LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES.
SHOULD LICENSES BE ALLOWED?
The question of the best mode of legally controlling the great evil of
prostitution, and confining its bad physical effects, is a very
difficult one.
The merely philosophical inquirer, or even the physician, regarding
humanity "in the broad," comes naturally to the conclusion that this
offense is one of the inevitable evils which always have followed, and
always will follow, the track of civilization; that it is to be looked
upon, like small-pox or scarlet fever, as a disease of civilized man,
and is to be treated accordingly, by physical and scientific means, and
must be controlled, as it cannot be uprooted, by legislation. Or they
regard it as they do intoxication, as the effect of a misdirected
natural desire, which is everywhere thought to be a legitimate object
both of permission or recognition by government, as well as of check by
rigid laws.
If medical men, their minds are almost exclusively directed toward the
frightful effects on society and upon the innocent, of the diseases
which attend this offense. They see that legislation would at once check
the ravages from these terrible maladies, and that a system of licenses
such as is practiced in the Continental cities would prevent them from
spreading through society and punishing those who had never sinned. As
scientific healers of human maladies, they feel that anything is a gain
which lessens human suffering, controls disease, and keeps up the
general health of the community. Their position, too, has been
strengthened by the foolish and superstitious arguments of their
opponents. It has been claimed that syphilitic disorders are a peculiar
and supernatural punishment for sin and wrong-doing; that by interfering
with their legitimate action on the guilty, we presume to diminish the
punishments inflicted by the Almighty; and, in so far as we cure or
restrain these diseases, we lessen one great sanction which nature and
Providence have placed before the infraction of the law of virtue.
The medical man, however, replies very pertinently that he has nothing
to do with the Divine sanctions; that his business is to cure human
diseases and lessen human suffering wherever he find them; and that
gout, or rheumatism, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, are as much
"punishments" as the diseases of this vice. If he refused to visit a
patient whenever he thought that his sins had brought upon him his
diseases, he would have very little occupation, and mankind would
receive very little alleviation from the medical art. Nor is he even
called upon to refuse to cure a patient who, he knows, will immediately
begin again his evil courses. The physician is not a judge or an
executioner. He has nothing to do but to cure and alleviate. Influenced
by this aspect of his duty, the medical man almost universally advocates
licenses to prostitutes, based on medical examination, and a strict
legal control of the participants in this offense.
On the other hand, those of us who deal with the moral aspects of the
case, and who know the class that are ruined body and soul by this
criminal business, have a profound dread of anything which, to the
young, should appear to legalize or approve, or even recognize it. The
worst evil in prostitution is to the woman, and the worst element in
that is moral rather than physical.
The man has the tremendous responsibility on his soul of doing his part
in helping to plunge a human being into the lowest depths of misery and
moral degradation. He has also all the moral responsibility which the
Divine law of purity places on each individual, and the farther burden
of possibly causing disease hereafter to the innocent and virtuous.
But the woman who pursues this as a business has seldom any hope in this
world, either of mental or moral health. The class, as a class, are the
most desperate and unfortunate which reformatory agencies ever touch.
Now, any friend of the well-being of society, knowing the strength of
men's passions, and the utter misery and degradation of these victims of
them, will dread any public measure or legislation which will tend to
weaken the respect of young men for virtue, or to make this offense
looked upon as permissible, or which will add to the number of these
wretched women by diminishing the public and legal condemnation of their
debasing traffic.
Among the large class of poor and ignorant girls in a large city who are
always just on the line between virtue and vice, who can say how many
more would be plunged into this abyss of misery by an apparent legal
approval or recognition of the offense through a system of license?
Among the thousand young men who are under incessant temptations in a
city like this, who can say how many are saved by the consciousness that
this offense is looked upon both by morality and law as an offense, and
is not even recognized as permissible and legal? A city license
constitutes a profession of prostitutes. The law and opinion recognize
them. The evil becomes more fixed by its public recognition.
It is true that prostitution will always, in all probability, attend
civilization; but so will all other sins and offenses. It may be
possible, however, to diminish and control it. It is already immensely
checked in this country, as compared with continental countries, partly
through economical and partly through moral causes. It has been
diminished among the daughters of the lowest poor in this city by the
"Industrial Schools." Why should it be increased and established by
legal recognition?
We admit that the present condition of the whole matter in New York is
terrible. The humanity and science which ought to minister to the
prostitute as freely as to any other class, are refused to her by the
public, unless she apply as a pauper. The consequence is, that the
fearful diseases which follow this offense, like avenging Furies, have
spread through not only this class of women, but have been communicated
to the virtuous and innocent, and are undermining the health of society.
This fact is notorious to physicians.
Now we think a reasonable "middle course" might be pursued in this
matter; that, for instance, greater conveniences for medical attendance
and advice in the city (and not on Blackwell's Island) might be afforded
by our authorities to this class, both as a matter of humanity and as a
safeguard to the public health. If there was a hospital or a dispensary
for such cases within the city, it would avoid the disgrace and
publicity of each patient reporting herself to the court as a pauper,
and then being sent to the Island Hospital. Hundreds more would present
themselves for attendance and treatment than do now, and the public
health be proportionately improved. No moral sanction would thus be
given to this demoralizing and degrading business. The simple duties of
humanity would be performed.
The advocates of the license system would still reply, however, that
such a hospital would not meet the evil; that Law only can separate the
sickly from the healthy, and thus guard society from the pestilence; and
the only law which could accomplish this would be a strict system of
license. The friend of public order, however, would urge that a wise
legislator cannot consider physical well-being alone: he must regard
also the moral tendencies of laws; and the influence of a license system
for prostitution is plainly toward recognizing this offense as legal or
permissible. It removes indirectly one of the safeguards of virtue.
Perhaps the _reductio ad absurdum_ in the relation of the State with a
criminal class, and of the Church with the State, was never so absurdly
shown as in the Berlin license laws for prostitutes, twenty years since.
According to these, in their final result, no woman could be a
prostitute who had not partaken of the communion!--that is, the
_Schein,_ or license, was never given to this business any more than to
any other, except on evidence of the person's having been "confirmed,"
or being a member of the State Church, that is, a citizen! This
classing, however, the trade of prostitution with peddling, or any other
business needing a license, did not in the least tend, so far as we have
ever heard, to elevate the women, or save them from moral and mental
degradation. On the contrary, the universal law of Providence that man
or woman must live by labor, and that any unnatural substitute for it
saps and weakens all power and vigor, applies to this class in
Continental cities as much as here. Without doubt, too, wherever the
Germanic races are, no degree of legalizing this traffic can utterly do
away with the public sentence of scorn against the female participants
in it; and the contempt of the virtuous naturally depresses the
vicious.
The "public woman" has a far greater chance of recovery in France or
Italy than in Germany, England, or America. Still, the wise legislator,
though regretting the depression which this public sentiment causes to
the vicious classes, cannot but value it as a safeguard of virtue, and
will be very cautious how he weakens it by legislation.
There is, no doubt, some force in the position that the non-licensing of
these houses is in some degree a terror to the community, and that the
cautious and prudent are kept from the offense through fear of possible
consequences in disease and infection. This, however, does not seem to
us an object which legislators can hold before them as compared with the
duties of humanity in curing and preventing disease and pestilence. They
have nothing to do with adding to the natural penalties of sin, or with
punishing sinners. They are concerned only with human law. But they have
the right, and, as it seems to us, the duty, so to legislate as not to
encourage so great an evil as this of prostitution. And licensing, it
seems to us, has that tendency. It certainly has had it in Paris, where
it has been tried to its full extent, and surely no one could claim the
population of that city as a model to any nation, whether in physical or
moral power.
Bad as London is in this matter--not, however, so much through defect of
licensing as through want of a proper street-police--we do not believe
there is so wide-spread a degradation among poor women as in Berlin.
New York, in our judgment, is superior to any great city in its smaller
prostitute class, and the virtue of its laboring poor. Something of
this, of course, is due to our superior economical conditions; something
to the immense energy and large means thrown into our preventive
agencies, but much also to the public opinion prevailing in all classes
in regard to this vice. Our wealthy classes, we believe, and certainly
our middle classes, have a higher sentiment in regard to the purity both
of man and woman than any similar classes in the civilized world. More
persons relatively marry, and marriages are happier. This is equally
true of the upper laboring classes. If it is not true of the lowest
poor, this results from two great local evils--Overcrowding, and the bad
influences of Emigration. Still, even with these, the poor of New York
compare favorably in virtue with those of Paris, Berlin, or Vienna. Now,
how large a part of the public opinion which thus preserves both ends of
society from vice may be due to the fact that we have not recognized the
greatest offense against purity by any permissive legislation? The
business is still regarded, in law, as outside of good morals and not
even to be tacitly allowed by license.