[Sidenote: Safeguarding boys.]
(1) The adolescent boy should be safeguarded by the knowledge that in
every city and in most towns there are women who for financial gain are
constantly seeking to entice young men into immoral sexual relations;
and that many unwary men are involuntarily entrapped, especially when
influenced by alcohol.
[Sidenote: Prostitution a business.]
(2) The young man should know that the selling of woman's virtue is an
organized business known as "prostitution" or "the social evil," words
which stand for indescribable degradation and degeneracy that no beast
could possibly imitate. Moreover, the young man should be informed that
all immorality is not prostitution, but that most of the immoral
relations of men are purchased directly or indirectly by money or its
equivalent.
[Sidenote: Some causes of prostitution.]
(3) The young man should know that the great majority of prostitutes do
not willingly undertake the shameful business of selling their virtue.
He should know that the majority have gone downward for such reasons as
follows: Many a woman has been betrayed by some detestable man who
pretended to love her. Poverty has forced many other women to the
first downward step. Many are easy victims because they belong to the
feeble-minded class. Others have been driven into immoral life by
parents and even husbands. Still others have been drugged, and raped
while insensible. A limited number have begun prostitution as "white
slaves" kept as prisoners until all hope of a better life has vanished.
A few have deliberately begun to accept the attentions of lewd men in
order to get money for luxurious dress and finery. And relatively very
few have started downward because of sexual passion such as commonly
influences men. In short, every young man should be informed that most
women living by prostitution have begun innocently or unwillingly; but
having made one false step, society has shunned them, even near
relatives have cast them off, and a career of prostitution has appeared
the only way of making a living, vulgar and unspeakably sordid though
it be. It is evident that the responsibility for prostitution rests
almost entirely upon men. Unfortunately, society does not recognize
this fact and has no way of dealing legally with both men and women
found associated in houses of prostitution. At present the women
arrested for prostitution are treated as criminals, while their male
associates in vice are allowed to depart as if they were respectable
citizens.
[Sidenote: Appeal to men.]
Tell young men these facts as to why women become prostitutes. Help
them to realize that most of these women are pitiful victims of man's
worse than brutal sexual passions. Then add the astounding fact that
very many of the women of the underworld have short lives, their health
being undermined rapidly by dissipation, by alcohol used to bury their
shame or to stimulate their flagging energies, and by the two loathsome
diseases, gonorrhea and syphilis, which relatively few prostitutes
escape--tell young men such facts which eminent physicians and
sociologists have often verified, and there are good chances of
striking sympathetic notes in their young manhood.
[Sidenote: Danger of social disease.]
(4) And there is one other line of facts concerning prostitution that
the developing young man should know well, namely, that every
prostitute is likely at any time to be infected with the social
diseases, and that no ordinary medical examination can prove that she
will not transmit these awful diseases to men who consort with her. In
fact, within an hour after most careful medical examination she may
become infected by some diseased man, and then she is capable of
inoculating other men. Such facts, for which the greatest of special
physicians vouch, will eradicate from the young man's mind the
widespread notions that prostitutes are safe if they carry a
physician's certificate, or one of the official cards given in some
European cities. Many a young man of sixteen to twenty has not heard
that prostitutes as a class are universally dangerous as distributors
of the most terrible diseases, and his education is incomplete until he
knows the exact truth from reliable sources.
[Sidenote: Limited reading.]
(5) It is not desirable that the young man should be set to read the
numerous books packed with more or less sensational reports on the
social evil, for these may sometimes tend toward morbidity. Any young
man who is not effectively appealed to by the above facts will not be
influenced by the most voluminous reports on prostitution ever
published. Such reports are not useful for young men. They serve a good
purpose by informing mature men and women and awakening them to the
necessity of legislation, education, and other weapons with which we
may fight the great black plague of social vice. For the average young
man the books recommended in Sec. 8 will give sufficient information and
viewpoint.
[Sidenote: Liaisons.]
(6) Finally, the young man of adolescent years should be made to
understand his responsibility for immorality that is not prostitution,
that is, extra-marital relations with his girl friends and without
pecuniary considerations. He should know the probability that he will
ruin a girl's life, either because illegitimacy occurs or because her
reputation suffers. Even if such immoral liaisons are kept private,
both persons concerned are likely in after years to regret their
illicit intimacy, especially if either marries another person.