Part 49 (1/2)
Next to the responsibility of parents in this matter is that of teachers, who, with all judiciousness and delicacy, should supply the deficiencies of ignorant or incapable parents in the physiological education of all committed to their care.
And here a word in regard to the bad effects of, so called, cla.s.sical studies. Are they not oftentimes acquired at the risk of outraged delicacy or undermined moral principles? Mythology, in particular, introduces our youth to courtesans who are described as G.o.ddesses, and G.o.ddesses who are but courtesans in disguise. Poetry and history as frequently have for their themes the ecstasies of illicit love as the innocent joys of pure affection. Shall these branches of study be totally ignored? By no means; but let their harmless flowers and wholesome fruit alone be culled for youthful minds, to the utter exclusion of all poisonous ones, however beautiful.
This lack of information has resulted in another evil in the impetus it has given to the sale of obscene books and prints. Recent legal proceedings have checked this nefarious trade, but it still exists. Boys and young men may be found loitering at all hours round hotels, steam-boat docks, rail-road depots, and other public places, ostensibly selling newspapers or pamphlets, but secretly offering vile, lecherous publications to those who are likely to be customers. They generally select young and inexperienced persons for two reasons. In the first place, these are the most probable purchasers, and will submit to the most extortion; and, in the second, they can be more easily imposed upon. The venders have a trick which they frequently perform, and which can scarcely be regretted. In a small bound volume they insert about half a dozen highly-colored obscene plates, which are cut to fit the size of the printed page. Having fixed upon a victim, they cautiously draw his attention to the pictures by rapidly turning over the leaves, but do not allow him to take the book into his hands, although they give him a good opportunity to note its binding. He never dreams that the plates are loose, and feels sure that in buying the book he buys the pictures also.
When the price is agreed upon, the salesman hints that, as he is watched, the customer had better turn his back for a moment while taking the money from his pocket-book, and in this interval he slips the plates from between the leaves and conceals them. The next moment the parties are again face to face, the price is handed over, and the book he had seen before is handed to the purchaser under a renewed caution, and is carefully pocketed. The book-seller leaves, and at the first opportunity the prize is covertly drawn forth to be examined more minutely, and the unwary one finds that he has paid several dollars for some few printed pages, without pictures, which would have been dear at as many cents.
Despite all precautions, there is every reason to believe that the manufacture of these obscene books is largely carried on in this city. It is needless to remind any resident of the large seizures made in New York during the last two years, or to particularize the stock condemned. More caution is observed now, and the post-office is made the vehicle for distribution. Circulars are issued which describe the publications and their prices, modes of transmitting money are indicated, and the advertiser plainly says that he will not allow any personal interviews on account of the dangers which surround the traffic. By using an indefinite number of _aliases_, and often changing the address to which letters are sent, he succeeds in eluding the vigilance of the police, and secures many remittances.
Not less dangerous than the directly obscene publications is a cla.s.s of voluptuous novels which is rapidly circulating. Some are translations from the French; but one man, now living in England, has written and published more disgustingly minute works, under the guise of honest fiction, than ever emanated from the Parisian presses. He writes in a strain eminently calculated to excite the pa.s.sions, but so carefully guarded as to avoid absolute obscenity, and embellishes his works with wood-cuts which approach lasciviousness as nearly as possible without being indictable. It is to be regretted that publishers have been found, in this and other cities, who are willing to use their imprints on the t.i.tle-pages of his trash, and sell works which can not but be productive of the worst consequences. Those who have seen much of the cheap pamphlets, or ”yellow-covered” literature offered in New York, will have no difficulty in recalling the name of the author alluded to, and those who are ignorant of it would only be injured by its disclosure. There can be but one opinion as to the share obscene and voluptuous books have in ruining the character of the young, and they may justly be considered as causes, indirect it may be, of prost.i.tution.
Some of the sources of prost.i.tution have been thus examined. To expose them all would require a volume; but it is hoped that sufficient has been developed to induce observation and inquiry, and prompt action in the premises.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.
Means of Support.--Occupation.--Treatment of Domestics.-- Needlewomen.--Weekly Earnings.--Female Labor in France.-- Compet.i.tion.--Opportunity for Employment in the Country.--Effects of Female Occupations.--Temptations of Seamstresses.--Indiscriminate Employment of both s.e.xes in Shops.--Factory Life.--Business of the Fathers of Prost.i.tutes.--Mothers' Business.--a.s.sistance to Parents.-- Death of Parents.--Intoxication.--Drinking Habits of Prost.i.tutes.-- Delirium Tremens.--Liquor Sold in Houses of Prost.i.tution.--Parental Influences.--Religion of Parents and Prost.i.tutes.--Amiable Feelings.-- Kindness and Fidelity to each other.
_Question._ IS PROSt.i.tUTION YOUR ONLY MEANS OF SUPPORT?
Resources. Numbers.
Dependent solely upon prost.i.tution 1698 Have other means of support 302 ---- Total 2000
No surprise will be excited by the fact indicated above, that seventeen of every twenty women examined in New York reply to this question in the affirmative, for it is almost impossible to conceive that any honest occupation can be a.s.sociated with vice of such character. The small minority who have other means consists princ.i.p.ally of women who work at their trades or occupations at intervals, or who receive some slight payment for a.s.sisting in the ordinary work, or for sewing, in the houses of ill fame where they reside. It is difficult to believe women working as domestics in brothels are virtuous themselves; on the contrary, it is a well-known fact that they are, in every sense of the word, prost.i.tutes; the only difference being that they work a portion of the time, while the ”boarders” do not work at all.
Those who follow an employment at intervals are mostly women whose trades are uncertain, and who are liable at certain seasons of the year to be without employment. Then real necessity forces them on the town until a return of business provides them with work. They are more to be pitied than blamed.
There is another cla.s.s not entirely dependent on prost.i.tution. It consists mostly of German girls, who receive from five to six dollars per month as dancers in the public ball-rooms. In the first ward of New York there are several of these establishments, and the Captain of Police in that district has attached some interesting memoranda to his returns, from which is gleaned the following information respecting these places and their inhabitants. It is submitted to the reader, in order that he may draw his own conclusions as to the virtue of the dancers.
”These dance-houses are generally kept by Germans, who consider dancing a proper and legitimate business. They are in general very quiet. The girls employed to dance do not consider themselves prost.i.tutes, because the proprietors will not allow them to be known as such. Each girl receives monthly from five to six dollars and her board, and almost every one of them hires a room in the neighborhood for the purpose of prost.i.tution. I have cla.s.sed them all as prost.i.tutes, because, in addition to the previous fact, I know that the majority of them have lived as such. Very few of these girls are excessive drinkers. Although the regulations of the ball-room require them to drink after each dance with their partners, yet the proprietor has always a bottle of water slightly colored with port wine, from which they drink, and he charges the partner the same price as for liquor.”
Alluding to the keeper of one of these places, the same officer says:
”The proprietress of this house is a German woman over seventy years of age. She established the house over eighteen years since, to my certain knowledge. Her husband had just then arrived from Germany with their four children. They were not worth one hundred dollars at that time. The man died three years ago, and by his will directed forty thousand dollars to be divided among his children. The widow is possessed of an equal amount in her own name.”
_Question._ WHAT TRADE OR CALLING DID YOU FOLLOW BEFORE YOU BECAME A PROSt.i.tUTE?
Occupations. Numbers.
Artist 1 Nurse in Bellevue Hospital, N. Y. 1 School-teachers 3 Fruit-hawkers 4 Paper-box-makers 5 Tobacco-packers 7 Attended stores or bars 8 Attended school 8 Embroiderers 8 Fur-sewers 8 Hat-trimmers 8 Umbrella-makers 8 Flower-makers 9 Shoe-binders 16 Vest-makers 21 Cap-makers 24 Book-folders 27 Factory girls 37 Housekeepers 39 Milliners 41 Seamstresses 59 Tailoresses 105 Dress-makers 121 Servants 933 Lived with parents or friends 499 ---- Total 2000
Wherever the social condition of woman has been considered, one fact has always been painfully apparent, namely, the difficulties which surround her in any attempt to procure employment beyond the beaten track of needlework or domestic service. Numerous light or sedentary employments now pursued by men might with much greater propriety be confided to women, but custom seems to have fixed an arbitrary law which can not be altered.
If a lady enters a dry goods store, she is waited upon by some stalwart young man, whose energy and muscle would be far more useful in tilling the ground, or in some other out-door employment. If she wishes to make a purchase of jewelry, she is served by the same cla.s.s of attendants. Why should not females have this branch of employment at their command? It would in a majority of cases be more consonant with the feelings of the purchasers, and consequently more to the interest of store-keepers. It would open an honorable field of exertion to the women, and improve the condition of the men who now monopolize such employments, by forcing them to obtain work suitable to their s.e.x and strength, and driving from the crowded cities into the open country some whose effeminacy is fast bringing them to positive idleness and ruin.
Many people are prepared to frown upon any attempt to improve the social condition of dependent women. They regard it as a part of that myth which they call opposition to const.i.tuted authorities, without any reference to the consideration which should form the basis of all society, namely, ensuring the greatest amount of good to the greatest number. Others who are opposed to any amelioration sustain their views by a libel upon woman, and upon her Almighty Creator. They a.s.sert that she has not sufficient intellect for any thing beyond routine employment, or blame her because she has received only such an imperfect education as the world has thought proper to award her, and thus has not had an opportunity to cultivate her faculties. It is not necessary to point to the productions and achievements of women even in our own days, omitting all mention of what has been done heretofore, to expose the fallacy of this proposition. The facts are patent to the world. With special reference to the subject in hand it may be a.s.serted, unhesitatingly and without fear of contradiction, that were there more avenues of employment open to females there would be a corresponding decrease in prost.i.tution, and many of those who are now ranked with the daughters of shame would be happy and virtuous members of the community.[390]
In the list of occupations pursued by the women who are now prost.i.tutes in New York, a most lamentable monotony is visible. Domestic service and sewing are the two princ.i.p.al resources. From the gross number of two thousand deduct those who lived with their parents or friends, children attending school, domestic servants, and housekeepers, amounting in the aggregate to 1322, and there is a balance of 678, nearly six hundred of whom depend upon needles and thread for an existence. In the total number reported there are _only four, or exactly one in every five hundred_, who relied for support upon any occupation requiring mental culture, that is, one artist and three school-teachers. This fact in itself sustains the theories that mental cultivation and sufficient employment are restrictions to the spread of prost.i.tution.
If women are compelled to undergo merely the slavery of life, no moral advancement can ever be expected from them. If every approach to remunerative employment is systematically closed against them, nothing but degradation can ensue, and the moralist who shuddered with horror at the bare possibility of a woman being allowed to earn a competent living in a respectable manner will e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, ”What awful depravity exists in the female s.e.x!” He and others of his cla.s.s drive a woman to starvation by refusing to give her employment, and then condemn her for maintaining a wretched existence at the price of virtue.