THE SOCIAL EVIL
The awakening of women to the low social status of their sex is the most
encouraging fact of the century. With the revelations which have come
both from women and from men physicians, nurses, and scientists of the
causes, spread, and effects of venereal diseases, the conscience and
intelligence of women have fairly leaped in response to the demand made
upon them for recognition of the situation and for remedies and
prevention.
Their work here as elsewhere has been varied; for the problem of
prevention is complex, many causes more or less combining to produce the
undesirable vice conditions. There are those, for example, who make
underfeeding—malnutrition—responsible for the physical and mental
defects which distort the mind and the will and which feed houses of
prostitution and the clandestine trade. Others lay emphasis upon the
liquor traffic and refer to the obvious connection between bars and
dance halls, between liquor and feeble-mindedness and degeneracy in
general. Yet others see in the commercial spirit of the age and the
avarice for profits and unearned livelihoods the basis of sex vice.
Education, the responsibility of doctors and parents, marriage laws and
customs, recreation, labor conditions and wages all receive their
emphasis in the discussion of the causes of sex irregularities and
morbidity.
In each line of thought and endeavor women will be found today in the
United States as leaders in the crusade against the social evil. The
General Federation of Women’s Clubs some time ago took official
cognizance of the imperative necessity for women to attack the evils
which eat at the heart of womanhood and maternity and thus endanger the
infant and the adult man and woman. At its Biennial Convention in
Chicago in June, 1914, the Federation made all aspects of this question
one of its main considerations for study and action.
As a further evidence of the determination of club women not to shrink
from the discussion of this question, we have _The American Club Woman_,
the organ of the Federation, declaring under the heading, “Women Will
Not Hush Up,” as follows:
There is deep significance in the fact that women are rejecting the
idea of keeping silent about vice problems. There is strong
enthusiasm for the suppression of the social evil. A well-known New
York club woman said the other day: “I attend committee meetings and
discuss the facts about the social evil in as impersonal a manner as
I do child labor or the high cost of living. Twenty years ago I
would have blushed with embarrassment at the mention of the social
evil in a mixed company of men and women. I know my mother would
have been terribly shocked at the idea of my reading a report on the
white slave traffic.”
Times change. I believe we may make mistakes, but if we women are
asking for political equality, we had better know what is happening
to other women. It is as much our duty to try to suppress the
so-called social evil as it is to promote higher education or secure
a living wage for women in employment.
Apropos of this humane sentiment, we note that women in various
parts of the country are tackling the problem with a vigor and
common-sense that astonishes city officials.
In Detroit recently the club women persuaded the city officials to
coöperate with civic organizations and order disorderly houses to
close and stay closed after a certain date.
A peculiar phase of the situation is that no provision seems to have
been made for the women who will be turned out of these resorts.
Being human, even if immoral, they are likely to continue living and
the presumption is that those who profit by their traffic will
remove them to some other city—which is not exactly a final solution
of the evil.
The club women who have labored so earnestly to improve the morals
of their city are not to blame. They would be glad to see an asylum
provided where such women might be cared for and given an
opportunity to return to a normal life, but the State has not
provided any such shelter, although the matter has been before the
legislature more than once. Possibly some effort will be made by
private subscription to do this work which the State should look
after.
Michigan is no worse than many other States in this respect and
Detroit shows courage in attempting to stamp out an evil which is
usually allowed to flourish without restraint. The case only
illustrates what confusion exists when practical measures of reform
are attempted. The study of social hygiene and eugenics inevitably
leads to the consideration of the ugly problems of life. Any attempt
at their solution is certainly better than the ignorant or
indifferent attitude which women have hitherto been encouraged to
take. Women are beginning to revolt against the atrocities of
commercialized vice. They do not believe that all this degradation
is inevitable. Every protest brings us nearer some right solution of
the whole problem of woman’s place in life.
CONGRESS OF MOTHERS
The Congress of Mothers likewise refuses to ignore a matter so vitally
related to motherhood. This organization has for one of its chief aims
the promotion of high ideals of marriage “and the maintenance of its
sacredness and permanence.” Its attitude toward life is primarily
religious, and the leaders believe that more religious education in the
home is the crying need which will prevent immorality. The Congress of
Mothers is active and successful in forming mothers’ circles, fathers’
circles, and parent-teacher associations for the purpose of discussing
the needs of childhood and increasing the sense of responsibility among
parents.
Such responsibility undoubtedly can be improved and needs to be
improved. The social evil is not solved thereby, however, for economic
conditions affect that responsibility in varying degrees. The mother who
must work out of the home long hours, or the father who toils on a
night-shift or for ten, twelve or fourteen hours a day has no time or
strength to devote to children, however great the inclination.
Parents who have themselves grown up in a congested area, who have been
overworked and underfed and surrounded from infancy with a vicious
environment cannot be reached always with a religious or moral appeal
and, even if they are, they cannot always persuade their children to
forsake the attractions of the street and the saloon and the resort for
a quiet evening of prayer at home with the father and mother. Many women
accept the judgment and observation of Dr. Abraham Flexner that the
social evil swallows up in greater proportion than any other “the
unskilled daughters of the unskilled classes,” and they would therefore
substitute for, or supplement, the instilling of moral precept, by
industrial training, housing reform, regulation of hours and conditions
of labor, control of recreational facilities, the minimum wage, mothers’
pensions and many other reforms.
In these articles of a social program, the Congress of Mothers would
join forces part of the way. It is when suffragists insist on the need
of political power for mothers that the forces separate, for the
Congress of Mothers inclines to the individualist theory of causation
and responsibility.
The value of the agitation carried on by the Congress of Mothers lies in
its appeal to middle- and upper-class men and women who often lightly
ignore their family duties and entrust the care of children to
incompetent nurses or maids during their formative years. The
organization of parent-teacher associations increases the knowledge of
both of these important agencies in the molding of the child’s character
and is of inestimable value in the sphere where it can be employed. Just
as hospital work has to be supplemented by family treatment of an
economic character, so this work has to be supplemented by
social-economic work to cover larger sections of the community.
This wider social program is now on the horizon of all those women who
supplement individualistic morality by social morality and attempt to
understand the causes which operate on men and women in masses. Where
the women have this larger vision, they are demanding to know the
facts—the plain, unvarnished facts. They will not be put off by a
“There, there, now,” or “The time is not propitious.” We see women
everywhere backing movements for commissions to study the social evil in
all its aspects, individual and social, and where such commissions are
established we frequently find women serving on them or coöperating in
the investigation.
VICE COMMISSIONS
While their presence upon state and city vice commissions is of recent
accomplishment, it is one of the striking recognitions of the fact that
women have a vital part to play in the solution of the social evil.
Dr. Mabel Sims Ulrich was appointed a member of the vice commission by
the mayor of Minneapolis in recognition of her pioneer work in
education. She took her medical degree at Johns Hopkins and went to
Minneapolis in joint practice with her husband. Gradually the question
of sex education obtruded itself into her work. She was a mother as well
as a physician and mothers came to her for advice; then the Y. W. C. A.
sent her about to colleges and universities to impart knowledge on this
subject. Thus her experience made her a valuable member of the vice
commission.
The Chicago Vice Commission of 1912, the first of its kind appointed by
a municipality and financed by the city treasury, consisted of thirty
well-known men and women. An important part of the investigation was
made by women or under their direction.
Following upon the recommendation of a Baltimore grand jury, the
governor of Maryland appointed in 1913 a commission of fifteen members,
some of whom were women.
Lucia L. Jaquith, superintendent of the Memorial Hospital of Worcester,
Massachusetts, was a member of the Massachusetts Vice Commission which
reported to the legislature in March, 1914. Its recommendations consist
of: a modified form of the Iowa injunction and abatement law, penalizing
the property in which prostitution is carried on rather than the
prostitute; laws giving licensing boards more stringent supervision over
cafés, hotels and saloons and authority to license boarding-houses and
public dance halls; and a measure requiring all persons found in a
building or place used for prostitution to state under oath their true
names and residences. “A constructive plan of favorably modifying the
conditions of prostitution demands definite knowledge of the class of
men who patronize the prostitute,” is the opinion of this commission.
Policewomen were suggested and a state police “untrammeled by local
prejudices and alliances” to coöperate with local officials in
suppressing immoral resorts in small towns and cities.
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston which had made plans for an
investigation of vice conditions turned over much valuable data to this
state commission. Another group of workers, under the chairmanship of
Miss Marion Nickols, had undertaken similar work and also decided to
help the commission.
The most notable report of a vice commission recently issued is,
according to _The Survey_, that of Portland, Oregon (a suffrage state):
It includes a series of reports issued since the commission’s
appointment in 1911. One of the series deals with the places of
public resort and accommodation affected by the social evil. It
concludes with the famous “tin-plate ordinance,” which requires that
“on the front of every building used, either in whole or in part, as
a hotel, apartment house, rooming, lodging, boarding, tenement
house, or saloon, there shall be, at the principal street entrance,
a conspicuous plate or sign bearing the name and address of the
owner or owners of such buildings.” This, of course, greatly
facilitates the apprehension and conviction of those responsible for
violating the law against disorderly resorts.
This ordinance is reported to have had the effect of driving immoral
people from the buildings they have occupied for years, because the
owners were afraid to risk the publicity and responsibility of their
presence and practices. Many of these buildings are now being
remodeled and occupied by a better class of tenants.
Another report of the series deals with the legal and police aspect
of the social evil which led to the enactment of the law for
enjoining and abating houses of ill fame as nuisances. A bill was
also recommended creating a morals court. Finding the division of
responsibility a cause of inefficiency and corruption in the police
department, the commission recommends the vesting of full authority
over the department in one man, as the most effective way of
handling the social evil problem. Study of the juvenile aspects of
the social evil led to specific sources of vice and the beginnings
of moral delinquency, and resulted in the recommendation that a
child welfare commission be appointed, which should be “charged with
the study of the general subject of juvenile life.”
While realizing the desirability of requiring vice diseases to be
reported and registered, the commission doubted whether public
opinion would support the enforcement of such a law. It considered a
vigorous campaign of education the most necessary step for the
control of these diseases. It recommended, however, that all cases
encountered in dispensaries, hospitals, juvenile and municipal
courts, penal institutions, maternity hospitals, rescue homes, and
all places of detention, should be officially reported. The
commission also urged that the city contribute to the support of
free dispensaries for the treatment of these diseases and that the
Department of Health make tests for the diagnosis of these diseases
without charge.
Wage scales were examined to determine the economic sources of the
social evil and much interesting information was gathered. Human
interest stories were revealed showing the need of a minimum wage
for women workers, improved sanitation in shops and stores, shorter
hours of labor and industrial education.
The commission records its emphatic opposition to segregation in
Portland for the following reasons:
“Segregation does not segregate; deals only with a small percentage
of the sexually immoral; promotes and justifies professional
prostitution; does not reduce clandestine immorality; helps to
establish a double standard of morality by stigmatizing the woman
and ignoring the moral responsibility of the man; rests on the false
presumption that sexual immorality is necessary; fosters the
debauchery of the sex instinct; promotes the spread of disease; and
affords official absolution for illegal and immoral conduct.”
Perhaps the most significant assertion in the whole impressive report is
this sentence: “When any considerable number of men question the
necessity of an evil it marks the beginning of the end. It is here that
this commission rests and finds justification of its labors.”
Portland has since passed the “tin-plate ordinance” recommended by the
commission and so strongly approved by women voters. Indeed this measure
has commended itself to women everywhere in the country.
The Women’s League for Good Government of Elmira, New York, made an
investigation of vice conditions under the American Vigilance
Association during the summer of 1913. The results of this investigation
were first given to the public at a great mass meeting held in one of
the theaters in October. At this meeting a summary of the investigator’s
report was given by one of the clergymen of the city. The theater was
taxed to its utmost capacity, and the overflow filled the largest church
auditorium in the city. The great audiences listened with solemnity to
the startling revelations of the report. The Committee on Public Morals
was at once organized and it was immediately requested by the newly
appointed police commissioners to keep a watchful eye on the cheap
theaters and the “movies.” Copies of the Vice Report were sent to the
newly elected city officials, and additional copies were requested by
the police commissioners, into whose hands was placed the key to the
Report (names of persons and places having been printed in cipher). “We
have reason to believe that the Report has been helpful to the police
commissioners in their efforts to enforce the laws,” say the women of
Elmira.
Valuable reports have issued from the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New
York, at the present time composed of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dr.
Katharine Bement Davis, the present city commissioner of corrections and
former superintendent of the Woman’s Reformatory at Bedford, Paul M.
Warburg, and Starr J. Murphy. For some time this Bureau had maintained a
laboratory of social hygiene at the Bedford Reformatory whence Dr. Davis
formed her convictions on the causes of sexual immorality. In the first
publication of this Bureau—that of Mr. Kneeland on conditions of vice in
New York City—Dr. Katharine Davis has a summary of the conclusions of
the Bedford laboratory. Her personal convictions she states in this way:
“I say unhesitatingly that in the vast majority of cases she [the
prostitute] is a victim. Prostitution as now conducted in this country
and in Europe is very largely a man’s business; the women are merely
tools in the hands of the stronger sex. It is a business run for profit
and the profit is large. It is my belief that less than 25 per cent. of
the prostitutes in this country would have fallen if they had had an
equally good chance to lead a pure life. That they have been dragged
into the mire in such large numbers is due to a variety of
circumstances, among which are poverty, low wages, improper home
conditions and lack of training, the natural desire for pretty things,
etc. But while all these may be contributing causes, man is chiefly
responsible.”
PUBLICITY
When commissions make investigations or some crisis forces the issue of
the social evil, women are among the first to demand full publicity and
effective action. A good example of their determination in this matter
is afforded by the battle of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association
in Hartford, Connecticut, against a conspiracy of silence on the part of
the town council. This interesting episode, which stirred the whole
state, is thus described in _The Survey_:
The names of the Hartford Common Council will not be lost to memory
if a six-foot signboard in front of the woman suffrage headquarters
can prevent oblivion. The sign, which placards with startling
headlines the attitude of each City Father toward the suppression of
commercialized vice, is the vigorous protest of the Connecticut
Woman Suffrage Association [led by Mrs. Thomas Hepburn] against a
principle which has been largely responsible for the unsavory
reputation of Hartford.
In December, 1911, the trial of the notorious white slavers, Morris
and Lena Cohen, revealed the fact that a policy of toleration,
extending over many years, had made Hartford a recognized market for
prostitutes and a center for the white slave traffic between New
York and points further east. Following this disclosure, Mayor Smith
ordered all houses of prostitution closed and appointed a vice
commission that the problem might be attacked still more drastically
in the future.
The Common Council refused to appropriate any city funds to make an
investigation possible, but the vice commission was not deterred
from its undertaking. It raised its own funds, carried on its
investigations and in July, 1913, published a report which probes
ruthlessly into the underworld of Hartford. Among the fifteen
specific recommendations dealing with local conditions, the most
emphatic is, “that the present policy of keeping the houses closed
be adhered to rigidly.” “The experiment,” the report continues, “if
such we may call it, has certainly had no evil results. Most of
those best qualified to judge affirm that it has led to better
conditions. In the face of these facts, a return to the old plan of
tolerating houses of ill fame would be a deliberate connivance at an
illegal traffic.” Owing to lack of money but 500 copies of this
report could be published and the City Council refused to
appropriate funds for further editions for general distribution to
make facts known to the whole city.
But the Council did not count on the determination of the Hartford
suffragists to procure a widespread dissemination of facts regarding
the enormity of the vice situation. To the horror of saloon-keepers,
dive-keepers, complaisant citizens, and the prominent newspapers,
the Woman Suffrage Association reprinted the report and placed it
for sale at suffrage headquarters in the midst of the shopping
district. So much publicity was given to the matter in this way that
it has become difficult for an immediate return to the old condition
of a segregated vice district in the city.
Nevertheless, an aroused public sentiment did not mean an aroused
Common Council. It has frequently been rumored in Hartford that the
connection between commercialized vice and politics was closer than
the average citizen realized. But aside from continued delay there
was no evidence to show that these suspicions were well founded
until, at a recent meeting, the majority of councilmen practically
declared their indifference toward an illegal traffic in women. At
this meeting Councilman Beadle introduced a resolution “that the
Court of Common Council register its approval of the policy of
repression in the regulation of vice as inaugurated by former Mayor
Edward L. Smith and publicly approved by present Mayor Louis R.
Cheney and that the same should be rigidly adhered to.” By a vote of
24 to 5, action on the resolution was indefinitely postponed. In
other words, of 29 councilmen present Messrs. Beadle, Havens,
Harger, Watson and Brockway were the only ones willing to go on
record as inalienably opposed to the toleration of commercialized
vice.
It was this definite committal of attitude by the Common Council
which precipitated the latest insurrection by the suffrage party. In
their efforts to secure a cleaner, safer Hartford, the Woman
Suffrage Association is distributing pamphlets which contain salient
facts in the history of vice regulation in Hartford and at their
doors they have erected the sign appealing to the mothers of
Hartford.
LEGISLATION
After investigations and publicity come remedial measures, legislative
and social. Legislation for the protection of girls is fostered by women
in nearly all the states now and much of it has been initiated by them.
The Protective Agency for Women and Children, an outgrowth of the
Chicago Woman’s Club, has secured legislation in Illinois, making crimes
of indecent offenses against children. One of the most significant
stories is that of the struggle for an adequate age of consent law in
the states.
Lavinia Dock, in her study of “Sex and Morality,” tells of that struggle
in Illinois:
The other bill, presented in the name of the federated club women of
the state, amended the existing statute by raising the age of
consent from 14 to 18. The course of this bill through the
Legislature affords a good illustration of the difficulties met by
women when they undertake to create new legislation that affects
dominant man. At every meeting of the legislature since the year
1887 an amendment raising the age of consent had been presented and
had been smothered in committee. This bill narrowly escaped a like
fate. It was introduced in the Senate and the senators were
practically unanimous in their promises to vote for it; of course
their mental reservation was “if it ever gets out of committee.” The
women in charge of the bill were allowed to plead their cause. Two
features of the meeting were that many members of the committee who
had promised support were “unavoidably absent” and that a lawyer
from Chicago who was not required to disclose the interests he
represented was allowed to make an elaborate attack on the proposed
amendment. It quickly became evident that the Committee would not
favorably consider the raise to 18 years. On a compromise at 16 the
result hung in doubt until the friendly chairman, Senator Juul, who
introduced the bill, decided a tie vote on the motion to report the
bill. Once before the Senate, the senators stood by their promises
and the bill was quickly passed unanimously.
In the House the bill met with a reception that was far from
friendly. The committee refused to hear the women in charge of the
bill and the program was silence and secrecy. The House Committee,
however, did not dare to kill the bill and contented itself with
adding several minor amendments apparently intended to afford
loopholes of escape to offenders. When the amended bill was returned
to the Senate, the women, believing the amendments to be innocuous
and regarding the raising of the age by two years as a substantial
victory, requested that it be passed. It was.
This bill has been a great aid to all the organizations interested
in protecting young girls, and convictions have been frequent under
it. But the club women were actually obliged to print both the old
law and the amended law and post them in police stations and police
courts to secure these convictions.
In this connection it should be stated that the very first
legislation undertaken by the Iowa State Federation of Women’s Clubs
was in 1894, when it petitioned the legislature to raise the age of
consent in that state from 15 to 18 years; the age was raised to 16.
In practically every state in the Union women have worked for a similar
age of consent but it is by no means yet established at 18 years in many
places. They have also supported all other measures giving more security
to girls.
The way in which California women have striven for remedial legislation
is thus described by Mary Roberts Coolidge in _The Survey_, under the
title of “California Women and the Abatement Law”:
Women voters, it is now generally conceded, were chiefly responsible
for the passage by the California legislature of 1913 of two
important measures dealing with the social evil. One, the bill to
appropriate $200,000 for a detention home for girls, met with little
opposition, because perhaps it was preventive in character. The
other, the red-light abatement bill, was bitterly fought, not only
upon the floor, but by every secret device known to vicious
interests throughout the state.
Although it passed the Assembly by a vote of 62 to 17 and the Senate by
a scarcely less significant majority of 29 to 11, it was apparent in the
debates that many of the legislators were yielding to the demands of
urgent constituents rather than to willing conviction. A political
pressure, to which all politicians are accustomed when corporate and
financial interests are involved, made them squirm unhappily when
brought to bear by 50,000 organized women.
The red-light bill had scarcely received the governor’s signature and
the women had scarcely turned their minds to the emergency measures
which would be needed by those who would be thrown out of their
miserable trade by the law, when rumors of a referendum to be invoked
against it began to be heard. The so-called Property Owners’ Protective
Association, with offices in the Phelan Building, San Francisco, became
the distributing center for the referendum petitions. Two months later
it was announced that they had secured over 30,000 names. As only 19,283
signatures of qualified voters were necessary to hold up the law, the
referendum was assured of a place on the ballot of November, 1914.
Although disappointed that the abatement law was not to go into effect
in August, some of the women leaders saw an opportunity in this delay to
educate citizens further in the intent of the law itself. In this way
they could insure more intelligent public support when it should finally
become operative. At this stage of readjustment the questionable methods
and support behind the anti-abatement referendum were suddenly exposed
by the discovery that hundreds—and since then, thousands—of signatures
to the petitions were not genuine. So many, indeed, that, if the facts
had been known before the petitions were certified, there might have
been enough to invalidate the referendum itself.
The Property Owners’ Protective Association had declared that they would
get these signatures outside the bay cities in order to prove that the
country was as much opposed as the cities to the law. But a scrutiny of
the petitions from each county shows that out of a total of 31,930
signatures certified, 53 per cent. (17,119) were from San Francisco
alone and that Alameda and San Francisco counties together furnished 60
per cent. of the whole, while Los Angeles gave only 19 per cent.,
Sacramento less than 5 per cent. and each of the other counties a
negligible hundred or two names.
These figures showed where the enemy lived. The fight against this law
was being made by the vice-and-liquor combination of San Francisco and
Oakland, backed by property owners who were reaping the rentals of the
tenderloin districts but dared not let their names be known. Against
such as these, women citizens had no direct recourse. But they addressed
themselves to the district attorney of San Francisco, whose duty it was
to prosecute the offenders.
But in spite of the fact that forged names appeared on the referendum
petitions, no indictments were made. Early in December it looked as if
nothing further would be done about these frauds. The district attorney
gave little evidence of continuing the cases. But until he definitely
refused to take action, the governor could not be expected to direct the
attorney-general to take the matter out of the district attorney’s
hands.
Various committees of women continued to urge action upon the district
attorney, and one group from the San Francisco Center of the California
Civic League made it their business to visit him week after week to
inquire what he intended to do about these forgeries. On each occasion
he refused to commit himself definitely, but he could not put his polite
questioners out of the office—they were women of too much social
backing. Besides, all these committees of women were voters and leaders,
perhaps, of unnumbered feminine electors. An uncomfortable plight
certainly for an official who might not wish to go on record on a
ticklish question.
The district attorney, in search of further evidence, finally sent to
the office of the secretary of state at Sacramento for the original
petitions. Although he declared that he had been shamefully abused by
some of these groups of women, he was nevertheless compelled to take the
forgery cases before a new grand jury. And, meanwhile, the press of the
state was demanding results and insisting that the attorney general
should prosecute the cases if the district attorney failed.
About the middle of February the district attorney again presented the
matter before the grand jury. Indictment of one Belle Weil, who had
circulated one of the referendum petitions, resulted.
In a struggle against entrenched and highly profitable evils, women may
seem to be at great disadvantage. In this case there is also a body of
men—small, perhaps, but of a sort that cannot be pooh-poohed—who have
been carrying on an equally effective campaign of publicity and
education. Women, in fact, have some advantages over men in such a
contest against the powers of evil. They have as yet no party traditions
to hamper them; no direct business relations to be jeopardized; and,
above all, they have a larger amount of daytime leisure in which to do
detail reform work and to convert small groups of people.
The various bodies of organized women who were behind the demand for the
abatement and injunction law last year are now pouring out thousands of
leaflets which defend and explain the cause in a simple and effective
way. They are training women to speak on the subject and providing them
with carefully digested information. In Berkeley the education committee
of the civic center is prepared to send a speaker to any meeting where
the subject may be presented; and is, moreover, asking every social,
civic and religious organization—of which there are over a hundred in
the town—to give time for a statement of the issues involved in the
anti-abatement referendum.
Whatever the fate of the referendum, the campaign of education, which is
now going on, is of the highest value to the citizens of the state. And
since this referendum has been invoked by vicious methods it becomes
evident that the very principles of direct legislation are at stake. If
this law may be held up and perhaps defeated by forgeries, then any
other may be.
Whatever the individual citizen may think of the policy of attacking the
property owner who reaps the profits of commercialized vice—which is the
sole aim of the abatement law—he cannot ignore the duty of guarding the
referendum principle. It should be made unpleasant and unprofitable for
men to tamper with petitions. And at the next legislature the law should
be so strengthened as to make the punishment of such acts swift and
easy.
The act was sustained but a test case was soon made in order to bring
the law before the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality must be
decided.
Women are equally alert to fight legislation, dealing with the social
evil, which discriminates against the sex. This fight is constantly
carried to the courts, the final place of appeal, if the battle is lost
in the legislature. Women succeeded in having a piece of legislation
declared unconstitutional in New York four or five years ago as a result
of their almost united protest against it; that is, the social workers,
the suffragists, the medical women and nurses, women’s club leaders and
others united in an endeavor to prevent an important measure from being
put into effect after it had passed the state legislature.
The object of their attack was Clause 79 in what is known as the Page
Law, which clause provided for medical examination of convicted
prostitutes and their compulsory detention during treatment. Their
objection to this process of “hygienizing” vice was made by the women on
the ground that the prostitutes were not being imprisoned until
reformed, or until sufficiently punished, but until presumably well,
when they were to be returned to the streets. It was contended that this
clause was utterly worthless from a sanitary standpoint and “its
indirect influence, as has been proved by the history of every
regulative act, will be to increase the evil which its direct influence
will not be competent to cure.”
Pamphlets describing the law and its inevitable consequences were
printed by the women and distributed widely among their organizations.
One of these was signed by the following groups of persons: the Women’s
Prison Association, which took the lead in this struggle; National Woman
Suffrage Association; Hygienic Committee of the Woman’s Medical
Association; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, State of New York; The
American Purity Alliance; the National Vigilance League (Men’s);
Friends’ Philanthropic Committee; Council of Jewish Women, New York
Section; Woman Suffrage Party, New York City; Equality League of
Self-Supporting Women; Brooklyn Auxiliary of the Consumers’ League; and
the American Federation of Nurses.
The battle for remedial measures is only half won when the desired
legislation is placed on the statute books. It is hardly half won, for
the enforcement of these laws is contested inch by inch by powerfully
organized forces of vice with almost unlimited financial resources and
the aid of the most skilled lawyers. Women are alive to this fact, and
realize the necessity of eternal vigilance in law enforcement. A few
passages of recent history will illustrate their determination not to
relax their efforts simply because good laws have been obtained.
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Commercialized vice is a national problem recognized as such by the Mann
Act which makes it a violation “for any person knowingly to persuade,
induce, coerce, or cause, or to aid or assist any woman or girl to go
from one state to another for prostitution, debauchery or other immoral
purposes, with or without her consent. The maximum penalty if the victim
be over 18 is five years’ imprisonment and $5,000 fine; and twice that
amount if she be under 18.”
The difficulty sometimes is to get judgment in the courts in cases of
arrest under the Mann Act.
In Minnesota the women’s clubs made a state issue of a case in which
a married man, deserting his family, took a girl from Wisconsin to
Minnesota, and was sentenced by Judge McPherson to three months in
the county jail and a fine of $1,000. The women’s clubs petitioned
the judge of the United States Court of Appeals, who makes the
assignments of the district judges, to assign Judge McPherson to
another district, “lest another case of white slavery be placed upon
the calendar subject to Judge McPherson’s judgment.” This petition
was refused, on the ground that the degree of punishment is
expressly intrusted to the trial judge. It was stated also that the
United States district attorney who prosecuted the case was
satisfied with the sentence. The man had pleaded guilty to taking a
girl under eighteen across state borders for cohabitation. Judge
McPherson defended his sentence on the ground that there was no
evidence to show that the girl was coerced. The club women countered
vigorously with a statement to the effect that coercion was not the
point; that by the man’s own story, plus all human experience, the
girl was surely entered on a life of prostitution; what they wanted
was such punishment as would be the talk of every barroom and a
specter to any man who contemplated doing it in the future.[14]
The federal judges and attorneys generally take into account the
circumstances in the case and only in clear cases where white slavery is
accomplished by force have the full penalties been imposed. The
transportation of regular prostitutes was not punished, in one instance
the judge saying that thus “our own daughters” are better protected.
Women with a social conscience take the position that all women are
their daughters and that no daughter is safe until the traffic is
suppressed. Moreover they seek to protect their sons wherever they are
and they call upon the national government to help them do it.
That women voters will not tolerate a wide-open indorsement of vice was
proved in the case of the policy pursued by Mayor Gill of Seattle in
1910–1911. It is true that conditions were so flagrantly vile that the
instincts of women were in open revolt, yet Mayor Gill, in his alliance
with the interests that were profiting by the public traffic, seemed
firmly entrenched.
Through the power of the recall, the women of Seattle led a movement
against Mayor Gill and his vice policy which was successful; the mayor
was removed from office; and a reform policy was instituted.
At the last election, however, contrary to the expectation and to the
amazement of women in other parts of the country, Mayor Gill was
reinstated as mayor. Criticism was rife and men joined with women in
attributing the result to the fickleness of women and their
superficiality. They were even accused of worse things.
In explanation of their conduct, the women of Seattle stated that Mayor
Gill pleaded with them for a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of his
neighbors and friends and in the eyes of the citizens of his city among
whom his family had to live and where his son must suffer from the
opprobrium in which his father would be held forevermore unless this
chance was given. Mayor Gill testified that he had thought a wide-open
town was what the people wanted and what would pay best. He found it was
not what the people wanted, least of all the women who now were voters,
and he would bow to their will for their sakes and for the sake of his
family whose respect he must regain. The women claimed that there seemed
more security with Mayor Gill under such pressure and in view of his
knowledge of women’s actual power if he failed to make good this time;
that a big point of view required them to give him a chance to redeem
himself. They gave him the chance and Mayor Gill is carrying out the
wishes of the women during his present administration.
The women of California undertook a similar campaign in San Francisco in
April of 1913. When a police magistrate reduced the bail which another
judge had fixed for a prisoner accused of attacking a young girl and the
prisoner immediately fled when released on the reduced bail, the women
went to work and soon secured the necessary signatures to a petition for
the recall of the magistrate. In the recall election, the erring
magistrate was defeated and an able young lawyer with a wider view of
this grave social problem took his place.
Miriam Michelson, in the _Sunset Magazine_, tells the story:
Now this threatened recall of a police judge is undertaken, I should
say, not because the women believe this particular judge to be
unique in flagrant adherence to a police court system of leniency in
sex-crimes; not because they think him the worst of his type that
San Francisco has known; but because they consider him a type and
because they consider the police court system one that must be
changed. This recall presents something definite, something to do,
which feminine hands have been aching for.
* * * * *
You may talk to women of the futility of figuring social sex sins,
but they seem to be congenitally incapable of believing you. I heard
a man talk to an audience in behalf of this measure, and when he
touched upon that old, old text—_it always has been; it always will
be_—there came a curious resemblance in every woman’s face within my
vision; for every face had hardened, stiffened, was marked with the
family likeness of rebellion. The lecturer was addressing himself to
deaf ears, to eyes determined not to see.
And this is at once the weakness and the strength of the new element
in elections. Those who have watched the ardor of the most eager and
high-minded reformers burn out in commissions, in barren resolutions
and recommendations, see in the average woman’s limitations that
power, that one-idead incapacity to look philosophically on both
sides of a question which marks Those Who Can Change Things. You may
object that such qualities produce a Carrie Nation. They do, but
they also make a Joan of Arc, a Harriet Beecher Stowe....
Her recently awakened realization of equality, the new broom that
her conscience is, revolts at a policy that establishes a municipal
clinic for women prostitutes, yet by a curious, cowardly subterfuge,
overlooks the male’s share in infection; as though the plague
created and disseminated in common could have but one source! And in
addition to all this, she is learning that when she is ready at last
to attack the vested, organized, recognized institution of
prostitution, the first result of her activities will mean greater
misery and perhaps speedier death for the woman who is already at
the lowest point of the social scale....
But over against this set this fact: There are seven hundred women
in San Francisco whose one aim in civic life is to found a state
training school for girls gone wrong who would go right. This
association has a representative in Sacramento whose sole business
it is to further a bill for the establishment of a helping station
to girls on the way to usefulness and moral health, modeled upon
similar establishments in other states. Here is work, backed by
thirty thousand club women of the state, proceeding definitely,
practically to a solution of one of the most appalling obstacles to
the crusade against vice.... But the time has not yet come when
woman will face her individual share of atonement for a social sin
in which she has acquiesced. Ultimately, with universal suffrage,
the wheel of time must place at the door of the protected woman
responsibility for the prostitute. As yet she cannot see herself, in
her own home, taking up the broken lives, diseased bodies, debased
minds and deadened souls—the by-product of that which men tell her
has always been and always must be.
PREVENTION
It is not merely by drastic legislation directed immediately at the
social evil that women are attempting to solve the problem. They know
full well the complexity of the disease. They are coming more and more
to the view that the indirect attack on low wages, bad housing
conditions, and the other evils which lower standards of living is more
effective than the frontal assault. They are also attacking the problem
with measures designed to safeguard young girls who for economic reasons
must work out of the home.
In their efforts to trace the whereabouts of immigrant girls, to do
follow-up work, to establish immigrant homes, to secure matrons on
steamers and women inspectors, women are constantly controlling some
portion at least of the social evil. Miss Sadie American, Executive
Secretary of the Council of Jewish Women, states that her organization,
which does so much to safeguard Jewish girls, could do vastly more if it
had the facilities that the government has in the way of registered
lists of newly arrived citizens with their destinations. Certainly the
organization of women as a social service adjunct to the Department of
Immigration would be a step acceptable to women and of incalculable
preventive value to the country.
The women of California are preparing to establish preventive and
assimilative work among the foreigners who will doubtless pour into that
state in a little while as a result of the opening of the Panama Canal.
“A committee for the protection of girls will be organized by Mrs. F. G.
Sanborn, president of the Woman’s Department of the Panama-Pacific
exposition. This work is regarded as very important when it is
remembered that 6,000 girls were lost during the Chicago World’s Fair.
Club women in San Francisco are actively interested in the Woman’s
Department of the exposition.”[15]
Intercommunity and interstate responsibility for the diminution of the
social evil receives increased emphasis in the writings and the civic
work of women. They have learned that suppression of disorderly houses
in one city may only drive evil doers into a neighboring city or a
neighboring state. Even eternal vigilance to prevent the return of the
traffickers and their victims does not satisfy those parents who read of
surrounding iniquity and whose young people travel or work from place to
place. By the organization of travelers’ aid societies, women and men
have sought to protect girls and women in their travel by train and by
boat from kidnapping or allurement on misunderstanding or misdirection.
Such societies exist in every large urban center and are of the greatest
value as preventive work in safeguarding women and girls from criminals.
SUPPRESSION
Among the societies which seek to deal with prostitution, in which women
lead or with which they are affiliated, may be mentioned the Kansas City
Society for the Suppression of Commercialized Vice which has two women
on its board of directors. This organization was the outcome of a
meeting held by the Public Morals Committee of the Church Federation in
September, 1913, when the following resolutions setting forth the
program of the society, were adopted unanimously:
Whereas the present conditions of tolerated vice in Kansas City are
undermining the foundation of character in our citizens, promoting
their physical degeneracy, withdrawing from its proper use an
enormous sum of money, and casting reproach upon the fair name of
our city;
Therefore, be it Resolved:
That we as citizens of Kansas City in mass meeting assembled,
unreservedly condemn the policy of the segregation of vice;
That we abhor the iniquitous fine system by which we as citizens are
forced to become partners in the profits of vice, and we favor
whatever proceedings may be necessary to divorce the city from a
participation in such profits;
That we call upon the prosecuting attorney to use the full powers of
his office to enforce the laws against vice;
That we favor a state-wide campaign in Missouri for the enactment of
a law similar to the Iowa injunction and abatement law;
That a committee of representative citizens be appointed with power
to increase their number to arrange for a permanent organization in
opposition to commercialized vice in Kansas City.
The objects of the Society are stated as follows:
The Society is organized to abolish commercialized vice and to
prevent the recognition of sexual immorality on the part of the city
or state in any way other than constant opposition to and
enforcement of laws against it;
The enactment of further legislation to facilitate the abatement of
the crime and injunction of property used for the purpose;
A propaganda which shall by forewarnings cut off both demand and
supply.
* * * * *
In writing of results already accomplished, this Society says:
We closed all of the 63 immoral houses on the police fine list.
Robert Thornton, resident U. S. officer to enforce the Mann Act,
stated that about one-third of his list of 559 immoral women in
Kansas City left town and that of the remainder from 100 to 150
found respectable employment and would not return to their old ways.
This shows a reduction of 50 per cent. of the immorality in Kansas
City due to the 559 prostitutes on the government agent’s list.
Since the closing of the red-light district in the north end the
Society has shut up 15 or 20 other houses in various parts of the
city. W. W. Knight, the newly appointed police commissioner, assures
us that the town will be cleaned up. We have already given him
information from our investigators which he says is very helpful.
In coöperation with eleven other civic and religious organizations
our society is bringing to Kansas City the next Congress of the
World’s Purity Federation, which will convene November 5th to 9th,
and will bring to Kansas City the very best specialists on social
questions. The Congress will consider causes of the social evil and
how best to combat them. It is believed that it will be a strong
factor in molding public opinion on this subject.
SOCIETIES
The recent merger of the American Vigilance Association and the American
Federation for Sex Hygiene into the American Social Hygiene Association
will doubtless increase the efficiency of the work attempted by the two
former societies and prevent duplication. Charles W. Eliot is president
of the new society and Jane Addams is an honorary vice-president while
the directors include Martha Falconer, Mrs. Raymond Robbins, and the
Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.
The purpose of the society is thus stated: “To acquire and diffuse
knowledge of the established principles and practices and of any new
methods which promote or give assurance of promoting social health; to
advocate the highest standards of private and public morality; to
suppress commercialized vice; to organize the defense of the community
by every available means, educational, sanitary or legislative, against
the diseases of vice; to conduct, on request, inquiries into the present
condition of prostitution and the venereal diseases in American towns
and cities; and to secure mutual acquaintance and sympathy and
coöperation among the local societies for these or similar purposes.”
The Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in New York City is one
of the local societies that is doing much to arouse a public sentiment
of a constructive character. While the officers are men, the list of
members includes 579 women, a large number of whom are either physicians
or school teachers and active and valuable members. The lecturers for
the society are chiefly women and the work done is more among women than
among men. Olive Crosby is the office secretary.
The New York Society is one of twenty branches similarly organized in
different cities and states. The work carried on by it is educational;
through lectures, conferences, pamphlets and agitation for better
legislation and proper sex instruction. Among its educational pamphlets
are some prepared by women, like that for teachers on “Instruction in
the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex” by Dr. Helen Putnam, of the American
Medical Association.
The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, of which Mrs. Louise De
Koven Bowen is the head, emphasizes the need of labor and other
legislation as a basis for some solution of the social evil. Among the
preventive measures suggested are: the minimum wage law; publicity for
the owners of disreputable houses by means of the tin-plate or card in
the hallway; a law similar to the Albert Law in Nebraska which declares
property used for purposes of prostitution a nuisance and the owner
punishable for maintaining such; better regulations of hotels; medical
certificates before the issuance of marriage licenses; and wider labor
legislation. Mrs. Bowen has made a special study of the department store
girl, among other types of workers, and she agrees with the Illinois
Vice Commission that the economic conditions which surround the
department store girl tend to her moral as well as her physical
breakdown and need remedying as the basis for greater stability.
In November of 1912 a federation was effected in Chicago of nearly forty
societies interested in social well-being and united against the social
evil.
While concentrating on preventive measures, women are not neglecting
what is known as “rescue work.” The name of Dr. Kate Waller Barrett is
known to thousands of girls who have passed through the Florence
Crittenton homes scattered throughout the country. Twenty-two thousand
girls, it is claimed, entered these homes last year. In these places of
temporary refuge, efforts have been made by the women in charge to
accomplish the individual reformation of the girls under their care.
Some effort is also made in these missions, under the direction of Dr.
Barrett, to give industrial training to their occupants. The equipment,
however, largely provides for the traditional cooking, sewing, cleaning
and nursing. It is a question whether domestic service or nursing are
the most suitable occupations for this type of girl.
Miss Maud Minor, of New York, who is head of Waverly House, a detention
home for girls, is another woman deeply interested both in the
probationary character of her work and in some of the larger preventive
aspects of the social evil problem.
LITERATURE
Recognizing that ignorance in matters of sex is one of the leading
causes of prostitution, women working on the problem of the social evil
have decided that the conspiracy of silence shall be broken all along
the line and that we shall have all the light we can get. They are not
unaware of the danger that comes from quacks and overhasty action, but
they do not intend to be daunted by the collateral evils that seem to
accompany every good. Women are therefore seeking to educate public
opinion to an abhorrence of the social evil and to a realization of the
menaces to health which result from it. Jane Addams by her articles in
the magazines and by her more recent books has done a vast deal to draw
public attention to the social evil. Anna Garlin Spencer has made a
study of state efforts to deal with vice by regulation instead of
abolition and “to protect monogamy by putting vice on a legal footing.”
Miss Lavinia Dock’s “Sex and Morality” has also been widely read and
quoted. There has been a large output of books dealing with woman’s
relation to the problem of prostitution, seeking, on the one hand, to
arouse woman to her own status and to inspire her to enforce right
conduct on the part of man; and, on the other, to arouse men to a sense
of their responsibility toward womanhood. Both English and American
books are widely circulated and read in this country and suffragists may
frequently be seen upon the streets or in meeting halls in various
cities selling such importations as “My Little Sister” by Elizabeth
Robbins or “Plain Facts about a Great Evil” by Crystabel Pankhurst.
By the drama also women and men have sought to teach sex health and
morality. They have supported the Sociological Fund of the _Medical
Review of Reviews_ in presenting “Damaged Goods,” by Eugene Brieux, to
large audiences in the greater towns and cities. At first presented
timidly to audiences carefully selected from ministers, teachers and
social workers, on which occasions the performance was opened with
prayer, the powerful lesson taught by this play has led to braver
adventures and “Damaged Goods” has been witnessed by many thousands of
people who have not only come to see it through invitations but who have
bought their seats at popular prices.
Of course the moving-picture promoters have been quick to seize upon the
popular interest in the white slave traffic and to exploit that interest
at times in a way that may easily be harmful to young boys and girls.
Women have been blamed in the press by other women and by men for
promoting an unholy craving for red-light films but it is difficult to
see how this charge can be substantiated in view of the well-known
commercial methods of the day. Certainly, the exploitation of woman’s
work against the social evil by moving-picture show concerns will not
deter their efforts for an instant.
TEACHING OF SEX HYGIENE
It is perhaps in the proper teaching of sex hygiene in the schools, to
working men and women, to college and other groups of young men and
women, and to foreigners, that women expect to accomplish most for the
elevation of moral standards and for the elimination of venereal
diseases.
In Minnesota the single standard of morals has been widely supported by
the club women and sex hygiene has been urged for the schools.
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston took the high position that
“realizing the physical misery which is resulting from ignorance in
regard to matters of sex, and the spiritual degradation following the
wrong conception of the high purpose of the sex function, to which must
be added the loss of efficiency in human ability, the Committee on
Social Hygiene of the League has set itself the task of awakening the
community to the dangers of a further continuance of this policy of
silence and of arousing the public conscience to do its duty; providing
sex education both for parents and for those whose parents cannot or
will not furnish it for them.” The League was, of course, very careful
to choose the members of this committee from those women whom it
believed to be qualified to lead in this work. From a recent report we
learn:
Because the time left us this season is so limited, we are making
our work experimental rather than exhaustive, with the idea of using
the results as a guide to the nature of the work to be undertaken
next year. We have, therefore, aimed to present the subject through
lecturers, to the following groups, selected as types: to a group of
mothers desirous of teaching their children in sex matters, and
eager to know how to go about it; to a group of teachers, who are
continually meeting sex problems among their pupils; to a group of
girls already in industry; to a group of boys organized in a club;
to a mixed group of men and women representing the present state of
public opinion, whose support is most necessary; and to
representatives from a committee from neighboring towns who wish to
take advantage of our machinery to start similar work at home.
The committee confronted its first difficulty in securing a
lecturer, for the work is new and there are few trained speakers
available. Dr. Frances M. Greene of Cambridge, the president of the
society which initiated this work in California, who has made an
intensive study of the question in Europe, was engaged to give a
course of five lectures in the League rooms.... Announcements were
sent out to 725 people, most of whom were mothers of young children;
77 persons attended the first lecture, and this number has increased
with each succeeding meeting. A charge of $1.00 was made for the
course. The receipts for the lectures were over $170.00, a sum
sufficient to pay the expenses of the lecturer, postage and
stationery. The serious interest shown by those in attendance has
deepened the conviction of the committee, that the public wishes
enlightenment in regard to instructing the young in these
fundamental matters, and that the present generation of parents
having been brought up in ignorance wishes to give its children a
better point of view than it ever had itself.
The committee has arranged to have Miss Laura B. Garrett[16] of New
York City speak on “Some Methods of Teaching Sex Hygiene” at
Huntington Hall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.... In
addition to League members 500 teachers are to be invited to attend
this lecture.
On April 14th the plans of the Committee on Social Hygiene were
presented, at 41 Brimmer Street, through the courtesy of Miss Ware,
to a group of one hundred or more, including representative persons
from Boston, Brookline, Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield and
Providence. Dr. Frances M. Greene, Dr. Abner Post, Dr. William P.
Lucas and Dr. Hugh Cabot made short addresses. Mrs. William Lowell
Putnam presided.
With the results before us of the work carried on this spring, the
committee will form its plans for next year. The present purpose is
to hold in October a mass meeting, with speakers representing
various shades of opinion and various methods of handling the
subject. Best methods of approach to the smaller groups of girls
from department stores and factories, boys’ clubs, mothers’ clubs,
parents’ associations, etc., will be further considered and the type
of speaker best adapted to be most successful with each individual
group will be sought out and sent to these various portions of the
community as may be desired.
The Committee on Social Hygiene is fully cognizant of the delicate
nature of the task before it, and of the necessity of moving slowly,
taking each step in accordance with a well-considered plan, rather
than of attempting to cover too much ground at the risk of making
mistakes. Nevertheless, it is fully convinced that the time has come
for speaking frankly in regard to sex matters and dealing honestly
with a problem which concerns every one of us. In coöperation with
the Public Health Education Committee of the American Medical
Association, we have arranged four lectures on different aspects of
sex education, to be given at the League. The speakers will be: Dr.
Edith Spaulding, of Sherburne Reformatory; Dr. Rachel Yarros, of
Chicago; Dr. Edith Hale Swift, of Boston; Dr. Kate Campbell Mead, of
Middletown, Connecticut.
All over the country we hear of meetings of women to discuss in a sane
and dispassionate way the problem of education in sex hygiene. For
example, two methods of teaching sex hygiene, the biological and the
physiological, and their adaptation to the needs of different groups,
were the subject of three conferences held last spring (1914) by the
Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, New York. Dr. Mary Sutton
Macy presented the physiological and Nellie M. Smith the biological
aspect. The third talk on the adaptability of these two methods to
different social groups was given by Harriet McDaniel.
“The Matter and Methods of Sex Education Other Than Instruction in
Schools” was discussed at a later meeting. The main speakers were Dr.
Eugene LaF. Swain, Nellie W. Smith, Laura B. Garrett and Mabel M. Irwin.
The discussion was started by Dr. Ira S. Wile, Dr. Rosalie S. Morton,
Dr. Mary Sutton Macy and Harriet E. McDaniel.
Dr. Rosalie Morton, of New York, speaking at the Sixth Triennial
Convention of the Council of Jewish Women, on this subject, said:
In the proper understanding of this subject of sex hygiene it is
quite impossible for either men or women to go very far alone. I am
sure that through the ages there have been men who have had this
subject very close to their hearts. They have felt that it was
basic, that it was most important; but they felt that it was not a
proper matter to discuss with women and so they have blundered on,
not getting very far in any solution of it. The subject has also
been near the heart of every woman. She hopes that her husband will
be a good man; she hopes that her son will be clean; she sees all
the wreckage and the heartaches in life that come from ignorance of
sex hygiene or lack of attention to it. So women have talked
together as to how the standard of morality might be raised, how
they might teach their sons and daughters, but they have felt that
it was not a topic to discuss with men, so they have blundered on.
They have been too sentimental, they have been too ignorant of the
limitations in the world of practical affairs; they have lacked
well-balanced judgment as to how it was best to teach, how it was
best to help. It is absolutely necessary that earnest men and women
should modify and guide each other in reaching a solution of the
problem.
No home can be successful in its teaching of this subject unless the
father and mother agree on the teaching; if the father thinks it is
not a subject for his wife to consider or to talk about, or if the
mother imagines that she alone shall tell her child, those children
will grow up with a feeling that there is discord at the root of the
family feeling on a most vital subject. Whether the father or mother
shall tell the child is very immaterial. The opportunity may come to
one, it may come to the other; both should be ready to meet it when
it does come.
This last twenty-five years is the first time in the history of the
world that any definite effort has been made to teach sex hygiene;
and if each one of us will do our duty as we see it—and we must see
it clearly now—and pass on our convictions (because no one has a
right to receive anything for themselves or their particular group,
and hold it, but each person has a tremendous responsibility to pass
on to others their influence, their knowledge), we shall awaken a
world-wide conscience regarding this thing. The reason that we can
do so little is because one child is taught and another child is not
taught. Education must be carried on in a widespread way before it
can really accomplish what we hope for. That is the reason that a
conference such as this means such progress in the history of the
world, because you people will go back to your various communities
and carry with you that courage of conviction which comes from the
comradeship which you had here. Each one of us is afraid to broach
this subject until we have had as the soldiers say, “a shoulder next
to us to help us up the hill.”
Dr. Morton’s words went home, and a permanent committee on sex hygiene
was established at the convention. The sentiments expressed at the
formation of the committee may fittingly form the conclusion to this
chapter.
The advance of preventive medicine and the far better understanding
of the conditions of health and bodily vigor which obtain today,
have put the whole subject of masculine chastity in a new light.
It is now clearly understood that the consequence to offspring of
lack of chastity in the father are just as grave as those of lack of
chastity in the mother; and that the happiness and security of
family life are quite as apt to be destroyed by want of purity and
honor in the father as in the mother. It is an established fact that
there never was either physical or moral reason for maintaining two
standards as regards chastity, one for men and the other for women.
The children of today are destined to be the units of a society
whose point of view is to make it unique in the world’s history. It
will be characterized by a single standard of morality for both
sexes. The child must be so trained and educated that it will later
be possible and natural for him to live up to the high standard
which the women of his age shall demand of him.
The ideals of society must be so changed that young men may not be
weakened and corrupted by the passive acceptance of false standards
of morals. One of the most important factors for the attainment of
this end is the same education of boys and girls in the matters of
sex, from which all secrecy, except that which is necessary from
true modesty and refinement, shall have disappeared.
We as parents must recognize and help establish the truth of the law
that the same virtue is needed in both sexes for the happy
development of that family life on which the security of the race
and the progress of civilization depend.