PROSTITUTION A NECESSARY SOCIAL INSTITUTION OF THE CAPITALIST WORLD.
Marriage presents one side of the sexual life of the capitalist or
bourgeois world; prostitution presents the other. Marriage is the
obverse, prostitution the reverse of the medal. If men find no
satisfaction in wedlock, then they usually seek the same in
prostitution. Those men, who, for whatever reason, renounce married
life, also usually seek satisfaction in prostitution. To those men,
accordingly, who, whether out of their free will or out of compulsion,
live in celibacy, as well as to those whom marriage does not offer what
was expected of it, conditions are more favorable for the gratification
of the sexual impulse than to women.
Man ever has looked upon the use of prostitution as a privilege due him
of right. All the harder and severer does he keep guard and pass
sentence when a woman, who is no prostitute, commits a "slip." That
woman is instinct with the same impulses as man, aye, that at given
periods of her life (at menstruation) these impulses assert themselves
more vehemently than at others,--that does not trouble him. In virtue of
his position as master, he compels her to violently suppress her most
powerful impulses, and he conditions both her character in society and
her marriage upon her chastity. Nothing illustrates more drastically,
and also revoltingly, the dependence of woman upon man than this
radically different conception regarding the gratification of the
identical natural impulse, and the radically different measure by which
it is judged.
To man, circumstances are particularly favorable. Nature has devolved
upon woman the consequences of the act of generation: outside of the
enjoyment, man has neither trouble nor responsibility. This advantageous
position over against woman has promoted that unbridled license in
sexual indulgence wherein a considerable part of men distinguish
themselves. Seeing, however, that, as has been shown, a hundred causes
lie in the way of the legitimate gratification of the sexual instinct,
or prevent its full satisfaction, the consequence is frequent
gratification, like beasts in the woods.
_Prostitution thus becomes a social institution in the capitalist world,
the same as the police, standing armies, the Church, and
wage-mastership._
Nor is this an exaggeration. We shall prove it.
We have told how the ancient world looked upon prostitution, and
considered it necessary, aye, had it organized by the State, as well in
Greece as in Rome. What views existed on the subject during the Middle
Ages has likewise been described. Even St. Augustine, who, next to St.
Paul, must be looked upon as the most important prop of Christendom, and
who diligently preached asceticism, could not refrain from exclaiming:
"Suppress the public girls, and the violence of passion will knock
everything of a heap." The provincial Council of Milan, in 1665,
expressed itself in similar sense.
Let us hear the moderns:
Dr. F. S. Huegel says:[100] "Advancing civilization will gradually drape
prostitution in more pleasing forms, but only with the end of the world
will it be wiped off the globe." A bold assertion; yet he who is not
able to project himself beyond the capitalist form of society, he who
does not realize that society will change so as to arrive at healthy and
natural social conditions,--he must agree with Dr. Huegel.
Hence also did Dr. Wichern, the late pious Director of the Rauhen House
near Hamburg, Dr. Patton of Lyon, Dr. William Tait of Edinburg, and Dr.
Parent-Duchatelet of Paris, celebrated through his investigations of the
sexual diseases and prostitution, agree in declaring: "Prostitution is
ineradicable _because it hangs together with the social institutions_,"
and all of them demanded its regulation by the State. Also Schmoelder
writes: "Immorality as a trade has existed at all times and in all
places, and, so far as the human eye can see, _it will remain a constant
companion_ of the human race."[101] Seeing that the authorities cited
stand, without exception, upon the ground of the modern social order,
the thought occurs to none that, with the aid of another social order,
the causes of prostitution, and, consequently, prostitution itself,
might disappear; none of them seeks to fathom the causes. Indeed, upon
one and another, engaged in this question, the fact at times dawns that
the sorry social conditions, which numerous women suffer under, might be
the chief reason why so many women sell their bodies; but the thought
does not press itself through to its conclusion, to wit, that,
therefore, the necessity arises of bringing about other social
conditions. Among those who recognize that the economic conditions are
the chief cause of prostitution belong Th. Bade, who declares:[102] "The
causes of the bottomless moral depravity, out of which the prostitute
girl is born, lie in the existing social conditions.... _It is the
bourgeois dissolution of the middle classes and of their material
existence, particularly of the class of the artisans_, only a small
fraction of which carries on to-day an independent occupation as a
trade." Bade closes his observations, saying: "Want for material
existence, that has partly worn out the families of the middle class and
will yet wear them out wholly, leads also to the moral ruin of the
family, especially of the female sex." In fact, the statistical figures,
gathered by the Police Department of Berlin, between 1871-1872, on the
extraction of 2,224 enrolled prostitutes, show:
Number. Per Cent. Father's Occupation.
1,015 47.9 Artisans
467 22.0 Millhands
305 14.4 Small office-holders
222 10.4 Merchants and railroad workers
87 4.1 Farmers
26 1.2 Military service
Of 102 the father's occupation was not ascertainable.
Specialists and experts rarely take up investigations of a deeper
nature; they accept the facts that lie before them, and judge in the
style of the "Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift," that writes in its No.
35, for the year 1863: "What else is there left to the large majority of
willing and unwilling celibates, in order to satisfy their _natural
wants_, than the forbidden fruit of the Venus Pandemos?" The paper is,
accordingly, of the opinion that, for the sake of these celibates,
prostitution is necessary, because what else, forsooth, are they to do
in order to satisfy their sexual impulse? And it closes, saying: "Seeing
that prostitution is necessary, it has the right to existence, to
protection, and to immunity from the State." And Dr. Huegel declares
himself in his work, mentioned above, in accord with this view. Man,
accordingly, to whom celibacy is a horror and a martyrdom, is the only
being considered; that there are also millions of women living in
celibacy is well known; but they have to submit. What is right for man,
is, accordingly, wrong for women; is in her case immorality and a crime.
The Leipsic Police Doctor, Dr. J. Kuehn, says:[103] "Prostitution is not
merely an evil that must be tolerated, _it is a necessary evil_, because
it protects the wives from infidelity, [which only the husbands have the
right to be guilty of] and virtue also [female virtue, of course, the
husbands have no need of the commodity] from being assailed [sic.] and,
therefore, from falling." These few words of Dr. Kuehn typify, in all
its nakedness, the crass egoism of male creation. Kuehn takes the
correct stand for a Police Doctor, who, by superintending prostitution,
sacrifices himself, to the end of saving the men from disagreeable
diseases. In the same sense with him did his successor, Dr. Eckstein,
utter himself at the twelfth convention of the German Associations of
House and City Real Estate Owners, held in Magdeburg in the summer of
1890. The honorable house-owners wished to know how they could prevent
the numerous instances of prostitutes occupying their houses, and how to
protect themselves against fines in case prostitutes are caught living
in them. Dr. Eckstein lectured them on this head to the effect that
prostitution was a "necessary evil," never absent from any people or
religion. Another interesting gentleman is Dr. Fock, who in a treatise,
entitled "Prostitution, in Its Ethical and Sanitary Respects," in the
"Deutschen Vierteljahrschrift fuer offentliche Gesundheitspflege," vol.
xx, No. 1, considers prostitution "an unenviable corollary of our
civilized arrangements." He fears an over-production of people if all
were to marry upon reaching the age of puberty; hence he considers
important to have prostitution "regulated" by the State. He considers
natural that the State supervise and regulate prostitution, and thereby
assume the care of providing for the supply of girls that are free from
syphilis. He pronounces himself in favor of the most rigid inspection of
"all women, proven to lead an abandoned life;"--also when ladies of "an
abandoned life" belong to the prominent classes? It is the old story.
That in all logic and justice also those men should be held under
surveillance who hunt up prostitutes, maintain them and make their
existence possible,--of that no one thinks. Dr. Fock also demands the
taxing of the prostitutes, and their concentration in given streets. In
other words, the Christian State is to procure for itself a revenue out
of prostitution, and, at the same time, organize and place prostitution
under its protection for the benefit of male creation. What was it that
the Emperor Vespasian said at a somewhat similar juncture? "_Non
olet!_"--it smells not.
Did we exaggerate when we said: Prostitution is to-day a necessary
social institution just as the police, standing armies, the Church and
wage-mastership?
In the German Empire, prostitution is not, like in France, organized and
superintended by the State; it is only tolerated. Official public houses
are forbidden by law, and procuring is severely punishable. But that
does not prevent that in a large number of German cities public houses
continue to exist, and are winked at by the police. This establishes an
incomprehensible state of things. The defiance of the law implied in
such a state of things dawned even upon our statesmen and they bestirred
themselves to remove the objection by legislative enactments. The German
Criminal Code makes also the lodging of a prostitute a penal offense. On
the other hand, however, the police are compelled to tolerate thousands
of women as prostitutes, and, in a measure, to privilege them in their
trade, provided they enter themselves as prostitutes on the Police
Register, and submit to the Police regulations,--for instance,
periodically recurring examinations by a physician. It follows, however,
that, if the Government licenses the prostitute, and thereby protects
the exercise of her trade, she must also have a habitation. Aye, it is
even in the interest of public health and order that they have such a
place to ply their trade in. What contradictions! On the one hand, the
Government officially acknowledges that prostitution is necessary; on
the other, it prosecutes and punishes the prostitute and the pimp. But
it is out of contradictions that bourgeois society is put together.
Moreover, the attitude of the Government is an avowal that prostitution
is a Sphinx to modern society, the riddle which society can not solve:
it considers necessary to tolerate and superintend prostitution in order
to avoid greater evils. In other words, our social system, so boastful
of its morality, its religiousness, its civilization and its culture,
feels compelled to tolerate that immorality and corruption spread
through its body like a stealthy poison. But this state of things
betrays something else, besides _the admission by the Christian State
that marriage is insufficient, and that the husband has the right to
demand illegitimate gratification of his sexual instincts_. Woman counts
with such a State in so far only as she is willing, as a sexual being,
to yield to illegitimate male desires, i. e., become a prostitute. In
keeping herewith, the supervision and control, exercised by the organs
of the State over the registered prostitutes, do not fall upon the men
also, those who seek the prostitute. Such a provision would be a matter
of course if the sanitary police control was to be of any sense, and
even of partial effect,--apart from the circumstance that a sense of
justice would demand an even-handed application of the law to both
sexes. No; "supervision and control" fall upon woman alone.
This protection by the State of man and not woman, turns upside down the
nature of things. _It looks as if men were the weaker vessel and women
the stronger; as if woman were the seducer, and poor, weak man the
seduced._ The seduction-myth between Adam and Eve in Paradise continues
to operate in our opinions and laws, and it says to Christianity: "You
are right; woman is the arch seductress, the vessel of iniquity." Men
should be ashamed of such a sorry and unworthy _role_; but this _role_
of the "weak" and the "seduced" suits them;--_the more they are
protected, all the more may they sin_.
Wherever men assemble in large numbers, they seem unable to amuse
themselves without prostitution. This was shown, among other instances
of the kind, by the occurrences at the German Schuetzenfest, held in
Berlin in the summer of 1890, which caused 2,300 women to express
themselves as follows in a petition addressed to the Mayor of the German
capital: "May it please your Honor to allow us to bring to your
knowledge the matters that have reached the provinces, through the
press and other means of communication, upon the German shooting
matches, held at Pankow from the 6th to the 13th of July of this year.
The reports of the matter, that we have seen with indignation and
horror, represent the programme of that festival with the following
announcements, among others: 'First German Herald, the Greatest
Songstress of the World;' 'A Hundred Ladies and Forty Gentlemen:'
Besides these smaller _cafes chantants_ and shooting galleries, in which
importunate women forced themselves upon the men. Also a 'free concert,'
whose gaily-clad waitresses, seductively smiling, brazenly and
shamelessly invited the gymnasium students and the fathers of families,
the youths and the grown men alike, to the 'shooting retreats.'... The
barely dressed 'lady' who invited people to the booth of 'The Secrets of
Hamburg, or a Night in St. Pauli,' should have been enough to justify
her removal by the police. And then the shocking announcement, almost
incredible of the much boasted about Imperial capital, and hardly to be
believed by plain male and female citizens in the provinces, to the
effect that the managers of the festival had consented to the
employment, without pay, of 'young women' in large numbers, as
bar-maids, instead of the waiters who applied for work.... We, German
women, have thousands of occasions, as wives, mothers and as sisters, to
send our husbands, children, daughters and brothers to Berlin in the
service of the fatherland; we, consequently, pray to your Honor in all
humbleness and in the confident expectation that, with the aid of the
overpowering influence, which, as the chief magistrate of the Imperial
capital, lies in your hand, you may institute such investigations of
those disgraceful occurrences, or adopt such other measures as to your
Honor may seem fit, to the end that a recurrence of those orgies may not
have to be apprehended at the pending Sedan festival, for instance...."
(!!)
During the session of the Reichstag, from 1892 to 1893, the united
Governments made an effort to put an end to the contradiction that
governmental practice, on the one hand, and the Criminal Code on the
other, find themselves in with regard to prostitution. They introduced a
bill that was to empower the police to designate certain habitations to
prostitutes. It was admitted that prostitution could not be suppressed,
and that, therefore, the most practical thing was to tolerate the thing
in certain localities, and to control it. The bill--upon that all minds
were agreed--would, if it became a law, have called again to life the
brothels that were officially abolished in Prussia about 1845. The bill
caused a great uproar, and it evoked a number of protests in which the
warning was raised against the State's setting itself up as the
protector of prostitution, and thereby favoring the idea that the use of
prostitution was not in violation of good morals, or that the trade of
the prostitute was such that the State could allow and approve of. The
bill, which met with the strongest opposition both on the floor of the
Reichstag and in the committee, was pigeon-holed, and dared not again
come into daylight. That, nevertheless, such a bill could at all take
shape reveals the embarrassment that society is in.
The administrative regulation of prostitution raises in the minds of men
not only the belief that the State allows the use of prostitution, but
also that such control protects them against disease. Indeed, this
belief greatly promotes indulgence and recklessness on the part of men.
Brothels do not reduce sexual diseases, they promote the same: _the men
grow more careless and less cautious_.
Experience has taught that neither the establishment of houses of
prostitution, controlled by the police, nor the supervision and medical
inspection, ordered by the police, afford the slightest guarantee
against contagion. The nature of these diseases is frequently such that
they are not to be easily or immediately detected. If there is to be any
safety, the inspection would have to be held several times a day. That,
however, is impossible in view of the number of women concerned, and
also of the costs. Where thirty or forty prostitutes must be "done" in
an hour, inspection is hardly more than a farce; moreover, one or two
inspections a week is wholly inadequate. The success of these measures
also suffers shipwreck in the circumstance that the men, who transmit
the germs of disease from one woman to another, remain free from all
official annoyance. A prostitute, just inspected and found healthy, may
be infected that same hour by a diseased man, and she transmits the
virus to other patrons, until the next inspection day, or until she has
herself become aware of the disease. The control is not only illusory:
These inspections, made at command, and conducted by male, instead of
female physicians, hurt most deeply the sense of shame; and they
contribute to its total ruination. This is a phenomenon confirmed by
many physicians. Even the official report of the Berlin Police
Department admits the fact by stating: "It may also be granted that
_registration causes the moral sense of the prostitute to sink_ still
lower."[104] Accordingly, the prostitutes try their utmost to escape
this control. A further consequence of these police measures is that
they make it extraordinarily difficult, even impossible, for the
prostitute ever again to return to a decent trade. _A woman, that has
fallen under police control, is lost to society; she generally goes down
in misery within a few years._ Accurately and exhaustively did the fifth
Congress at Geneva for Combatting Immorality utter itself against the
police regulation of prostitutes, by declaring: "The compulsory medical
inspection of prostitutes is an all the more cruel punishment to the
woman, seeing that, by destroying the remnants of shame, still possible
within even the most abandoned, such inspection drags down completely
into depravity the wretched being that is subjected thereto. The State,
that means to regulate prostitution with the police, forgets that it
owes equal protection to both sexes; it demoralizes and degrades women.
Every system for the official regulation of prostitution has police
arbitrariness for its consequence, as well as the violation of civic
guaranties that are safeguarded to every individual, even to the
greatest criminal, against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Seeing
this violation of right is exercised to the injury of woman only, the
consequence is an inequality, shocking to nature, between her and man.
Woman is degraded to the level of a mere means, and is no longer treated
as a person. _She is placed outside of the pale of law._"
Of how little use police control is, England furnishes a striking
illustration. In the year 1866 a law was enacted on the subject for
places in which soldiers and marines were garrisoned. Now, then, while
from 1860 to 1866, without the law, the lighter cases of syphilis had
declined from 32.68 to 24.73 per cent., after a six years' enforcement
of the new law, the percentage of diseased in 1872 was still 24.26. In
other words, it was not one-half per cent. lower in 1872 than in 1866;
but the average for these six years was 1-16 per cent. higher than in
1866. In sight of this, a special Commission, appointed in 1873, to
investigate the effect of that law, arrived at the unanimous conclusion
that "the periodical inspection of the women who usually have sexual
intercourse with the _personnel_ of the army and navy, _had, at best,
not occasioned the slightest diminution in the number of cases_," and it
_recommended the suspension_ of periodical inspections.
The effects of the Act of Inspection on the women subjected thereto
were, however, quite different from those on the troops. In 1866, there
were, to every 1,000 prostitutes, 121 diseases; in 1868, after the law
had been in force two years, there were 202. The number then gradually
dropped, but, nevertheless, still exceeded in 1874 the figure for 1866
by 16 cases. Under the Act, deaths also increased frightfully among the
prostitutes. In 1865 the proportion was 9.8 to every 1,000 prostitutes,
whereas, in 1874 it had risen to 23. When, towards the close of the
sixties, the English Government made the attempt to extend the Act of
Inspection to all English cities, a storm of indignation arose from the
women. The law was considered an affront to the whole sex. The Habeas
Corpus Act,--that fundamental law, that protects the English citizen
against police usurpation--would, such was the sentiment, be suspended
for women: any brutal policeman, animated by revenge or any other base
motive, would be free to seize any decent woman on the suspicion of her
being a prostitute, whereas the licentiousness of the men would remain
unmolested, aye, would be protected and fed, by just such a law.
Although this intervention in behalf of the outcasts of their sex
readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading
remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow
themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction
of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and
pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were discussed by men and women; in
Parliament, the extension of the law was, first, prevented; its repeal
followed later. The German police is vested with a similar power, and
cases that have forced themselves into publicity from Berlin, Leipsic
and other cities, prove that its abuse--or be it "mistakes" in its
exercise--is easy; nevertheless, of an energetic opposition to such
regulations naught is heard. Even in middle class Norway, brothels were
forbidden in 1884; in 1888 the compulsory registration of the
prostitutes and the inspection connected therewith were abolished in the
capital, Christiania; and in January, 1893, the enactment was made
general for the whole country. Very rightly does Mrs. Guillaume-Schack
remark upon the "protective" measures adopted by the State in behalf of
the men: "To what end do we teach our sons to respect virtue and
morality if the State pronounces immorality a necessary evil; and if,
before the young man has at all reached mental maturity, the State leads
woman to him stamped by the authorities as a merchandise, as a toy for
his passion?"
Let a sexually diseased man, in his unbridled career of licentiousness,
contaminate ever so many of these poor beings--who, to the honor of
woman be it said, are mostly driven by bitter want or through seduction
to ply their disgraceful trade,--the scurvy fellow remains unmolested.
But woe to the woman who does not forthwith submit to inspection and
treatment! The garrison cities, university towns, etc., with their
congestion of vigorous, healthy men, are the chief centers of
prostitution and of its dangerous diseases, that are carried thence into
the remotest corners of the land, and everywhere spread infection. The
same holds with the sea towns. What the moral qualifications are with a
large number of our students the following utterance in a publication
for the promotion of morality may give an idea of: "_With by far the
larger number of students, the views entertained upon matters of
morality are shockingly low, aye, they are downright unclean._"[105] And
these are the circles--boastful of their "German breed," and "German
morals"--from which our administrative officers, our District Attorneys
and our Judges are in part recruited.
"Thy sins shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation." This Bible sentence falls upon the dissipated and sexually
diseased man in the fullest sense of the word, unhappily also upon the
innocent woman. "Attacks of apoplexy with young men and also women,
several manifestations of spinal debility and softening of the brains,
all manner of nervous diseases, affections of the eyes, cariosity,
inflammation of the intestines, sterility and atrophy, _frequently
proceed from nothing else than chronic and neglected, and, often for
special reasons, concealed syphilis_.... As things now are, ignorance
and lightheadedness also contribute towards _turning blooming daughters
of the land into anaemic, listless creatures_, who, under the burden of
a chronic inflammation of the pelvis, _have to atone for the excesses
committed by their husbands before and after marriage_."[106] In the
same sense does Dr. Blaschke utter himself:[107] "Epidemics like cholera
and smallpox, diphtheria and typhus, whose visible effects are, by
reason of their suddenness, realized by all, although hardly equal to
syphilis in point of virulence, and, in point of diffusion, not to be
compared therewith, yet are they the terror of the population ... while
before syphilis society stands, one feels inclined to say, with
frightful indifference." The fault lies in the circumstance that it is
considered "improper" to talk openly of such things. Did not even the
German Reichstag stop short before a resolution to provide by law that
sexual diseases, as well as all others, shall be treated by Sick-Benefit
Associations?
The syphilitic virus is in its effects the most tenacious and hardest
poison to stamp out. Many years after an outbreak has been overcome, and
the patient believes every trace to be wiped out, the sequels frequently
crop up afresh in the wife or the new-born child;[108] and a swarm of
ailments among wives and children trace their causes back, respectively,
to marital and parental venereal diseases. With some who are born blind,
the misfortune is due to the father's sins, the consequences of which
transmitted themselves to the wife, and from her to the child.
Weak-minded and idiotic children may frequently ascribe their infirmity
to the same cause. Finally, what dire disaster may be achieved through
vaccination by an insignificant drop of syphilitic blood, our own days
can furnish crass illustrations of.
In the measure that men, willingly or otherwise, renounce marriage, and
seek the gratification of natural impulses through illegitimate
channels, seductive allurements increase also. The great profits yielded
by all undertakings that cater to immorality, attract numerous and
unscrupulous business men, who spare no artifice of refinement to draw
and keep customers. Account is taken of every demand, according to the
rank and position of the custom, also of its means and readiness to
bleed. If some of these "public houses" in our large cities were to blab
out their secrets, the fact would appear that their female
tenants--mostly of low extraction, without either culture or education,
often unable to write their own names, but possessed of all the mere
physical charms--stand in the most intimate relations with "leaders of
society," with men of high intelligence and culture. There would be
found among these Cabinet Ministers, high military dignitaries,
Councillors, members of Legislatures, Judges, etc., going in and out,
and side by side with representatives of the aristocracy of birth, of
finance, of commerce and of industry,--all of them, who, by day and in
society, strut about with grave and dignified mien as "representatives
and guardians of morality, of order, of marriage, and of the family,"
and who stand at the head of the Christian charity societies and of
societies for the "suppression of prostitution." Modern capitalist
society resembles a huge carnival festival, at which all seek to deceive
and fool one another. Each carries his official disguise with dignity,
in order later, unofficially and with all the less restraint, to give a
loose to his inclinations and passions. All the while, public life is
running over with "Morality," "Religion" and "Propriety." In no age was
there greater hypocrisy than in ours. The number of the augurs swells
daily.
The supply of women for purposes of lust rises even more rapidly than
the demand. Our increasingly precarious social conditions--want,
seduction, the love for an externally brilliant and apparently easy
life--furnish the female candidates from all social strata. Quite
typically does a novel of Hans Wachenhusen[109] depict the state of
things in the capital of the German Empire. The author expresses himself
on the purpose of his work in these words: "My book deals mainly with
the victims of the female sex and its steady depreciation, due to the
unnatural plight of our social and civic state, through its own fault,
through neglect of education, through the craving of luxury and the
increasing light-headed supply in the market of life. It speaks of this
sex's increasing surplus, which renders daily more hopeless the new-born
ones, more prospectless those that grow up.... I wrote much in the same
way as the District Attorney puts together the past life of a criminal,
in order to establish therefrom the measure of his guilt. Novels being
generally considered works of fiction, permissible opposites of Truth,
the following is, in that sense, no novel, but a true picture of life,
without coloring." In Berlin, things are no better and no worse than in
other large cities. Whether Greek-Orthodox St. Petersburg or Catholic
Rome, Germanic-Christian Berlin or heathen Paris, puritanic London or
gay Vienna, approach nearer to Babylon of old is hard to decide.
"Prostitution possesses its written and its unwritten laws, its
resources, its various resorts, from the poorest cottage to the most
splendid palace, its numberless grades from the lowest to the most
refined and cultivated; it has its special amusements and public places
of meeting, its police, its hospitals, its prisons and its
literature."[110] "We no longer celebrate the festival of Osiris, the
Bacchanalia and the Indian orgies of the spring month; but in Paris and
other large cities, under the black cloak of night, behind the walls of
'public' and 'private' houses, people give themselves over to orgies and
Bacchanalia that the boldest pen dare not describe."[111]
Under such conditions, the traffic in female flesh has assumed mammoth
proportions. It is conducted on a most extensive scale, and is most
admirably organized in the very midst of the seats of civilization and
culture, rarely attracting the notice of the police. A swarm of brokers,
agents, carriers, male and female, ply the trade with the same unconcern
as if they dealt in any other merchandise. Birth certificates are
forged, and bills of lading are drawn up with accurate descriptions of
the qualifications of the several "articles," and are handed over to the
carriers as directions for the purchasers. As with all merchandise, the
price depends upon the quality, and the several categories are assorted
and consigned, according to the taste and the requirements of the
customers in different places and countries. The slyest manipulations
are resorted to in order to evade the snares and escape the vigilance of
the police; not infrequently large sums are used to shut the eyes of the
guardians of the law. A number of such cases have been established,
especially in Paris.
Germany enjoys the sorry fame of being the woman market for half the
world. The innate German migratory disposition seems to animate also a
portion of the women. In larger numbers than those of any other people,
the Austrian excepted, do they furnish their contingent to the supply of
international prostitution. German women populate the harems of the
Turks, as well as the public houses of central Siberia, and as far away
as Bombay, Singapore, San Francisco and Chicago. In a book of
travels,[112] the author, W. Joest, speaks as follows on the German
trade in girls: "People so often grow warm in our moral Germany over
the slave trade that some African negro Prince may be carrying on, or
over conditions in Cuba and Brazil, but they should rather keep in mind
the beam in their own eyes: _in no country is there such a trade with
white female slaves, from no country is the export of this living
merchandise as large as it is from Germany and Austria_. The road that
these girls take can be accurately followed. From Hamburg they are
shipped to South America; Bahia and Rio de Janeiro receive their quotas;
the largest part is destined for Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, while a
small rest goes through the Straits of Magellan as far as Valparaiso.
Another stream is steered via England, or direct to North America,
where, however, it can hold its own only with difficulty against the
domestic product, and, consequently, splits up down the Mississippi as
far as New Orleans and Texas, or westward to California. Thence, the
coast is supplied as far south as Panama; while Cuba, the West Indies
and Mexico draw their supplies from New Orleans. Under the title of
"Bohemians," further droves of German girls are exported over the Alps
to Italy and thence further south to Alexandria, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta
and Singapore, aye, even to Hongkong and as far as Shanghai. The Dutch
Indies and Eastern Asia, Japan, especially, are poor markets, seeing
that Holland does not allow white girls of this kind in its colonies,
while in Japan the daughters of the soil are themselves too pretty and
cheap. American competition from San Francisco also tends to spoil the
otherwise favorable chances. Russia is provided from East Prussia,
Pomerania and Poland. The first station is usually Riga. Here the
dealers from St. Petersburg and Moscow supply themselves, and ship their
goods in large quantities to Nischni-Novgorod and beyond the Ural
Mountains to Irbit and Krestofsky, aye as far as the interior of
Siberia. I found, for instance, a German girl in Tschita who had been
traded in this way. This wonderful trade is thoroughly organized, it is
attended to by agents and commercial travelers. _If ever the Foreign
Department of the German Empire were to demand of its consuls reports on
this matter, quite interesting statistical tables could be put
together._"
This trade flourishes to this day at its fullest, as proved in the
autumn of 1893 by a Social Democratic delegate to the German Reichstag.
The number of prostitutes is hard to estimate; accurately it can not be
at all given. The police can state approximately the number of women
whose principal occupation is prostitution; but it can not do this with
regard to the much larger number of those who resort to it as a side
means of income. All the same, the figures approximately known are
frightfully high. According to v. Oettingen, the number of prostitutes
in London was, as early as the close of the sixties, estimated at
80,000. In Paris the number of registered prostitutes in 1892 was 4,700,
but fully one-third escape police control. In all Paris, there were, in
1892, about sixty brothels, with 600 to 700 prostitutes, and the number
of brothels is steadily on the decline. On the other hand, based upon an
investigation, instituted by the Municipal Council of Paris, in 1889,
the number of women who prostitute themselves is placed at the enormous
figure of 120,000. In Berlin, the number of prostitutes, registered with
the police, was:--
1886 3,006
1887 3,063
1888 3,392
1889 3,703
1890 4,039
In 1890, there were six physicians employed, whose duty it was to devote
two hours a day to inspection.[113] Since then the number of physicians
has been increased. The prostitutes, registered with the police,
constitute, however, in Berlin also, only a very small portion of the
total. Expert sources estimate it at not less than 50,000. In the year
1890 alone, there were in 9,024 liquor saloons 2,022 bar-maids, almost
all of whom yield to prostitution. Furthermore, the, from year to year,
rising number of girls, arrested for disorderly conduct, shows that
prostitution in Berlin is steadily on the increase. The numbers of these
arrests were:--
1881 10,878
1884 11,157
1887 13,358
1890 16,605
Of the 16,605 girls, arrested in 1890, there were 9,162 carried for
sentence before the Judge. There were, accordingly, 30 of these at every
session of the court, and 128 of them were placed under the police by
judicial decree. Already in 1860, it was calculated in Hamburg that
every ninth woman was a prostitute. Since then the proportion has become
greatly worse.
In Germany, the number of prostitutes probably runs up to 180,000.
Accordingly, we here have to do with a large female army, that considers
prostitution as a means of livelihood; and the number of victims, whom
disease and death claim, is in proportion.[114]
Tait calculates for Edinburg that the average life of the prostitute is
22 to 25 years. According to him, year in and year out, _every fourth
aye, every third prostitute seeks to take her own life, and every
twelfth actually succeeds in killing herself_. A truly shocking state of
things. The majority of prostitutes are heartily tired of their way of
living; aye, that they are disgusted thereat, is an experience admitted
by all experts. But once fallen into prostitution, only to very few is
the opportunity ever offered to escape.
And yet the number of prostitutes increases in the same measure that
does that of the women engaged as female labor in the various branches
of industry and trade, and that are paid off with wages that are too
high to die, and too low to live on. Prostitution is, furthermore,
promoted by the industrial crises that have become a necessity of the
capitalist world, that commence to become chronic, and that carry want
and misery into hundreds and thousands of families. According to a
letter of the Chief Constable of Bolton, October 31, 1865, to a Factory
Inspector, the number of young prostitutes had increased more during the
English cotton famine, consequent upon the North American war for the
emancipation of the slaves, than during the previous twenty-five
years.[115] But it is not only the working-women, who, through want,
fall a prey to prostitution. Prostitution also finds its recruiting
grounds in the higher walks of life. Lombroso and Ferrero quote
Mace,[116] who says of Paris that "a governess certificate, whether of
high or low degree, is not so much a draft upon bread, _as upon suicide,
theft and prostitution_."
Parent-Duchatelet made out in his time a statistical table, according to
which, out of 5,000 prostitutes there were 1,440 who took to the
occupation out of want and misery; 1,250 were orphaned and without
support; 80 prostituted themselves in order to feed poor parents; 1,400
were concubines left by their keepers; 400 were girls whom officers and
soldiers had seduced and dragged to Paris; 280 had been deserted by
their lovers during pregnancy. These figures speak for themselves. They
need no further explanation. Mrs. Butler, the zealous champion of the
poorest and most wretched of her sex in England, says on the subject of
prostitution: "Fortuitous circumstances, the death of a father, of a
mother, lack of work, insufficient wages, misery, false promises,
snares, have led them to sin." Instructive also is the information given
by K. Schneidt[117] on the causes, that lead the Berlin bar-maids so
often into the arms of prostitution. Shockingly large is the number of
female servants that become barmaids, and that almost always means
prostitutes. The answers that Schneidt received on his schedules of
questions addressed to bar-maids, ran like this: "Because I got a child
from my master and had to earn my living;" or "Because my book was
spoiled;" or "Because with sewing shirts and the like too little is
made;" or "Because I was discharged from the factory and could get no
more work;" or "Because my father died, and there were four other little
ones." That, particularly, servant girls, after they fall a prey to
seduction by their masters, furnish a large contingent to the
prostitutes, is a known fact. On the subject of the shockingly large
number of seductions of servant girls by their masters or by the sons of
these, Dr. Max Taude expresses himself reproachfully.[118] When,
however, the upper classes furnish their quota to prostitution, it is
not want but seduction and the inclination for an easy life, for dress
and for pleasures. On that subject a certain work[119] utters itself
this wise:
"Cold with horror and dismay, many a staid citizen, many a parson,
teacher, high official, high military dignitary, etc., learns that his
daughter has secretly taken to prostitution. _Were it allowable to
mention all these daughters by name, either a social revolution would
take place on the spot, or the popular ideas concerning honor and virtue
would be seriously damaged._"
It is especially the finer prostitutes, the _haute volee_ among the
prostitutes, that are recruited from these circles. Likewise do a large
portion of actresses, whose wardrobe outlays alone stand in crass
disproportion to their salaries, depend upon such unclean sources of
revenue.[120] The same with numerous girls, engaged as sales-ladies, and
in similar capacities. There are employers dishonorable enough to
justify the low wages that they pay by referring their female employes
to the aid of "friends." For instance: In 1889 the "Sachsische Arbeiter
Zeitung" of Dresden published a notice that ran as follows: "A cultured
young lady, long time out of work on account of lung troubles, looked,
upon her recovery, for work of any sort. She was a governess. Nothing
fit offered itself quickly, and she decided to accept the first job that
came along, whatever it was. She first applied to Mr. ----. Seeing she
spoke readily several languages, she was acceptable; but the 30 marks a
month wages seemed to her too small to get along with. She stated to Mr.
----, and his answer was that most of his girls did not get even that
much, but from 15 to 20 marks at most, and they all pulled through quite
well, each having a 'good friend,' who helped along. Another gentleman,
Mr. ----, expressed himself in the same sense. Of course, the lady
accepted a place in neither of the two establishments."
Seamstresses, female tailors, milliners, factory girls by the hundreds
of thousands find themselves in similar plight. Employers and their
subalterns--merchants, mill owners, landlords, etc.,--who keep female
hands and employes, frequently consider it a sort of privilege to find
these women handy to administer to their lusts. Our pious and
conservative folks love to represent the rural districts as truly
idyllic in point of morality, compared with the large cities and
industrial centers. Everyone acquainted with the actual state of things
knows that it is not so; and the fact was evidenced by the address,
delivered by a baronial landlord of Saxony in the fall of 1889, reported
as follows in the papers of the place:
"GRIMMA.--Baron Dr. v. Waechter of Roecknitz, recently delivered an
address, before a diocese meeting that took place here, upon the subject
of 'Sexual Immorality in Our Rural Communities.' Local conditions were
not presented by him in a rosy color. The speaker admitted with great
candor that _employers_, even _married_ ones, are frequently in _very
intimate relations_ with their female domestics, the consequences of
which were either cancelled with _cash_, or were removed from the eyes
of the world through a _crime_. The fact could, unfortunately, not be
cloaked over, that immorality was nursed in these communities, not alone
by girls, who, as nurses in cities, had taken in the poison, or by
fellows, who made its acquaintance in the military service, but that,
sad to say, also the _cultured classes_, through the stewards of
manorial estates, and through the officers on the occasions of field
manoeuvres, carried lax principles of morality into the country
districts. According to Dr. v. Waechter, there are _actually here in the
country few girls who reach the age of seventeen_ without having
fallen." The open-hearted speaker's love of truth was answered with a
social boycott, placed upon him by the officers who felt insulted. The
_jus primae noctis_ of the medieval feudal lord continues in another
form in these very days of ours.
The majority of prostitutes are thrown into the arms of this occupation
at a time when they can hardly be said to have arrived at the age of
discretion. Of 2,582 girls, arrested in Paris for the secret practice of
prostitution, 1,500 were minors; of 607 others, 487 had been deflowered
under the age of twenty. In September, 1894, a scandal of first rank
took the stage in Buda-Pest. It appeared that about 400 girls of from
twelve to fifteen years fell prey to a band of rich rakes. The sons of
our "property and cultured classes" generally consider it an attribute
of their rank to seduce the daughters of the people, whom they then
leave in the lurch. Only too readily do the trustful daughters of the
people, untutored in life and experience, and generally joyless and
friendless, fall a prey to the seduction that approaches them in
brilliant and seductive guise. Disillusion, then sorrows, finally
crime,--such are the sequels. Of 1,846,171 live births in Germany in
1891, 172,456 were illegitimate. Only conjure up the volume of worry and
heartaches prepared for a great number of these mothers, by the birth of
their illegitimate children, even if allowance is made for the many
instances when the children are legitimatized by their fathers! _Suicide
by women and infanticide_ are to a large extent traceable to the
destitution and wretchedness in which the women are left when deserted.
The trials for child murder cast a dark and instructive picture upon the
canvas. To cite just one case, in the fall of 1894, a young girl, who,
eight days after her delivery, had been turned out of the lying-in
institute in Vienna and thrown upon the streets with her child and
without means, and who, in her distress and desperation, killed the
infant, _was sentenced to be hanged_ by a jury of Krems in Lower
Austria. About the scamp of a father nothing was said. And how often do
not similar instances occur! The seduced and outrageously deserted
woman, cast helpless into the abyss of despair and shame, resorts to
extreme measures: she kills the fruit of her womb, is dragged before the
tribunals, is sentenced to penitentiary or the gallows. The
unconscionable, and actual murderer,--he goes off scott-free; marries,
perchance, shortly after, the daughter of a "respectable and honest"
family, and becomes a much honored, upright man. There is many a
gentleman, floating about in honors and distinctions, who has soiled his
honor and his conscience in this manner. Had women a word to say in
legislation, much would be otherwise in this direction.
Most cruel of all, as already indicated, is the posture of French
legislation, which forbids inquiry after the child's paternity, and,
instead, sets up foundling asylums. The resolution on the subject, by
the Convention of June 28, 1793, runs thus: "The nation takes charge of
the physical and moral education of abandoned children. From that moment
they will be designated only by the term of orphans. No other
designation shall be allowed." Quite convenient for the men, who,
thereby, shifted the obligation of the individual upon the collectivity,
to the end of escaping exposure before the public and their wives. In
all the provinces of the land, orphan and foundling asylums were set up.
The number of orphans and foundlings ran up, in 1893, to 130,945, of
which it was estimated that each tenth child was legitimate, but not
wanted by its parents. But no particular care was taken of these
children, and the mortality among them was, accordingly, great. In that
year, fully 59 per cent., i. e., more than one-half died during the
first year of their lives; 78 per cent. died twelve years of age and
under. Accordingly, of every 100 only 22 reached the age of twelve years
and over. It is claimed that matters have in the meantime improved in
those establishments.
In Austria and Italy also foundling asylums were established, and their
support assumed by the State. "_Ici on fait mourir les enfants_" (Here
children are killed) is the inscription that a certain King is said to
have recommended as fit for foundling asylums. In Austria, they are
gradually disappearing; there are now only eight of them left; also the
treatment and care of the children has considerably improved to what it
was. In 1888, there were 40,865 children cared for in Austria, including
Galicia; of these 10,466 were placed in public institutions, 30,399
under private care, at a joint cost of 1,817,372 florins. Mortality was
slighter among the children in the public institutions than among those
placed under private care. This was especially the case in Galicia.
There, 31.25 per cent. of the children died during the year 1888 in the
public establishments, by far more than in the public establishments of
other countries; but of those under private care, 84.21 per cent.
died,--a veritable mass-assassination. It almost looks as though the
Polish slaughterhouse system aimed at killing off these poor little
worms as swiftly as possible. It is a generally accepted fact that the
percentage of deaths among children born out of wedlock is far higher
than among those born in wedlock. In Prussia there died, early in the
sixties, during the first year of their lives 18.23 per cent. of
children born in wedlock, and 33.11 per cent. of children born out of
wedlock, accordingly twice as many of the latter. In Paris there died,
100 children born in wedlock to every 139 born out of wedlock, and in
the country districts 215. Italian statistics throw up this picture: Out
of every 10,000 live-births, there died--
Legitimate children: 1881. 1882. 1883. 1884. 1885.
One month old 751 741 724 698 696
Two to twelve months 1,027 1,172 986 953 1,083
Illegitimate children:
One month old 2,092 2,045 2,139 2,107 1,813
Two to twelve months 1,387 1,386 1,437 1,437 1,353
The difference in the mortality between legitimate and illegitimate
children is especially noticeable during the first month of life. During
that period, the mortality of children born out of wedlock is on an
average three times as large as that of those born in wedlock. Improper
attention during pregnancy, weak delivery and poor care afterwards, are
the very simple causes. Likewise do maltreatment and the infamous
practice and superstition of "making angels" increase the victims. The
number of still-births is twice as large with illegitimate than with
legitimate children, due, probably, mainly to the efforts of some of the
mothers to bring on the death of the child during pregnancy. The
illegitimate children who survive revenge themselves upon society for
the wrong done them, by furnishing _an extraordinary large percentage of
criminals of all degrees_.
Yet another evil, frequently met, must also be shortly touched upon.
Excessive sexual indulgence is infinitely more harmful than too little.
A body, misused by excess, will go to pieces, even without venereal
diseases. Impotence, barrenness, spinal affections, insanity, at least
intellectual weakness, and many other diseases, are the usual
consequences. _Temperance_ is as necessary in sexual intercourse as in
eating and drinking, and all other human wants. But temperance seems
difficult to youth. Hence the large number of "young old men," in the
higher walks of life especially. The number of young and old _roues_ is
enormous, and they require special irritants, excess having deadened and
surfeited them. Many, accordingly, lapse into the unnatural practices of
Greek days. The crime against nature is to-day much more general than
most of us dream of: upon that subject the secret archives of many a
Police Bureau could publish frightful information. But not among men
only, among women also have the unnatural practices of old Greece come
up again with force. Lesbian love, or Sapphism, is said to be quite
general among married women in Paris; according to Taxal,[121] it is
enormously in practice among the prominent ladies of that city. In
Berlin, one-fourth of the prostitutes are said to practice "tribady;"
but also in the circles of our leading dames there are not wanting
disciples of Sappho. Still another unnatural gratification of the sexual
instinct manifests itself in the violation of children, a practice that
has increased greatly during the last thirty years. In France, during
1851-1875, 17,656 cases of this nature were tried. The colossal number
of these crimes in France is intimately connected with the two-child
system, and with the abstinence of husbands towards their wives. To the
German population also we find people recommending Malthusianism,
without stopping to think what the sequels will be. The so-called
"liberal professions," to whom belong mainly the members of the upper
classes, furnish in Germany about 5.6 per cent. of the ordinary
criminals, but they furnish 13 per cent. of the criminals indicted for
violation of children; and this latter percentage would be still higher
were there not in those circles ample means to screen the criminals, so
that, probably, the majority of cases remain undiscovered. The
revelations made in the eighties by the "Pall Mall Gazette" on the
violation of children in England, are still fresh in the public memory.
The moral progress of this our best of all possible worlds is recorded
in the below tables for England, the "leading country in civilization."
In England there were:--
Immoral Acts Deaths from
Year. of Violence. Syphilis. Insane.
1861 280 1,345 39,647
1871 315 1,995 56,755
1881 370 2,334 73,113
1882 466 2,478 74,842
1883 390 ... 76,765
1884 510 ... ...
Increase
since 1861 82 per cent. 84 per cent. 98 per cent.
A frightful increase this is of the phenomena that point to the rising
physical and moral ruin of English society.
The best statistical record of venereal diseases and their increase is
kept by Denmark, Copenhagen especially. Here venereal diseases, with
special regard to syphilis, developed as follows:--
Venereal Of these,
Year. Population. Diseases. Syphilis.
1874 196,000 5,505 836
1879 227,000 6,299 934
1885 290,000 9,325 1,866
Among the personnel of the navy in Copenhagen, the number of venereal
diseases increased 1224 per cent. during the period mentioned; in the
army and for the same period, 227 per cent.[122] And how stands it in
Paris? From the year 1872 to the year 1888, the number of persons
treated for venereal diseases in the hospitals Du Midi, de Lourcine and
de St. Louis was 118,223, of which 60,438 suffered of syphilis and
57,795 of other venereal affections. Besides these, of the number of
outside persons, who applied to the clinics of the said three hospitals,
there was a yearly average of 16,385 venereals.[123]
We have seen how, as a result of our social conditions, vice, excesses,
wrongs and crimes of all sorts are bred. All society is kept in a state
of unrest. Under such a state of things woman is the chief sufferer.
Numerous women realize this and seek redress. They demand, first of all,
economic self-support and independence; they demand that woman be
admitted, as well as man, to all pursuits that her physical and mental
powers and faculties qualify her for; they demand, especially, admission
to the occupations that are designated with the term "liberal
professions." Are the efforts in these directions justified? Are they
practical? Would they mend matters? These are questions that now crowd
forward.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] "Geschichte, Statistik und Regelung der Prostitution in Wien."
[101] "Die Bestrafung und polizelliche Behaundlung der gewerbsmaessigen
Unzucht."
[102] "Ueber Gelegenheitsmacherei und oeffentliches Tanzvergnuegen."
[103] "Die Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert vom sanitaetspolizeilichen
Standpunkt."
[104] Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Koenigl. Polizei-Praesidiums von
Berlin fuer die Jahre 1881-1890; pp. 351-359
[105] "Korrespondenzblatt zur Bekaempfung der oeffentlichen
Sittenlosigkeit," August 15, 1893.
[106] "Die gesundheitschaedliche Tragweite der Prostitution," Dr. Oskar
Lassar.
[107] "Die Behandlung der Geschlechtskrankheiten in Krankenkassen und
Heilanstalten."
[108] In the English hospitals, during 1875, fully 14 per cent. of the
children under treatment were suffering of inherited venereal diseases.
In London, there died of these diseases 1 man out of every 190 cases of
death; in all England, 1 out of every 159 cases; in the poor-houses of
France, 1 out of 160.5.
[109] "Was die Strasse verschlingt."
[110] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, "The Moral Education."
[111] Montegazza, "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."
[112] "Aus Japan nach Deutschland durch Sibirien."
[113] "Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Kgl. Polizei-Praesidiums von Berlin
vom Jahre 1881-1890."
[114] In the large trades union sick-benefit associations of Berlin the
number of syphilitic diseases increased from 4326 in 1881 to 9420 in
1890. Dr. A. Blaschko, _ubi supra_.
[115] Karl Marx, "Capital," p. 461, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896.
[116] _Ubi supra._
[117] "Das Kellnerinnen-Elend In Berlin," Berlin, 1893.
[118] Dr. Max Taube, "Der Schutz der unehelichen Kinder," Leipsic, 1893.
[119] "Die gefallenen Maedchen und die Sittenpolizei," Wilh. Issleib,
Berlin, 1889.
[120] In a work, "Kapital und Presse," Berlin, 1891, Dr. F. Mehring
proves that a by no means indifferent actress was engaged at a well
known theater at a salary of 100 marks a month, and that her outlay for
wardrobe alone ran up to 1000 marks a month. The deficit was covered by
a "friend."
[121] Lombroso and Ferrero, _ubi supra_.
[122] "Die venerischen Krankheiten in Daenemark," Dr. Giesing.
[123] Report of the Sanitary Commission on the organization of
sanitation relative to prostitution in Paris, addressed to the Municipal
Council of Paris, 1890.