Part 63 (1/2)

The words ”Natives” and ”Foreigners” have been so frequently used in the course of this investigation, that the official census returns as to their relative numbers can not but be interesting.[424]

Of the white population of the United States there were

Born in the state in which they are now living 6702 per cent.

” ” United States, but not in the state in which they are now living 2135 ”

----- Total of natives 8837 ”

Born in foreign countries 1146 ”

Unknown nativities 17 ”

------ 100 ”

Thus of every hundred white inhabitants of the United States, eighty-eight were natives of the soil.

Of the free colored inhabitants there were[425]

Natives 9859 per cent.

Foreigners 94 ”

Unknown nativities 47 ”

------ 100

The slave population are (for all practical purposes) entirely native.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

NEW YORK.--REMEDIAL MEASURES.

Effects of Prohibition.--Required Change of Policy.--Governmental Obligations.--Prost.i.tution augmented by Seclusion.--Impossibility of benevolent a.s.sistance.--Necessity of sanitary Regulations.--Yellow Fever.--Effect of remedial Measures in Paris.--Syphilitic Infection not a local Question.--Present Measures to check Syphilis.--ISLAND HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Mode of Admission.--Vagrancy Commitment ”on Confession,” and its Action on Blackwell's Island.--Pecuniary Results.--Moral Effects.--Perpetuation of Disease.--Inadequacy of Present Arrangements.--Discharges.--Writs of _Habeas Corpus_ and _Certiorari_, how obtained, and their Effects.--Public Responsibility.--Proposed medical and police Surveillance.-- Requirements.--_Hospital Arrangements to be entirely separated from punitive Inst.i.tutions._--Medical Visitation.--Power to place diseased Women under Treatment and _detain them till cured_.--Refutation of Objections.--Quack Advertisers.--Const.i.tution of Medical Bureau.-- Duties of Examiners.--License System.--Probable Effects of Surveillance.--Expenses of the proposed Plan.--Agitation in England.-- The London _Times_ on Prost.i.tution.--Objections considered.--Report from MEDICAL BOARD OF BELLEVUE HOSPITAL on Prost.i.tution and Syphilis.--Report from RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, RANDALL'S ISLAND, on Const.i.tutional Syphilis.--Reliability of Statistics.--Resume of substantiated Facts.

Having traced the causes and delineated the extent and effects of the evil of prost.i.tution as it exists in New York at the present time, an evident duty is to inquire what measures can be devised to stay the march of this desolating plague in its ravages on the health and morals of the public.

This is a problem the solution of which has for centuries interested philanthropists and statesmen in different countries. They commenced with the theory that vice could be suppressed by statutory enactments, and the crus.h.i.+ng-out process was vigorously tried under various auspices, until experience demonstrated that it virtually increased and aggravated the evil it was intended to suppress. At subsequent periods, however, different measures have been adopted with different results.

It will be necessary, in the first place, to consider the effect of stringent prohibitory measures. The records given in the previous chapters of this work show what these have attempted, and they also show at the same time the uselessness of endeavoring to eradicate prost.i.tution by compulsory legislation. The lash, the dungeon, the rack, and the stake have each been tried, and all have proved equally powerless to accomplish the object. Admitting that, in religion, morals, or politics, it is impossible to force concurrence in any particular sentiment, while a kindly persuasive plan may lead to its adoption; admitting that all attempts to compel prost.i.tutes to be virtuous have notoriously failed; has not the time arrived for a change of policy? If, in direct ratio to the stringency of prohibitory measures, the vice sought to be exterminated has steadily increased, does not reason suggest the expediency of resorting to other measures for its suppression?

It has been said that ”History is philosophy teaching by example,” and, if such instruction is well considered, none can fail to see therein an unanswerable argument against excessive severity in this matter. The several statutes proscribing prost.i.tution have been detailed, and their specific results given, as gathered from the experience of various countries. At the time these laws were in force, it is hardly probable that their authors regarded them as unsusceptible of improvement; and the question now arises for decision, in this age of general progress, is it not our duty to try the effect of some other line of action in this country?

In common with other nations, we have pa.s.sed laws intended to crush out prost.i.tution; have made vigorous protests (on paper) against its existence; and there our labors have ended. The experience acquired in this course of legislation only demonstrates that such laws can not be enforced so as to produce the desired effect. But why are they still retained on the statute books? Is it not an opprobrium upon our national character to allow them to exist, if they are never to be enforced? If they are powerless for good, effective only to increase the plague they were designed to check, why not expunge them at once, and subst.i.tute others more practicable and more useful in their stead? A candid acknowledgment of error, whether by an individual or a community, is always a creditable and graceful act. It shows that experience has dictated a wiser course; that reflection and experiment have condemned the former plan.

It is not to be supposed that any system of laws will entirely eradicate prost.i.tution; history, social arrangements, and physiology alike forbid any such utopian idea. But will not a more enlightened policy do much toward diminis.h.i.+ng it? Many of the present generation can recollect the time when it was considered right and proper to imprison an insolvent debtor; but this idea is now wisely repudiated by society, and no one will a.s.sert that the effect of the change has been to place any additional difficulties in the way of collecting legal claims. Capital punishment has been abolished in many cases, and yet it is a well-known fact that crime has diminished where this experiment has been tried. This is more particularly the case in England, where forgery, which was punished with death, is comparatively rare since the amelioration of the law. A general conviction is becoming prevalent that the most effectual way to deal with criminals is to attempt to raise them above what they were, in contradistinction to the old plan of sinking them lower.[426] It is now freely acknowledged that the elevating, instead of the depressing process, is consonant both with the spirit of our republican inst.i.tutions and with humanizing policy. Even if American society is not yet prepared to take a course directly the reverse of its present prohibitory practice, prudence dictates the adoption of some medium rule by which prost.i.tution can be kept in check without being encouraged or allowed, as in the Prussian laws, which expressly declare that the vice is ”tolerated but not permitted.”

Government should be patriarchal in its character, and exercise an effective but parental supervision over all its subjects. This is the living principle which gives vitality and strength to any organization, and no satisfactory government can exist if it is absent. Now, in regard to prost.i.tutes, admitting that they have erred, still, the people, who const.i.tute the government in this country, are concerned in the matter, and their mutual obligations, their policy, and their pecuniary interests require that these wandering members of the body corporate should have a reasonable opportunity for reformation. Which will give this opportunity most effectually--to crush them under the weight of their own misdeeds, or to adopt a liberal course likely to induce them to abandon their depraved habits? One of the secrets which bound the soldiers of the empire to the standard of Napoleon through all his battles and vicissitudes was the knowledge that France regarded them as her children, and would not fail to protect and support them. The words ”I am a Roman citizen” derived their magic power from the fact that the Roman Empire treated all her citizens as sons, and watched over their interests with parental care. The recent outburst of popular enthusiasm in our own country when the commander[427]

of an American national vessel rescued a citizen from threatened outrage in a foreign land, was an emphatic recognition of the principle. Can we now consistently refuse to apply the rule to all who need our kindly care?[428]

It may be considered a bold a.s.sertion, that our present mode of dealing with prost.i.tution is calculated to widely extend its prevalence, yet the historical facts already given are sufficient to prove its truth without further argument. The existing rule of treatment, instead of suppressing the vice, merely drives it into seclusion--a result far different from the design, and infinitely increasing its power. To those secret haunts of prost.i.tution resort the lowest and most depraved of the male s.e.x, with the full knowledge that a fundamental law of our commonwealth considers every house a castle, into which no officer can enter unless armed with a special legal authority, or called in to suppress an outrage. The result of such seclusion is to confirm the vicious habits of the prost.i.tutes, and frequently to lead them to the commission of other and more heinous offenses.

Again: Secrecy further augments prost.i.tution by preventing the approach of those benevolent individuals who would feel a pleasure in advising and directing the daughters of misery for their real good. Philanthropists have organized Prison a.s.sociations and Magdalen Asylums to bear upon prost.i.tution, but they can only reach it in its lowest grades, when the females become inmates of public inst.i.tutions from dest.i.tution and disease. Reformers can not come near the fountain-head, and they are consequently now as far from the consummation of their praiseworthy intentions as when they commenced their labors; because prohibitory measures force prost.i.tutes to take shelter in seclusion, and it is only when women are consigned to our hospitals, work-houses, and penitentiaries that they become accessible. By this time they are so far sunk in depravity as to afford very slender hope of reformation. This is more especially true of Magdalen Asylums. There is indeed a ”field white unto the harvest” for benevolent exertions in the most secluded haunts of prost.i.tution, if they could only be made accessible. Sympathy is worthily bestowed upon the sick or dying women transferred from public inst.i.tutions to charitable organizations. To alleviate the sorrows of their final sufferings, to soothe the agony of the hour of death, to divest of its terrors the pa.s.sage from this world to the dread future, is a work in which the heart of any Christian must rejoice. But it is only a part of the duties contemplated by such asylums. While their projectors gladly administer the consolations of our holy religion to an expiring Magdalen, they also seek an opportunity to direct erring women to the paths of virtue during the life that still remains to them; to guide them to a path in which they can retrace the false steps already taken, and become useful members of society. This opportunity for exertion is denied under the system which drives vice into seclusion.