wrought by education, religion, science, sanitation, enlightened and far-reaching statesmanship can effect a cure. Our attitude towards prostitution, in so far as these factors are concerned, cannot embody itself in a special remedial or repressive policy, for in this sense it must be dealt with as part of the larger social problems with which it is inextricably entangled. Civilization has stripped for a life-and-death wrestle with tuberculosis, alcohol and other plagues. It is on the verge of a similar struggle with the crasser 402forms of commercialized vice. Sooner or later, it must fling down the gauntlet to the whole horrible thing. This will be the real contest,—a contest that will tax the courage, the self-denial, the faith, the resources of humanity to their uttermost.

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