VARIOUS PHASES OF THE QUESTION
_By William Trufant Foster_
It is necessary to take into account all phases of the social emergency.
The question is not merely one of physiology, or pathology, or diseases,
or wages, or industrial education, or recreation, or knowledge, or
commercial organization, or legal regulation, or lust, or social customs,
or cultivation of will power, or religion. It is all of this and more. The
danger is that we shall see only one or two sides of a many-sided problem.
A solution may appear adequate because it leaves essential factors out of
consideration.
One physiological factor in the situation is of fundamental importance,
namely, the discrepancy between the age of sexual maturity and the
prevailing age of marriage,--an artificial condition largely determined by
social customs, by modern educational systems, and by standards of living.
While society has set forward, generation after generation, the age at
which marriage seems feasible, the age of puberty has remained virtually
the same. This unnatural condition--as artificial as the clothes we
wear--is a phase of the emergency which should be considered by those who
condemn as unnatural and forced the education of adolescent boys and girls
in sexual hygiene and morals. Partly as a result of this has come the
general acceptance of the double standard of chastity which has bitterly
condemned the girl--made her an outcast of society--and excused the boy
for the same offense, on the false plea of physiological necessity.
With the sanction of this double standard, tacitly accepted by society,
thousands of prostitutes have been harbored and protected. What shall we
do with them? We may drive them out of certain districts and certain
houses, and even certain cities, but they are still with us, and we are
responsible for them. If they are denied resorts where men seek them, they
will seek men. Most of them are unable, without special training, to earn
a living in any other way, and many of them would not if they could. A
majority are mentally defective and should be wards of society. Any plan
which fails to take care of these women--adequately, permanently, and
humanely--ignores one of the greatest of the problems which history, with
the sanction of society, has made a factor of the present emergency.
The medical phase of the present situation is not often ignored, except by
those who hold that there is no such thing as disease. All countries are
alarmed over the prevalence of venereal infection. Definite information,
however, concerning the extent of these diseases, the sources and
conditions of contagion, and the complications and results, is not to be
had; because society still persists in treating venereal diseases as not
subject to public registration and control, in spite of their terrible
attacks on tens of thousands of innocent victims.
The fear of contracting disease has long been used in attempts to promote
a single standard of chastity. Such fear has no doubt played its part and
will continue to keep many prudent men away from prostitutes. But in
looking forward to the work of the next generation, we must face the need
of higher motives than the fear of disease, for science may at any time
discover positive safeguards against contagion, thus diminishing one of
the factors of the present emergency and by the same stroke accentuating
others.
Of the economic phases of the emergency, there are some which directly
affect the wage-earner. One is the failure of wages to keep pace with the
higher cost of living; another is the increase in the number and
proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition
for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part
unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of
supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry;
still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls to imitate their
patrons' vulgar displays of finery. But of all the economic factors
contributing to the moral breakdown of girls, the most general and
inexcusable is the failure of our public schools to provide vocational
training, although it is certain that above fifty per cent of all girls
leave the schools to become wage-earners. Failure to gain a living wage is
undoubtedly one of the causes, though seldom the sole cause, of the first
delinquency of some girls.
Other economic conditions serve to promote and intrench the business of
prostitution. These conditions are as real as any other factors and will
block reform until they are squarely met. One of these is the excessive
profit on property used for immoral purposes. The fact that such property
is often owned by persons who pass as respectable members of society does
not make the problem easier. Then there is the intimate connection between
the sale of intoxicating liquors and commercialized prostitution, as
definitely revealed by the investigations of every vice commission.
Another economic factor intrenching prostitution as a business is the
commercial organization which continues to do an international and
interstate business, partly because of our inadequate white-slave laws and
inadequate appropriation for enforcement.
Most important among the economic aids to prostitution as a business are
the high immediate wages of vice in contrast with the low wages of virtue.
A girl in the shop, or factory, or office may be capitalized at six
thousand dollars; in the clutches of a procurer, she may become worth
twenty-six thousand dollars. As a prostitute, she "earns more than four
times as much as she is worth as a factor in the social and industrial
economy, where brains, intelligence, virtue and womanly charm should bring
a premium." In an average lifetime, to be sure, the wages of one woman in
industry are greater than the earnings in the short life of one
prostitute; but from the viewpoint of the man who pockets most of the
earnings, it is more profitable to kill off a dozen women than to keep one
at decent work through an average lifetime. This economic condition is
revealed to the cast-out woman after a few years, on the brink of the
grave; but at the outset of her brief career, she sees the immediate gain,
not the ultimate ruin.
There are other economic factors which will aid all movements for social
hygiene when they are more clearly perceived by those engaged in reputable
business: first, the loss to honest industry due to the reduced efficiency
of sexual perverts, of the diseased, and of those who, through their
ignorance, have been kept in worry by "leading specialists"; and, in the
second place, the inevitable reduction in the profits of legitimate
business due to the excessive profits of illegitimate business.
The recreational pursuits of young people are other factors of immediate
concern to those who would see the problems of social hygiene in their
entirety. Adolescent boys and girls spend most of their leisure time
either in wholesome physical activity conducive to normal sex life or in
various forms of amusement fraught with danger. In seeking innocent
recreation, young people can hardly escape contact with amusements
cunningly devised to excite sex impulses and at the same time to lower
respect for woman. The bill-boards and the picture post-cards, the
penny-in-the-slot machines and the motion pictures, the exhibits of quack
doctors, vaudeville performances, many so-called comic operas, popular new
songs, the dress of women approved by modern fashion,--these all help at
times to prepare young people to fall before the special temptations that
beset all commercial recreation centers. Especially dangerous are the
saloons, billiard rooms, dance-halls, ice-cream parlors, road-houses and
amusement parks. Both male and female enemies of decency frequent these
resorts. They are often schools of sexual immorality, with clever and
persistent teachers. Unless we take them into due account, we cannot see
the whole problem of education in sexual hygiene and morals.
Then there are the legal phases of the situation. We must consider, on the
one hand how much can be accomplished by legislation, in view of all the
known factors in the situation. Our courts, for example, in spasmodically
or regularly rounding up women, fining them ten or fifteen dollars apiece,
and turning them loose, are trying to meet the social emergency by
shutting their eyes to nine out of ten of its essential features. Their
policy gives a clean bill to the male prostitute, arrests the woman, takes
away a part of her earnings, sets her free under the necessity of seeking
new victims to offset the fine, offers her no incentive to lead any other
life, incidentally increases opportunities for police graft, and virtually
gives the sanction of the law to the whole nefarious business. The ostrich
with his head buried in the sand sees our gravest social problem about as
clearly and wholly as do many who are administering laws concerning
prostitution in American cities.
The impotence of laws passed in advance of public education and public
demand is a difficulty often overlooked. Some reformers seem to think
they can eliminate the social evil by getting a law passed. They urge
state legislatures to pass laws requiring every school to teach sex
hygiene. These people think they are going straight at a solution; but
they fail to see the patent fact that there are not now enough competent
teachers for this work; no, not one teacher for every hundred schools.
Another example of futile legislation is the California law requiring the
reporting of cases of venereal diseases. One could easily list a score of
laws in the domain of sexual morals which are ineffective, either because
in their very nature they could not be enforced, or because the public do
not wish to have them enforced. Perhaps there are no factors of the social
emergency so frequently left out of account as the relation of public
education to public opinion and the relation of public opinion to the
possibility of law enforcement.
As a matter of fact the educational phases of social reform are of most
immediate importance. Nothing can so profitably occupy the attention of
social hygiene societies as the education of the public. If groups of
social workers come to serious disagreement on other phases of the
present emergency,--if the discussion of restricted districts,
minimum-wage laws, health certificates for marriage, and reporting of
diseases divides the group into warring camps,--all can unite in favor of
spreading certain truths as widely as possible; and it is not difficult to
agree on at least a few of the many methods which have already proved
effective in educational campaigns.
At the outset of our attempt to educate the general public in matters of
sex, we face certain factors which govern the scope, time, place, and
method of any successful efforts. Failure to give these factors due
consideration has brought many attempts to early and unhappy ends, and
convinced some people that ignorance is safer than such education.
We must reckon carefully with the centuries of social tradition which have
resulted in the taboo on the subjects of sex and reproduction. It may be
that this conspiracy of silence has proved a failure; it may be that it
has no basis worthy of intellectual respect. It may be that all people
should welcome the new freedom of speech. These are not issues in the
process of education. Our first concern is the actual state of the public
mind; we begin with that or else we fail.
Biologically the all-inclusive issue concerns the survival of the race.
Nature has no favorites: the fittest of the human stock will survive after
others have degenerated and disappeared; the fittest animals will
ultimately people the earth. Sexual degeneracy is the surest road to race
extinction.
No aspects are more important than those concerning morals and religion.
The restraining influences of the fear of disease may and probably will be
thrown off by science. Whether education in scientific aspects of the
subject will do good or harm in a given case depends on the extent to
which moral and religious ideals control the conduct of the individual.
The inadequacy of mere knowledge in the realm of sex hygiene is painfully
evident. To the knowledge of what is right must be added the will to do
the right. As moral and religious instruction is the dominant educational
need of the present generation, so the moral and religious aspects of sex
problems transcend all others in importance.
These are the most important phases of the social emergency. It is
difficult to see them in all their intricate relationships and to realize
that in any one approach we touch only one side of a many-sided problem.
The great majority of our people see only the superficial aspects, or see
one particular phase in distorted perspective, because that is brought
close to them through a special case of misfortune. Even social workers
are in danger of narrowness of vision because of devoted service in
particular fields. The aim of the following chapters is to consider
successively and in right relationships various aspects of the social
emergency.