REVIEW.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 281, 18 November 1918, Page 4

REVIEW.

(By Abram Elexner.)

HISTORY OE PROSTITUTION IN EUROPE.

This book is the second volume published by the Bureau of Social Hygiene. 1 his Bureau was created as a result of the work of the Special Grand Jury which investigated the W hite Slave Traffic in New York City in 1910. They despatched a young journalist, Abram Elexner, to study the subject of Prostitution in Europe. Mr Elexner was a man without any prejudice, and with no previous opinion to sustain. He was fettered by no instructions, and given no thesis to prove or disprove. He was given the fullest facilities for enquiries, was directed to make a thorough and impartial examination, and to the work of enquiry and writing the book he devoted two years. He travelled all Western Europe, and found that from Glasgow to Buda Pesth the evolution of prostitution was the same in all cities. It was essentially an urban problem. In the Middle Ages all the great cities were Islamic. In medieval Europe the cities were small, and the prostitute was a marked woman. They were of two kinds, resident (in horde!ls) or itinerant (attached as camp followers to the great armies, temporal or spiritual). In Mediaeval Europe prostitution was limited and definite, but in modern Europe it is huge and vague. Our great cities, with their large floating populations, with many women detached fiom their families, render concealment easy, and at least half the prostitutes are clandestine and unregistered. In one city over 50 per cent, of diseased women were employed as waitresses, barmaids, etc. There were no segregated districts in Europe, but it was noteworthy that prostitution tended to associate itself with the sale of alcohol. Separate sections of the book deal with the questions of demand and supply. On the Continent the demand was almost universal. Most German men have had gonorrhoea, and about one in five syphillis. During the Middle Ages it was so universally allowed that chastity was harmful for males, that a sufficient supply of women was always obtained by way of entertaining church congresses. This is now questioned, and all modern scientific opinion states that chastity is not harmful, but beneficial to male

auci female alike. Touton writes: “Europe has been a man’s world, managed by men, and largely for men —and cynical men at that —men lacking in respect for womanhood. According to medical opinion, continence is not harmful. Even where neurotic disturbances occur, they are not comparable to the damage, corporal and moral, which attends irregular intercourse. In short, all the talk about manifestations due to abstinence is thus far, with few exceptions, a hodge-podge of superficial observations and uncritical interpretations.’’ Neither in Europe nor in Great Britain is there any systematic or general instruction in Sex Hygiene in the State Schools. The supply comes chiefly from the lower working classes, and is mainly unmarried women. They are mostly uneducated, and detachment from home, and slum conditions, are mainly responsible for their downfall. In dealing with prostitution, two opposite policies have been followed — regulation and abolition. The regulationist says that as a matter of fact prostitution exists; it cannot be summarily wiped out, but it makes for decency to get it to submit to police control. The abolitionists say that regulation fails to achieve its purpose, that it places the State in the position of authorising or legalising vice. That it is a compact with vice. Systems of differ in different countries, but all agree in stipulating that prostitutes registered with the police must heed certain restrictions placed upon their conduct in the interest of public order and decency, and that they must piesent themselves at regular intervals for medical examination in the interest of public health. In Berlin inscription if, either voluntary or compulsory; minors undt-r eighteen cannot be inscripted. but in certain cases girls between 18 and 21 inay be inscripted. Certain prominent thoroughfares, places of amusement and resort are interdicted to prostitutes. Their dwellings are under complete control, and all regulations are enforced by the morals

police. As the young girl under eighteen is most dangerous to health, the writer says: “If minors aie not enrolled, th** system collap^s; if minors are enrolled, then society perpetrates an infamy.” Regulation has not improved the order of the streets. It prevents the

perfect cleansing of the streets by allowing street-walking. Opinion in Europe is increasingly hostile to licensed houses. Segregation, that is the confining prostitutes in one locality, or a few definite localities, is not undertaken in any European city from Budapest to Glasgow. Clandestine prostitutes .ire more numerous than registered ones, and even these can never be segregated. Registered houses prosper only where trafficking is permitted. !)r. Baumgartcn, of Vienna, says: “Th° Bordell is inseparable from traffic in girls.” Without bordells there would be no white slave traffic. This traffic has lately been so sternly suppressed in Europe that the trafficker now seeks the safer pastures of Rio Janeiro and Buenos Ayres. Though the sale of liquor is forbidden in bordells, it is yet carried on. “The business could not be carried on otherwise,” said a madarne. With the extinction of the bordell, street conditions in Europe have improved. The few town*: whose arc strikingly free from prostitutes are, without exception, towns in which neither regulation nor bordell exists. The bordell gives to sexual vice its most prominent advertisement. By working on the curiosity of the young and of strangers —its main patrons, by the way—it substantially increases demand; by requiring constant service of its inmates, it virtually increases supply. It is a most flagrant instance of exploitation for the benefit of third parties. Eor keeper’s profit, men waste their substance and are infected by disease, while women arc dragged down to the lowest depths of degradation and excess. The bordell is therefore something more than futile, something worse than inhuman. This is the conclusion, not of sentimentalist', but of police officers all ovei the Continent, many of whom arc still administering the system. As far as order goes, it is impossible to make out a case for regulation. In regard to regulation for disease, all prostitutes who are registered have to present themselves for examination, and clandestine (which un the Continent simply means unregistered) prostitutes are examined at the discretion of the Bureau Chief. The compulsory examination varies in frequency in the different centres; some insist uixm weekly, others fortnightly, or even monthly examinations. In some cities the hospitals are good, and the

treatment up-to-date; others, such as Paris, are like a mediaeval prison. The quality of the examination also varies widely, but mostly it is very IX‘rfunctory. At Paris, when the author was present, the examining doctor gave from 15 to 30 seconds to each woman examined. Regulation implies the absence of any expectation of male restraint; it is society’s tacit assent to laxity. There can be no question that State regulation of vice increases the volume of irregular intercourse and the number of those who participate in it. Regulation tends to increase miscellaneous sexual congress, and to whatever extent it increases irregular commerce bydiminishing individual and social resistance, to that extent it tends to increase venereal disease. Js more congress with regulation not likely to result in more disease than would result from less congress and no regulation. The author held the view that intercourse with regulated women was safe, but when he studied the subject he saw no safety at all. There is no inspection of minors, as “no civilised society can i>ermit a minor to brand herself as a professional prostitute, authorised by the community to earn her livelihood as such.’'* Vet minors are the most attractive and dangerous, and clandestine prostitutes are the chief source of infection. Regulationists all admit the failure of regulation. A Vienna Professor says: “As far as the good of regulation goes, I can speak from experience; the good can’t possibly amount to much.” Professor Messer: “The present system of regulation rather operates to increase the volume of venereal disease.” Dr. Julius Engel Reimers: “It is absolutely clear that these diseases are no less common where regulation exists than in places where prostitutes enjoy unrestrained freedom to ply their trade.” Verdict of history is against regulation. Many women pronounced healthy act as carriers, and transmit the disease from one patron to another. The true inwardness of regulation on the Continent i? the desire of the police to keep in touch with criminals and others who exploit women Voluntary treatment has been a success so far as the women are taking advantage of it. In surtxming up, the author says that in so far as prostitution is due to

alcohol, to natur.il impulses denied legitimate expression, to mental or moral defects, laws arc useless; the conditions must be altered.

“Civilisation has stripped for a life and death wrestle with tuberculosis, alcohol, and other plagues. It is on .be verge of a similar struggle with the crasser forms ol commercialised vice. Sooner or later it must fling down the gauntlet to the whole horrible thing. This will be the real contest a contest that will tax the courage the self-denial, the faitii, the resources of humanity to their uttermost