THE SUPPLY
Relation of demand and supply.—Demand increased by forcing
supply.—Supply derived mainly from lower working-classes.—Occupations
of parents.—Occupations of women themselves.—Is the prostitute a born
degenerate?—Importance of the milieu.—Effect of loosening home
ties.—Broken homes.—Demoralization of minors.—Unmarried
mothers.—Influence of bad example.—Economic pressure.—Low and
irregular wages.—Perilous employments.—Efforts to improve
conditions.—Rescue work.—Volume of supply.—Forced supply.—White
slavery.—Employment agencies.—The pimp, bars, variety theaters,
etc.—Rescue and preventive work.—Supply capable of modification
through laws and social conditions.
The supply, which after a fashion responds to the demand just described,
must be considered from three distinct points of view: its sources, its
volume, its reaction on demand itself. On the face of it, the general
relation of demand and supply appears simple and mechanical: a demand
exists; somehow, thereupon, a supply springs up to meet it. The demand
thus recognized, a moving equilibrium is established. Unquestionably, as
the situation now stands, prostitution to a certain extent illustrates
this purely mechanical conception. There is a demand of such strength
and upon such terms that a supply is forthcoming: in so far as this
particular demand is concerned, outright efforts simply to deny its
satisfaction would for the most part lead to higher bidding or to
circuitous methods of gratification. Demand itself must be affected
before this situation can be essentially or fundamentally altered. There
is also a supply on hand, which will employ a high degree of ingenuity
to bring itself into relation with actual or potential demand. But,
after all, however important, this is only one aspect of the problem.
The modern merchant, in whatever commodity he may deal, is a practical,
if not a trained, psychologist. He knows that appetite not only exists,
but may be both created and developed: that, in the absence of strong
restraint, supply can be worked up to almost any extent; and that there
is no more efficient way to manufacture and to develop demand than to
crowd supply in an attractive form upon the possible buyer’s attention,
when he is most amenable to suggestion of the requisite kind. True of
every article of commerce, be the need for it native or acquired, this
principle is nowhere more valid than in respect of a vice that starts
with a tremendously powerful momentum, and is easily susceptible of
still further stimulation. The volume of the business is, moreover, not
only a question of the number of women engaged in it, but of the
intensity with which the vocation is plied. A thousand women may consort
with a thousand men in the course of a night; or, conditions favoring,
they may entertain five or ten times that number. The definition adopted
in the preceding chapter looked ahead to precisely this fact,—a fact
that will become increasingly important as we proceed. For prostitution
represents not only the periodic coming together of demand and supply;
it represents also the exploitation of artificial, instigated appetite
and overworked supply. The prostitute may indeed satisfy her own or
another’s passion; but there is no passion in the sexual drudgery which
as a rule she performs. So far then from dealing with a simple natural
or mechanical process of satisfaction, demand and supply in this matter
tend to display rather more than the complications and interrelations
characteristic of enterprise in general.
The most striking fact in connection with the source of supply is its
practically total derivation from the lower working-classes, and mainly
the unmarried women of those classes.[111] The victims come in a highly
preponderant ratio from this definitely circumscribed milieu. Half a
century ago, Parent-Duchatelet, studying their social origins, found
that Parisian prostitutes are recruited well nigh exclusively from
artisan families; among 828 fathers, there was a bare sprinkling of
better-conditioned men.[112] These conditions still obtain. Of 11,413
women prisoners incarcerated during several years in Milbank prison,
10,646 were the daughters of working-men, or the equivalent; 544, of
small shopkeepers; 128, of professional men; 82, of small officials; 13,
of gentlemen.[113] Of 565 Stuttgart women, the fathers were, in 172
instances, artisans; in 84 instances, day laborers; in 60 instances,
peasants; in 31 instances, small shopkeepers. Skilled occupations were
barely represented.[114] Of 173 registered women in Munich, 95 of the
fathers were artisans; 46, day laborers; 17, peasants. Of 2,574
so-called clandestines in the same city, the fathers were: artisans,
1,147; laborers, 944; peasants, 248; under-officials, 140.[115] Two
thousand one hundred and three women appeared on the inscription lists
of the Stockholm police between 1885 and 1904: in 179 cases, the fathers
were small landowners and lease-holders; in 42 cases, merchants; in 14
cases, national or municipal officials: the rest were gardeners,
peasants, fishermen, mechanics, publicans, unskilled laborers, etc.[116]
The occupations of the women themselves suggest the same conclusions.
They are the unskilled daughters of the unskilled classes. Out of 1,327
street women of Geneva examined between 1907 and 1911, 503 had been
servants; 236, tailoresses and laundresses; 120, factory workers;[117]
of 173 registered Munich prostitutes (1911), 52 had been barmaids;[118]
29, domestic servants; 29, factory workers; 15, seamstresses; 8 had no
particular employment. Of 2,574 clandestines in the same city, 721 had
been servants; 608, barmaids; 255, factory hands; 60, stage-dancers or
singers; 170, without definite calling.[119] Of 1,200 women enrolled in
Berlin 1909–10, 431 had been servants; 445, factory operatives; 479,
seamstresses and laundresses; 145 were without vocation.[120] One
thousand five hundred women who were sent to the hospital on account of
venereal disease show the same vocations: 431 were servants; 445,
factory hands; 112 without special employment. Of 2,275 inscribed
Viennese women, 44.52% were servants; 20.55%, factory workers; 16%
without calling.[121] Of 427 admitted to a London Reformatory, 275 were
servants, 25 laundry workers; 20, factory hands; 11, dressmakers; 6,
barmaids; 33, without a vocation.[122] Of 675 cases included in another
study, 283 were servants; 114 without occupation; 52, factory girls; 12,
barmaids.[123] Another London list of 168 girls shows 2 described as
“typist and clerk,”—all the others engaged in unskilled domestic,
industrial, or mercantile labor.[124] Among Merrick’s thousands, already
referred to, one-half had been servants; one-tenth each, laundresses,
charwomen, factory hands and seamstresses; another large contingent were
barmaids: a few described themselves as governesses.[125] In the
Stockholm cases, the facts are identical: 996 were servants; 395,
unskilled workers; 266, sewing-girls; 57 were shop girls; 6 connected
with the stage.[126] Almost 7,000 Paris women, inscribed between 1878
and 1887 illustrate the same principle.[127]
Merrick’s data as to the educational opportunities enjoyed are also
generally sustained: less than one-tenth of his cases had had anything
beyond the most rudimentary training;[128] the German prostitutes show
at the most only the compulsory “Volksschule” education. Of the minors
apprehended during the year 1901, only 36% of those over 12 years of age
had completed the popular elementary schools; only one-fifth of 1% had
advanced further.[129] Very few indeed have acquired in any direction a
substantial degree of skill. They belong to the intellectual as well as
to the social proletariat. And this is just as true of the elaborately
dressed denizens of the Palais de Dance as of the unpretending
street-walker of Potsdamer Platz: they are, generally speaking, all of
the same origin and the same capacity.
The foregoing statistics are obviously, however, not fully
representative, derived as they are mainly from the records of the
hospital, the police, the prison, and the rescue home. Professionals of
low grade and failures are perhaps too largely included,—the women of
the street and the brothel; the dull drudges, who are most likely to
fall into the hands of the law; the stupid, who most readily give up in
despair. The vocational designations are also in one respect somewhat
deceptive: the women involved not infrequently describe themselves in
terms not of an habitual vocation or of a position held at the moment,
but of perhaps their last occupation, or some occupation capriciously
selected from the various jobs on which they have been more or less
transiently employed. Low grade help is as a rule thus variable and
casual. For instance: 1,689 women were inscribed by the police of Berlin
in twelve months following March 1900; all declared some sort of
employment; yet only 352 had work at the moment.[130] The returns are
therefore not precisely accurate; yet from the standpoint of our
interest in them, they do more than justice to the quality of the women,
for to the extent of implying preference or capacity for one kind of
work rather than indicating aimless shifting from one to another and
then again to nothing, the impression created is more favorable than the
facts warrant. In any case, the economic competency of the prostitute is
not higher than the statistics indicate and may be lower. Exceptions, of
course, are bound to occur. One finds here and there a stenographer, an
elementary teacher, a former actress;[131] but in most of these cases,
the woman is, socially speaking, of inferior origin and intellectually
not more prepossessing than others of her type. Very rarely indeed a
person of some education, social standing, and personal charm is met
with. A Parisian woman to whom this description is fairly applicable was
asked as to the possibility of finding others like herself. “I am one in
a million,” she proudly—and truthfully—answered.
The particular features of the milieu that involve peril I shall discuss
in a moment. Meanwhile, the fact that prostitution recruits itself from
a single social class is itself fatal to the contention that the
prostitute is necessarily a born degenerate; for if prostitution
involved born degeneracy; and if, vice versa, congenital degeneracy made
straight for prostitution, a single milieu would not furnish practically
the total supply. The definiteness of the type is, of course,
indisputable. Characteristic traits, external and internal, mark the
scarlet woman; she has a distinct gait, smile, leer; she is lazy,
unveracious, pleasure-loving, easily led, fond of liquor, heedless of
the future, and usually devoid of moral sense. Defect undoubtedly
accounts for certain cases, and especially so where a psychopathic
family strain is continuously implicated. Of 21 girls recently admitted
into a newly-established observation home in Berlin, 5 were reported as
mentally below par; of Mrs. Booth’s 150 cases discussed below,[132] 12%
were feeble-minded. In the case of prostitutes committed under the
British Inebriate Acts, the percentage naturally runs much higher: in
1909, out of 219 such immoral women, only 70 are described as of “good”
mental state; 118 were “defective”; 23, “very defective”; 8, “insane”;
_i. e._, almost 70% were below normal. “There is,” writes Dr.
Branthwaite, “almost consistent evidence here of some causative
relationship between mental defect and prostitution; but the evidence is
by no means overwhelming enough to justify more than a general
conclusion that mental defect is one of many causes for its
prevalence.”[133] Bonhöffer, studying 190 prostitutes incarcerated in
prison at Breslau, found that one hundred came from alcoholic families
and that two-thirds of them were mentally defective—hysterical,
epileptic or feeble-minded; his judgment is adverse to the existence of
the “born prostitute,” but in favor of congenital defect as providing
soil favorable to immorality.[134] One hundred and fifty-five Berlin
cases between 12 and 21 years of age, yield an equally striking result;
30% are reported as “intact,” 23%, as feeble; 43%, as psychopathic; 66%
are therefore abnormal.[135] Premature development on the sex side is
also frequently encountered. Among Lindblad’s 800 cases, 52 had had
sexual intercourse before they were 15 years old; 111 more, before they
were sixteen.[136] In these instances there was presumably a lack of
self-control, but not necessarily always a lack of the very possibility
of acquiring it, such as the degeneration argument requires. How far
these statistics are reliable, representative, or significant, it is
impossible to determine. Expert scientific study of large numbers of
women from each of the different strata of prostitution, without as well
as within prisons, reformatories, hospitals and refuges is needed in
order to clear up the question. For though degeneracy and native
depravity may account for the prostitute alone or in connection with
other facts, her conduct and qualities are also otherwise explicable.
The women involved have, as we have learned, undeveloped intelligence to
begin with; riotous sex-indulgence, the loss of shame, alcohol,
irregular hours, disease, combine to bring about speedy and far-reaching
demoralization. Moral idiocy, covetousness, aversion to work, vanity,
inclination to steal, libidinousness, may be acquired as well as native
traits; they may be qualities exaggerated, even if not altogether bred
in the course of the career. “The personality of the prostitute,” Bloch
contends, “is the result rather than the reason of her occupation.”[137]
Branthwaite holds that even the so-called “temperamental prostitute,”
with morbidly violent sexual desire, is apt to be the product of her way
of life: in the majority of his cases he believes the symptom to be a
“characteristic acquired by habit.”[138] Undoubtedly personal or
anthropological factors are usually involved: for if it were a question
of milieu alone, all affected by it would succumb. But the exact extent
to which the anthropological factor is congenital defect or only
imperfect education and protection remains as yet to be settled.
However this may turn out, the peril of the milieu remains. It increases
in geometric ratio with the feebleness of the girl, to whatever cause
that feebleness be due. The reason of this may best be comprehended, if
the question is approached from the opposite end. Let us ask, not why
some women fall, but why others go straight. A certain number,
undoubtedly, because of sheer character; these are the women who lead
righteous lives under all circumstances whatsoever; for they are made of
the hardy fiber that withstands any kind of wear and tear. A proportion,
one has no way of knowing how large, keep straight for the mere lack of
sufficient temptation to do otherwise: “The happy accident of the
absence of opportunity has helped to the rescue of many eminent virgins
at critical moments,” George Meredith caustically remarks.[139] But a
still larger number, though doubtless persuaded of their own ethical
superiority, attribute to positive character what is really due to the
unnoticed pressure of clan opinion, and the imperceptible barriers by
which they are completely surrounded. The certain disapproval of family
and friends, the sure ostracism that attends a serious departure from
the accepted code of behavior consciously or unconsciously act as
powerful deterrents; the esteem we are taught to crave, the warnings,
expostulations, and demands of family and friends constantly on the
lookout, keep the growing child within a well-marked path; established
habit, position, responsibility for others, and ripe reason ultimately
approving the same—these function in many cases as a substitute for
fundamentally hardy character. The superiority in such instances is
trained, not inherent; and not so much narrowly educational as widely
social. The whole organization of certain strata of society supports
those who pass their lives securely within it.
In many cases—we have as yet no way of knowing how many—the girls who
fall differ from those who go straight in lacking precisely these
supports; they are born in a stratum in which no strong supporting
bulwark of opinion and habit has been developed; or the bulwark, such as
it is, has been in one way or another broken down. The strong
characters—and they are immensely more abundant than is usually
supposed—do without it; the weaker too often succumb. Even so, their
collapse is rarely sudden. It is a hopeful fact that decency is often
only gradually and cunningly undermined. The buyer dealing with the
seasoned prostitute may go straight to his object; his purpose must be
veiled in negotiations with the beginner, who is led on by pretty
clothes, amusements, wine and glitter. There is no reason to believe
that, as a rule, promiscuity is congenial to the woman from the start;
it is sometimes increasingly odious. Low as the barrier may be, the
prostitute has rarely once and for all deliberately stepped across it.
Her demoralization is a progressive, not a summary, process. With her,
the sex instinct is, for reasons already given, less apt to be valued at
its real worth, or to be properly safeguarded by deference to exacting
opinion; less apt, too, to be reduced in comparative urgency by the
volume and abundance of other satisfactions. The girl has, however, no
notion in the first place of becoming a prostitute. She begins by giving
away what ultimately she learns to sell.
From the above discussion, it appears that, as far as we now know, it
may be not so much individuals as environments, that are superior.
Danger lies where the environment puts up no high barrier; still more so
when the low barrier, the strong temptation, and the weak resistance,
coincide. How completely the untrained daughters of the proletariat lack
the positive protections and supports by means of which
better-conditioned girls are, even in default of their own strength,
held upright, a somewhat closer study of the facts will soon show.
There is, in the first place, no quicker way of evading the immaterial
forces that assist in maintaining an approved line of conduct than
abrupt transplantation of an immature person into an environment within
which no such forces operate on the individual in question. Accordingly,
a heavy percentage of urban prostitutes are girls who have left home: of
168 girls in a London rescue home, 85 were born abroad; not all the 83
English girls were London born.[140] “The servants in Manchester,” I was
told, “come almost invariably from remote counties; they have been
familiar at home with the men, with whom they walk out.” In a strange
city, without work, or with hard work, they obtain through the too
lightly prized sex function, at least for the moment, what their lot
otherwise lacks. Out of 12,707 women inscribed in Paris, two-thirds were
born outside the department of the Seine.[141] Only 213 out of 781 girls
newly enrolled in Paris in a single year were natives of the city.[142]
Of 1,376 inscribed prostitutes of Stockholm (1890–1904), only 21.1% were
natives of that city; the same proportion were born in other Swedish
cities; 57% were country girls; the rest, foreigners.[143] Many of the
prostitutes of Vienna were born in the poor districts of Galicia and
Poland. The studies of Lindblad and Welander in Stockholm show how
closely immorality has followed detachment from home in hundreds of
instances.[144]
The home barrier is itself often so low as to constitute little or no
obstacle to demoralization,—often indeed, demoralization is of domestic
origin. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, dealing with London destitution,
describe a situation existing in all crowded European cities: “The
herding together, by day and by night, of men and women, of young and
old, of boys and girls, of all degrees of relationship or no
relationship, not only destroys health, but makes, to the ordinary human
being, the particular virtue upon which the integrity of the family
depends, wholly impracticable. Any person who has dwelt among the
denizens of the slums, cannot fail to have brought home to him the
existence of a stratum of society of no inconsiderable magnitude in
which children part with their innocence long before puberty, in which
personal chastity is virtually unknown, and in which ‘to have a baby by
your father’ is laughed at as a comic mishap.”[145] In a close in High
Street, Edinburgh, I visited with the city physician a family consisting
of father, mother, grandmother, daughter of 13, and two younger
children, all of whom slept in a single bed. Professor Blaschko declares
that “what Robert Koch once said of tuberculosis, viz., that it is a
question of living conditions, holds equally of prostitution. Living
conditions are responsible for the fact that children learn all forms of
evil prematurely and forego all natural enjoyments.”[146] Of the
inhabitants in Berlin in 1900, 73.7% lived in dwellings of two rooms or
less; 785,000 lived in single rooms; 561,000 in two rooms; 5,450 in one
unheated room; 7,759 in a kitchen.[147] Too frequently, the home, such
as it is, is broken besides. Not infrequently, necessity drives the
mother herself to become a wage-earner. Something above 2,000,000 German
women are engaged in factories, one-third of whom are married, widowed
or divorced. The children of these families,—boys and girls alike,—lack
the rearing which would be their most important safeguard.
Unfortunately, too, the tide is rising: the married women workers of
Bavaria increased absolutely in number 72% from 1895 to 1907;[148]
throughout Germany a similar rise is taking place.[149] As this increase
involves especially women between 30 and 50 years of age, it is clear
that they are driven into factories in order to support children whose
welfare requires that the mother should stay at home. In other
instances, the home is fractured by death, desertion or immorality: of
565 Stuttgart prostitutes, 64.2% were wholly or partially orphaned;[150]
of 384 London cases, only 24% had both parents alive.[151] In Lindblad’s
cases, 219 out of 772 homes are classified as “bad” or “very bad.”[152]
Ominous is the rôle played by alcohol in dissolving the home and in
undermining the constitution of the children.[153]
The inordinately large contingent of servants is partially accounted for
on these lines; for the servant has given up her own home and does not
always make for herself another in the house she serves. She has come
from the landless country proletariat, where sexual intercourse is
either customary or not forbidden; in the city, exposure and weak
resistance make her a frequent victim. Servants between 16 and 30 years
old form one-fourth of the female population of Berlin; they bear
one-third of the illegitimate children of the population. Of the
registered prostitutes of Berlin in 1900, 60% had traveled this
road.[154] In Paris, of 6,842 clandestine prostitutes arrested and found
ill within the decade 1878–1887, 2,681—i. e., 39.18%—were
domestics.[155] Two hundred and eighty-four of Lindblad’s 800 patients
were servants, 80 more were attendants on little children, 170
charwomen.[156]
If the urban home often leaves its girls defenceless[157] or
demoralized, the daughters of the rural proletariat fare even worse. The
children of the landless peasant are a sheer drain—they have no economic
value to the family. I recall a characteristic instance of a girl of 27,
one of fourteen children belonging to a peasant family, eleven of whom
had died in infancy. She herself had had no rearing whatsoever. Drifting
from pillar to post, she had come to Munich, where at 17 she had a
child; since then, five others, of whom one survives, maintained by her
on her illicit earnings.[158]
It is early demoralization that is most dangerous, and it is precisely
to early demoralization that the bad or broken home most surely leads.
In all great European cities the rapid increase of the prostitution of
minors has been noted. Without domestic protection, the girl seeks her
amusement on the streets and wittingly or unwittingly is led to her
fall. Between 1880 and 1903 the average number of minors annually
arrested for prostitution by the Paris police was 1,370,—the total,
32,885.[159] Nine hundred and seventy-five minors were arrested there
for this offence 1,638 times in 1908,—91 of them under 16; 988 minors
were arrested 1,739 times the next year,—221 under eighteen.[160] In
general it has been estimated that one-half of the minors arrested have
not yet finished their seventeenth year.[161] The Viennese authorities
declare that “clandestine prostitution in its varied forms is made up
for the most part of youthful persons. Clandestine prostitutes,
especially in so far as they are incidentally engaged as waitresses in
“Animierkneipen” and restaurants, singers and dancers, are usually
young, since, among other reasons, youth is a condition _sine qua non_
of employment. While out of 1,000 inscribed prostitutes only 16% were
under 21 years of age, among the same number of non-inscribed arrested
on the streets, over 57% were minors.”[162] In the year 1910, of 1,319
arrests, 823 were minors whose utter isolation is proved by the fact
that efforts to preserve some sort of family guardianship failed in 802
instances.[163] In Cologne, 1,626 arrests were made in 1911,—1,296 of
them minors,—79 under 18 years of age. German authorities hold in
general that the danger period lies between the 12th and the 21st year:
“only a small percentage go wrong after the 21st year.”[164] Among 846
newly inscribed prostitutes in Berlin in 1898, 229 were minors, despite
a settled policy in favor of registering adults only. There is perhaps
no better proof of the extent of demoralization during girlhood: seven
of these were mere children,—15 years old; 21 were 16 years old; and 33,
seventeen years of age.[165] Nor are conditions any better in smaller
towns. Bendig, studying prostitution in Stuttgart from 1894 to 1908,
finds 55% of the women deflowered under seventeen years of age; 70%,
between sixteen and eighteen; 97.3%, between fourteen and
twenty-five.[166] Over one-half were under twenty years of age at the
time of their registration as professional prostitutes by the police.
Through some English Rescue Homes, 745 children between eight and
fifteen years of age passed in the course of three years.[167] The
confidential memorandum dealing with 168 cases already referred to shows
that all but 30 were under twenty-one years of age. So, of 92 girls
admitted to a London Rescue Home, 50 were less than twenty-one years
old. Of 1,882 prostitutes arrested on the streets of Glasgow for
drunkenness or soliciting, seven were between fourteen and sixteen; and
314 between sixteen and twenty-one.[168] Of this type are usually the
white slave cases,—young girls for the most part enticed from poor rural
or urban homes by the promise of employment or marriage in a great city;
as also instances not altogether unknown in which mothers sell their own
children. A brisk demand for the child prostitute constitutes a strong
inducement.[169]
Exposure sometimes originates otherwise. Sometimes the seduced servant
or shop girl, or the pregnant country lass, may lose position or caste,
and, besides, find herself responsible for the maintenance of herself
and her child, law and custom bearing all too lightly on her partner. In
point of character the girl has no longer anything to lose; meanwhile,
need presses. Eighty-three out of the 168 London cases already discussed
were of this type. In Berlin, 1,531 girls were newly inscribed in the
years 1908–9–10; of these, 636—i. e., over 41%, had borne children.[170]
Mrs. Bramwell Booth furnished me a detailed study of 150 cases, out of
which 11% were believed to be attributable to pregnancy following
seduction. Lindblad found that 62 of 800 women—7¾%—insisted that they
had become prostitutes in order to support children: of these 10 were
widowed or divorced; 34 were unmarried, but confessed to a succession of
lovers; 18 were unmarried and with but one child.[171] Children born
under such conditions represent at times the most aggravated form of the
broken home, and not a few of the girls afterwards take to irregular
lives: nevertheless, by no means universally. For, as Adele Schreiber
has forcibly pointed out, illegitimacy is a complicated phenomenon, by
no means universally involving recklessness and irresponsibility.[172]
The premarital intercourse of European boy and girl may result in an
illegitimate birth which is either preliminary to marriage or is
regarded as equivalent thereto. This fact enables us to understand why
the researches of Johansson in Stockholm[173] and Pinkus in Berlin
appear to indicate that illegitimate children contribute somewhat less
than their expected quota to the recruiting of the prostitute army.
While 17.3% of the births in Berlin during certain specified years were
illegitimate, only 13.7% of the inscribed prostitutes in the same period
were of illegitimate origin.[174] Johansson calculated that one would
expect to find 12% to 14% of the enrolled women of Stockholm to be
illegitimates: they make up only 9% to 11% of the entries.[175]
Meanwhile the situation is charged with danger, unless the father meets
his responsibility. Too often this is not the case; and a relationship
that perhaps began in passion deteriorates—the man seeking other women,
the women turning to prostitution.
One more consideration ought to be separately mentioned, because it is
mainly and most fatally operative in the milieu with which we are
dealing,—the influence of evil example. From vicious suggestion
practically no child is free; but the children to whom our attention has
been directed may be so loosely anchored that they are easily carried
away. The ruined girl, glancing back over the path she has come,
overlooks the fundamental facts of environment and disposition and sees
only the older comrade or chance acquaintance, whose easy attainment of
fun, clothes, trinkets, she envies. Of the 800 Stockholm cases to which
I have already frequently referred, 71% attributed their final decision
to advice from tainted sources; 217, from professional prostitutes; 215,
from clandestines; 81, from immoral girls; 4, from their own
mothers.[176]
I need hardly call attention to what the reader will already have
observed, viz., that I have frequently cited the same statistics in
different connections: for the same girl may appear as orphaned, as
servant, as ignorant, as illegitimate, as badly advised. No one
circumstance can be regarded as alone fatal; the complicated skein of
influences and associations cannot be completely disentangled. The facts
that have been adduced,—broken homes, bad homes, exposure,—do not then
act directly as causes, in the sense that the girls involved take to
prostitution “as the sparks fly upward.” Of several sisters, all placed
in precisely the same situation, only one may succumb; personal or
anthropological forces may successfully defend all the others, despite
their apparently identical position. The environment is, however, not
thus freed of responsibility,—it is merely freed of direct, simple or
sole responsibility. It does not cause prostitution; but the huge
proletariat is the reservoir from which victims can be readily drawn.
Nor are single factors characteristic of the proletariat causally
responsible; but the phenomenon attaches itself to a chain of factors
belonging in their totality to this milieu alone. Bad fathers, loose
mothers, alcoholism, poor associations, physical defect, occur
sporadically in every social stratum; but all together combined with
defective education, low economic capacity, absence of oversight and
restraint, rampant desires and meager satisfactions occur only in the
proletariat.
We are in position now to judge the part played by economic pressure.
The preponderance of servants suggests the proper interpretation: for
the servant does not lack food or shelter, and her services are
everywhere in demand. She does not therefore resort to prostitution as
an alternative to starvation. Animated by a natural desire to excuse
their conduct, as most human beings are, the direct pressure of need is
rarely assigned by prostitutes in exculpation of their conduct. Mrs.
Bramwell Booth, than whom there is no more competent or sympathetic
authority, found among 150 successive and unusually varied cases only 2%
who explained their prostitution by inability to earn a livelihood;
Ströhmberg discovered among 462 enrolled women at Dorpat only one who
protested poverty as her justification;[177] Pinkus,[178] studying the
incomes of 1,550 Berlin women before embarking on the life, decides that
1,389 had earned enough for self-support.[179] But it would be obviously
unfair to say of these 1,389 women capable of earning a living that
social-economic conditions had nothing to do with their fall; for
precisely these conditions create a situation capable of being
exploited. Undeveloped moral character, early and careless infringement
of the sex function, drudgery, on the one hand, unsatisfied and
uncontrolled cravings, on the other,—these are all largely
social-economic in their origin and scope. It happens all too often that
girls born perhaps to pull canal boats, and with education and
intelligence hardly above their lot, possess some little fancy, or love
of pleasure, or taste in dress, without the strength of will or ideals
to content themselves with an existence of mere endurance in a world
full of enjoyment. They end by exploiting the sex function in order to
obtain the satisfactions not otherwise accessible, or to escape
difficulties and drudgeries from which they can contrive no other exit.
Prostitution is thus of economic origin and significance in so far as
the region of economic pressure is mainly the region from which the
prostitute comes. Whether or not the family lives in this region is
primarily a question of the father’s income. The region is, however, not
statistically definable: a specified income may keep a given family or a
given individual under dangerous pressure; the same income may release
from pressure another family or another individual. Severest, of course,
where actual poverty exists, all those whose needs, desires and protests
beat vainly against the limits imposed by their resources, live within
the area of economic pressure. But the mere fact of living within the
area, whether in its darkest tract or elsewhere, is not of itself
conclusive. For the prostitute is, in the last resort, to use a
biological phrase, “individually selected” in the manner already
sketched.
The menace of unfavorable economic conditions can be clearly discerned
in certain directions. Prostitution fluctuates with seasonal and casual
labor; in certain employments it is looked upon as a regular source of
incidental income to women workers; in other employments it offers to
girls not living at home the readiest recourse. As bearing on the part
played by casual and seasonal labor, it is important to note that the
proportion of their female help permanently employed by certain London
shops often falls as low as 25% of their maximum help; it rarely rises
above 75%:[180] that is to say, something between one-quarter and
three-quarters of the women employees of the London shops are casual
hands, turned adrift in increasing numbers as the trade barometer falls.
Charles Booth notes in addition to the “more regular members of this
varied group of women, some who take to the life occasionally;
tailoresses or dressmakers who return to their trade in busy times;
girls from low neighborhoods, who eke out a living in this way.”[181]
“It is true,” writes Wilbrandt of the irregularly employed girls in
Germany, “that when out of work, many of them succeed from time to time
in sewing more or less for private customers, or the lodging-house
keepers give them credit (‘give food to the unfortunate also at times’),
but for the majority this is no remedy. Even more than the isolated
factory workers, these girls are fairly forced to prostitution. Where
there is no serious obstacle, hardly one of this type, if isolated, but
is given to occasional prostitution.”[182] The vagrant class in trade
and industry and those dependent upon them are necessarily restless,
improvident and irresponsible.[183]
Practically in the same category are the workers whose wages suffice
only if they live at home, in which case part of their support is borne
by other members of the family; where—as so often happens with those who
come to the city to earn a living,—this is impossible, occasional or
incidental immorality is a perilous temptation. Immorality may thus by
low or irregular wages be almost woven into the very tissue of their
lives. I was told, for example, that in certain English manufacturing
towns, such as Bradford and Sheffield, a sliding-scale is accepted among
some of the girl operatives; when wages rise above a certain point, a
virtuous life is required by public opinion; when they fall below, the
source of supplementary earnings is not scrutinized. The minimum wages
of the sewing-women, factory hands, laundresses throughout Europe do not
support the most meager sort of decent independence.[184] An official
report states that out of 226 inscribed women at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
98 were laundresses and shop-help, earning from 1.50 marks to 1.80 marks
a day,—less, that is, than 50 cents.[185] The same holds true of
superior help—dressmakers, shop-assistants, whose standards are
necessarily higher: “these girls accept wages which would not be enough
to support them if they had not a friend to help them.”[186]
There remain the employments in which only prostitutes engage or in
which the perils are so enormous that a girl who has not fallen, soon
will fall. Irregular earnings are tacitly assumed as the major or sole
consideration in bargaining for a position. The chorus, ballet, or
cabaret girl can usually afford “the stage” because she is already
immoral and the glamor of the footlights increases her earning capacity;
the same conditions of course tend to force into immorality a girl who
has hitherto been honest. A monthly salary of 10 marks ($2.50) is paid
the dancers at the Court Theater in Hanover; the leading lady at
Eisenach draws 15 marks ($3.75) a month for a six months’ season; a
prominent soubrette at Munich states that she received an annual salary
of 3,600 marks, from which the outlay for wardrobe was 1,500 marks; one
reads of salaries of 1,200 marks conjoined with wardrobe expenses of
2,000 marks; incomes of 5,400 marks and expenses of 8,000 marks.[187] If
a decent girl objects to a salary of 20 marks a week ($5.00) on the
ground that it will not supply her necessities—living, wardrobe,
etc.—the Director retorts: “Why should you want any salary? You are a
pretty girl.”[188] The maelstrom thus tends powerfully to suck in those
not previously tainted. The English barmaids and continental
waitresses[189] are not infrequently virtuous women, leading decent
lives; but they are also often selected for the lively manners so
certain to lead, if they have not already led, to extra remuneration,
that only a nominal wage attaches to their posts. The 37,000 waitresses
in Germany are recruited from among the country or urban proletariat,
whose invaded chastity has already been noticed. Their wages are
nominal—or less; one-fourth of them are under 20 years of age.[190] It
is not surprising to find a Berlin insurance fund reporting that
waitresses make up one-half of those of its numbers venereally
afflicted.[191] In England and Wales, of 27,707 barmaids in the Census
of 1901, 18,251 were under 25 years of age.[192] Their wages range from
5 to 15 shillings a week.[193] Mrs. Booth concludes that of the
prostitutes in the West End of London, one-fourth were originally
barmaids and a still higher estimate has been made.[194] In many
establishments, irregularity either precedes employment or is common
enough to be taken into account in determining the conditions of
employment.
Nothing would be gained by going into the foregoing matters more
thoroughly. Enough has been said to show why in the presence of the
demand previously characterized, an ample supply is forthcoming, and why
it is almost totally derived from a single social stratum. It is
derived, of course, with all sorts and degrees of difficulty. Sometimes
demoralization has set in so early, or there has been so little
development of intelligence or character, that the girl is herself from
the start not only willing, but the main instigator; in other cases,
with intelligence too undeveloped and character too unformed to urge her
away from temptation, a vague but profound instinct holds her back until
her dumb resistance has been overcome by other inducements or weakened
by alcohol, pretended affection or interest. Despite this dark picture,
however, most girls in the various stations described do resist like a
stone wall. Of all those marked at any time by a given characteristic,
the number engaged in prostitution is rarely high. The huge total is to
be ascribed to the variety of paths and cross-cuts by which the morass
may be reached.
So much for the source of supply: let us turn for a moment to its
volume. Prostitution is an urban phenomenon; its volume increases even
more rapidly than population. For as the demand seeks particularly
younger women, the older tend to become a drug on the market. It is
therefore inevitable that, while there is a comparative dearth of the
youthful, the total supply should be in excess of the requirements. This
situation, of course, favors the exploiter; for he procures without
difficulty and on easy terms the commodity which he pushes on the
street, in the bar, the dancing hall, the café, and the brothel.
In the case of supply, as in the case of demand, two different problems
present themselves. In so far as individual reasons alone lead a girl of
mature years to prostitution or deliberately to persist in prostitution,
preventive action is both practically and theoretically difficult;
prostitution of this kind is a reply to demand or an invitation thereto,
taken in its simplest, even if not purely physiological form. Very
different is the situation as respects supply arbitrarily developed to
satisfy a specialized or artificial appetite. The girls thus involved
are forced into prostitution; demand in the sense just mentioned has not
been brought to bear upon them. Once violently ruined, however, they
become part of the army requiring that the mass of immorality be
increased so as to sustain them. Of this type are the white slave cases,
and those led into ruin through employment agencies. In both instances,
innocent girls are lured into strange places, deceived with promises
that fail to materialize, and coerced into an immoral life, which holds
them easily enough after their demoralization is completed. How much of
the present supply is of this forced character it is obviously
impossible to say. Stead’s revelations in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in
1885 and such incidents as the “Process Riehl”[195] at Vienna disclosed
the existence of a large and active trade in innocent girls of tender
years.
We found that there is no reason to regard demand as a fixed quantity.
The same is obviously true of supply. Girls may be forced into
prostitution; they can also be kept out. To some extent, as they are
kept out, demand also shrinks; for the provocation is thereby reduced.
It must be altogether obvious that all social amelioration tends thus to
reduce the supply, by diminishing exposure and strain. Within the scope
of this volume it is impossible even to mention briefly the steps that
have been taken in this direction in different European countries during
recent years. Suffice it to say that every effort in social and economic
reform, education, and sanitation has tended to reduce the number of
prostitutes and to strengthen the resistance of those exposed to danger.
In addition to indirect and slow-working processes of this kind, the
problem has been directly and in some respects effectively grappled
with. Of these efforts, the international movement for suppression of
the White Slave Traffic is the most conspicuous. There is no question
that not many years ago an extensive, though but loosely organized,
traffic in girls was carried on in large European cities. The bordells
were thus recruited with young and attractive inmates. The subject was
first brought to public notice in 1877; but little attention was paid to
it until the _Pall Mall Gazette_ published a complete exposure in 1885.
Shortly thereafter the British Vigilance Society was formed; similar
organizations were then organized in other countries and in 1899 an
international congress was held in London. Annual congresses now meet to
review progress and to suggest legislation; societies are everywhere
engaged in watching at steamboat landings and railroad stations in order
to assist unaccompanied travelers or to locate suspicious couples; and
associations in different countries endeavor by correspondence to run
down offenders and to release their victims.
Successful prosecution is, however, as a rule, surrounded by many
technicalities. In Germany the statute provides that any one who induces
a female to leave the country for the purpose of prostitution by means
of concealment of his object is liable to penal servitude for five
years, to loss of citizenship and a fine of 150 to 6,000 marks.[196] But
as a rule the culprit, if arrested, has made an attempt only, and thus
escapes the severe penalty here imposed. To avoid this pitfall, the
congress of 1910 urged as a model provision the following: “Whoever
procures a female for purposes of prostitution, abducts, carries off, or
leads her into prostitution, even if the steps thereto occur in
different countries, shall be punished, etc.” Several countries have
proceeded on this line, notably Hungary, in a law passed in 1908. The
most advanced legislation is, however, the recent amendment of the
British Criminal Law by a provision empowering a police officer to
arrest a procurer caught with a suspected victim without the delay
involved in procuring a warrant.
This legislation indicates the form to which the White Slave Traffic has
been largely reduced in Europe. Beyond question an innocent girl might
be entrapped, enticed, and immured in a European brothel; but if so, the
instance would be an isolated crime, like a mysterious murder or
robbery. Under existing conditions, there is absolutely no reason to
think that such cases occur frequently, though there are those who would
be quick to take advantage of any relaxation of vigilance on the part of
governments, the police, and the private organizations constantly on the
alert. In the cases to which from time to time attention has been
sensationally called, the women involved are neither innocent nor
deceived. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that European
cities and ports are utilized for purposes of transit to South American
ports where the trade still flourishes. A trafficker may entice a girl
from Poland and Galicia on the promise of marriage or work; indeed every
police office in Europe has a list of men thus engaged. The countries
from which women are procured are believed to be mainly Hungary,
Galicia, Poland, and Roumania; the countries to which they are carried,
Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and the Levant.[197] The pair steal
through Vienna and Berlin and appear at the dock in Hamburg, Rotterdam,
London, or some less prominent port just as the boat sails for Rio
Janeiro, Buenos Aires or a South African harbor—too late to procure a
warrant or detailed proof. The new English law above mentioned is
calculated to deal with just this emergency: for it authorizes the
detention and arrest of such couples without warrant, on suspicion, and
throws the burden of proof upon them.[198] The entire White Slave
movement is thus forcible interference with the making of
prostitutes.[199]
While the traffic in young girls has been thus greatly restricted, there
is no question that a trade in already ruined women is still carried on.
Prostitution is, as I have repeatedly insisted, a business,—a business,
too, in which novelty is an important item. Deprived of a supply of
fresh young girls, the bordell-keeper, the proprietor of cabaret, dance
hall or Animierkneipe must at least have variety. The trafficker scours
the market for the most attractive women he can procure and women are
thus kept in circulation through his efforts. He carries on his business
in European cities, in the Levant and in the large cities of South
America.
The employment agency has been similarly employed as a means of forcibly
increasing supply. Girls are sent out as servants into disreputable
places, in the activities of which they have been induced or compelled
to take part; or, they are sent out of the country as dancers or
singers, only to find themselves, on reaching their destination,
consigned to cabarets in which theatrical entertainment is but a cloak
for the exploitation of prostitution. Newspaper advertisements and the
_poste restante_ are deceptively employed for the same purposes. Of the
numbers thus victimized no accurate statement can be given. But
preventive measures are being taken. The London County Council has
undertaken a strict regulation of the employment agency: establishments
must be annually licensed, their records must be kept according to a
specified form, inspectors are free to examine them at will. Agents are
prohibited to arrange for the employment of females abroad unless the
satisfactory nature of the employment has been clearly established; nor
even then shall an agent arrange for the employment abroad of a girl
under sixteen unless with the written consent of her parents or lawful
guardian.[200] The worst of the agencies abandoned the business as soon
as the new regulations went into effect.[201] In Austria, the Employment
Agency is regulated by the trade ordinance; the establishment must be
licensed, those conducting it must be sufficiently educated, and the
business is subject to the inspection of the safety, health and morals
police.[202] A special license must be obtained if international
operations are contemplated. Books must be kept according to a
prescribed form; girls under 18 years of age can in no case be sent out
of the country except with the permission of the Court of Chancery;
precautions are taken to insure good faith in the case of older girls;
the license can be canceled by the government without notice.[203] There
is a marked tendency to limit the business to societies or the commune.
The pimp is connected with the supply of prostitutes in two ways: he
cultivates intimacies with the ultimate purpose of putting his victims
or associates on the street; he then drives them to the utmost, forcing
them to ply their trade with all possible intensity. He is thus an
important factor in increasing the number of prostitutes and the volume
of prostitution. How formidable an element he becomes is evident from
the fact that nowhere less than 50% and in most cities as many as 90% of
the professional prostitutes are declared by the police to support their
lovers. In Paris the proportion is given as 80% to 90%; in London at
90%. Of 93 foreign prostitutes in Zurich 85 were proved to be working
for souteneurs; of 204 at Rotterdam, 130 were known to be supporting
their lovers.[204] In form they vary; now appearing as base hangers-on,
now as paramours, again as husbands. No European city has, however,
successfully coped with the system. During September and October 1891,
350 arrests were made in Paris with only 14 convictions.[205] In London,
the numbers convicted have increased, though they are still almost
negligible: in 1902, there were 132 arrests, with 105 convictions; in
1905, 123 arrests and 95 convictions, in 1909, 201 and 167 respectively,
in 1910, 185 and 151.[206] Glasgow shows 25 successful convictions for
the same offence in 1911.[207] The present Dutch law has been in
operation since June, 1911; up to November 15, 1912, there were 39
arrests and 30 convictions. In Vienna there were 30 convictions in 1912.
Wulffen has carefully compiled the statistics showing the extent to
which panders of all kinds—the pimp, the owner of disorderly houses,
hotels, etc.—have been prosecuted in Germany. Very striking are two
points, viz.: that the number of convictions has risen, as public
opinion has developed, and that the total represents even yet only a
small fraction of the guilty. In the entire Empire, between 1883 and
1887, convictions were obtained in only 5.18% of the cases; in the
period 1898–1902, this figure had risen to 7.37%, an increase of 50%.
Meanwhile local differences are enormous: Berlin convicted 565,—43.92%
of the accused; Cologne, 507,—39.36% of the accused; Hamburg,
193,—15.01% of the accused; Frankfort 26,—2.03% of the accused.[208] The
statutes differ somewhat in principle and detail, but the difficulty
arises partly from varying interest on the part of the authorities,
partly—nay largely, from the inherent reluctance of the woman to
testify. Perhaps this vilest on-hanger of prostitution is the most
difficult to lay hold of.
Of the various forms which prostitution takes the bordell plays a
peculiar part in creating and intensively working supply; but, for
reasons that will appear, the bordell requires special treatment and
will occupy a separate chapter.[209] It would carry us far afield to
describe fully here the other establishments that cater to prostitutes,
directly or indirectly inducing girls to enter the life or furnishing
facilities for the intensive pursuit of the vocation. The Animierkneipe,
the Variety Theater, the café and other establishments largely derive
their profit, direct or indirect, through affording an ever increasing
supply an abundant opportunity to work up a demand, that will overtake
it. Prostitution in these forms doubtless answers in part what I have
loosely termed the physiological craving: that is to say, men bent on
gratifying appetite sometimes betake themselves to the Animierkneipe, in
the absence of which they would betake themselves elsewhere. Beyond all
doubt, however, a fair, perhaps a very large, share of the immorality
connected with these establishments is incited in them.
In London, license to sell liquor was formerly granted to music halls;
no further licenses of this kind are granted, and one by one licenses
formerly granted are being canceled. A few well known establishments,
however, still remain, in which prostitutes loiter about the bar and in
the promenade. Regular dance halls where liquor is sold—as is the case
everywhere on the Continent—do not exist in London, though special
permits for dances in hotels and elsewhere where liquor is sold are
obtainable. A determined effort has however been made in Great Britain
to break up the close connection between prostitution and the sale of
drink. The licensing act forbids an unaccompanied woman to remain in a
café or public house longer than a reasonable time to consume her drink.
In the provincial towns this law is vigorously enforced; saloons which
violate it may be deprived of their license on the charge of harboring
prostitutes. The danger to the proprietor is a real one, for the
government takes advantage of every legitimate pretext for reducing the
number of liquor establishments. In London the law is less consistently
enforced than in the provinces: certain notorious resorts in and about
Leicester Square remind one of the continental café.
On the Continent, however, little has been done to hinder the
exploitation of prostitution in connection with drinking, dancing, and
the theater. “In Paris, cafés, balls and theaters are from this point of
view, not the object of any particular restriction.”[210] In German
cities, these establishments fall under the regulations applicable to
business establishments and, for practical purposes, are not molested as
long as outer decency is preserved,—the term being as a rule rather
broadly interpreted. Public dance halls where liquor is freely dispensed
abound everywhere. A Zurich law sought to improve conditions by
forbidding waiters to work beyond midnight; but the law is evaded by
engaging a second set to work in the early morning hours! Stockholm
closes all public dance halls, cafés, etc., at midnight. The police
could proceed against a vicious establishment only by inducing the
license bureau to revoke the permit, a step very rarely taken. Meanwhile
of the pernicious character of these places in wrecking innocent girls
and facilitating the operations of prostitute and pimp, there is nowhere
any question. “Legitimate trade is not large enough to keep them going,”
remarked the head of the Zurich police. “The women make them pay by
increasing the amount that each customer drinks. They thus win customers
for themselves.” The difficulty in dealing with problems of this sort
arises from several factors—the overlapping of the legitimate and
illegitimate purposes which they serve, the lack of a definite public
opinion, and the dispersion of authority among various detached
departments.
An increasingly active interference with the making and forcing of
supply is represented by rescue and protective work. Religious and
philanthropic societies maintain street workers who endeavor to reclaim
fallen women, and homes in which those in distress are received and
rehabilitated. These institutions are more highly developed in England
than on the Continent; nevertheless attractive and wholesome retreats
have been established in Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen and elsewhere.
Nowhere, however, is the capacity equal to the demand or the
opportunity. Of the outcome of rescue work, the police are naturally
skeptical; but it is a striking fact that those who have been longest
engaged are the most hopeful.
There is, however, no difference of opinion at all as to the superior
importance of prevention. Children immediately exposed to demoralization
must be removed from danger and trained to some useful and profitable
avocation,—for the girl who possesses some form of industrial skill is
least likely to err and most likely to recover herself. The French
government has recently provided for homes answering this purpose, but
the machinery by means of which children are to be got into them is so
clumsy that the legislation has proved ineffective. The recent Prussian
“Fürsorge Gesetz” of 1901 (Law on Guardianship) is much more
satisfactory. The procedure is applicable to children under 18, but
guardianship continues until the age of 21. In less serious cases,
children are placed in families under supervision; if the situation
warrants, they are interned in institutions. In Prussia, about 6,000
children are yearly cared for on these lines, ⅓ of them girls, of whom
about 40% have already gone wrong. For the most part their domestic
environment was bad,—their birth illegitimate, the father alcoholic, the
mother immoral, etc. This law is a fair sample of modern effort on the
part of the state to control the conditions under which imperiled
children are reared.[211] Energy expended at this stage attacks the
problem of supply at its very source.
Our consideration of demand and supply has shown the complicated
character of modern prostitution. The important point to remember, from
the standpoint of practical policy, is this. Supply is to some extent
artificially created and demand is to some extent artificially forced;
whatever may be true of minimum supply and demand, the artificial
processes in question are in greater or less degree socially
controllable or modifiable. This is, of course, not to say that powerful
commercial interests and social habits would not resist interference;
for the abnormalities in question are at once the product and for
thousands the attraction of metropolitan life. The fascination and the
curse of the great city lie thus close together,—perhaps inextricably
so, as is so effectively portrayed in the concluding scene of
Charpentier’s “Louise.” With this local pride to be a great city through
forcing the sensual pace, modern Europe is fairly mad. Berlin and Vienna
are rich and gay; the idle and curious throng thither from all quarters
of the world. Smaller towns like Geneva, smitten with envy, struggle to
imitate the license of those great capitals. In so far, prostitution is
in the broadest sense a social problem,—the problem of rationalizing
human life, and only indirectly to be grappled with.
Precisely therefore as there is nothing absolutely fixed, predetermined,
and inevitable about the strength of demand, so there is nothing
fatalistic about supply. In general, the two move together, one—either
one—provoking the other. In the end, they have to be solved together;
but within limits, effective action attacking one can itself ameliorate
the other. Human nature is indeed weak enough on the sexual side; but
the mass of existing vice is out of all proportion to what would exist
on that account alone; and one way to abridge demand is to abridge
supply, as it is being abridged by white slave legislation, by control
of employment agencies, by care of the unprotected young and by rational
management of the drink and amusement traffic. Moreover, whatever
interferes with intensive exploitation virtually reduces supply. As
forced supply increases demand, so diminished and hampered supply to
some extent checks it.
NOTE.—Since the above was written the Report of the Fifth
International Congress on the White Slave Traffic has appeared. It
contains a complete account of the various movements and efforts above
described. It is published by the National Vigilance Association,
London.