CHAPTER II

THE DEMAND

Prostitution involves two parties.—Extent of demand in Europe.—Theory of its necessity.—Is physiological impulse irresistible?—Analysis into various factors.—Demand emanating from woman.—Effect of improvement in social status.—Changed attitude of medical profession.—Reduction of demand through education.—Sex education in Europe.—Influence of demoralizing literature.—Recent improvement.

Prostitution is usually described and discussed from the standpoint of the women involved alone; but the problem cannot be understood so long as it is approached solely from that angle. In every act of prostitution at least two parties, usually, but not always, of opposite sex, are concerned. Now one, now the other, is either initially or more highly responsible. Not infrequently, however, these two individuals are so far from constituting the entire situation that they may be mere puppets in the hands of others: the man, the victim of shrewdly devised suggestion or excitement; the woman, the bait cunningly dangled by pimp, brothel-keeper, or publican. Under such circumstances it is plainly absurd to speak of prostitution as if it were only or even mainly the act of the woman; as if women took to prostitution simply because they were marked out for a vicious life by innate depravity or even forced into it by economic pressure. Inclination on the one hand, need on the other, are among the factors that will assist us to understand the problem; but a fundamental and antecedent condition is the existence of a market, clamoring for wares of a particular kind and furnishing an opportunity for the forced sale of such wares as do not themselves immediately find buyers. Instead, therefore, of explaining prostitution as if it were caused by certain conditions affecting solely or primarily the constitution or environment of women, I shall view it from the standpoint of demand and supply. In utilizing these terms I do not mean to imply that a certain volume of demand exists, to begin with, and that this is satisfied and has to be satisfied through the production somehow of a corresponding supply. We shall find that both demand and supply are variable factors. The demand can within limits be stimulated or checked; the supply can be increased or decreased; and the increase of supply can be so manipulated as to increase demand. Moreover, a given supply can be made to satisfy a smaller or a larger demand, so that the volume of prostitution is a matter not only of the number of those engaged, but of the intensity of their activity. The two partners—the man and the woman—thus not only interact on each other, but are both played upon by agencies lying outside themselves. This method will have the advantage of demonstrating the interlocking relations of the man, the woman, and the exploiter.

That this procedure is both fair and sound a moment’s consideration will show. If the prostitution of women had specific causes, in the sense in which the term cause is used in science, then, wherever such causes are present, prostitution should result. There are, however, no conditions of which this can be affirmed. Of the number of women of whom any particular fact or set of facts is characteristic, only a small portion ever become prostitutes. For example: prostitutes have often been, as we shall see, domestic servants. Yet service, even under unfavorable conditions, cannot be said to cause prostitution, for more servants escape than succumb. The conditions of service at most indicate whence part of the supply will be drawn. Moreover, once engaged in prostitution, the woman does not passively wait to be sought out by ungratified spontaneous demand; in order to earn her own livelihood or to satisfy the cupidity of a third party, she proceeds to create or develop the demand for what she has to sell. At every moment there exists a circle of habituated consumers, as well as numerous agencies,—the women and their exploiters, for example,—actively engaged in increasing the number of consumers and the urgency of their demands. Demand and supply thus interact upon each other in much the same fashion as characterizes the interplay of the market in reference to any other commodity. The application of this conception to the discussion of prostitution has therefore two obvious advantages: it brings out the dual nature of the phenomenon and it suggests the commercial side involved in the production and maintenance of prostitution on the grand scale.

At the present time, the demand on the part of the continental male European is practically universal;[72] so true is this, that until quite recently questioned, it has been taken to be an ultimate and inevitable physiological fact. Male continence has not been required by either tradition or opinion. A low regard for women has practically left the matter one to be regulated by men on such standards as they themselves approve. Indulgence begins early: Meirowsky’s investigations indicate that at least 20% of the boys in the highest gymnasium classes are already habituated;[73] of 106 venereally infected University students, 61% admitted intercourse before reaching the University.[74] In a Vienna statistic covering 10,057 cases of venereal infection, over one-half were minors, and 67% under 25 years of age. Prof. Finger, Chief of the great Vienna clinic, concludes that these figures are actually representative,—that perhaps one-half of all venereal disease belongs to the youth of both sexes.[75] Welander found that of 582 Swedish men, 464 admitted intercourse before the end of the 18th year.[76] “In the country and in the urban proletariat, no one dreams of continence beyond adolescence,” says Blaschko.[77] “Among the working-classes, city or country, abstinence is excessively rare, and in the higher classes, practically insignificant.”[78] Of 90 physicians interrogated by Prof. Neisser respecting their sexual history, only one denied all intercourse prior to marriage and he attributed his exemption to an early engagement alone; twenty-eight, i. e., 32.9%, had indulged themselves while still in the secondary school.[79] These figures have been confirmed by other investigators.[80] Beginning thus early after puberty, sexual intercourse on the male’s part ranges more or less widely prior to marriage and is none too severely constrained by custom even afterwards. Its practical universality, with the rare exceptions explicable on religious or ethical grounds, is substantiated by the wide prevalence of venereal complaints. “Roughly speaking,” remarked a distinguished specialist, whose opinion, when quoted by me to his confrères has rarely been strongly overruled,—“roughly speaking, one may say that most German men have had gonorrhœa, and about one in five syphilis.”[81]

No wonder that where practice is so general, theory has accommodated itself so far as to assume that sexual intercourse on the male’s part is necessary and wholesome. Up to recent times this has been almost undisputed dogma. The practically universal demand was for centuries regarded fatalistically as inevitable and incontestable; in the Middle Ages, a sufficient supply of women was imported by way of entertaining the delegates to church congresses.[82] A change of attitude and opinion is, however, undoubtedly taking place. The universality of demand has been condoned on the assumption that it represented an irresistible physiological impulse. A good deal of attention has been latterly expended in the effort to resolve this so-called physiological impulse into its constituent elements, with the following results. In the first place, however strong the spontaneous sex impulse may be, it is like any other impulse—capable of restraint through the cultivation of inhibitions. Except for the futile precepts of the church, European society has for centuries been singularly free from any such effort. Women have been regarded as inferior creatures and have contentedly accepted the status assigned to them. They have therefore failed to resent masculine immorality; the self-restraint that might thereby have been imposed on men—be it much or little—has been generally lacking. Europe has been a man’s world,—managed by men and largely for men,—for cynical men, at that,—men inured to the sight of human inequalities, callous as to the value of lower-class life, and distinctly lacking in respect for womanhood, especially that of the working-classes. The military, the aristocracy, the student, are all conceded their fling. “Dem Studenten ist ja alles erlaubt—To the student everything is allowed.” Where soldier and scholar freely indulge themselves without reprobation, it is too much to expect the artisan to refrain.

Not only has there been—up to recently, at least—no social inhibition: there has been a strong social compulsion. Men swim with the current; they fall in with accepted habits and customs, in order to escape being ridiculous, and custom established in this way is practically imposed on successive generations. Certain forms of venereal experience have been popularly treated as marks of maturity. Dr. Magnus Möller tells of a club of military officers existing in Stockholm in the early nineties to which no one was eligible until he could prove that he had had syphilis.[83] Quite as flagrantly, boys have been practically coerced into sowing wild oats. Women, whose influence might have been exerted restrainingly, have been trained not to pry into the prematrimonial records of their husbands; fathers fashion their sons, as a rule, after their own image. Indulgence brought about in this way cannot fairly be characterized or excused as physiological, even though, once experienced, it soon gathers intensity enough to operate on its own account and to play the ominous rôle of suggestion to others.

Finally, we may not overlook the part played by deliberate excitation on the part of the woman or those in whose interests she works. Prostitution is not merely a matter between man and woman,—the former overtaken by a periodic impulse demanding gratification, the latter supporting herself through the passionless sacrifice of the sexual function. Over and above this, it is an industry, deliberately cultivated by third parties for their own profit: and the instinct readily lends itself to artificial exploitation. A very large constituent in what has been called the irresistible demand of natural instinct is nothing but suggestion and stimulation associated with alcohol,[84] late hours, and sensuous amusements, and deliberately worked up for the profit of third parties,—pimps, tavern-keepers, bordell proprietors, etc. Street-walking, with the pimp across the way ready to ply the lash; the Animierkneipe, in which the earnings of the prostitute barmaid are wholly dependent upon the extent to which she overmasters her guest through liquor and otherwise; the bordell, in which heavy charges and her small proportional share force her to find an extensive trade,—these are the most obvious examples of supply deliberately and resourcefully engaged in creating demand. Amid conditions as they exist in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and the smaller towns like Geneva which aspire to be world cities by being licentious, growing youth is characterized not by a normal, healthy, and natural sexual development, but by an over-stimulated and premature sex activity—a purely artificial excitation of instinct. An artificial supply of prostitutes is deliberately created; forced upon the market under appropriate conditions, an artificial demand is worked up to consume it. Every tolerated focus, through the existence of which third parties benefit, thus soon becomes a vested interest, actively engaged in whipping up demand and supply, reacting upon each other. Supply, everywhere greater than spontaneous demand, is utilized to create a secondary demand. A striking example of deliberate business organization along these lines is to be found in Paris where, closely adjoining one another in the rue Pigal are found a dance hall, a café and an assignation house said to form a plant under one management.

The sex impulse, however formidable it may be, is thus on close investigation discovered to be not the single powerful physiological force which it has been represented to be, resistlessly pushing towards an instinctive object, but rather a combination of forces of very different quality as respects both origin and intensity. Taking prostitution and resort to prostitution as they exist in any great city to-day, three distinct factors are readily distinguished: sex impulse, pure and simple; social instigation or compulsion; sheer artificial excitation. Not improbably, instinct plays a decidedly less important part than is commonly supposed; much of what has been viewed as physiological is undoubtedly social. Less than half of Neisser’s cases attributed their lapse to their own impulse,—and even this impulse is not necessarily of really spontaneous origin; of the others, 28.8% blamed comrades for dragging them into trouble; 18.6% acted under alcoholic excitement. In another set of 129 cases cited, less than half acted on native impulse; alcohol figures with 23.6%; comrades, with 29.4%.[85] Nor is native impulse itself any longer regarded as a constant or spasmodically irresistible force; it can be checked, diverted, modified, or stimulated. It becomes stronger with indulgence; weaker through continued repression.

For the reasons above given, demand is no longer spoken of as if it were a constant quantity determined at any given time and place by the ultimate constitution of human nature and unalterable except by transformation of the character of the race; just as it is equally absurd to speak in fatalistic terms of the supply. Not a single factor in either demand or supply bears this rigid elemental stamp; every factor is capable of mitigation or aggravation by human decisions, institutions, habits,—some of them, indeed, more or less readily so. “Human nature”—so-called—is not the whole of it, in the sense in which the expression is commonly used. Indeed, human nature itself may be made better or worse by opinion, inhibition, suggestion, example. Unquestionably, do what we will, a problem—a vast problem—will remain; but it is an enormous gain to have learned that a considerable volume of prostitution and of the demand for prostitution is the product of conditions that, however difficult the task, are within limits socially controllable.

One must not, of course, overlook the fact that demand does not simply take the form of the male seeking or being induced to seek the female. The seeker is sometimes the woman herself, bent upon her own gratification. Her own effort may thus succeed in increasing demand. It is impossible to say with what frequency male irregularity is thus provoked. Of Meirowsky’s 102 first offenders, 29.4% attributed their lapse to the seductive influence of comrades, part of whom were girls; of 28 physicians whose first offence occurred while still at school, over one-half blamed themselves wholly; three of them threw the initial blame on girls, all of whom were servants. But the overwhelming majority of women involved in provocation are open or concealed prostitutes.

The fact just stated throws an interesting light on the possibility of reducing immorality through the cultivation of social inhibitions. We learned in the preceding chapter that under the natural conditions that obtain in the country and in certain sections of the urban working-classes, girls are sometimes equally responsible partners in sexual irregularity. Clan morality does not forbid; we may assume, therefore, that not infrequently the woman indulges her passion precisely as the man indulges his. But the moment that improved social or economic position brings her under the range of more exacting ideals, she checks herself. The first consciousness of the higher requirement results in decidedly reducing the scope which she allows to her impulse. It is perhaps true that self-restraint is actually easier for women than for men;[86] but it is at any rate not achieved without effort. It is therefore not without significance that the social sanction, as yet but slightly operative among men, is among women of the higher classes very generally powerful enough to reverse the animal engine. Unhappy consequences to health are alleged, and doubtless sometimes occur; but they are a lesser evil than disgrace, disease or pregnancy and are endured as such.

The analysis of demand as above outlined has already borne consequences both theoretical and practical. In the first place, it has accomplished a striking change in medical opinion as to the necessity of sexual intercourse and the supposedly unfavorable results of continence. Recent medical literature abounds in strong and authoritative expressions utterly at variance with the traditional position. Cases of irrepressible desire are stamped as pathological, rather than normal; as relatively rare, rather than usual or even frequent. Continence is, in general, increasingly regarded as both feasible and wholesome. “I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of persons are not in the least injured by continuous continence whether during youth or afterwards,” writes Moll. “The longer one is continent, the more readily is continence borne, the less is one annoyed by the sexual impulse.”[87] Moll insists that, even in cases where neurotic disturbances occur, these are not comparable to the damage, corporal and moral, which attends irregular intercourse—and of course it always remains to be proven that the disturbances in question really result from abstinence. Pinkus, conceding that occasionally depressing symptoms attend self-restraint, points out that “the annoyances arising from abstinence are far from being such serious psychic disturbances as are produced by the knowledge that one has contracted venereal disease: under which conditions abstinence must be practised anyway.”[88] “There is not a shadow of proof to show that continence is damaging to health.—To the continent, continence becomes progressively easier.”[89] “Whatever disturbances are attributable to sexual abstinence, they are usually non-progressive and are for the most part remediable through hygienic and therapeutic measures. On the other hand, the damages done through intimacy with prostitutes far overshoot in number and gravity any harm attributable to continence.”[90] Exceedingly cogent is Touton’s curt summary: “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.”[91] Again: “Altogether healthy men, sexually normal, can, without danger of illness, for the most part get along far into maturity without sexual intercourse, if they do not purposely excite themselves or if temptation is not pressed upon them, especially so, if, instead of such stimulation, they resort to moderate exercises and adequate mental employment. The idler cannot remain continent.”[92] Johansson urges that through the cultivation of an inhibitory mechanism, the impulse can be limited, and subordinated to the welfare of the individual and of society.[93]

There is no livelier topic under discussion in connection with prostitution than that of the methods to be pursued in order to minimize demand, in accordance with the modern scientific view that irregular sexual intercourse is a reducible evil. The fact that “appetite grows by what it feeds on” pleads strongly for timely action. Instruction, with special reference to sex-physiology, has therefore been widely and confidently urged as the means of acquainting childhood and, later, youth, with the essential facts of sex-physiology, so as to deprive the facts of morbid interest and to warn the child of the dangers attending uncleanliness. It will be worth while to give a brief account of what has taken place in this direction in Europe and to consider what benefit is likely to be derived from this source.

Despite the prevalent notion to the contrary, the subject of sex education is as yet very largely in the realm of theory or controversy. As to this point, a strange misconception obtains. In England, one hears that great progress has been made in this field in Germany; in Germany one is referred with equal positiveness to Scandinavia; in Scandinavia to Finland, whither, however, I did not pursue the will-o’-the wisp. The facts are these:

No recognition is given to sex-instruction in English schools at all.[94] The head-masters and house-masters in some of the great public schools,—notably Eton,—endeavor, however, to gain the confidence of the boys individually, to put them on their guard and to assist them if in distress. A series of leaflets has been issued by the church schools for the guidance of parents, who are urged to open the subject with their sons at the proper time.[95] In Prussia, which is representative of the States of the German Empire, sex-instruction of any kind is very rarely given at the popular schools;[96] in the Gymnasien,—the nine-year secondary schools opening into the University,—a lecture on the subject may be given to the last year class[97] by the School Director, a teacher or a physician;[98] attendance on the part of the students is optional. The lectures deal with the feasibility of continence, which is strongly urged, the dangers attending sexual irregularity or abnormality, and the misuse of alcohol; at times they are printed and circulated. During the school year 1911, such lectures were given at 76 Gymnasien out of a total of almost 800. Similar talks are given at institutions for the training of teachers. Occasionally pupils before leaving school are presented with books dealing with the topic in a wholesome manner. This represents the sum total of school instruction on the subject in Prussia; additional lectures, of an occasional character are provided for parents, artisans, etc., by local branches of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Disease. In Denmark and Norway, nothing either of a general or a compulsory character exists; Sweden practically repeats Prussia, offering no instruction in popular schools, an optional lecture to last year students in the higher secondary schools, particularly those for girls, in the discretion of the headmaster or headmistress. Systematic or general instruction has developed as yet nowhere in Europe. The educational officials of both Prussia and Sweden distinctly hold that under existing conditions the problem is one for the home, not the school. France is at the same stage of development. A memorandum on the subject has been submitted to the ministry of education, but no official action has been taken.

In view of the paucity of our experience, much of the literature on the subject strikes the observer as perhaps promising too much from mere diffusion of knowledge. Undoubtedly it is beyond all question that no boy or girl ought to be permitted to err through sheer ignorance. But it does not follow that fuller and clearer knowledge on the part of the growing boy and girl will itself effectively restrain; not only knowledge, but knowledge suffused with ethical emotion is requisite.[99] By prematurely creating images and stimulating curiosity both of which go further than the immediate communications on the topic, knowledge alone may either originate or increase the danger. Inhibition is unquestionably possible and it must be educationally brought about; but it involves not only a certain amount of intelligence on the child’s part, but control of impulse through loyalty—instinctive or deliberate—to precept and example. As the boy matures, the actual dangers involved in immorality may be so depicted as to exert a deterrent effect; but the main reliance must continue to be upon the higher motivation.

The importance of emotional and ethical training suggests the importance of the home in this connection. Foreign opinion is well-nigh unanimous in recommending that parents initiate the subject at the psychological moment,—a moment that is rarely the same for two individuals; subsequently the school can make its contribution, though there is as yet no agreement as to the form or the time.[100] Some urge that it be the natural outgrowth of general biological instruction;[101] some favor class teaching, others individual instruction; an occasional writer contends that, while boys should be urged to continence, they should also be taught the use of preventives since it is well known in advance that they will not obey![102]

The practical difficulties are, however, very great. The researches of Moll and others indicate that sexual instinct and curiosity awaken at different stages in different children; something depends on the constitution of the individual child, something on the environment. Moreover, the parents of the children most dangerously exposed are very often those who are most incapable of managing the situation. A little later, when the school might intervene, the difficulty due to individual differences has not disappeared and additional problems have also arisen. Class instruction disregards individual variations and requires the greatest tact and skill in presentation; the teachers are as yet incompetent;[103] physicians lay as a rule too much stress on disease and on mere knowledge, and are as a rule clumsy and ineffective or skeptical respecting the ethical side, without which such understanding of the subject as may be brought about is apt to be of slight value. The danger that lurks in tabooing or avoiding the subject has been clearly demonstrated; but there is danger, too, in breaking down reserve. The more explicit the intellectual aspects of the matter are made, the more important does it become to insist that the mere communication of the facts cannot possibly alone attain the end toward which the movement looks. The girl must develop character enough to resist easy demoralization; the boy, character enough to subdue rebellious impulse.

Still later, when boys are about to leave the Gymnasium—and therewith their homes—in order to enter upon the freedom of University life in strange towns, candid talks to whole classes, laying particular stress upon the penalties attached to immorality, can be indeed given, as from time to time they are. But, unless effective training on higher lines has begun long before, the good to be achieved is of dubious extent: witness the prevalence of venereal disease among last year Gymnasium and first year University students, and the rapid, even if passing, demoralization characteristic of the latter.

The educational situation in reference to sex hygiene may then be concisely put as follows: little progress has been anywhere made in actual instruction; decided benefit is to be hoped for only where increase of knowledge is accompanied by increase of self-control—by loyalty, conscious and unconscious, to higher ideals of personal behavior.

I have mentioned above the factors and influences that tend artificially to develop demand. Whatever makes prostitution prominent, easy, attractive, seductive, unquestionably operates to increase demand. By the same token, measures that deprive prostitution of prominence, facility, attractiveness, seductiveness, reduce demand, or,—what amounts to the same thing—hinder its artificial increase. In the modern city, many conditions make, some purposely, some incidentally, for the stimulus of sex appetite: glitter, luxury, the mad rush for amusement, the stage, the café, the tavern,—all assist in the early maturity of the sex function, the exercise of which they also facilitate. With many of the artifices that have been employed to develop prostitution as a business conducted for the profit mainly of third parties, I shall deal in other chapters.[104] But certain of them may properly be considered in this connection.

A by no means negligible factor in stimulating appetite are erotic books, prints, etc. Obscene objects of this character are frequently circulated in secret in schools,—girls’ as well as boys’; occasionally they are even advertised under more or less deceptive titles. In recent years active efforts have been made to stamp out this nefarious trade. An international agreement has been arrived at, according to the terms of which the police departments of the nations who are parties thereto cooperate in ferreting out publishers and importers of immoral publications and in endeavoring to bring them to justice. In France,[105] Germany,[106] Austria and elsewhere popular societies have been formed for the purpose of making war on pornography; laws have been strengthened and ministerial decrees emitted, establishing special police bureaux to handle offenders.[107] The kinematograph is the most recent invention open to abuse in this direction; to forestall which, inspection of films has already been introduced at police headquarters in Berlin. Many congresses, national and international, held in recent years, are evidence of a growing determination to stop the artificial and premature excitation of sex demand through immoral books, pictures, plays and other representations. The total laxity which once prevailed has been checked and increasing restraint may be looked for, as public opinion is educated to require and to sustain it.[108] For even where laws exist, their enforcement depends on the vigor and sympathy of police officials and magistrates, who, in the interpretation of the statute, in some measure take their cue from the newspapers and popular opinion. In a recent London case, a Bow Street Magistrate convicted a bookseller for disposing of a book, of which, in imposing punishment, he stated that nothing “more foul or filthy” had been found in London in a long time. Subsequently another case, involving the same book, was brought into court; and in the latter instance, the culprit was acquitted.[109] In Germany, the laws—long since fairly adequate—were for years a dead letter; but recent agitation has already had a noticeable effect. Curiously enough, the most decisive action on the part of the authorities is feasible only in countries where the liberty of the press is most firmly established: for only in countries thoroughly free in spirit will the public deliberately impose limitations on itself without fear that such restrictions may ultimately be abused to serve other ends than those originally intended.

Though no quantitative evidence of improving morality can be given, the various movements above touched on supply proof that opinion is undergoing a change which must in the end affect conduct. I was indeed assured that a change is already perceptible to those whose knowledge spans a sufficiently great period of time. Custom once practically constrained the French student in the Latin quarter to swim with the current; now it has become possible to lead a blameless life without incurring contempt for his idiosyncrasy; an impassioned literature appealing to the German student has made its appearance.[110] The woman’s movement will unquestionably destroy the passivity of German women in respect to masculine irregularities. The task of developing continence in nations habituated to indulgence is one of inexpressible difficulty; but it may be fairly said that now for the first time it has been deliberately faced on the Continent by a small, but earnest band of men and women bent upon the purification of the sexual life.