THE DEMAND
Prostitution involves two parties.—Extent of demand in Europe.—Theory
of its necessity.—Is physiological impulse irresistible?—Analysis into
various factors.—Demand emanating from woman.—Effect of improvement in
social status.—Changed attitude of medical profession.—Reduction of
demand through education.—Sex education in Europe.—Influence of
demoralizing literature.—Recent improvement.
Prostitution is usually described and discussed from the standpoint of
the women involved alone; but the problem cannot be understood so long
as it is approached solely from that angle. In every act of prostitution
at least two parties, usually, but not always, of opposite sex, are
concerned. Now one, now the other, is either initially or more highly
responsible. Not infrequently, however, these two individuals are so far
from constituting the entire situation that they may be mere puppets in
the hands of others: the man, the victim of shrewdly devised suggestion
or excitement; the woman, the bait cunningly dangled by pimp,
brothel-keeper, or publican. Under such circumstances it is plainly
absurd to speak of prostitution as if it were only or even mainly the
act of the woman; as if women took to prostitution simply because they
were marked out for a vicious life by innate depravity or even forced
into it by economic pressure. Inclination on the one hand, need on the
other, are among the factors that will assist us to understand the
problem; but a fundamental and antecedent condition is the existence of
a market, clamoring for wares of a particular kind and furnishing an
opportunity for the forced sale of such wares as do not themselves
immediately find buyers. Instead, therefore, of explaining prostitution
as if it were caused by certain conditions affecting solely or primarily
the constitution or environment of women, I shall view it from the
standpoint of demand and supply. In utilizing these terms I do not mean
to imply that a certain volume of demand exists, to begin with, and that
this is satisfied and has to be satisfied through the production somehow
of a corresponding supply. We shall find that both demand and supply are
variable factors. The demand can within limits be stimulated or checked;
the supply can be increased or decreased; and the increase of supply can
be so manipulated as to increase demand. Moreover, a given supply can be
made to satisfy a smaller or a larger demand, so that the volume of
prostitution is a matter not only of the number of those engaged, but of
the intensity of their activity. The two partners—the man and the
woman—thus not only interact on each other, but are both played upon by
agencies lying outside themselves. This method will have the advantage
of demonstrating the interlocking relations of the man, the woman, and
the exploiter.
That this procedure is both fair and sound a moment’s consideration will
show. If the prostitution of women had specific causes, in the sense in
which the term cause is used in science, then, wherever such causes are
present, prostitution should result. There are, however, no conditions
of which this can be affirmed. Of the number of women of whom any
particular fact or set of facts is characteristic, only a small portion
ever become prostitutes. For example: prostitutes have often been, as we
shall see, domestic servants. Yet service, even under unfavorable
conditions, cannot be said to cause prostitution, for more servants
escape than succumb. The conditions of service at most indicate whence
part of the supply will be drawn. Moreover, once engaged in
prostitution, the woman does not passively wait to be sought out by
ungratified spontaneous demand; in order to earn her own livelihood or
to satisfy the cupidity of a third party, she proceeds to create or
develop the demand for what she has to sell. At every moment there
exists a circle of habituated consumers, as well as numerous
agencies,—the women and their exploiters, for example,—actively engaged
in increasing the number of consumers and the urgency of their demands.
Demand and supply thus interact upon each other in much the same fashion
as characterizes the interplay of the market in reference to any other
commodity. The application of this conception to the discussion of
prostitution has therefore two obvious advantages: it brings out the
dual nature of the phenomenon and it suggests the commercial side
involved in the production and maintenance of prostitution on the grand
scale.
At the present time, the demand on the part of the continental male
European is practically universal;[72] so true is this, that until quite
recently questioned, it has been taken to be an ultimate and inevitable
physiological fact. Male continence has not been required by either
tradition or opinion. A low regard for women has practically left the
matter one to be regulated by men on such standards as they themselves
approve. Indulgence begins early: Meirowsky’s investigations indicate
that at least 20% of the boys in the highest gymnasium classes are
already habituated;[73] of 106 venereally infected University students,
61% admitted intercourse before reaching the University.[74] In a Vienna
statistic covering 10,057 cases of venereal infection, over one-half
were minors, and 67% under 25 years of age. Prof. Finger, Chief of the
great Vienna clinic, concludes that these figures are actually
representative,—that perhaps one-half of all venereal disease belongs to
the youth of both sexes.[75] Welander found that of 582 Swedish men, 464
admitted intercourse before the end of the 18th year.[76] “In the
country and in the urban proletariat, no one dreams of continence beyond
adolescence,” says Blaschko.[77] “Among the working-classes, city or
country, abstinence is excessively rare, and in the higher classes,
practically insignificant.”[78] Of 90 physicians interrogated by Prof.
Neisser respecting their sexual history, only one denied all intercourse
prior to marriage and he attributed his exemption to an early engagement
alone; twenty-eight, i. e., 32.9%, had indulged themselves while still
in the secondary school.[79] These figures have been confirmed by other
investigators.[80] Beginning thus early after puberty, sexual
intercourse on the male’s part ranges more or less widely prior to
marriage and is none too severely constrained by custom even afterwards.
Its practical universality, with the rare exceptions explicable on
religious or ethical grounds, is substantiated by the wide prevalence of
venereal complaints. “Roughly speaking,” remarked a distinguished
specialist, whose opinion, when quoted by me to his confrères has rarely
been strongly overruled,—“roughly speaking, one may say that most German
men have had gonorrhœa, and about one in five syphilis.”[81]
No wonder that where practice is so general, theory has accommodated
itself so far as to assume that sexual intercourse on the male’s part is
necessary and wholesome. Up to recent times this has been almost
undisputed dogma. The practically universal demand was for centuries
regarded fatalistically as inevitable and incontestable; in the Middle
Ages, a sufficient supply of women was imported by way of entertaining
the delegates to church congresses.[82] A change of attitude and opinion
is, however, undoubtedly taking place. The universality of demand has
been condoned on the assumption that it represented an irresistible
physiological impulse. A good deal of attention has been latterly
expended in the effort to resolve this so-called physiological impulse
into its constituent elements, with the following results. In the first
place, however strong the spontaneous sex impulse may be, it is like any
other impulse—capable of restraint through the cultivation of
inhibitions. Except for the futile precepts of the church, European
society has for centuries been singularly free from any such effort.
Women have been regarded as inferior creatures and have contentedly
accepted the status assigned to them. They have therefore failed to
resent masculine immorality; the self-restraint that might thereby have
been imposed on men—be it much or little—has been generally lacking.
Europe has been a man’s world,—managed by men and largely for men,—for
cynical men, at that,—men inured to the sight of human inequalities,
callous as to the value of lower-class life, and distinctly lacking in
respect for womanhood, especially that of the working-classes. The
military, the aristocracy, the student, are all conceded their fling.
“Dem Studenten ist ja alles erlaubt—To the student everything is
allowed.” Where soldier and scholar freely indulge themselves without
reprobation, it is too much to expect the artisan to refrain.
Not only has there been—up to recently, at least—no social inhibition:
there has been a strong social compulsion. Men swim with the current;
they fall in with accepted habits and customs, in order to escape being
ridiculous, and custom established in this way is practically imposed on
successive generations. Certain forms of venereal experience have been
popularly treated as marks of maturity. Dr. Magnus Möller tells of a
club of military officers existing in Stockholm in the early nineties to
which no one was eligible until he could prove that he had had
syphilis.[83] Quite as flagrantly, boys have been practically coerced
into sowing wild oats. Women, whose influence might have been exerted
restrainingly, have been trained not to pry into the prematrimonial
records of their husbands; fathers fashion their sons, as a rule, after
their own image. Indulgence brought about in this way cannot fairly be
characterized or excused as physiological, even though, once
experienced, it soon gathers intensity enough to operate on its own
account and to play the ominous rôle of suggestion to others.
Finally, we may not overlook the part played by deliberate excitation on
the part of the woman or those in whose interests she works.
Prostitution is not merely a matter between man and woman,—the former
overtaken by a periodic impulse demanding gratification, the latter
supporting herself through the passionless sacrifice of the sexual
function. Over and above this, it is an industry, deliberately
cultivated by third parties for their own profit: and the instinct
readily lends itself to artificial exploitation. A very large
constituent in what has been called the irresistible demand of natural
instinct is nothing but suggestion and stimulation associated with
alcohol,[84] late hours, and sensuous amusements, and deliberately
worked up for the profit of third parties,—pimps, tavern-keepers,
bordell proprietors, etc. Street-walking, with the pimp across the way
ready to ply the lash; the Animierkneipe, in which the earnings of the
prostitute barmaid are wholly dependent upon the extent to which she
overmasters her guest through liquor and otherwise; the bordell, in
which heavy charges and her small proportional share force her to find
an extensive trade,—these are the most obvious examples of supply
deliberately and resourcefully engaged in creating demand. Amid
conditions as they exist in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and the smaller
towns like Geneva which aspire to be world cities by being licentious,
growing youth is characterized not by a normal, healthy, and natural
sexual development, but by an over-stimulated and premature sex
activity—a purely artificial excitation of instinct. An artificial
supply of prostitutes is deliberately created; forced upon the market
under appropriate conditions, an artificial demand is worked up to
consume it. Every tolerated focus, through the existence of which third
parties benefit, thus soon becomes a vested interest, actively engaged
in whipping up demand and supply, reacting upon each other. Supply,
everywhere greater than spontaneous demand, is utilized to create a
secondary demand. A striking example of deliberate business organization
along these lines is to be found in Paris where, closely adjoining one
another in the rue Pigal are found a dance hall, a café and an
assignation house said to form a plant under one management.
The sex impulse, however formidable it may be, is thus on close
investigation discovered to be not the single powerful physiological
force which it has been represented to be, resistlessly pushing towards
an instinctive object, but rather a combination of forces of very
different quality as respects both origin and intensity. Taking
prostitution and resort to prostitution as they exist in any great city
to-day, three distinct factors are readily distinguished: sex impulse,
pure and simple; social instigation or compulsion; sheer artificial
excitation. Not improbably, instinct plays a decidedly less important
part than is commonly supposed; much of what has been viewed as
physiological is undoubtedly social. Less than half of Neisser’s cases
attributed their lapse to their own impulse,—and even this impulse is
not necessarily of really spontaneous origin; of the others, 28.8%
blamed comrades for dragging them into trouble; 18.6% acted under
alcoholic excitement. In another set of 129 cases cited, less than half
acted on native impulse; alcohol figures with 23.6%; comrades, with
29.4%.[85] Nor is native impulse itself any longer regarded as a
constant or spasmodically irresistible force; it can be checked,
diverted, modified, or stimulated. It becomes stronger with indulgence;
weaker through continued repression.
For the reasons above given, demand is no longer spoken of as if it were
a constant quantity determined at any given time and place by the
ultimate constitution of human nature and unalterable except by
transformation of the character of the race; just as it is equally
absurd to speak in fatalistic terms of the supply. Not a single factor
in either demand or supply bears this rigid elemental stamp; every
factor is capable of mitigation or aggravation by human decisions,
institutions, habits,—some of them, indeed, more or less readily so.
“Human nature”—so-called—is not the whole of it, in the sense in which
the expression is commonly used. Indeed, human nature itself may be made
better or worse by opinion, inhibition, suggestion, example.
Unquestionably, do what we will, a problem—a vast problem—will remain;
but it is an enormous gain to have learned that a considerable volume of
prostitution and of the demand for prostitution is the product of
conditions that, however difficult the task, are within limits socially
controllable.
One must not, of course, overlook the fact that demand does not simply
take the form of the male seeking or being induced to seek the female.
The seeker is sometimes the woman herself, bent upon her own
gratification. Her own effort may thus succeed in increasing demand. It
is impossible to say with what frequency male irregularity is thus
provoked. Of Meirowsky’s 102 first offenders, 29.4% attributed their
lapse to the seductive influence of comrades, part of whom were girls;
of 28 physicians whose first offence occurred while still at school,
over one-half blamed themselves wholly; three of them threw the initial
blame on girls, all of whom were servants. But the overwhelming majority
of women involved in provocation are open or concealed prostitutes.
The fact just stated throws an interesting light on the possibility of
reducing immorality through the cultivation of social inhibitions. We
learned in the preceding chapter that under the natural conditions that
obtain in the country and in certain sections of the urban
working-classes, girls are sometimes equally responsible partners in
sexual irregularity. Clan morality does not forbid; we may assume,
therefore, that not infrequently the woman indulges her passion
precisely as the man indulges his. But the moment that improved social
or economic position brings her under the range of more exacting ideals,
she checks herself. The first consciousness of the higher requirement
results in decidedly reducing the scope which she allows to her impulse.
It is perhaps true that self-restraint is actually easier for women than
for men;[86] but it is at any rate not achieved without effort. It is
therefore not without significance that the social sanction, as yet but
slightly operative among men, is among women of the higher classes very
generally powerful enough to reverse the animal engine. Unhappy
consequences to health are alleged, and doubtless sometimes occur; but
they are a lesser evil than disgrace, disease or pregnancy and are
endured as such.
The analysis of demand as above outlined has already borne consequences
both theoretical and practical. In the first place, it has accomplished
a striking change in medical opinion as to the necessity of sexual
intercourse and the supposedly unfavorable results of continence. Recent
medical literature abounds in strong and authoritative expressions
utterly at variance with the traditional position. Cases of
irrepressible desire are stamped as pathological, rather than normal; as
relatively rare, rather than usual or even frequent. Continence is, in
general, increasingly regarded as both feasible and wholesome. “I am
convinced that the overwhelming majority of persons are not in the least
injured by continuous continence whether during youth or afterwards,”
writes Moll. “The longer one is continent, the more readily is
continence borne, the less is one annoyed by the sexual impulse.”[87]
Moll insists that, even in cases where neurotic disturbances occur,
these are not comparable to the damage, corporal and moral, which
attends irregular intercourse—and of course it always remains to be
proven that the disturbances in question really result from abstinence.
Pinkus, conceding that occasionally depressing symptoms attend
self-restraint, points out that “the annoyances arising from abstinence
are far from being such serious psychic disturbances as are produced by
the knowledge that one has contracted venereal disease: under which
conditions abstinence must be practised anyway.”[88] “There is not a
shadow of proof to show that continence is damaging to health.—To the
continent, continence becomes progressively easier.”[89] “Whatever
disturbances are attributable to sexual abstinence, they are usually
non-progressive and are for the most part remediable through hygienic
and therapeutic measures. On the other hand, the damages done through
intimacy with prostitutes far overshoot in number and gravity any harm
attributable to continence.”[90] Exceedingly cogent is Touton’s curt
summary: “In short, all the talk about manifestations due to abstinence
is thus far with few exceptions a hodge-podge of superficial
observations and uncritical interpretations.”[91] Again: “Altogether
healthy men, sexually normal, can, without danger of illness, for the
most part get along far into maturity without sexual intercourse, if
they do not purposely excite themselves or if temptation is not pressed
upon them, especially so, if, instead of such stimulation, they resort
to moderate exercises and adequate mental employment. The idler cannot
remain continent.”[92] Johansson urges that through the cultivation of
an inhibitory mechanism, the impulse can be limited, and subordinated to
the welfare of the individual and of society.[93]
There is no livelier topic under discussion in connection with
prostitution than that of the methods to be pursued in order to minimize
demand, in accordance with the modern scientific view that irregular
sexual intercourse is a reducible evil. The fact that “appetite grows by
what it feeds on” pleads strongly for timely action. Instruction, with
special reference to sex-physiology, has therefore been widely and
confidently urged as the means of acquainting childhood and, later,
youth, with the essential facts of sex-physiology, so as to deprive the
facts of morbid interest and to warn the child of the dangers attending
uncleanliness. It will be worth while to give a brief account of what
has taken place in this direction in Europe and to consider what benefit
is likely to be derived from this source.
Despite the prevalent notion to the contrary, the subject of sex
education is as yet very largely in the realm of theory or controversy.
As to this point, a strange misconception obtains. In England, one hears
that great progress has been made in this field in Germany; in Germany
one is referred with equal positiveness to Scandinavia; in Scandinavia
to Finland, whither, however, I did not pursue the will-o’-the wisp. The
facts are these:
No recognition is given to sex-instruction in English schools at
all.[94] The head-masters and house-masters in some of the great public
schools,—notably Eton,—endeavor, however, to gain the confidence of the
boys individually, to put them on their guard and to assist them if in
distress. A series of leaflets has been issued by the church schools for
the guidance of parents, who are urged to open the subject with their
sons at the proper time.[95] In Prussia, which is representative of the
States of the German Empire, sex-instruction of any kind is very rarely
given at the popular schools;[96] in the Gymnasien,—the nine-year
secondary schools opening into the University,—a lecture on the subject
may be given to the last year class[97] by the School Director, a
teacher or a physician;[98] attendance on the part of the students is
optional. The lectures deal with the feasibility of continence, which is
strongly urged, the dangers attending sexual irregularity or
abnormality, and the misuse of alcohol; at times they are printed and
circulated. During the school year 1911, such lectures were given at 76
Gymnasien out of a total of almost 800. Similar talks are given at
institutions for the training of teachers. Occasionally pupils before
leaving school are presented with books dealing with the topic in a
wholesome manner. This represents the sum total of school instruction on
the subject in Prussia; additional lectures, of an occasional character
are provided for parents, artisans, etc., by local branches of the
German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Disease. In Denmark and
Norway, nothing either of a general or a compulsory character exists;
Sweden practically repeats Prussia, offering no instruction in popular
schools, an optional lecture to last year students in the higher
secondary schools, particularly those for girls, in the discretion of
the headmaster or headmistress. Systematic or general instruction has
developed as yet nowhere in Europe. The educational officials of both
Prussia and Sweden distinctly hold that under existing conditions the
problem is one for the home, not the school. France is at the same stage
of development. A memorandum on the subject has been submitted to the
ministry of education, but no official action has been taken.
In view of the paucity of our experience, much of the literature on the
subject strikes the observer as perhaps promising too much from mere
diffusion of knowledge. Undoubtedly it is beyond all question that no
boy or girl ought to be permitted to err through sheer ignorance. But it
does not follow that fuller and clearer knowledge on the part of the
growing boy and girl will itself effectively restrain; not only
knowledge, but knowledge suffused with ethical emotion is requisite.[99]
By prematurely creating images and stimulating curiosity both of which
go further than the immediate communications on the topic, knowledge
alone may either originate or increase the danger. Inhibition is
unquestionably possible and it must be educationally brought about; but
it involves not only a certain amount of intelligence on the child’s
part, but control of impulse through loyalty—instinctive or
deliberate—to precept and example. As the boy matures, the actual
dangers involved in immorality may be so depicted as to exert a
deterrent effect; but the main reliance must continue to be upon the
higher motivation.
The importance of emotional and ethical training suggests the importance
of the home in this connection. Foreign opinion is well-nigh unanimous
in recommending that parents initiate the subject at the psychological
moment,—a moment that is rarely the same for two individuals;
subsequently the school can make its contribution, though there is as
yet no agreement as to the form or the time.[100] Some urge that it be
the natural outgrowth of general biological instruction;[101] some favor
class teaching, others individual instruction; an occasional writer
contends that, while boys should be urged to continence, they should
also be taught the use of preventives since it is well known in advance
that they will not obey![102]
The practical difficulties are, however, very great. The researches of
Moll and others indicate that sexual instinct and curiosity awaken at
different stages in different children; something depends on the
constitution of the individual child, something on the environment.
Moreover, the parents of the children most dangerously exposed are very
often those who are most incapable of managing the situation. A little
later, when the school might intervene, the difficulty due to individual
differences has not disappeared and additional problems have also
arisen. Class instruction disregards individual variations and requires
the greatest tact and skill in presentation; the teachers are as yet
incompetent;[103] physicians lay as a rule too much stress on disease
and on mere knowledge, and are as a rule clumsy and ineffective or
skeptical respecting the ethical side, without which such understanding
of the subject as may be brought about is apt to be of slight value. The
danger that lurks in tabooing or avoiding the subject has been clearly
demonstrated; but there is danger, too, in breaking down reserve. The
more explicit the intellectual aspects of the matter are made, the more
important does it become to insist that the mere communication of the
facts cannot possibly alone attain the end toward which the movement
looks. The girl must develop character enough to resist easy
demoralization; the boy, character enough to subdue rebellious impulse.
Still later, when boys are about to leave the Gymnasium—and therewith
their homes—in order to enter upon the freedom of University life in
strange towns, candid talks to whole classes, laying particular stress
upon the penalties attached to immorality, can be indeed given, as from
time to time they are. But, unless effective training on higher lines
has begun long before, the good to be achieved is of dubious extent:
witness the prevalence of venereal disease among last year Gymnasium and
first year University students, and the rapid, even if passing,
demoralization characteristic of the latter.
The educational situation in reference to sex hygiene may then be
concisely put as follows: little progress has been anywhere made in
actual instruction; decided benefit is to be hoped for only where
increase of knowledge is accompanied by increase of self-control—by
loyalty, conscious and unconscious, to higher ideals of personal
behavior.
I have mentioned above the factors and influences that tend artificially
to develop demand. Whatever makes prostitution prominent, easy,
attractive, seductive, unquestionably operates to increase demand. By
the same token, measures that deprive prostitution of prominence,
facility, attractiveness, seductiveness, reduce demand, or,—what amounts
to the same thing—hinder its artificial increase. In the modern city,
many conditions make, some purposely, some incidentally, for the
stimulus of sex appetite: glitter, luxury, the mad rush for amusement,
the stage, the café, the tavern,—all assist in the early maturity of the
sex function, the exercise of which they also facilitate. With many of
the artifices that have been employed to develop prostitution as a
business conducted for the profit mainly of third parties, I shall deal
in other chapters.[104] But certain of them may properly be considered
in this connection.
A by no means negligible factor in stimulating appetite are erotic
books, prints, etc. Obscene objects of this character are frequently
circulated in secret in schools,—girls’ as well as boys’; occasionally
they are even advertised under more or less deceptive titles. In recent
years active efforts have been made to stamp out this nefarious trade.
An international agreement has been arrived at, according to the terms
of which the police departments of the nations who are parties thereto
cooperate in ferreting out publishers and importers of immoral
publications and in endeavoring to bring them to justice. In
France,[105] Germany,[106] Austria and elsewhere popular societies have
been formed for the purpose of making war on pornography; laws have been
strengthened and ministerial decrees emitted, establishing special
police bureaux to handle offenders.[107] The kinematograph is the most
recent invention open to abuse in this direction; to forestall which,
inspection of films has already been introduced at police headquarters
in Berlin. Many congresses, national and international, held in recent
years, are evidence of a growing determination to stop the artificial
and premature excitation of sex demand through immoral books, pictures,
plays and other representations. The total laxity which once prevailed
has been checked and increasing restraint may be looked for, as public
opinion is educated to require and to sustain it.[108] For even where
laws exist, their enforcement depends on the vigor and sympathy of
police officials and magistrates, who, in the interpretation of the
statute, in some measure take their cue from the newspapers and popular
opinion. In a recent London case, a Bow Street Magistrate convicted a
bookseller for disposing of a book, of which, in imposing punishment, he
stated that nothing “more foul or filthy” had been found in London in a
long time. Subsequently another case, involving the same book, was
brought into court; and in the latter instance, the culprit was
acquitted.[109] In Germany, the laws—long since fairly adequate—were for
years a dead letter; but recent agitation has already had a noticeable
effect. Curiously enough, the most decisive action on the part of the
authorities is feasible only in countries where the liberty of the press
is most firmly established: for only in countries thoroughly free in
spirit will the public deliberately impose limitations on itself without
fear that such restrictions may ultimately be abused to serve other ends
than those originally intended.
Though no quantitative evidence of improving morality can be given, the
various movements above touched on supply proof that opinion is
undergoing a change which must in the end affect conduct. I was indeed
assured that a change is already perceptible to those whose knowledge
spans a sufficiently great period of time. Custom once practically
constrained the French student in the Latin quarter to swim with the
current; now it has become possible to lead a blameless life without
incurring contempt for his idiosyncrasy; an impassioned literature
appealing to the German student has made its appearance.[110] The
woman’s movement will unquestionably destroy the passivity of German
women in respect to masculine irregularities. The task of developing
continence in nations habituated to indulgence is one of inexpressible
difficulty; but it may be fairly said that now for the first time it has
been deliberately faced on the Continent by a small, but earnest band of
men and women bent upon the purification of the sexual life.