THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Let me begin this chapter with a query. Is not all the trouble in the
modern world over the sexual element in life the evidence of something
abnormal and distorted in the very constitution of modern society? Or
put differently, would it not turn out that if only men and women were
set in just and healthy conditions, given real education and sufficient
means of self-expression, the sexual problem would be found very
largely to have solved itself? I cannot offer any dogmatic answer to
that query, though I have my own conviction that history will one day
answer it with an unmistakable affirmative. What we can do even now is
to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to
increase the amount of failure in true sex morality. All our
callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting
us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection, and all
honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is
also helping our moral progress.
And I wish to amplify this point because I hope some at least of the
readers of this book will find themselves asking eagerly what can be
done in view of the seriousness of sexual evil. If those who go wrong
in sex matters are spoiling their lives at the core, which of us would
not like to do something to guard the young from wandering, and to help
to clean the modern world! Therefore it is a real satisfaction to be
able to reply, as I do with complete conviction, "Anything you do to
help to bring social justice and general health any nearer is also
helping towards the solution of this one problem."
Let us consider some of the outstanding social evils from this point of
view.
I turn first to the matter of _education_ because it is the primary
issue in every connection. Now education that stops at fourteen is
hardly worthy to be called education at all. It is after that age that
those interests awaken which provide absorbing life for boys and girls,
and ensure them against the pains and dangers of empty-mindedness.
It is also after that age that most young folks learn the ways
and means of self-expression. Probably also, at least in the case
of boys, the years between fourteen and sixteen are just the years
when the discipline of school life is most valuable, and it is certain
that during that period healthy games, played under the discipline of
sternly enforced rules, do most to put boys into possession of
themselves, and to provide a wise outlet for their abundant energies.
Consider then what happens so long as we continue to send boys out of
school at the age of fourteen. They go with minds unawakened and
therefore empty. They face adolescence in almost complete freedom from
control. They very often have far too little opportunity for
invigorating games, and they do not know how to express themselves,
though vital energies are vibrant within them. It is only natural that
they should find orderly ways of life very dull, and that in pursuit of
excitement they should take to hooliganism. Not having learnt to
appreciate either literature or art, they either read nothing or read
stories that are neither true nor decent. They respond only to what is
highly spiced and have nothing in their minds to counter balance the
meretricious attractions of suggestive stories and undesirable films.
The truth about the people who are fond of "blue" stories is often
(though not always) that those stories accurately indicate their
intellectual level. And the uneducated modern boy is often at that
level through no fault of his own. It actually is hard for men to whom
the wonder and the splendor of life have been revealed to find room in
their mental life for indecent trash. But till we really educate our
boys we are sending them out into life unarmed against some of its
worst features.
And if the general failure of education has this deplorable effect,
what shall we say of the complete lack of any special education
relating to sex in at least a majority of modern schools? I know that
that is a very difficult matter. I know that disaster may follow from
any attempt to do it in a general way through class teaching. I know
too that it ought to be done by parents. But it is not done, and both
boys and girls go out to face the dangers of life in town and country
without the knowledge of physical facts which might guide them into
safety. Actual immorality is indeed uncommon between the ages of
fourteen and seventeen, but those years are often spent in a way that
is the worst possible preparation for the struggle that is to come.
I have put my main stress on the fact that education stops at fourteen,
because to my mind that is the outstanding defect of our system. But
even the education we do give is ill fitted to attain its true end. It
is not the fault of the teachers. Many of them do wonderful work, and
long to be allowed to do better work. But with classes of from fifty
to seventy the most heaven-born teacher in the world cannot achieve his
purposes. It is certain that lovers of purity who really understand
human nature cannot be among the panic-stricken economists who want to
starve education.
_Housing_
Housing evils are mainly of two kinds. Houses are often dark, damp, and
evil-smelling, which means ill-health. And houses are often too small,
which means that human beings are packed so closely that privacy is
impossible. Both results affect morality. A man below par in general
health is far more susceptible to the lure of evil than a really
healthy one. And the same is true of girls. There are to be found in
some corners of our towns lewd and unwholesome-looking youths whose
talk and whose actions are unclean and sordid. We perhaps shudder as we
pass by and sense what is their moral condition, but if we knew the
houses from which they come we might hardly wonder. Then plainly it is
hostile to wholesome living when husband and wife cannot have a
sleeping-place separate from the rest of the family, and when growing
boys and girls share the same room, so that natural modesty is
confronted with constant obstacles to its normal development. When I
wrote some pages back about the disciplinary value of the daily cold
bath, I could hardly forbear stopping at that point to comment on the
fact that that primary condition for bodily and moral health is beyond
the reach of millions. Our housing has not yet reached the bathroom
standard for the majority of our people.
All these considerations are perfectly obvious and have often been
urged before. But though I have known of many cases where moral evil
has followed from bad housing conditions, I have known so many
instances where in spite of bad housing conditions morality has been
perfectly preserved, that I do not make so much of this point as some.
I have yet to learn that morality is made safe by the most elaborate
and healthy housing conditions. It is true that the level of morality
is very low indeed in really overcrowded slums, but it also is true
that the section of the population among which real purity is most
common is the artisan section, and many of them have to contend with
very poor housing conditions. The Royal Commission on Venereal Disease
reported that while the class of casual laborers is the worst in the
country, the next in the scale is the one described as "middle and
upper classes". Traveling west in our cities does not mean traveling
towards morality.
_Sweating_
There are three main directions in which sweating tends to increase
immorality. In the first place low wages paid to men make marriage very
difficult, and sometimes impossible. And nothing could be worse for any
community than that healthy and robust men should be debarred from
marriage after twenty-one by purely material considerations. It is not
impossible for a man to remain chaste through a lifetime of celibacy,
but for all that a society that enforces celibacy on men against their
will is making immorality a practical certainty.
A particularly mean form of this evil occurs in connection with the
living-in system which is imposed by a good many big shops on their
employees. I used to know a number of young men of marriageable age who
were housed in a great and bare sort of barracks and given in addition
a wage that was only enough to provide dress and necessary etceteras.
If, desiring to marry, they said that they wished to live out and to
receive the equivalent of their board and lodging in money, they got in
those pre-war days £18 a year extra. Is it to be wondered at that in
that section of society it was a common saying that "only fools get
married"? But it was not a chaste section of the community. Men are
very seldom chaste when they live in exclusively male communities.
Then, secondly, sweating makes for immorality because it means that
girls are paid wages which are quite insufficient to support life. Some
of them live at home with their parents and so get through, but those
who have to support themselves become subjected to a terribly severe
temptation to add to their starvation wages by the sale of themselves.
It is still in this way that a considerable percentage of the
prostitutes of the country is created, and the number of girls who,
though not known as prostitutes, have sacrificed their purity because
of financial pressure must be very great.
The word sweating also covers cases where workers are subjected to
overwork, and unduly long hours; and therefore under this head I
mention the influence of the strain of long shop hours. The improvement
has been great of late in this respect, but still there are restaurants
and special shops where the strain on girls is very heavy. And the
result is that after work is over they are fit for nothing but walking
about the streets in search of diversion. Many indeed who live in
hostels have almost no choice between walking in the streets or going
to bed. There is no need to say more. First girls are rendered
nervously weary and yet eager for fresh air and movement, and then they
have to face all that street life may mean. The recreations offered
them in cinemas and music-halls are often calculated to give them just
the wrong sort of excitement. And so first they are bored by monotony
and long hours, and then played upon by rather low forms of suggestive
art. It is here that girls' clubs and troops of girl guides meet the
real needs of girls; and they probably constitute the finest influence
of the right sort which modern life offers them.
_Luxury_
One of the most serious evils in the modern world is that a great many
men and women have far more money than is good for them, and that of
these a considerable number are not under any necessity to work.
Nothing in all the wide world is worse for a man than to have lots of
money and nothing to do. It is among these men that the patrons of
expensive vice are to be found. Of necessity such men are bored by
ordinary life. For life without work in it is always boring. It follows
that they must seek excitement, and a very short time suffices for them
to get all the excitement possible out of innocent recreations.
Wherefore in pursuit of something to stir them they take to the
diversions that are not innocent, and often try to exploit their own
passions to give color to life. Their expensive and luxurious ways of
life constitute one of the worst moral forces in the community. They
keep in existence to pander to their desires large numbers of
subordinates whose lives are also worthless and without any productive
value. It is because of them that the life of a courtesan seems to
offer golden prizes to some, and the hope of reaping such prizes
deludes many. Because this is a materialistic age their money gives
them powers to which they have no moral right, and no more wholesome
thing could happen to the whole community than that the necessary
changes should be worked out which would make such noxious drones
impossible in the future. It is for these people that sweated workers
drudge and sweat. And then, under our curious and indefensible laws of
inheritance, it is possible for wealth thus created to be passed on
from generation to generation, creating for each in turn the worst
possible conditions for true life. It is utterly unreasonable to hope
that we shall ever as a nation attain to moral health until this evil
has been dealt with. It seems to matter little whether such people are
married or unmarried; in both conditions they make havoc of sexual
life, and poison society.
_Drink_
I have kept to the last the social evil which more than all the others
put together tends to produce sexual immorality. As I have already
said, it is a comparatively rare thing for a man to "go wrong" for the
first time when he is entirely sober. It is Bacchus that conducts men
into the courts of Venus. Mr. Flexner, who for scientific reasons made
a comprehensive study of Prostitution in Europe, reports that in every
country the whole traffic is "soaked in drink." There are inhibitions
in our humanity which make sexual vice repulsive to our taste, and
there are few who can get past these inhibitions until alcohol has
deadened their better feelings. Man after man has told me that it was
after some festive night when he had taken more wine than ever before
that he first fell. Unmarried mothers have told me that what happened
on the night that was fatal to them was that they were cajoled into
taking champagne or whisky, and after that could not well remember what
took place.
It is not too much to say that until we have grappled with the drink
evil in our midst we cannot possibly hope to master this greater evil
which follows on the heels of intemperance. This one consideration
alone would make me an enthusiastic prohibitionist. We have tried life
on the present terms and it has beaten us. We have allowed the common
sale of a drug that is the proved enemy of our best life. It has
damaged us physically, industrially, and financially. But its most
deadly damage has been done in connection with our sexual life. It not
only misleads the unmarried, but in many homes it is daily destroying
all possibility of married happiness. No doubt the difficulties of
temperance reform are very great. But the real cause of the delay of
effective reform is want of will in the community as a whole. I cannot
but think that if the deadly and intimate connection between drink and
sexual vice were realized, the will to effective reform might appear
among us.
When I consider all the forces which I have thus briefly reviewed, and
remember that behind them there is the power of a central and universal
human instinct, I no longer wonder that sexual follies abound in our
country, and that we have not yet solved the problem of purity. What I
do wonder at is that there are hundreds of thousands of young men and
women who, in spite of all these facts, insist on living clean and pure
lives. There is something in human nature that fights very hard for the
true way of life. Boys and girls with bad hereditary influences to
hamper them, and brought up in very unfavorable surroundings, do yet
constantly refuse to succumb. Even those who have made mistakes
constantly refuse to be beaten, and hold on tenaciously to the narrow
way. Though the modern world has been deluged with novels written to
display sexual irregularities in a romantic light, and to express
contempt for Christian moral standards, and though no doubt thousands
have been misled, it remains true that surprisingly large numbers
refuse to be befooled in such ways. I believe the reason is that,
strong as mere physical desire may be, love is a stronger thing still.
And it is the power of love that keeps many right. In many men it is
love for an ideal woman that does it. They keep themselves from evil
because, though they may never have met her, they believe one day they
will, and they want to bring her their best selves without any spot of
defilement. In many girls love works in the same redemptive way. And
perhaps in both what is really working is a mystic longing after the
best that life can hold, and a half-conscious understanding that that
best is only for those who preserve unity between body and spirit, and
keep the body in bonds until the pure command of love itself summons it
to freedom.
And yet it is infamous that the struggle should be so hard for so many.
All of us who are ignorant or complacent or skeptical about the social
evils of our time are sharers in the iniquity of those who fall. Many
of us live in mean satisfaction, just because we ourselves have found
comfort and security; that is how these evil forces are able to go on
year after year leading thousands to their undoing. If the test of a
real passion for purity lies in caring about the forces that make for
impurity and caring to the point of suffering for those who fall, then
I fear few of us have that passion in any really effective and holy
form. And it will need passion to compete with the forces that lie
behind evil social conditions. They are entrenched behind the power of
money, and I know of only one passion that is stronger than money.
When will all who really love take up the challenge of this disordered
modern world? We talk. We confer. We discuss social reform. But we do
not love. And that is why Mammon is able to laugh at us, and go on
dragging our boys and girls down into the mire.