Women's Wild Oats Part 6

The condition of the streets is such that it is not safe to let any young man or boy walk about, not so much because of prost.i.tutes, men may learn to avoid them, but because of dressed-up, flighty girls, who have earned big wages during the past four years, and now are feeling the want of money to spend upon dress and pleasure. Almost for the first time girls have had money, and it has enabled them to do what they want; they have learned more than their mothers know and, therefore, they despise their mothers' ideas of what is fitting and natural. Modern girls are out to get all they can, and by any means. It is, I know, easy to exaggerate the situation. I have, however, taken pains to gain all possible information on the subject. I find it the opinion of those who are best qualified to know that the most alarming feature of the problem now is the greatly increased danger of spreading the diseases, caused by the s.h.i.+fting of infection from the professional prost.i.tute to young girls out for larks and presents. I was told by one worker in the Police Court Mission, for instance, of a club for girls, aged from fourteen to twenty-six years, among whom _there was probably not a single pure girl_. A woman rescue worker said that "South London was swamped by these larking girls," so many cases come up that "no one knows what to do with them." In the Police courts, while the number of women charged had lessened considerably, the number of girls charged has increased three-fold. Many of these girls are very young; some of them hardly more than children. In almost all cases the charge made is the same--disorderly conduct with soldiers. Of the number of girls convicted and sent to prison or to rescue homes, _at least three parts are found to be infected_, the greater number with gonorrhoea, but some with syphilis.

Now, it is no part of my purpose to blame women. The great majority of these girls are ill-trained, and have been worked beyond care for decency. The question is, what it is best to do. The answer is not easy.

For while everyone is agreed about the need for action, disagreement as to what form the action shall take hinders the adoption of any wider course of prevention. Here again there is no unity of purpose, no humility to accept what is right.

II

For myself, I shall try to avoid a purely moral and idealistic treatment of the subject. At the same time, before explaining what practical measures should, in my opinion, be taken to lessen the evils, I should like to refer briefly, and I know inadequately, to the deeper causes, which are rooted in our att.i.tude of life, as well as dependent on our hidden desires. Man, and of course I include woman, as a whole is estimated at too low a value. It is a paradoxical consequence that the _parts of man_, I mean his separate organs, rise in value. His brain, his s.e.x, his stomach--each strives for mastery in attention; a faithless age has manias of s.e.xuality, of intellect, of gastronomy.[117:1] These manias are the result of low values really placed on man himself. How do we discover that low value? It is not so much a matter of opinion; far more important than the opinion of the public is the wide-spread, always-acting, fundamental public feeling, expressed in the atmosphere of our society. Every smallest detail of life, our aims and hourly habits, everything that makes up the secret imaginations and the un-willed purposes of life--all have a part to play in deciding what our estimations of life will be, the things we shall seek as desirable, what avoid as unpleasant. If our estimations and hidden desires in actual fact rise in goodness, if we find better aims to satisfy our lives than the excitements of s.e.xual satisfaction, then this department of morality will rise.

The question is one of great complexity, and the surest means of improvement are very difficult to decide; not to be settled in a spirit of Sunday-school optimism. The bad boy does not always come to harm, or the good boy gain the reward that he ought to have. It is not so simple as that. Even if all vulgar and evil desires could by some magician's wand be transformed into their opposites, so that all of us bubbled and seethed with virtues, I do not believe we could count on the results.

Our very virtues might hasten us to perdition: both higher and lower aims, if ill-adjusted to form a complete life, may lead astray. The savage in us all has to be reckoned with as the angel, and the dreamer who ever looks to heaven often stumbles over a tiny stone. Thus a helpless romanticizing, a too ideal as well as a too low view of love, may lead easily to a self-deceiving resort to prost.i.tution.

All forcing of goodness, in my opinion, is dangerous. Often the cause of virtue is injured, like the cause of religion, not only when virtue is allied with routine, dullness and narrowness, but also when appeal is made to aspirations, which the young rarely feel spontaneously, aspirations ill-adapted and too high for their immature characters and the needs at the stage of virtue that has been reached. Certainly they _appear_ to respond, fall in with our plans of salvation and often accept them with seeming joy; I venture, however, to think that very often this external att.i.tude does not in any way correspond with the internal one, that very often there has been disturbance and shock, to be followed later by increased need for excitement, with an impulse to more perilous adventure to cover the unconscious feeling of frustration and disappointment; while another result is a sense of unreality, a state always unfavorable to moral health.

If morality is seen as something overbeautiful for daily use, even more than as something dull, inactive, over-prudent; if vice, on the other hand, is conceived as easy, brilliant, gay, gallantly reckless, in opposition to the too ethereal or merely stupid and prosaic aspects of life (though in reality seldom do the dissipated and those who prey on the vices of mankind possess any brilliance or originality), then beauty and virtue will aid vice, through the stimulus of contradiction it will provide. Vice will gain by the brilliance, wit and beauty, which the artists and creators of the world ought to be induced, were the world's cause properly cared for, to connect with virtue.

The popular view of our common motives still inclines to reduce everything to a single impulse--the young are moved exclusively by self-interest and the search for pleasure. But surely this view is false. Hazlitt, the English essayist most interested in psychology, in his essay on "Mind and Motive," correctly observes that, "love of strong excitement both in thought and action" has much more influence on our ideas, pa.s.sions and pursuits than mere desire for the agreeable.

Curiosity itself, also the love of truth, "our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of persons and places we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy," he holds these to be ill.u.s.trations of "the love of intellectual excitement," and, with respect to this curiosity, he holds that our vices are more due to it than to s.e.xual gratifications, saying with regard to vicious habits, "curiosity makes more votaries than inclination."

We find, then, that the difficult problem we are considering, like other social problems, has a material aspect, that is a medical aspect, an intellectual aspect, and a spiritual aspect concerning the aims of life: and of these the last is the most fundamental; it is obviously also the most difficult. To attack the situation fully it would be necessary to change most of our contemporary life. We are, however, bound to realize that, if we are to succeed, our attention must s.h.i.+ft from saving the fallen, to removing the hindrances and the temptations that are the causes of falling. In other words, we have to provide a society in which the young will find virtue and goodness as serviceable to their needs and as attractive as vice and doing evil.

III

If we turn now to the practical consideration of the problem before us, we find the situation, difficult as it is, is not without hope. We have to face as the result of the war a task greatly enlarged and growing in difficulties, but if we do so face it--and the very increase in the danger is urging us like spurs in the flesh of a tired horse--we have an exceptionally favorable opportunity for correction and amendment. For one thing, we have become more used to being interfered with, also, I think we have come to understand in a new and more profound way that each man "is his brother's keeper." Again the real difficulty arises now, not so much from our want of good will, as from our failure to act unitedly, and formulate and carry out a wide-reaching program of reform.

If for the sake of clarity, we try by cla.s.sifying motives to form a rough grouping, we find that, as with most political subjects, there are three opinions with regard to proposals for State interference to stay the peril and prevent the spread of venereal disease.

The first school favors extreme State interference. Persons suspected of disseminating disease (or "denounced by one of the opposite s.e.x" as having done so) are liable to be arrested, medically examined, and, if necessary, detained for re-examination and for treatment until cured: habitual prost.i.tutes can be sentenced to imprisonment. Possibly State-inspected brothels will be established; all street solicitation treated as an offense. Compulsory medical certificates of freedom from infectious venereal diseases will be made a legal prerequisite of marriage; all wis.h.i.+ng to be married, when found infected, to be registered and treated until certified free from infection. State provision of hygienic preventative and curative means are to be given free to those in danger from infection as well as to all suffering from venereal diseases. Finally, severe police action is urged against agents, landlords, publicans, restaurant and hotel-keepers, theater, music-hall and cinema owners, fortune-tellers--and everyone directly or indirectly profiteering by prost.i.tution. This is not a description of any one national treatment, or proposed treatment of the problem, but rather a composite hotch-potch, intended to include the main features of the new and old schemes based on State interference and regulation of vice.

The opposite school of thought produces an opposite scheme; one that I may, perhaps, call an ethical Sunday-school plan of salvation by means of guidance and gentle persuasions. They would educate people in the fact that all _promiscuous intercourse is likely to be dangerous_, and recommend only an alteration of the laws of marriage and divorce to meet cases of marital infection and to protect children who are infected by negligence. Such a course of mild action is widely supported by bishops and by "sheltered" women, who reveal to us curiously the psychology of the cla.s.s, which, throughout the Victorian period, practiced idealism on the easiest methods.

The practical objections usually advanced to "the interference school"

are that laws of regulation create an illusory sense of security which encourages vice and increases the spread of disease. No inspection, however widely and well regulated, can guarantee that it will detect _all_ infected persons, but the idea will prevail that all infected at any time are "locked up." A still stronger objection as urged by women, arises from the fact that the law will not be equal in its treatment of the two s.e.xes: the man on the spree after his day's work will seek his pleasure without danger of the law's hand, while a woman, _in a similar position, in work and not asking for money_, will be liable to arrest for soliciting, and detention and imprisonment, if affected. I shall have more to say soon on this question; here I will remark only that in bringing forward these objections I am not stating opinions of my own, but trying to be fair to objections, which, I know, are strong in the minds of the majority of women. But I diverge a little in these comments from my present work of cla.s.sifying schemes.

The third type of treatment pursues, of course, a moderate, middle course. Registration and treatment of disease should not be compulsory, because, as opinion at present is, this course will lead merely to concealment on the part of the sufferers, whereas medical treatment at the earliest possible hour is what is aimed at; but free treatment and provision of curative safeguards should be provided to all who apply for them, and always with secrecy. (There is much opposing opinion as to which of these two preventative plans--providing of disinfectants to be used _before_ or of remedies to be used _as soon as possible after the act_--is the more effective.) No wide-spread schemes for examination and detention are recommended, rather are they discouraged; nor is there any firm regulation for ending street soliciting. Certificates of health should _not_ be made a legal pre-requisite to marriage, but the existence of venereal disease should _annul_ marriage without expense, making the law applicable to the poor as well as to the rich. Also, medical men should be specially authorized, without risk of libel, slander or other legal attack, to inform parents or guardians or others directly interested, that anyone contemplating marriage, a man or a woman--is in an infectious state.

It may be pointed out here that military authorities seem to lay stress on one thing that some people will say has nothing to do with the subject--the provision of proper means of recreation. Personally, I would emphasize this aspect of the question to which I have but just now referred. If the amus.e.m.e.nt is to fulfill the purpose required, and be really a strong counter attraction from vice, it must be the kind of recreation desired and liked by the young people for whom it is provided, not merely the recreation that is considered good for them by the adults who provide it. This opens up, of course, a whole welter of questions. I am not advocating bad and low cla.s.s entertainments; I hate them and think their suggestive influence a curse among us. Yet, I do fear the adverse action of any kind of amus.e.m.e.nt that takes the form of an unliked and moral-forcing hot-house.

The fluttering about, the glitter and glare of dissipation, is always, I think, at first the fierce striving of a sickly life towards the only attractive and visible light. Certainly the providing of wholesome amus.e.m.e.nt is necessary, but, in relation to all the change that is really called for, this is just about as important as the giving of packets of sweets. What is wanted is a wiser understanding of the many and conflicting needs of the young; the provision of the opportunities and outlets which their bodies' and souls' growth demand; needs which must be gratified, or the body, driven by dissatisfaction and curiosity, seeks the gratification that has been taken away from the creative soul.

IV

But to return to plans of action for fighting this scourge. The fight has to be made, and to be begun at once. It is stated that there were, at the beginning of the year, in the neighborhood of 20,000 infected men receiving treatment in our Army and Navy Hospitals. According to the estimate of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases published in 1916 there were, at that time, something like 3,000,000 syphilitic persons in the Kingdom, 450,000 in London alone. Since 1916 the number must have greatly increased. Many diseases are more immediately fatal to mankind than are these diseases, but none are so disastrous in their effects. To take but two examples of their destructive incidence; it is known that to them more than half of both the blindness and the lunacy in this country is directly due. But I need not trouble you with facts and figures that to-day are known to almost everyone.

What is needed now is a world-wide, organized plan of defense, modified possibly to meet the special requirements of different countries, but, as far as is possible, the same for the whole world. A first step has been taken, at the meeting of the Red Cross Societies of the world, which was held at Cannes, in April, 1919. No man can tell how far-reaching its work will prove: an International Health Bureau was inst.i.tuted and arrangements made for a further great conference to be held at Geneva after the signing of peace.

I would like to wait and write of the Cannes Conference, which to me was an event more serious even than the other world conference, where some were thoughtlessly and selfishly juggling with human affairs. Here was no pretending, no hiding of motives, just a facing of the real situation. The great events of life are almost always quiet. I picture the great ball-room,[129:1] where usually jazzes and one-steps were indulged in by the officers of the Allied Armies and bright girl W.A.A.C.S. and W.R.E.N.S., occupied now with grave men; a group of some of the greatest scientists ever a.s.sembled together. United they seek for the first time how best an end may be made to this tragic scourge of our civilization;[129:2] their fervent purpose should light a flame to blaze in action in every civilized country.

It would be impossible to over-emphasize the importance of the findings of this Conference. We women are glad to know that the Committee reported unanimously against State regulation of vice and State toleration of prost.i.tution. At the same time, the repression of all street-soliciting was advocated, as well as control of restaurants, hotels or other places with reference to their use for promoting prost.i.tution. The Committee further favored the detention and, where necessary, the isolation of all persons known to be, or suspected of being infected, and advocated the adoption of the report system in regard to early preventive treatment. The importance of early marriage was urged. Other measures recommended were the custodial care of the feeble-minded, and State control of the use of alcohol.

So many people, and especially, I think, women are led astray by s.e.x sentiment as soon as they approach these problems. I do not believe that this can be avoided, but we may guard against it. Thus, those who hesitate, and there are many who do hesitate, in adopting the proposals of the Cannes Committee, which are aimed, either directly or indirectly, against prost.i.tutes, should take care to consider all the facts. Of late there has been exhibited in this country a rather bewildering sentimentality about this matter. The experience of the American Army authorities should teach us a much-needed lesson. The American program to maintain the s.e.xual health of the men went much further than any English proposal, straight and without sentiment to the main cause of the disease, in a way that should shame our vacillating methods.

"The repression of prost.i.tution was declared to be a public health measure, and all public health departments were required to cooperate actively with the proper law authorities in minimizing its practice."

When the American armies entered France, the same end, of keeping the men from "coming in contact with the prost.i.tutes, either public or clandestine," was always kept in view. The difficulties were immense. At that time (from August to the early part of November, 1917) the troops were stationed in certain French towns, where the houses of prost.i.tution were running wide open and were frequented by large numbers of men. On November 15th all these houses were placed out of bounds. The table on the following page shows what happened.

Month No. of No. of Disease Rate Troops. Prophylaxis. Cases. p. 1000.

Houses open.

August 4,571 1,669 72 16 September 9,471 3,392 124 13 October 3,966 2,074 67 16

Houses out of bounds.

November 7,017 885 81 10 December 4,281 539 44 10 January 3,777 523 8 2

Take also these figures: in one body of 7,401 troops belonging to various branches of the service, with an average of seven weeks in France, only 56 prophylactic treatments were given, and only one case of venereal disease developed; again, during two months in France, one infantry regiment of 3,267 men had a record of only eleven prophylactic treatments, and no case of disease. But perhaps the most effective example of the efforts made by the American authorities to repress prost.i.tution in France occurred at Blois. American troops arrived at the town in January, 1918. The brothels were at once placed out of bounds, but, shortly afterward, and, owing to protestations on the part of the French authorities,[132:1] the order was relaxed, in so far as one of the brothels was taken over for the use of the American soldiers. Not for long was this tolerated. On March 21, this brothel also was put out of bounds. Strict repressive measures against prost.i.tution and street-walking were put in force; and repeated arrests--by the military police--both of prost.i.tutes and suspected prost.i.tutes, succeeded in almost ridding the town of this menace.

The result was very interesting. I will quote directly from the article from which these facts are taken:

_Although politicians and the owners of cafes and brothels continued to protest, the decent elements of the community gradually changed from an att.i.tude of skepticism, even of hostility and resentment, to one of appreciation, commendation and cooperation. An official report from the Surgeon-General's office on conditions in the town declared:_

"_It is evident that placing the houses at Blois out of bounds has had a wonderful effect, not only in lowering the venereal rate, but in improving the morality of the soldiers and also of the civil population._"

Of course, these few figures and scattered facts cannot tell the whole story; they do, however, indicate with sufficient clearness what may be done by firm and fearless action.

V

Let me try to make the position clearer by means of another and quite different ill.u.s.tration. The results of restrictions on the drink trade in England during the war showed that legislative interference with strict rules can do much more than many of us believed.[134:1] Wipe off all that is doubtful in the results, all evasions of the law, all that was due to the absence of a large number of healthy men, yet the State interference--prohibition of treating, great shortening of hours, provision of weakened beer--these undoubtedly have acted so as to reduce drunkenness.

Surely this must serve as a great proof that the removal of temptation is the one effective remedy to help men and women and to prevent sin. A man who got into trouble with a woman not very long ago, gave as a defense in police court: "You can say 'No' to one woman, but when they are round you all the time you can't."

The three objections specially urged by women against laws directed against prost.i.tution and prohibiting solicitation are:--

(1) That such laws cannot prevent all solicitation. This may be granted, but it does not prove that they may not greatly lessen the evil of solicitation. It may be granted, in the same way, that no State prohibition can prevent all secret drinking. But this is no reason for or against prohibition; the question is what it does do, not what it does not do.

(2) That such laws act unequally for the two s.e.xes,--that is, that a man is never, or almost never, made specially liable for soliciting and worrying women. This objection is really quite absurd, and it is only on account of the frequency with which it is urged by women that I refer to it again. For the life of me, I cannot see how any woman reconciles it with her conscience to bring forward such a silly evasion. A woman can always give a man in charge who annoys and insults her; moreover, in the vast majority of cases she could without effort protect herself from any such annoyance. Laughter is a weapon that will dishearten the most persistent man-follower. Besides, as every one of us knows, solicitation is the woman's act, and not the man's in ninety-nine out of a hundred of these cases. The man may be ready, possibly he may seek, but he seeks only where he knows the one sought will invite. This objection cannot then, in honesty, stand.

(3) That such laws encourage blackmailing by the police; also that the police may arrest poor, hard-working and defenseless girls, out for a legitimate lark and charge them by error or vindictively. The fear of blackmailing by the police is, I think, the one valid objection.

Possibly it can be met by a much wider use of women police; the second objection of the poor defenseless girl, wrongly charged, leaves me quite unmoved. Again the remedy is in the girl's own hands. But, as a matter of fact, the police are so afraid of making a mistake that, almost in every case where there is a doubt, they do not charge.

Those--again I must add especially women--opposed to State interference in these matters must ask themselves on what grounds their opposition is based: should we not consider the health of society in the present and the future well-being of the race as more important than our personal distaste and intellectual dislike of interference? Even _liberty_ must not take up a disproportionate amount of s.p.a.ce in our view. My own belief in the efficacy of making right doing as simple as is possible by lessening temptation, is based on what life has taught me, that the fundamental character of people is not greatly alterable, but that the alteration of their circ.u.mstances will certainly influence the effect and working of their capacities and instincts. The b.u.t.tercup which is tall with a flower at the end of a high firm stalk and leaves with slender spike fingers, if it grows in an open meadow, becomes a stunted flower on a short stem, and its leaves form squat webs, in order to force its growth on a close-cropped lawn. The experience of the American Army shows us that to cut off opportunity and suggestion of temptation, the incentives to libidinous imagination, is to alter character more than everyone recognizes. When I think of this achievement, gained in so short a time and with so simple means, I confess I lose patience with the opposition raised by the women of this country against every attempt at legislative interference with prost.i.tution. Nothing can be done thoroughly because of this hindering folly. There really is no limit to women's sentimental egoism and their blindness in turning from facts.

We pray in our churches "lead us not into temptation," but we leave our streets crowded with temptations. Surely this is stupid negligence and worse. Remove the temptations, and as a nation we shall be delivered from evil.

VI

Now, a friend who has read this chapter up to this point, objects that I am laying too great stress on one aspect of the problem, bringing forward with undue insistence the importance of restricting prost.i.tution--the removal of the woman tempter as the only practical way to prevent the spread of s.e.xual diseases. She does not, I think, like my dismissal of conscious moral striving from a princ.i.p.al place in my scheme of reformation. That, at least, I gather from what she has said to me. Stronger, however, than this feeling, is, I am sure, an unconscious, or at any rate an unacknowledged, irritation at what she feels to be a failure on my part _to blame men_; I say too little about their weakness and their l.u.s.t.