THE WOMAN OF THE 
STREETS 
By 
Lee Alexander Stone, M. D. 
Major M. C. U. S. R.; Late Instructor on Social and Sex 
Hygiene and Venereal Disease Control to Troops 
Located in Cantonments and Flying Fields, 
U. S. Army; Former Lecturer Medical So- 
ciology, University of Tennessee Med- 
ical College, Memphis, Tenn. Au- 
thor "Eugenics and Marriage," 
"Sex Discussion," "Hidden 
Menace," etc. Region- 
al Consultant U. S. 
Public Health 
Service. 
Illustrated by J. P. Alley 
Kansas City, Missouri 
BURTON PUBLISHING COMPANY 
Publishers COPYRIGHTED 1919 
BY 
BURTON PUBLISHING COMPANY TO MY FRIEND, 
DR. G. FRANK LYDSTON, 
"The Noblest Roman of Them All."  to express my deep appreciation for 
the telling cartoons in this work to my very 
good friend J. P. Alley, cartoonist for the 
Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal. 
LEE A. STONE. CHAPTER ONE. 
Ancient Prostitutes-factors in the 
Establishment of Society. 
CHAPTER TWO. 
The Venereal Peril. 
CHAPTER THREE. 
Segregation or Clandestine Prostitu- 
tion. Which ? 
CHAPTER FOUR. 
The Harmfulness of Vice Crusades. 
CHAPTER FIVE. 
The Socalled Reformer an Enemy to 
Society. 
CHAPTER SIX. 
Enfranchisement of Women a Step 
Forward. 
CHAPTER SEVEN. 
A Plea for Our Children. 
CHAPTER EIGHT. 
Causes of Prostitution. 
ADDENDA. 
Excerpts from Editorials. "THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME!* 
J.p/LLSY /» MeHPit/S CDHHC/K/JI INTRODUCTION. 
My reason for writing on this theme 
is that for centuries all forms of prosti- 
tution have been classified under one 
head by Christians and reformers. 
They have refused to believe that at one 
time in history female human beings 
were impelled by religious motives to 
sacrifice their virginity at hymen's al- 
ter for the purpose of improving their 
race, and that commercial prostitution 
is of comparatively recent origin. 
I hope to make my disquisition so 
clear that my readers who expect me to 
deal in pornographic rhetoric will be 
disappointed. I have no patience with 
the individual who is constantly trying 
to find "dirt" in every thing he reads, 
which deals with the actions of man and 
his mate, or with the doings of individ- 
7 8 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
uals who have been forced to become 
anti-social creatures by an uncharit- 
able and unfeeling society, who only 
recognize "the sin of being found out" 
as being the one which cannot be for- 
given. I feel a great sympathy for the 
present day prostitute. She comes from 
the proletariat and as a consequence 
of this educational workers and relig- 
ionists have not thought her worth 
while as a factor in society. They have 
not tried to educate her kind; by her 
kind I mean the great mass of ignorant 
individuals who are in our country to- 
day, who have knocked many times at 
the doors of high-brow institutions and 
ponderous religious systems, begging 
to be allowed entrance into the holy of 
holies of a greater enlightenment, only 
to be turned away by those who should 
have thrown the mantle of charity 
about their shoulders and taken them 
in. All Americans are snobs, the dol- 
lar is the only thing that counts, and 
even though I may be contradicted by 
individuals who will say that philan- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
9 
thropists abound who are trying to lift 
those who cannot help themselves, out 
of the depths, I say that their work so 
far has amounted to little. They have 
put the cart before the horse, they have 
failed to see the underlying reasons for 
the existence of a pauper class who are 
totally unable to help themselves, and 
who need real help, help not alone of a 
financial nature, but of an educational 
type that will pull them out of the mire 
of despair and give them sufficient 
mental strength to resist the tempta- 
tion that comes to them in so many 
forms. 
Altruism is a bugbear in modern so- 
ciety and men and women who feel a 
real desire to help are called "dream- 
ers" or "agitators" and are crucified 
on the cross of materialism. The in- 
dividual who dares to express his or 
her opinion unless it agrees with that 
of the ultra-conservatives, or better ex- 
pressed, the provincial member of so- 
ciety, is damned. He or she may finally 
come to the top, but more often they 10 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
are crushed by the Juggernaut of ridi- 
cule until they give up in disgust, feel- 
ing that it is useless to longer tell the 
truth into ears that are deaf. 
If individuals are to progress and 
society is to climb to heights unattain- 
able through ignorance, the truth must 
be told. Nothing must be regarded as 
sacred unless it will stand in the strong 
light of fact, and bias should have no 
place in the minds of educators or in- 
vestigators. We are too prone to jump 
to a conclusion, and allow that conclu- 
sion to govern our actions. We should 
not, until after a careful investigation 
has been made, announce our opinions 
for fear of doing damage where it was 
not intended that damage should be 
done. The truth makes men and wom- 
en whole and replaces readily doubt 
and hypocrisy. 
Christianity is on trial every time a 
vice campaign is started, and it is com- 
manded of every so-called Christian to 
do his duty and act as the Nazarene 
would have him act were he present to THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
11 
direct. "Let him who is without sin 
among you cast the first stone at her." 
These words of Jesus have thundered 
down the ages as a warning to the 
smug, self-satisfied member of organ- 
ized Social Systems. Christ meant ex- 
actly what he said, and it ill behooves 
any man today to cast a stone at the 
woman who has erred and for whose 
error he is responsible. 
The last one at the cross and the first 
one at the tomb was Mary Magdala, 
former queen of the courtesans of Jeru- 
salem. Christ loved Mary and cleansed 
her with his wonderful love and under- 
standing. 
There are many women of the under- 
world who can be saved. There are 
many who cannot for they have become 
too hardened and too cynical to be eas- 
ily reached by a reform wave. A means 
should be provided for a careful study 
of the causes for prostitution before 
any district is broken up; and the resi- 
dents therein must not be made to feel 
that the hand of society is against them, 12 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
but should receive the help that human 
methods may direct. 
I have been forced to give a short his- 
tory of prostitution before going into 
the causes and remedies for the salva- 
tion of society's victims. 
I believe that a study of ancient 
forms of prostitution is necessary in 
order that a fair treatment of condi- 
tions that exist today may result. 
A few years ago there went to Mem- 
phis, Tenn., a body of men who called 
themselves Reformers and Religionists. 
While in Memphis they undertook to 
discover the causes for social vices 
there. They visited the red light dis- 
trict at all hours of the night, and if 
reports are true, they resorted to tricks 
that would make the oldest roue blush 
with shame, in order to get the stories 
of the lives of the residents of the dis- 
trict. These men listened to made up 
tales of woe, tales prepared for their 
benefit by the inmates of houses who 
had many a laugh over them after they 
had been told. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
13 
These same men, so the story goes, 
submitted to caresses, etc., from these 
women, thinking to get a true story 
from their lips, of the causes for their 
prostitution. Prostitutes enjoy im- 
mensely fooling overzealous investi- 
gators, who carry their investigations 
to a point that makes them ridiculous. 
It is human nature for them to try to 
have what they call their fun, and they 
relish pouring a tale of woe into the 
ears of a soft hearted individual, a tale 
that is made up as they talk. This indi- 
vidual, if he would take a second 
thought before beginning his investi- 
gation, would go at it in a common- 
sense manner and lay aside hysterical 
methods as being entirely useless. 
The man or the woman who obtains 
a true story from the fallen woman 
usually goes after it in a way that does 
not offend. They gain the confidence 
of the one they are looking after long 
before they ever ask a question. This 
is as it should be, and until all those 
who, however honest their intentions 14 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
are, learn humanitarian methods, their 
work will go for naught. 
I have purposely made this treatise 
brief with the hope that readers will 
come forward and offer further sug- 
gestions, having in mind for some fu- 
ture day the total elimination of vice. 
L. A. S. PAGES 15-16 MISSING CHAPTER ONE. 
Many will be shocked at the state- 
ment that the primitive prostitute was 
of the greatest benefit to society. 
People of ages and ages ago were en- 
dogamous. They absolutely forbade the 
marriage of one of their clan or gens 
to a member of an outside organization 
or gens. As a result of this it was not 
long before all of the members of a 
single clan or gens were related by 
blood ties to one another and the nat- 
ural consequence of consanguineous 
union of normal with abnormal individ- 
uals, physical and mental degeneration 
resulted. Many females were forced 
through assault being made on their 
persons to have intercourse with male 
members of gens who did not belong 
to their own; they gave birth to off- 
springs who became stronger both 
17 18 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
physically and mentally than those 
born as a result of consanguineous un- 
ion. The wise men of the gens were the 
first to notice this improvement as the 
result of intercourse with outsiders 
and consulted the priests for advice. 
Religious prostitution was the result. 
Rather than become exogamous all 
single females were required once in a 
life-time to submit themselves to a 
stranger. According to man's present 
code of ethics, society associates a pro- 
cedure of this sort with the sensual 
and immoral. The sacrifice of virtue 
to the goddess of Mylitta was not in 
any sense a sensual or lewd custom. It 
marked a desire to progress, and its 
application as a religious duty was 
highly proper. Priests realized that 
unless outside blood was imported into 
their clans that their doom was sealed, 
that the mark of inbreeding would 
leave its indelible stain upon them and 
that degeneracy and its evil brood 
would soon destroy them. 
Sacred prostitution permitted fe-. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
19 
males to bear children by outsiders 
without the obligation of marriage; 
thereby bringing new blood into their 
tribes which strengthened them with- 
out the importation of a foreign in- 
fluence. Prostitution as an original 
sacred institution stood foremost as 
being of service to mankind. Without 
it the human race would possibly have 
decayed and progress would have been 
rendered impossible. 
The family as it originally stood was 
composed of a host of females with 
only one male, who attended to all of 
their sexual needs. The patriarch, as 
he was called, jealously guarded all of 
his women even to the extent of driving 
his sons from his camp as soon as they 
reached puberty and forbade them en- 
tering it ever again under the penalty 
of death. He had children by his wife, 
her sisters, his daughters and his 
daughter's daughters. This condition 
existed for centuries until an element 
of spirituality entered the heart of a 
mother who persuaded the patriarch 20 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
to allow her favorite son to remain with 
her. After much pleading the son was 
allowed to remain with the injunction 
that he was to let his father's females 
alone. He was permitted to capture a 
wife and bring her home and establish 
a gens of his own. This finally resulted 
in the establishment of settlements with 
one common ancestor and all bore his 
name. 
The reader can readily see what dis- 
astrous results might be expected when 
a father had intercourse not only with 
his wife and her sisters, but with his 
own daughters. Weaklings were born 
and something had to be done to 
strengthen, hence females became the 
logical saviors of their race. 
It was centuries after religious pros- 
titution came into existence that an 
exogamous union was permitted. When 
exogamy became an established fact, 
and men and women were forbidden to 
marry within their own clans, human 
kind began to progress as it never had 
done before. Tribes became civilized, THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
21 
a desire to push ahead of neighboring 
clans obsessed them, and as a result of 
this, great nations were born. Babylon, 
Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece and Rome 
with their ascending greatness came 
into existence to leave their stamp of 
civilizing influence to be felt for cen- 
turies upon centuries after their great- 
ness had become merely a matter of his- 
torical record. 
Necessity has been the cause of pro- 
gress. Through their need for better 
blood and a stronger people the an- 
cients conceived the sacrifice of their 
females to the gods of procreation in 
order that new blood might become 
fused with their's for their physical and 
mental betterment. Their minds were 
primitive, therefore they could not con- 
ceive of schemes enlightened minds of 
today would devise in a moment of their 
improvement, without the sacrifice of 
the virginity of their females. They 
had no conception of marriage in the 
way that it is today understood. They 
did their best. The procreation of the 22 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
species was their aim in life and the 
infusion of new blood which would 
strengthen not only them but clans to 
come was the desire closest to their 
hearts. 
It is thought by some that sacred 
prostitution occurred only in temples 
or gardens dedicated to the goddess 
Mylitta in Babylon. This is not true, 
for all worshipers at the many shrines 
of Venus were only obeying the de- 
mands made by the procreative in- 
stinct. This same curious custom of 
religious prostitution existed among 
the Lydians, Syrians, Carthaginians, 
Egyptians and Greeks, and to a limited 
degree among the Romans, who per- 
mitted prostitutes to frequent their 
temples and ply their trade. These 
same Roman prostitutes rendered a 
certain tithe to the temples dedicated 
to the gods of that period, and in many 
instances their gifts were magnificent. 
The goddess Flora or goddess of the 
flowers of the Greeks was a noted 
courtesan who made an enormous for- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
23 
tune, which she left to the State. Her 
legacy was accepted, and the Senate, in 
gratitude, decreed that the name of 
"Flora" should be inscribed in the fasti 
of the State and that solemn fetes 
should perpetuate the memory of her 
generosity. These fetes, connected as 
they were also with the goddess of 
Fecundity were accompanied by scenes 
in the circus-that would be thought 
scandalous today. 
Sacred prostitution at Athens was 
under the patronage of Venus Pan- 
demos, who is said to have been the 
first divinity that Theseus caused the 
people to adore, or, at least to whom 
a statue was erected on the public place. 
It was a common practice in Greece 
to consecrate to Venus a certain num- 
ber of young girls, when it was de- 
sired to render the goddess favorable, 
or when she had granted the prayers 
addressed to her. 
Gautama was entertained at Vesali 
by a lady of high rank who had the 
title "Chief of the Courtesans." Jesus 24 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
of Nazareth, like Gautama of the Hin- 
doos, was entertained by a most charm- 
ing woman who had aspired to the title 
of "Chief of the Courtesans" of Jeru- 
salem. Christ did not feel at all of- 
fended at her entertainment and re- 
buked his disciples for attempting to 
interfere with Mary Magdala when she 
annointed His feet with oil and wiped 
them with her hair. 
Prostitutes before the Christian era 
enjoyed a position that was unique, 
they were usually well educated and 
charming women, women who were 
capable of making themselves felt by 
the power of their intellects as did the 
Hetaire of Athens, as well as by allur- 
ing charms they were capable of dis- 
playing. 
In Armenia strangers alone were en- 
titled to seek sexual hospitality in the 
sacred enclosures of the temple of 
Anaitas; and it was the same in Syria 
during the fetes of Venus and Adonis. 
Armenian women who became sacred 
prostitutes, after a period of service in THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
25 
the temples were much sought after as 
wives, because it was thought that their 
service rendered them better fit for a 
normal sexual life as married women 
than would women who had not been 
introduced into the mysteries of the 
sexual embrace. It is said that today 
in portions of Austria and Armenia 
women frequently become prostitutes 
to earn their dower money and that 
their former profession in no way af- 
fects their standing with their pros- 
pective husbands. 
The Jews, prior to the time of 
Joshua, the prophet, and even after- 
wards, maintained in their temple 
priestesses who supplied the sexual 
needs of male worshipers for a tithe 
that was paid into the temple for its 
support. The ramifications of sacred 
prostitution have penetrated the many 
institutions belonging to religious or- 
ganizations for thousands of years. 
Mankind has followed the demands 
of sex-hunger the world over. Sex- 
hunger with its gratifications caused 26 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
the establishment of the deity Phallus, 
and remains of phallism may be found 
in every creed and sect extant. 
The former custom of offering a 
guest a daughter or wife as a sexual 
partner for a night came from the tem- 
ple of Mylitta and is in a way a modi- 
fied form of sacred prostitution. It 
was done as a sacrifice to the goddess 
of fecundity, aside from a desire to 
satisfy the sexual needs of the guest 
and to appear hospitable. 
In Japan a girl entered the Yoshi- 
wara for a term in order to propitiate 
the gods. She sacrificed her virginity 
as an act of service to her parents. She 
did not lose caste nor did she find it a 
difficult matter to obtain a husband. 
Hand fasting in Scotland, or trial 
marriages, existed up to the beginning 
of the 19th century. Men and women 
who desired each other shook hands 
and considered themselves legally mar- 
ried for one year and a day. In event 
conception did not take place during 
the year and they were not pleased THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
27 
with one another, they parted at the 
time their contract expired and neither 
the man nor the woman considered 
that that they had done anything 
wrong. They were free to enter an- 
other such a union or else they could 
marry any one who would accept them. 
If conception occurred, the man was 
legally compelled to marry the woman 
in order to legitimatize his child. This 
is another remnant of the days when 
the goddess of procreation was wor- 
shiped. 
The "War Bride," a creature of the 
world war who married a man prac- 
tically a stranger to her in order that 
she might give birth to a child for her 
country's sake, became an attendant at 
the shrine of the Goddess Mylitta just 
as did her ancient sister in Babylon 
when she submitted herself for a piece 
of money to a stranger in order to 
propitiate the gods of creation and 
bear a child for the state. 
It may be interesting to some to 
know that the custom of kissing a girl 28 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
under the mistletoe came from the 
Gardens of Mylitta. The maidens who 
entered the temples of this diety sat 
under a green bough waiting for a 
male stranger to pick them out. Each 
female was compelled to submit her- 
self to the first man who tossed her a 
coin no matter how small the coin was. 
This custom applied to the Princesses 
of the royal household just as much as 
it did to daughters of middle class mer- 
chants, all females regardless of sta- 
tion were required to make an attempt 
to give the State an offspring by co- 
habiting with a stranger. 
Unfortunately during the first thou- 
sand years after the birth of Christ 
women fell very low in the moral scale, 
due not to themselves but to the damn- 
ing attitude of the church towards 
their sex. Priests taught that women 
were fit only for sexual and sensual 
gratification and that they were 
agents of the evil one. It may be 
stated, and truthfully, that some 
women despite the atmosphere of con- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
29 
tempt for their sex in which they lived 
succeeded in climbing to enviable posi- 
tions and became advisers in the coun- 
cils of many of the higher churchmen. 
Priests advocated celibacy for men 
and women alike and many married 
only to maintain the strictest conti- 
nence, never allowing themselves the 
joys of the marriage bed. They became 
the brides and bridegrooms of Christ 
and the church. The history of Sacer- 
dotal celibacy is filled with causes for 
the social decay of the "dark ages." 
Men and women hungered for sexual 
contact, but, on account of threatened 
religious disapproval, they abstained. 
Abstinence from the pleasures of the 
conjugal relation caused them to be- 
come more or less decadent. Ambition 
ceased to stir their souls, hence they 
became nothing more than automota 
under the guidance and control of 
priests. 
About eleven hundred A. D. a re- 
action set in and the Troubadours of 
Provence came into their own. They 30 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
sang of their loves, wrote poetry of a 
most passionate type to the ladies 
whose favors they desired to gain, and, 
as a consequence of this, women again 
came into what was rightfully their 
own-the right to love and be loved 
by males. 
Had it not been for the influence, 
according to Lucka, of the Italian 
poets, Dante and others, Mary would 
have been deified and would have re- 
placed Christ as the God of the Chris- 
tians. Through their influence Mary 
became the mediator and was wor- 
shipped as such. Artists began to 
paint madonnas and used as their 
models their mistresses. It is said by 
some investigators that hardly a ma- 
donna has been painted but that its 
face was the face of the beloved mis- 
tress of the artist. 
Prostitution in its sacred form, as 
practiced by the ancients, did not imply 
the loss of virginity in the sense in 
which such a loss is understood today. 
The prostitute was respected because THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
31 
she was obeying the command of the 
procreative principle in nature. So 
throughout the ages prior to the ad- 
vent of Christianity, women sought to 
bring into the world offsprings that 
would reflect credit, not only on them- 
selves but on the deity worshipped. 
It was Solon who, about five hun- 
dred years B. C. started our present 
system of commercialized prostitution. 
He had quarters built for slave girls 
who sold their charms to any who came 
to buy them. Solon believed that he 
was protecting the home, that he was 
eliminating any chance for married 
women to be insulted or to have their 
virginity disturbed by those seeking 
sexual pleasures. Prostitution as a 
modern institution was established to 
protect the female members of the 
home from the advances of sensualists, 
and it differs in every respect from the 
ancient observance of sacred prostitu- 
tion, which was for the injection of 
new blood into endogamous claps and 
to propitiate the gods of procreation. 32 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
The first form of prostitution, it 
may readily be seen, was more or less 
of a truly religious type, whilst the sec- 
ond form represents the highest type 
of sensuality. It shows that man ca- 
tered to his lustful appetites to such a 
degree that the debasing of women had 
to be stopped by placing on sale the 
bodies of females who were very low 
in the moral scale and who in their 
original position in society were slaves. 
The present day prostitute, like her 
ancient relative who gained the posi- 
tion of social outcast by the command 
of Solon, has not elevated herself in 
the social scale, but has fallen lower 
and lower until now she is a sensualist 
and a carrier of disease as well. Her 
associate frequently leaves her side 
diseased to marry a virgin only to in- 
fect her and cause her to suffer untold 
agony, and when conception occurs, to 
carry her disease to her offspring and 
affect its physical and mental well be- 
ing even to producing idiocy, bone dis- 
crasias, mental and moral degeneracy. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
33 
The prostitute of the present day 
has become a social avenger. She has 
been persecuted and prosecuted to such 
a degree by those who are responsible 
for her downfall-her persecutors in 
many instances being nothing more 
than hypocrites who have infected her 
with a venereal disease-that her 
whole ambition seems to be to get what 
she considers her revenge on society 
for having made a social outcast of her. 
Male members of society infect 
women of the underworld with dis- 
eases that may be contracted during 
sexual intercourse. THE MAN IS 
THE CARRIER OF VENEREAL 
DISEASES, the woman is the 
spreader. With this thought in mind 
it should not be a difficult matter for 
those who are honestly trying to help 
the unfortunates who through be- 
trayed love or a weakened mentality 
fell from the virgins high estate to be- 
come social outcasts, to enter into a 
discussion of ways and means to help 
dispose of the problem CHAPTER TWO. 
There should be a complete separa- 
tion of moral and maudlin sentimental- 
ism from sanitary issues and all forms 
of prostitution should receive attention 
from sanitarians in order that the 
chance for veneral diseases to develop 
among the associates of prostitutes 
would be minimized. In other words, 
the actions of prostitutes should be put 
under the control of health authorities, 
preferably under the control and care 
of the United States Public Health 
Service. Federal control would do 
away with the petty graft which pros- 
titutes would be subjected to if their 
control were left in the hands of politi- 
cians who direct the affairs of police 
departments. 
Kelly estimates that venereal dis- 
eases cost America Three Billion Doi- 
34 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
35 
lars a year. Others claim that one out 
of every ten individuals met on the 
street or in society is a syphilitic, cer- 
tainly it may be truthfully said that 60 
per cent of the male population of the 
United States have had gonorrhoea 
These two diseases are sapping at the 
very vitals of civilization and are low- 
ering the vitality of individuals who, 
had they never been infected, other 
things being equal, would have had 
their efficiency standing constantly at 
100 plus. 
Unless sanitarians and moralists get 
together and agree on some plan for 
handling prostitutes other than the one 
of persecution and prosecution of to- 
day, future races will have so degen- 
erated in one hundred years from the 
effects of venereal diseases that noth- 
ing can be done for their regeneration. 
Syphilis may destroy, absolutely, and 
gonorrhoea so weaken a man's pro- 
creative functions that he frequently 
becomes sterile or sexually incompe- 
tent early in life, thereby becoming an 36 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
anti-social being, totally lacking in the 
virile man's attributes. 
Syphilis and gonorrhoea should be 
made reportable diseases, and physi- 
cians should be brought to understand 
the importance of notifying boards of 
health of their presence in a commu- 
nity-syphilis and gonorrhoea are 
more dangerous than tuberculosis or 
any other communicable disease to a 
town or a city, because at present they 
are the unmentionable and hidden 
curses of society. 
Syphilitics should be forbidden by 
law to marry, and should be sterilized 
for the benefit of society in order that, 
in the event they should seek illicit sex- 
ual intercourse, conception could not 
take place. If a person who has been 
sterilized has undergone rigid treat- 
ment for syphilis, and if ten years have 
elapsed since he began treatment, and 
no signs of the disease have reap- 
peared, an anastomosis may be done, 
then he may be allowed to exercise his 
procreative function. Many will object THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
37 
to the above practice and will disagree 
with it; sterilization would be infin- 
itely better in all cases than to allow 
even one offspring to be born with the 
taint of syphilis in its blood. Too fre- 
quently do physicians report cases of 
latent syphilis in individuals who have 
undergone rigid treatment, and been 
pronounced cured and allowed to 
marry. The result of their marriage 
is the infection of their wives and 
through them, their offspring. 
It is a hard matter in such cases as 
these to know where to place the blame. 
The patient having been told that he 
is well again, by his physician, feels 
certain that he is in a perfectly safe 
condition to marry, when in reality his 
medical advisor might have been 
wrong in placing too much confidence 
in his treatment. In many instances 
the physician himself is directly to 
blame and should be condemned by so- 
ciety for not having advised that cer- 
tain tests be made three or four times 
before giving a positive opinion. 38 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
Syphilitics are a menace to society 
and should be punished for having con- 
tracted a disease that, should it be car- 
ried to unsuspecting and pure women, 
would result in their developing it, and 
conveying it to their children. The 
children of syphilitic fathers and moth- 
ers are almost sure to have horrible 
lesions of the brain and general nerv- 
ous system, that would make them de- 
generates of one type or another to the 
detriment of society and the state. 
It may be repeated that sentimental- 
ism should not be allowed to control 
the sober judgment of physicians and 
laymen and they should unite to over- 
come a disease that is saping at the 
very vitals of present day civilization. 
Syphilis leaves its mark for genera- 
tions after the original spreader of the 
disease is dead, and many individuals 
who suffer from mental troubles, 
epilepsy, etc., may trace their origin 
to a Luetic ancestor. 
In bulletin No. 8 of the War Depart- 
ment, U. S. A., 1914, Col. E. B. Vedder THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS' 
39 
presents an admirable discussion of his 
investigations as to the prevalence of 
syphilis in the army. He says in part 
in reference to recruits, "that speaking 
conservatively 17% of the male civil 
population from which recruits come, 
are probably syphilitics. In as much 
as 2.3% of the rejections of applicants 
was due to syphilis, the estimated total 
percentage among applicants for en- 
listments, was 19.7%." Vedder con- 
cludes that syphilis among young men 
in civil life between the ages of 20 and 
30, and in the general classes of occu- 
pations, from which enlisted men are 
drawn, may be estimated at at least 
16.77%, "and there is good reason for 
believing that it is fully 20%." 
The Medical Review of Reviews in 
an editorial November, 1915, says, "If 
one out of every five male persons, be- 
tween the ages of 20 and 30, is un- 
knowingly possessed of a latent syphi- 
litic infection, it is of momentous im- 
portance that such diagnosis should be 
established and adequate therapeutics 40 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
instituted in order to safeguard the 
community. Herein is found striking 
testimony as to the reasons for the fre- 
quent development of early apoplexy, 
locomotor ataxia, paresis and similar 
unfortunate developments of untreated 
syphilis." 
The necessity for proper diagnostic 
methods is paramount, and no physi- 
cian has a right to pronounce a patient 
well of syphilis who has not used every 
means at hand to prove his opinion cor- 
rect. The Wasserman and Luetin tests 
should both be used several times be- 
fore a patient is finally dismissed as 
cured, and even then, he should be kept 
under observation for at least a year. 
If efficiency is to count for anything, 
venereal diseases must be eliminated. 
The way to do this is by proper legal 
control of houses of prostitution and 
their inmates, by sanitatians who will 
be vested with the authority to do any- 
thing that will eliminate disease; even 
to being allowed to establish lock hos- 
pitals wherein veneral diseases may be THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
41 
treated, and patients, both men and 
women, quarantined until they are no 
longer a menace to the community in 
which they live. 
Dr. William Lee Howard in a letter 
to the author in 1915 makes the follow- 
ing statement, that should prove very 
interesting to those who favor segre- 
gation: 
"When household molarists forced 
the repeal of the Contagious Act Bill, 
the increase of venereal diseases in the 
British Army was so great as to cause 
some regiments to be reduced nearly 
one-half in efficiency. 
"The present deplorable conditions 
in getting proper recruits in England 
(1914-15) is partly due to the enormous 
spread of the effects of venereal dis- 
eases which followed immediately 
after women were no longer segre- 
gated, examined and treated. 
"To go into the causes for the fail- 
ure of segregation in the few cities in 
the United States where it has been 
tried, is to go into the causes for the 
failure of most civic improvements- 
politics. 42 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
"Segregation under proper control- 
that is, absolutely free from political 
control-has never been tried in the 
United States, but in no other way can 
we commence to control venereal dis- 
eases. 
"This is what we want the public to 
understand: In asking for segrega- 
tion of prostitutes we are not asking 
the community to legalize or morally 
support the oldest profession in the 
world; we are asking it for the sake of 
the mental and physical welfare of the 
race and nation. 
"Segregation in a decent and accept- 
able manner and where the unfortu- 
nates can be compelled to go to a hos- 
pital and be confined as long as they 
are dangerous to the community, is the 
only way to aid in checking the diseases 
which are honeycombing this nation. 
"It is this latter fact which must be 
comprehended by all good men and 
women before they will understand the 
absolute necessity of stopping the 
spread of these plagues which are en- 
tering homes, schools and rural com- 
munities." 
When a segregated district is broken THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
43 
up and prostitutes have no place in 
which to ply their trade, some believe 
that prostitution stops. This is, un- 
fortunately, not true. Prostitution 
thrives all the more, only clandestinely. 
Prostitutes continue to look for what 
they consider their lawful prey-and, 
unfortunately, it is not hard to find- 
because of poor sanitary facilities, 
places to bathe, etc., they become a 
greater menace and spread venereal dis- 
eases broadcast. The clandestine pros- 
titute is a greater danger to a commu- 
nity than the criminal-the criminal 
may be put under arrest and his acts 
punished-while the clandestine pros- 
titute spreads disease wherever she 
goes. 
If an honest statement could be ob- 
tained from the average reformer, a 
statement free from prejudice, it 
would be found that the statistics of 
prostitution under police control and 
out from under, would be very mate- 
rially changed in favor of segregation. 
The reformer has prejudiced the mind 44 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS' 
of an innocent public to the extent of 
making it blind to conditions it should 
have under complete control. 
The prostitute has been fought for 
centuries and persecuted as an outcast 
by religionists, who have failed to con- 
ceive that great precept of the Naz- 
arene: "Let him who is without sin 
among you cast the first stone." It 
has a meaning for them that should 
not go unheeded. In other words, if 
they heeded its intention few would be 
left to cast a stone. The sinless man 
does not exist, and it ill behooves indi- 
viduals whose past would not bear 
opening up, to hurl stones of contempt 
and persecution at creatures they 
themselves have made, who have gone 
down into the bottomless pit of iniquity 
because of them. 
The driving out of prostitutes may 
be likened to the methods used years 
ago by the children of Provence, when 
they wished to be rid of an insect they 
feared. "They arrange straws or dry 
twigs around it and then light them, so THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
45 
that to whatever side the poor creature 
turns it encounters the flames, is 
cruelly burned and falls back; it re- 
peats this several times and persists in 
its efforts, with an obstinate courage, 
but always in vain. It cannot pass that 
circle of fire." 
The persecutors of the erring woman 
permit of no avenue being opened for 
her escape, nor do they recognize the 
fact that she fell to satisfy the lustful 
desires of man. They keep her hemmed 
in until she has become so hardened 
that she feels no desire to lead another 
life. Eventually she pays the penalty, 
for the terrible fires of venereal dis- 
ease and debauchery finally destroy 
her, these diseases having been con- 
tracted from her male consort. CHAPTER THREE. 
It is impossible to legislate as old a 
profession as that of prostitution out 
of existence. The causes for it must 
be found out and eliminated; until this 
is done, every other move leading to- 
wards doing away with the social evil, 
must be a failure. 
Lecky in his history of European 
morals aptly says, of the woman who 
has fallen, "That unhappy being whose 
very name is a shame to speak; who 
counterfeits with a cold heart the 
transports of affection and submits 
herself as the passive instrument of 
lust; who is scorned and insulted as 
the vilest of her sex, and doomed for 
the most part, to disease and abject 
wretchedness and an early death, ap- 
pears in every age as the perpetual 
symbol of the degradation and the sin- 
46 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
47 
fulness of man. . . . She remains 
while creeds and civilizations rise and 
fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, 
blasted for the sins of the people." 
She will remain "the eternal priest- 
ess" until men and women determine to 
study her as she really is and decline 
to allow her to become the prey of de- 
signing politicians and misguided so- 
cial workers and reformers, until they 
have discovered the causes for her 
prostitution. 
Many claim that the segregated dis- 
trict is not necessary-it is not-for 
the reason that a prostitute can ply her 
trade anywhere. The chief argument 
used by many for a segregated district 
is, that the women in it are more care- 
ful of themselves than if they were on 
the streets (the truth of this argument 
is doubtful), and, as a consequence, dis- 
ease is said not to be as prevalent 
among them as it is among street walk- 
ers, etc. The health of any community 
is wTorth considering far more than any 
moral reform that has behind it the 48 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
scattering of venereal diseases broad- 
cast. It is reform measures of this 
kind that cause many, who would take 
hold otherwise for the good of a com- 
munity, to lose confidence in and de- 
cline to even notice the actions of any 
reformer. 
What reformers really should do is 
to strongly advocate inspection of 
every male who enters a house of pros- 
titution and strict medical attention 
for every female in the house by a 
REPUTABLE PHYSICIAN. 
Not many know that the so-called 
segregated district, as it stands at 
present, really holds only about one- 
third of the prostitutes of a city, the 
balance occuping houses of assignation, 
call houses, cheap hotels and rooming 
houses in isolated districts. When the 
tenderloin district is broken up cru- 
saders have only scattered a few of the 
many who usually live in the average 
city. Segregation that really would 
segregate women of the under world, 
would prove a blessing to any commu- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
49 
nity, for the reason that all residents 
therein could be carefully watched and 
cared for properly, in the event that 
they became infected with gonorrhea 
or syphilis. Houses of prostitution 
almost automatically close themselves 
whenever dancing, music and drinking 
is forbidden. 
Ask the average young man where 
he contracted the venereal disease he 
may be suffering from, and he will tell 
you that he got it from a "soft snap," 
meaning that he had cohabited with a 
so-called respectable woman, who was 
supplying only a few? with sexual 
favors. The clandestine woman of the 
streets is forced for economic reasons 
to be less careful of herself because of 
lack of sanitary surroundings, there- 
fore she becomes a spreader of the 
plague of civilization. This plague is 
destroying the vitality of thousands 
who should have remained strong and 
vigorous. 
It may be mentioned that the "white 
slave" is rarely ever found in the segre- 50 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
gated district. The average keeper of 
a well regulated house of prostitution 
is too jealous of her reputation, and 
hates the life she is living too cordially 
to want to be the means of holding 
without their consent females for pur- 
poses of prostitution. Many "land- 
ladies" have helped girls to reform, and 
have urged them when they were first 
starting into a life of shame to desist 
and live clean lives again. The owner 
of a lewd establishment realizes that 
Dead Sea fruit is the only kind that 
may be partaken of by the erring one, 
and that the ashes of despair come 
when fires of youth are spent. 
The author has only contempt for 
the hypocrite who is constantly spread- 
ing a false doctrine. He is not in favor 
of prostitution any more than the re- 
former or moralist, but believes that 
the way to attack a thing is to go to 
its bottom in a common sense manner 
and not allow an hysterical street cor- 
ner agitator to influence him to make 
raids, persecute and prosecute without THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
51 
first figuring the cost to the commu- 
nity in which he lives. If more men 
would assume this attitude there would 
soon be little need for agitation, be- 
cause common sense would gain a vic- 
tory over maudlin and prurient senti- 
mentalism. 
Gonorrhoea and syphilis are ruining 
thousands each year, unless these dis- 
eases are checked they will undermine 
the race. Hospitals for the care of in- 
fected men and women must be built 
so that individuals may be cured. Sani- 
tariums and hospitals are built for the 
care of infectious diseases, and isola- 
tion hospitals for smallpox, and, yet 
sanitarians in the past have paid little 
attention to the great pox or to gon- 
orrhoea, both of these diseases being 
far more deadly than either of the 
above. Few hospitals will accept a case 
of syphilis or gonorrhoea in their acute 
stages. Sufferers from these diseases 
are to be found everywhere present in 
society today and something should be 
done for their welfare. They are ill 52 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
and should be so regarded and should 
be isolated until pronounced cured. 
Some argue that the segregated dis- 
trict becomes an area for crime. This 
is possibly true if it is not under the 
proper control of police authority. 
Any district of a loose moral caliber 
away from police control sooner or 
later becomes a breeding place for 
crime. Pool rooms, saloons, or other 
loafing places lower the morals of a 
community to a greater degree than 
do houses of prostitution, for it is in 
these loafing places that crime is born. 
Saloons and houses of prostitution 
are better for a town than pool rooms. 
Saloons and houses of prostitution may 
be run under police supervision and 
regulated, while pool rooms are breed- 
ing places of iniquity. This statement 
appears startling, but on analysis it 
will be found a true one. Pool rooms 
make loafers out of young men and 
boys who, if the enticements offered 
by pool rooms were eliminated, would 
find work to do to occupy their time, THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
53 
Loafing places lower the morals of 
young men; sooner or later they learn 
to gamble and from gambling they try 
something worse until they are beyond 
recall. Read the daily papers and 
every day you will find where the son 
of some parent who was careless as to 
his son's associates and permitted him 
to spend his time in pool rooms and 
other loafing places has been indicted 
for one crime or another usually for 
the violation of the chastity of a young 
girl, too young to protect herself. 
Many young women have been sent to 
hell as the result of schemes concocted 
in pool rooms by crowds of dissolute 
young men whose delight it is to boast 
of the number of girls they have de- 
ceived. This is not idle talk, go any 
day you care to, to the majority of pool 
rooms in the country and listen to the 
conversations you will hear and you 
will agree that the pool room is a 
greater menace because it directly af- 
fects the home, wherein live the pure 
daughters of the community, than sa- 54 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
loons or houses of prostitution. The 
home must be protected and virginal 
daughters' welfare guarded. 
Men lock up their money and jewels 
in safes and vaults for safe keeping, 
but turn their most precious posses- 
sions, their female children, loose upon 
the world to associate with almost any 
male with whom they may come in con- 
tact, apparently not caring as long as 
he stands high in society, and has aris- 
tocratic? blood in his veins, that he 
may be a debauchee or sot or loafer or 
what may be worse, a syphilitic. 
Fathers are careless about the so- 
ciety their sons seek and think that 
they must sow their wild oats before 
they may rightly earn the title "man." 
As a consequence of this thousands of 
brides each year go to the marriage bed 
pure and chaste only to become in- 
fected with a disease which was con- 
tracted by the husband while sowing 
his wild oats and conveyed to the wife 
during their first intercourse. 
Until the members of modern social THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
55 
systems realize the great need for a 
single standard of morals and change 
their entire attitude toward society, 
prostitution will continue to abound 
and all the legislating that a thousand 
legislatures could do will not stop it. 
Man's moral code is wrong. John 
Smith does not hesitate to tell you that 
he would kill the man who would vio- 
late the chastity of any one of his fe- 
male relatives, yet he, John Smith, 
would not hesitate if the opportunity 
offered to violate the chastity and rob 
the home of his neighbor of the purity 
of its female members. He would con- 
sider that he had done something cred- 
itable to himself and would boast about 
it to his friends. 
Until things like the above are elimi- 
nated from society prostitutes will con- 
tinue to occupy the place of "the high 
priestesses of humanity blasted for 
the sins of the people," and these anti- 
social creatures will continue to influ- 
ence the actions of man. CHAPTER FOUR. 
Numerous cities in the United States 
have gone through moral crusades. 
Houses of prostitution have been 
broken up and prostitutes driven out 
and scattered into residential districts, 
hotels and boarding houses. The de- 
cent and respectable women of these 
towns never know at what moment 
they may run into one of the unfortu- 
nate creatures of the under world. 
The former resident of the demi monde 
is constantly coming into contact with 
young and innocent girls and because 
of whose innocence-which rightly in- 
terpreted means ignorance-they taint 
with unclean suggestions and smutty 
talk and by introducing them to their 
friends pave the way for their ultimate 
downfall. 
A grand jury in one southern city 
56 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
57 
recommended the return to the segre- 
gated district. In Chattanooga, Tenn., 
reformers have broken up the district, 
and, as a consequence, the increase of 
venereal disease among the United 
United States troops located at Chicka- 
mauga Park has been great. In At- 
lanta, Ga., the author has been in- 
formed that gonorrhoea and syphilis 
have increased greatly and that the 
patients of genito urinary specialists 
have been more than doubled since 
houses of prostitution have been put 
out of existence. This is not alone true 
of Atlanta, but true everywhere that 
the false teacher of a falser code of 
morals has been allowed to work. 
It is a notorious fact that men hesi- 
tate to escort their wives down the 
streets of cities where vice campaigns 
have been carried on, for fear of their 
wives being insulted by poor wretches 
who have been driven into the street by 
misguided reformers. 
Chicago broke up her segregated dis- 
trict and by so doing scattered prosti- 58 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
tutes all over the city. They may be 
found in boarding houses, apartments, 
and residences in the most exclusive 
neighborhoods, and in the very best 
hotels. It is impossible for a gentle- 
man to walk down the main streets of 
Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, Mem- 
phis, Louisville, St. Louis, Kansas City, 
Chicago, San Francisco, New York or 
Chattanooga, and many other cities 
over the country that have suffered the 
tortures of vice crusades, at night 
without being accosted at least once by 
a former resident of the Red Light Dis- 
trict. Prostitutes in these cities use 
doorways, vestibules, and even in.re- 
mote cases church pews in lieu of well 
ordered and clean bed rooms to supply 
their charms to those who will pay for 
them. In Atlanta one well known hotel 
which is said to be the property of a 
prominent reformer harbors many 
former residents of the demi-monde. 
If the question is asked in Atlanta or 
elsewhere of sane and thoughtful busi- 
ness and professional men whether or THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
59 
not the breaking up of the segregated 
district has proved to be an advantag- 
eous move, on the part of fanatical agi- 
tators, they will readily answer, no. 
They will tell you that no measure as 
radical and unbalanced as persecution 
and prosecution always is, can hope to 
drive out an institution whose roots 
penetrate into the very heart of so- 
ciety, but will advise that humani- 
tarian principles be put into practice 
and prostitutes be treated as diseased 
members of modern social systems. 
These unfortunates are diseased both 
mentally and physically, and are de- 
serving of sympathy rather than 
curses. Until men and women fully 
realize this they cannot hope to elimi- 
nate prostitution. 
There are thousands of women who 
have tried to escape a life of shame, 
but, because of an unfeeling social cus- 
tom, that damns those females who err 
and who are found out, they sink to 
depths unfathomable. Many imagine 
that demi-mondaines live lives of ease. 60 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
They do if life in a prison cell consti- 
tutes ease. The prostitute is truly in 
prison; there are no bondmen to bail 
her out. She is in for life. No pardon 
is ever granted her. She is regarded 
as being below the hardest criminal in 
the social scale, and constantly lives in 
the presence of diseases, which sooner 
or later attack her and make of her a 
worse outcast than she already is. 
Even in the domain of prostitution 
there are high and low scales, and the 
attractive woman, who retains her 
beauty, is the one sought after, while 
the poor creature, who ceases to be at- 
tractive, and who contracts disease, 
becomes a creature of the brothel only 
to be consigned to the most noisome 
cells wherein are to be found the lowest 
of the low among males. 
Prostitution is a man made institu- 
tion, and as such has prospered cen- 
turies upon centuries. Some day men 
will awaken to the fact that their sin 
is the greatest and will cease viewing 
women as being the lawful prey of THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
61 
every sensually minded male, and will 
attempt to control lustful thoughts 
that should have no place in their 
minds. Sensuality and lustful desires 
are nothing but the creatures of a false 
code of ethics born as a result of an 
over accent being put on the supposed 
pleasures to be derived from illicit in- 
tercourse. 
Prostitutes are considered the lawful 
prey of shyster lawyers, police judges 
and politicians, and receive protection 
as long as they are able to pay for it. 
When their money runs out and pov- 
erty stares them in the face they are 
cast out and sooner or later hauled be- 
fore police judges and fined. This sys- 
tem of fining poor creatures who are 
without friends, is one of the many 
ways some police judges, professional 
bondsmen and the police have of earn- 
ing for themselves the title of being 
public servants, when in reality they 
are nothing more than vile grafters, 
living off money that is earned by the 
sale of human bodies. Unfortunately, 62 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
the woman higher up, who is able to 
dispense her largess in grand style, is 
never molested. In fact, nearly all 
those who violate the law, and who 
have a pull or strong influence behind 
them, are the ones the law rarely 
reaches. It is only the friendless who 
are prosecuted who receive punishment 
in most cases. 
The following comment from a Chi- 
cago newspaper is apropos of every 
large city where in a Morals Court is 
held: 
"Statistics show that the Morals Court 
of the City of Chicago derives an an- 
nual income of about $20,000 from the 
women who are brought in there from 
day to day. This amount is paid, us- 
ually out of the earnings of these wom- 
en, money earned from the sale of 
their bodies, or paid by some macque 
or bondsman, who gets double in re- 
turn. Isn't it about time to call for a 
stop on the present system? The only 
women and men ever brought into the 
Morals Court, are from the lowest, THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
63 
cheapest dives in the city and from off 
the streets. Did you ever hear of one 
of the women out on Michigan Avenue 
being arrested? Did you ever hear of 
the fashionable "quick women" who 
haunt the lobbies of the big loop hotels 
being arrested? No, they never are 
arrested. On the other hand, any one 
who frequents the Morals Court, even 
the attaches themselves, will say that 
the same girls are brought in from 
twenty to thirty times. They are fined, 
turned loose, arrested, fined again, 
etc., etc. The city, by this system, 
simply collects its commission from 
commercialized vice, while it makes a 
pretense of suppressing it." This state- 
ment would indicate that fallen women 
pay into the coffers of every city a cer- 
tain sum, though it may not be called 
a license, in reality that is all it is. 
Many deluded individuals believe that 
vice has been driven out of all cities 
wherein vice crusades have been staged 
and that prostitutes are no longer to be 
found plying their trade. The author 64 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
knows positively that while houses of 
prostitution may not run openly in 
these cities, that demi - mondaines 
abound, and that they are to be found 
in all parts of these metropolises. The 
police of these towns refrain from ex- 
citing the minds of agitators by keep- 
ing silent, or by occasionally telling 
falsehoods to keep down further inves- 
tigations. They know how impossible 
it is to free a city of prostitutes under 
the present system of ethics. They 
know too that society does not change 
its opinion over night, and that as long 
as a double standard of morals is ad- 
hered to, fallen women will exist. 
One of the greatest mistakes made 
by those who attempt to destroy social 
vice is that they think only of the com- 
munities in which they live; in other 
words, the moment a vice campaign 
is started, women are driven out of the 
districts in which they have lived, and 
the cities wherein they have plied their 
trade, to other cities. No thought is 
given to the trouble they will cause THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS' 
65 
their neighbors; their only thought be- 
ing to rid themselves of the presence 
of these poor unfortunates. 
There should be a national law that 
would forbid the driving out of crim- 
inals or fallen women from one city to 
another, by the police or reformers, 
and they should be immediately de- 
ported by the authorities of the towns 
wherein they are discovered, and made 
to return to the city they came from. 
The city from whence they came should 
be forced to look after them. 
Wirt W. Hallam, of Chicago, said in 
an article published in April, 1912, in 
"Social Diseases," "that when the trial 
of police officials began on the North 
Side (Chicago) an immediate reduction 
in vice developed. There was hardly 
a street walker to be seen anywhere." 
This is one of the many mis-statements 
made by over-zealous reformers, who 
believe that all they hear is true. The 
North Side in Chicago was literally in- 
fested in 1912 and 1913 by loose women, 
and particularly was this true of the 66 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
Wilson Avenue district. The police did 
all they could, but the demand for these 
women was greater than the result of 
their actions, therefore they abounded. 
Apartment houses rarely ever es- 
caped them, and no exclusive neighbor- 
hood was free from their presence. 
This statement is just as true today as 
it was then-the police are powerless. 
In another part of his article Hallam 
says "in Chicago as already mentioned, 
street soliciting stopped immediately 
when the city began prosecuting of- 
ficials for neglect of duty. In Seattle 
the majority-1,000 women and 2,000 
men-left the city without prosecu- 
tion." (WHERE DID THEY GO?) 
"Though some others tried to continue, 
notwithstanding the new officials. In 
Iowa, cities where the law made it seem- 
ingly impossible for politics or graft 
to give illegal protection, dive keepers 
left without waiting to be prosecuted." 
Mr. Hallam makes these cities veritable 
Utopias, for he leads one to believe that 
they are entirely free from vice. Un-. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
67 
fortunately, the few women who left 
these places have either returned or 
others have replaced them, for cer- 
tainly, those who are looking for the 
society of prostitutes do not have far 
to go. 
They may be picked up by the dozens 
on any public street. In Des Moines in 
1913 it was not a hard matter for a 
male to meet as many women as he 
cared to, for purposes known to those 
who associate with the "women of the 
street." The Abatement Law of Iowa, 
as far as prostitution is concerned, is 
regarded as a joke, by those who seek 
to violate it. Of course there are many 
who follow the old adage which says 
"There are none so blind as those who 
will not seeand they would be horri- 
fied if told that their pet laws were not 
being obeyed. CHAPTER FIVE. 
It is the man who is able to put him- 
self in the "other fellow's place" who 
becomes the best reformer, for the rea- 
son that he feels and knows, in a meas- 
ure at least, what it means to be temp- 
ted. 
Today nothing gives misinformed 
moralists and conspicious reformers 
greater delight than to persecute a 
prostitute without attempting to go 
into the causes of her prostitution. 
They talk about breaking up segre- 
gated districts and scattering immoral- 
ity over a city just as though they were 
doing the world a service. They do not 
realize that when they scatter prostitu- 
tion and take it out from under police 
supervision, that they are spreading 
disease broadcast, and by spreading it 
they are lowering the efficiency of 
68 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
69 
whole communities-for a few dis- 
eased persons in a town or city may 
spread their ailments to many and 
thereby lower the earning capacity of 
all infected. 
Maudlin sentimentalism and a dis- 
eased morality in America have caused 
the wheels of progress many times to 
become clogged. Moralists have be- 
come decadent; they have fallen from 
the high estate of humanitarianism 
into the gutter of pettiness. They have 
allowed prejudice and a narrow relig- 
ious point of view to make them illiber- 
al and unseeing. They have failed to 
realize that morality and humanity 
should go hand in hand, and that if 
they wish to do the most good they 
must possess the quality of introspec- 
tion, and not be judges constantly of 
the actions of others without first ask- 
ing what they would have done if placed 
in a similar position to that of the of- 
fender. It is easy enough for one to say 
that he would not have done so and so, 
when he is surrounded with a good en- 70 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
vironment, and has also the advantage 
of not having a line of ancestors with 
diseased mentalities and criminal rec- 
ords. He never has been, in other 
words, placed in the atmosphere of 
temptation; so that he does not know 
what he might have done. 
In most instances where reformers 
and misguided ecclesiastics start a bit- 
ter campaign against what they call 
sex sins, it may be found that they, 
themselves, are weak sexually, and 
never have felt the real pangs of sex 
hunger. The man or woman who is not 
strong sexually is the one who most 
often makes the statement that such a 
thing as an active sexual life should not 
exist. They condemn as sensual any- 
thing beyond the pale of asceticism, 
which, since the birth of Christian reli- 
gion, has taught the man's relation 
with his conjugal partner, outside of 
its real procreative function, was im- 
pure and unchaste. 
Passionate love among this type 
plays no part in their married lives. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
71 
They view sexual enjoyment among the 
married as being obscene and are ready 
to denounce it whenever the oppor- 
tunity presents itself. Paul the Apos- 
tle belonged to the above mentioned 
class; he was undoubtedly congenitally 
impotent and never felt the joys of a 
well balanced sexual life. He railed at 
women and viewed them as being emis- 
saries of the devil, sent out to tempt 
mankind. 
It is the weak man sexually who us- 
ually formulates a moral code that full 
blooded and sexually strong males and 
females have to suffer under. They are 
not allowed to express a normal desire, 
nor are they permitted to say what is 
or is not good for their physical or psy- 
chical welfare. As a consequence of 
this, hypocrisy and its evil brood run 
rampant through society and women 
frequently repress their sexual hun- 
ger after marriage and become nervous 
wrecks, and husbands as a consequence 
of this seek the company of harlots for 72 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
the relief of pent up appetites that de- 
mand appeasing. 
Sex hunger when properly fed, is as 
gentle as a lamb, but when starved it 
becomes an uncontrollable beast, bent 
only on devouring what it considers its 
lawful prey. Moralists should consider 
this whenever they condemn women 
who have erred, and have become social 
outcasts. They should look into the 
causes for their prostitution and should 
not punish by banishment those who 
have sinned for love or through ignor- 
ance. 
Ignorance with regard to self is the 
curse of civilized nations. The most ig- 
norant of uncivilized tribes under- 
stands the mysteries of sex and pro- 
creation, and view them as they should 
be viewed, as being biologically normal 
parts of their physical make up, put 
into individuals by the Creator, for the 
purpose of keeping the world popu- 
lated. 
If men and women could be made to 
understand that unless a normal out- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
73 
let is found for the gratifying of their 
sexual appetites through marriage, 
that in all probability illicit sexual un- 
ion will result, with the stigmatizing 
influence that all forms of immorality 
have on society in general. When a 
broad understanding is reached, an 
awakening of the public conscience will 
result, that will blow into atoms all 
forms of present day sex hypocrisy and 
allow a freedom to men and women 
alike, which has heretofore only been 
allowed to man. In other words, the 
curse of a double moral code of ethics 
would soon be replaced by the blessings 
of a single standard of morality. 
Pascal said "He who tries to be an 
angel becomes a beast." Only too fre- 
quently does this statement apply to 
those poor misguided sexual weaklings, 
who are trying to regulate the actions 
of society by damning as immoral, 
practices that, should they cease curs- 
ing them, would become pure again. 
Men and women rant and rave at 
the "Social Canker" and hold prayer 74 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
meetings and other religious services, 
and form vice commissions in an en- 
deavor to rid a community of its pres- 
ence, yet, if asked to take one or two of 
the poor unfortunates who comprise it, 
into their homes, and attempt to reform 
them, draw back in horror at the sug- 
gestion. 
"To talk is one thing, to do another." 
Talk is cheap and many indulge them- 
selves to the fullest degree, and when 
they are called upon to act they are 
found wanting. They love to talk of 
charity and of the teachings of the low- 
ly Nazarene, but hesitate to practice the 
one and obey the other. 
If the average religionist, who imag- 
ines he can pray a vice away, would 
devote a little time honestly to trying to 
find out its cause, it would not be long- 
before all would be well and he would 
be happy in the thought that work and 
prayer together accomplished wonders. 
He boasts of his trust in Jesus and when 
called upon to show it, like Peter, de- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
75 
nies him. Christ's charity towards the 
outcast was one of the most wonderful 
incidents in his ministry, and it would 
be well, if those who profess to follow 
him, would read of it and try to emulate 
his example. Nothing may be expected 
of Pharisaism. Enough harm has al- 
ready been done by hypocrites who 
have cried aloud "Lord! Lord!-and yet 
should have been driven out because of 
the vile lives they were living. 
The Pharisee has been constantly 
present in society since the birth of 
Adam-and he has many times been 
the cause of its undoing. 
"When to the brown 
Earth Christ bent down 
And wrote a moment in the sand 
While waiting for a sinless hand 
To cast the first hard, persecuting stone 
At her who sinned, He found himself alone 
Save for the wretched woman who stood near 
Each eye bedewed with a penitential tear." 
"Should every stone in all the world, 
Lie undisturbed till it was hurled, 
By the hand of him who had not sinned, 
Reformer's ranks would be so thinned 
We'd cease remarking their temerity 
And doff our hats to their sincerity." 
-Strickland Glllilan. CHAPTER SIX. 
When women finally gain their fight 
for enfanchisement and become think- 
ing and working citizens, they will put 
into practice thoughts, that have been 
dormant in the feminine brain for cen- 
turies. Woman has been kept down by 
man because he has feared her. That 
day is passing, and soon will she take 
the part she should in regulating the 
morals of the world. Only through fear 
of offendnig her Lord and Master (?) 
has she kept quiet for ages and allowed 
herself to be viewed as being a purely 
passive creature, when her appetites 
and desires were really more dominant 
than those of the male, her advantage 
being that she had them under better 
control. 
The sexually strong woman is usually 
broad in her views and is charitably 
76 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
77 
inclined towards her sister who has 
erred. She realizes fully the onslaught 
sex hunger might make on a woman, 
as sexually strong as she, yet without 
her self control, or possibly without her 
opportunity to marry the man of her 
choice, becaue of economic reasons that 
could not be overcome. 
Motherhood represents the most 
ideal position in which woman can pos- 
sibly be placed. Motherhood without 
the full joys of conjugal bliss has its 
pangs, and most women resent children 
who are not the result of passionate 
love. 
Thousands of women enter the demi- 
monde every day, who have given birth 
to babes born out of lawful wedlock, 
yet whose very lives were the result of 
a love that was in itself pure, all that 
it lacked was the pronouncing of a few 
words by a clergyman and the pres- 
ence of a marriage license to make it 
legal and holy. These women should 
never have been sacrificed to immorali- 
ty and these babes should not have been 78 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
stamped "illegitimate," for the acts of 
their parents were not primarily im- 
moral. The poor woman who errs for 
love's sake is nearly always put on the 
sacrificial altar dedicated to the gods of 
a moral cowardice, that infests modern 
social systems, which regards ignor- 
ance as being holy. 
Every woman should be viewed as a 
potential mother. It is the failure to 
do this on the part of men, that causes 
many women to take the step down- 
ward. 
There are many institutions that will 
not employ a mother. Several School 
boards have dismissed teachers, who 
have given birth to offsprings as the 
result of a legal union, wherein love 
played the essential part it should. 
Many of these women are rendering aid 
to husbands whose earning capacity is 
limited in obtaining sufficient funds to 
run the home, and they should not be 
denied the rights of motherhood be- 
cause of a cold materialism that repels 
as natural a craving of the human THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
79 
body, as the desire for offspring al- 
ways is in the normal woman. 
A factor not often considered as be- 
ing a cause for the social evil is repres- 
sion of the natural appetites of the fe- 
male. Woman in America is obliged 
to wait until some man asks her hand 
in marriage, and must never show any 
interest whatever until he has perfunc- 
torily performed this duty. This fact 
has placed women in a false position. 
The mothers of the race should have 
the right to choose the fathers of their 
children. Many women marry men 
whom they absolutely abhor, because of 
a fear that they may have to go through 
the rest of their lives as spinsters. Fear 
of spinsterhood has driven many 
women to become breeding machines 
for men, who should be regarded by a 
wise society as being incompetent to 
procreate-who in reality should have 
been sterilized. Degenerates are born 
as the result of marriages like the 
above, many times to mothers, who 
might have boasted of perfectly normal 80 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
offsprings had they been able to have 
chosen their mates. The natural intui- 
tive ability of women makes them bet- 
ter judges of men than men are of 
women. This ability should cause them 
to assert themselves and demand that 
they have equal rights with men to 
choose their mates. CHAPTER SEVEN. 
It is very interesting to note with 
what ardor the armies of the world 
took up the fight for efficiency among 
their soldiers. The following very in- 
teresting card was distributed among 
many troops urging against promiscu- 
ous intercourse with prostitutes. The 
warning is timely for civilians and 
should be heeded by all who are in the 
habit of associating with the unfortun- 
ates of the underworld. It reads: 
"Comrades, it is time to speak sum- 
marily of the risk you run as men. 
Gonorrhoea and syphilis are malignant 
diseases which not only make you unfit 
for fighting but which you may bring 
home to your families and children, 
nay, these diseases may be with you for 
months and years in the madhouse. In 
this time of mortal need, you must sum- 
81 82 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
mon all your will to resist women. 
Avoid drink and its promptings of the 
blood, which unseat judgment and per- 
vert good manners." 
What a pity it is that a card of this 
nature can not be handed every young 
man when he reaches puberty. What 
a pity it is that innocence is allowed 
to suffer the pangs of incurable di- 
seases because of provincialism and a 
decadent system of moral ethics. 
Young men should be fortified by a 
warning sufficiently broad in its mean- 
ing to cover without being obsence the 
temptations that will beset them as 
soon as they approach manhood. 
Many a boy because of ignorance has 
allowed himself to be enticed by boys 
older than himself, who have become 
proficient in petty vices by association 
with pool room loafers, etc., into doing 
things immoral that he would have re- 
sisted had he received the proper in- 
struction at home, from a father who 
was not afraid to tell his son the truth. 
Moral cowardice in the past has ruled THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
83 
in the home. False modesty, sex hypo- 
crisy and prurience control the minds 
of the average father and mother. 
Rather than tell their children the 
truth, they let them go out into the 
world and suffer the horrible conse- 
quences of ignorance. They are quick 
enough to say that they believe in in- 
struction for the young when the sub- 
ject is broached, yet when the back is 
turned, they fall again into ruts made 
by teachers of a code of ethics that has 
been rotten since their inception. 
It is doing a child a great injustice 
to turn it loose upon the world ignorant 
of the frightful consequences of dis- 
obeying the laws of nature. The parent 
is committing a crime greater than 
that of murder, when he or she fail in 
their duty to their offspring. 
Yesterday with its arrogant hypoc- 
risy is gone; today with its attempt at 
elimination of all that is false is here, 
and it ill behooves any individual mem- 
ber of society to be caught napping. 
An opportunity is offered every 84 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
guardian of the destinies of children to 
improve them mentally, physically, 
morally and spiritually. 
For parents to say that they hesitate 
to speak to their children because of a 
fear that it may excite their curiosity 
and cause them to do those things they 
are talking against is begging the ques- 
tion. Children of today are able to grasp 
the meaning of good advice and are 
nearer ready to heed it than they ever 
have been before. To plead modesty 
and an inability to talk on such a deli- 
cate subject as Nature is to confess a 
cowardice that deserves the ignominous 
contempt of those who are trying by 
their teaching to eliminate forms of 
immorality that are born as a result of 
ignorance. 
The sex impulse is the strongest im- 
pulse of the human brain. It has ruled 
for ages; without it man would have 
been a failure, he would never have ad- 
vanced. It should be regarded as being 
holy and sex hunger should not be al- 
lowed to become gluttonous. Biologi- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
85 
cally, sex hunger is as normal as hun- 
ger for food, yet it is possible to pervert 
this hunger to ulterior purposes and it 
is to this end that parents should advise 
their children. They should not be 
taught that it is an unclean something 
which debases, but rather should they 
be told that it is for the holy purpose 
of procreation, and that if Nature's 
laws are violated and sensuality is in- 
dulged in, that disastrous results may 
follow that cannot be overcome. 
There is not a parent who would not 
warn children against the danger of 
fire, and yet fail to warn against the 
horrible scourge of venereal disease 
that today is sapping at the very vitals 
of society; that is burning up by its ter- 
rible ravages on the human economy in- 
dividuals who should not have been sac- 
rificed before the altar of sensuality. 
There should be schools for the in- 
struction of parents in social and sex 
hygiene, and attendance should be made 
compulsory in order that the conserva- 
tion of the race could be better looked 86 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
after in order that sex crimes might be 
eliminated from society. 
There are no members of modern so- 
cial systems who do not recall the lies 
told them by their parents in their 
childhood when the question was asked, 
"Who made me?" And the shock to 
their mentalities when they learned the 
truth from outside sources in a form 
that was in all probability nasty. 
Children should be regarded as hu- 
man beings and treated as such, and not 
like creatures of no intelligence, entire- 
ly subject to the opinions of their eld- 
ers. They appreciate frankness of ex- 
pression just as much as does an adult, 
and should receive it. Their little minds 
are just as capable in their way of ab- 
sorbing ideas of good and evil, as are 
the minds of men and women of mature 
age. For parents to refuse to answer 
questions truthfully, is for them to com- 
mit a crime against society that will 
not go unpunished, for the fruits of the 
iniquity of ignorance like Banquo's 
ghost will come to annoy them many THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
87 
times, when least expected. Children 
should be studied constantly by their 
parents and made the recipients of at- 
tention that will so mold their lives as 
to lay the foundation of a good and 
wholesome morality for them that will 
make them good citizens of a future 
day, to reflect credit on the generation 
that brought them into the world. 
The ancient institutions of a decadent 
morality should be destroyed by the 
gunfire of public disapproval and the 
cloak of the enlightenment of a better 
day should be donned by parents who 
for truth's sake are willing to throw 
aside their cowardice of the past and 
make the bravery of their fight for the 
betterment of childhood, stand pre- 
eminent in society to the shame of those 
who are not yet willing to accept truth 
and who turn aside to blush with a pru- 
rient mind at the very mention of that 
something which should stand out in 
bold relief from everything else as be- 
ing pure-the sex impulse. 
If the average philanthropist who is 88 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
continually giving to this or to that 
charity or to this or to that church, 
would give some of his money for the 
establishment of neighborhood houses 
wherein girls who have to work for a 
living and who have poor home sur- 
roundings, or none at all, could enter- 
tain their male friends, they would do 
a great deal towards stopping prositu- 
tion. If preachers would recommend 
to their parishoners that their churches 
be left open seven days a week and used 
for places of entertainment, free pic- 
ture shows, humane lectures, parties, or 
anything else that might bring young 
people together and keep them off the 
street, they would be doing a service 
that would benefit all classes. 
If the members of society would 
spend more time studying human be- 
ings and less in criticising the actions 
of their neighbors there would be again 
less reason for prostitution. Harsh 
criticism has driven many a woman 
into a life of shame who would have THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
89 
remained pure and chaste after her 
first mistake if wagging tongues could 
have been quieted. ST Rt IT-CORN ER. 
LOAFER. 
THE CHILD SEDUCER. CHAPTER EIGHT. 
The causes for prostitution are many. 
Because of poverty hundreds of girls 
go wrong every day; they have no place 
where they may entertain their male 
friends, and, as a consequence, the 
street corner becomes their parlor. The 
natural craving for social contact with 
the male causes them to seek out a 
means whereby they may meet men in 
order that they may marry and give ex- 
pression to their maternal instincts. 
These girls dream of their ideal men, 
just as daughters of rich men dream 
about their prospective lovers, and for 
the same reason. The maternal spirit 
dominates the body of the poor girl or 
woman who works for a living and it 
cries out for an opportunity to assert 
itself. She feels the demands of nature 
just as keenly as does the woman who 
91 92 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
is in a position to gratify her heart's 
desire. When she uses the street cor- 
ner for her parlor, she falls into the 
hands of unscrupulous men and boys 
who by flattery and tales of love and 
promise of marriage gain advantage 
over her and accomplish her ruin. After 
she has fallen she realizes that she has 
become a social pariah and that she can 
never gain for herself a place in society 
and falls lower and lower in the social 
scale. 
Numerous women who lead lives of 
prostitution and who sell their bodies 
for gold are purer in thought and mind 
than are many residents of so-called ex- 
clusive neighborhoods. The only dif- 
ference being that some women in ex- 
clusive circles frequently give vent to 
impure thought and sensuous desires, 
fear alone of social ostracism keeping 
them from breaking all the ties of de- 
cency. "High Society" reserves the 
right to indulge its sensual appetites 
clandestinely and curses those who are 
discovered. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
93 
Many women who become prostitutes 
are poorly balanced mentally, they are 
Morons, their intellects are as shallow 
as the intellect of a 10 or 12 year old 
child. Prostitution offers to them the 
point of least resistance, and too, offers 
what appears to be a life of ease and 
pleasure. Most prostitutes should be 
confined in institutions for the care of 
feeble minded. They should receive the 
humane and careful attention all who 
suffer from mental diseases receive. 
They are ill, and persecution and prose- 
cution of them does no good. Women 
of this sort are the result of a system, 
which has said to mothers "breed, breed 
for quantity and may be quality will 
come." Had their ancestors been ster- 
ilized and prevented from procreating 
offsprings who would inherit their bad 
qualities, great good would have re- 
sulted to society. Too little attention 
is paid to quality breeding and quantity 
seems to be the object many mothers 
have in view when they allow them- 
selves to become breeding machines for 94 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
husbands, in whose families may be 
found causes for race decay. 
Until women rise in their might and 
refuse to bring into the world children 
whose lives will be blighted by the in- 
heritance of bad traits formerly pos- 
sessed by their parents, grand parents 
or great grand parents, etc., degen- 
eracy and its evil brood will continue 
to revel in the dark corners of present 
day social systems, and prostitution 
with its blighting effect on men and 
women will thrive wherever individuals 
gather together to found towns and cit- 
ies. 
All degenerates, both male and fe- 
male should be sterilized; a failure to do 
this only allows them possibly to pro- 
create human beings who sooner or 
later will become public charges. 
The total elimination of the prosti- 
tute depends on the elimination of pov- 
erty and on the proper education of the 
masses. Because of poverty women fre- 
quently sacrifice themselves before the 
altar of sensuality in order to earn THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
95 
money to provide food for loved ones. 
In a mid-Western City, a young woman 
known to the writer, sold herself, in or- 
der that she might earn money enough 
to obtain necessities for her invalid 
mother. She tried to obtain work but 
on account of her delicate appearance 
she failed. Shop keepers and mer- 
chants feared she could not stand up 
under the long hours of labor that 
would be required of her. Some offered 
her employment at $3.50 per week, the 
smallness of the offer showed her the 
futility of hunting further. She and 
her mother had to live. She chose the 
hardest way as a last resort. Society 
damned this woman. Her sacrifice was 
made, from necessity. There are thou- 
sands of such cases; yet because of an 
unfeeling and cruel moral code, these 
martyrs become outcasts. 
If society would damn its own mem- 
bers, when they sell themselves before 
the marriage altar for gold and social 
position, there might be a reason for 
condemning poverty stricken women? 96 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
who, because of want, sacrifice them- 
selves to lustful males. 
The woman who will marry a man for 
his dollars and not for his love is a har- 
lot in the eyes of her Creator. Her sin 
is the greatest. The woman who sells 
herself for money and social position, 
usually confers sexual favors on a lover, 
thereby leading a double life, and a 
worse one than the woman of the 
streets. She becomes a most serious 
menace to society, because the wrongs 
she commits are committed under cov- 
er. A hidden sin is more insidious than 
an open one. A cure may possibly be 
found for an open wound, but the one 
that heals apparently on the surface 
while underneath a poison is being gen- 
erated, usually destroys in the end. 
In this age of material thought, fre- 
quently spiritual elements in man's na- 
ture are neglected, and love does not 
play the part it should. The finer things 
life should hold for lovers are cast 
aside in a mad fight for dollars. "What 
will the dollar buy for me?" is the THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
97 
thought uppermost in the minds of 
most men and women-this thought 
makes sinning easy-and, as the road 
downward seemingly is a pleasant one 
to descend, few try to climb again the 
mountain paths to purity. 
N. E. A. in Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 
28, 1913, tells this story. 
"Rochester, N. Y., is fortunate in be- 
ing a city with a human being as its 
chief of police. Chief Quigley teaches 
his men to try to anticipate and prevent 
crime. 
One night not long ago a policeman 
in plain clothes saw two young women 
pause on a prominent street as two 
young men addressed them; smile; in- 
terchange whispered words and start 
with the men in the direction of a cafe. 
No law had been broken, but the man 
remembered that he had seen one of the 
girls a few evenings before drinking 
with a man in a place not above sus- 
picion. 
He "butted in". He approached the 
young woman, begged a word in pri- 98 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
vate, led her a few steps away from her 
companion, showed- her his star and 
said the chief wanted to see her. 
A hardened woman probably would 
have made a scene. This one didn't. She 
went with the policeman quietly to the 
station, where the chief talked to her 
as a good father would. Her story, 
later confirmed, was the old, old story. 
Born in poverty, denied adequate 
schooling, she had had to work for self 
support. She toiled all day at tiring 
tasks for just enough pay to keep her 
afloat. With night came the human 
craving for companionship. But, alas, 
there was "nowhere to go"-nowhere 
but into the streets or into the cafes. 
So to the streets she went. Not to be 
vicious. Just to be human; to get some 
fun in relief from the strain of exhaust- 
ing toil. 
The chief told her of the danger of 
her choice. Fortunately he was able to 
bring her into touch with a motherly 
elder woman who has perhaps saved 
her from ruin. THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
99 
But he cannot hope to do as well 
toward all. Youth will have fellowship, 
wisely or ill. Isn't society to blame 
when there is "nowhere to go?" 
"Vice and crime can be abolished. 
When? When we are certain of the 
cause of them-and then remove those 
causes. What are their causes? Invol- 
untary poverty." 
" 'But the law might do something 
to wipe out the evil, surely,' exclaim 
some. The world has been legislating 
against sin for thousands of years, but 
the sin remains just the same. Clean- 
ing out a bagnio is like clearing an old, 
decaying house of rats by making a 
loud noise and frightening them away 
for a time. All the unhappy wretches 
exist and must live in some way. They 
have no other way of securing it except 
by practicing their old profession, only, 
now, they do it more secretively and in 
darker and more dangerous corners. 
Nothing but a complete change in the 
social and economic institutions and 
systems of our civilization will effect a 100 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
cure for the evil under discussion; lit- 
tle remedies do not actually effect the 
evil and its underlying cause. The 
world is waking up to the fact that all 
human beings are related and that what 
concerns one concerns all!" 
"While there are owners of the earth 
and homeless ones, because of it; while 
there are masters and servants; while 
there are the favored few and the op- 
pressed majority, there will always be 
wrongs and abuses which cannot be 
cured. The earth and all its resources, 
must belong to all alike. Useful labor 
must be the only foundation for the 
ownership of wealth. None should be 
overworked-drudgery dulls the facul- 
ties, paralyzes the brain and dwarfs the 
body. This is pure selfishness, en- 
lightened, for each will possess enough 
and need not fear the encroachments 
of his needy brother. 
"When all are afforded full oppor- 
tunity to act and develop and grow, 
does anyone think that man or woman THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
101 
will sell himself or herself for base 
uses? Would there be any cause for 
prostitution? Certainly not." ADDENDA 
The following editorials from two 
leading daily papers in Tennessee 
should point a way to light to those who 
are as yet members of the same class 
to which organizers of the Inquisition 
belonged centuries ago and who as yet 
are suffering from mock modesty. 
Editorials like the ones mentioned 
above have been written by fearless 
editors everywhere in cities wherein 
sex crimes have been numerous and 
where conspicuous reformers have 
preached the doctrine of persecution 
and prosecution. L. A. S. 
THE MALE "MENACE" SHOULD BE TREATED AS 
FEMALE "MENACE." 
(Commercial Appeal, Aug. 31, 1919.) 
The proper solution of an evil that is as old as sin 
and death was finally adopted this week by the Mem- 
phis police department. 
One day last week the female inmates of what the 
world calls a disorderly house were arrested, brought 
Newspaper Editorial 
102 THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
103 
to the police station and were held there pending 
fines and a medical examination. We were moved to 
remark that if there were any men in the place at the 
time they were not arrested. 
It has been the custom that when the inmates of 
these places have been arrested and hauled in 
wagons to the police stations in this city and other 
cities the men who happened to be there were unmo- 
lested. 
Within the last few years there has been an effort 
to stop the spread of certain diseases which the 
namby-pamby minds euphemistically call "social" dis- 
eases. These diseases have not been discussed, as 
they should have been, in the pulpit, schools, family 
circle and in the newspapers. 
We are making a few remarks on them and kindred 
subjects on this Sabbath day. 
An order has gone out that hereafter when disor- 
derly houses are raided that the men also be brought 
along. The order has also gone out that when a 
woman of unsavory character is caught with a man 
that man, as well as the woman, be brought in. 
If w~ practice the single standard in morals then 
will we come out of a condition under which millions 
of people are destroyed every year. 
There seems to be a riot of sexual sin. We are 
reaping the whirlwind of neglect. Religion and mor- 
als both have been sugar-coated. 
The intellectuals want to think about only those 
things that are pleasant. 
Those who do not think want to indulge only in 
those things that gratify the flesh. 
We are constantly making efforts to regulate 
women for bad morals. The man who consorts with 
these women may still remain a pillar of society. 
Occasionally he leads in reform. Sometimes he has 
a wife and children in one end of a town and his 
strumpet in another end. 
If women are found to have contracted diseases it 
is suggested that they be confined until they are 
cured, and if men contract diseases they, too, should 
be confined until they are cured. 
Human society's first law is self-preservation. 
There is more physical ruin, more blindness, more 
deformity resulting from sexual diseases than from 
any other cause. 104 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
There are more operations performed upon inno- 
cent women every year in the United States because 
of the former sins of their husbands than were per- 
formed on all the American soldiers wounded in 
France. 
It has become so that many beautiful and innocent 
young women in three weeks pass from the wedding 
feast into the operating room. 
If anyone should talk to those medical men who 
keep records and follow the ravages of gonorrhea 
and syphilis that one would be astounded and amazed 
when it was stated to him that from them and from 
their consequences there are more deaths than from 
tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid and malarial fever. 
The consequences of these diseases run through 
the generations. Their effect is seen in the asylums 
for the insane. Their further effect is also seen in a 
vast number of children who perish under five years 
of age. 
Among men the victims of these diseases in the 
army during the war were less per thousand than 
among men in civilian life, but in the army the vic- 
tim of these diseases was put in a stockade hospital, 
where he was confined until he was cured. In civilian 
life the men walk the streets and roads and have no 
compunction about scattering the poison that is in 
them. 
We have got to have a social cleanup. It must go 
to males as well as females. 
We must have it so that the immoral man is de- 
tested as is the immoral woman. 
The ravages of these diseases must be stopped 
among the American people or the American people 
will perish. 
SYMPATHY, NOT SERMONS. 
(Editorial, Memphis Commercial Appeal.) 
"Because strait is the fate and narrow is the way 
which leadeth unto life few there be that find it." 
How true this is today. How true it was even in 
the days of Eden, the very dawn of the world. 
Human flesh is weak. There are none so strong, 
so perfect that they may not err. For this reason 
we should extend a helping hand to those who have 
sinned. We should help them with the strength of THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
105 
human sympathy. We should guide them, not preach. 
"Judge not, that ye be not judged." 
The words echo down through ages. The Sermon 
on the Mount rings sweetly in the ears of all who 
are trying to do the Master's bidding. 
"For with what judgment ye judge," come softly 
the words of St. Matthew, "ye shall be judged, and 
with what measure ye mete it shall be measured 
again." 
Did you ever gaze into the haunted eyes of the 
wrongdoer, gaze up into the hardened but pathetic 
face or casually glance at the wan and woebegone 
countenance of the fallen brother or the fallen sister 
and realize that it is sympathy they want, not ser- 
mons? Sympathy will moisten the hardest heart. 
Sermons, too frequently, fall upon closed ears. 
The man or woman who has slipped in the narrow 
path, who has missed the gate in the narrow way, 
know and understand and suffei1 because of the mis- 
directed step. When once they fall it does not mean 
that they are destined to perdition. A kindly word, 
a thoughtful look, a human touch, a soft spoken word 
may save a soul. 
Those who sin expect a sermon. They look for a 
lecture. They want a kindly word. They hunger for 
sympathy. 
We learn this lesson with the very beginning of 
life. As a child when we do wrong in our very inno- 
cence we know it. The wise mother will take her 
little one to her knee and with tender but grave 
motherly dignity will reprove, will tell of the wrong- 
doing with a kindly stroke of the hair and a gentle 
word of reproof, mingled with the sympathy which 
wells from the mother's heart, will bring her little 
truant back into the fold. 
Young lives have been crushed with harsh words. 
Young hearts have been hardened by the severe ser- 
mons of the nursery. 
When Christ dragged His rugged cross to the top 
of Calvary in His heart was a prayer for His fellow- 
men, but His soul longed for sympathy, that word of 
sympathy which gives the body fortitude to withstand 
the vicissitudes and tragedies of adversity. 
We of churchly faith, yet wise in the ways of the 
world, are too wont to say in the words of Cain, "I 
am not my brother's keeper." 106 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
It is a complaisant thought to sit with pious dignity 
in a cushioned pew and gaze through stained glass 
windows into God's eternity and feel at peace. 
But how many can do this? How many can really 
understand and appreciate the words of those rever- 
ent men of the cloth who labor in the Lord's vine- 
yard? 
How much better we feel when we realize what a 
word of sympathy will accomplish when given to the 
unfortunate on the street corner and in the lanes and 
alleys of life. 
There are in this world men whose hearts rattle in 
their narrow breasts like dried peas in a pod, whose 
wise words and hypocritical advice fall like drops of 
water on a duck's back. There is the tear of the 
crocodile in their eye, and, while profuse in their 
words of wisdom, there is not a note of sympathy in 
their voice, no warmth of love in their soul. Their 
words of sympathy to the recipient come like stones 
to the starving man. 
There must be that secret undercurrent of kindness 
in all expressions of sympathy. 
"It is the secret sympathy, the silver link, the 
silken tie which heart to heart and mind to mind in 
body and soul can blend." 
And again the words from St. Matthew echo down 
through the corridors of time. "Thou hypocrite, first 
cast out the beam out thine own eye; and then shalt 
thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy brother's 
eye." 
It was that sweet singer of songs of the heart, 
Phoebe Carey, who wrote: 
"It is not well 
Here in this land of Christian liberty, 
That honest worth or hopeless want should dwell 
Unaided by our care and sympathy." 
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 
(Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 31, 1917.) 
The chance acquaintance, to a lonely girl, is a dan- 
gerous companion. 
Some girls who come to the city to make their 
living feel the need of masculine friendship. When a 
girl, having passed the period of adolescence, comes THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
107 
into contact with the seamy side of life she is eager 
to meet any chance acquaintance, even though he be 
unattractive, and the moving picture show seems to 
be a common ground for making chance acquaint- 
ances. 
It is so easy to sit beside a girl longing for com- 
panionship, and in the dark talk to her about the 
picture, and subsequently, as the keen pang of lone- 
liness is somewhat softened, to talk about something 
else. 
The chance acquaintance may be perfectly honest 
in his approach, and the girl may be equally grateful 
and feel that the man is only trying to be friendly. 
Possibly this is true, but the girl, even as lonely 
as she may be, and as sadly as she feels the need of 
male companionship, should exercise unusual judg- 
ment when she picks up a chance acquaintance. 
The craving for companionship is sometimes a 
curse. It is natural that any girl, walking through 
the doors of womanhood, should not select to live 
alone. It is her mission in life to find her mate, but 
she should be careful in the selection. 
Girls come to the city to make their way, and all 
cities are filled with pitfalls. They leave the farm 
or the country town, where every one knows every 
one else; where conviviality and companionship is 
recognized. She comes to a crowded city only to find 
herself alone. 
Loneliness is the destroyer of peace of mind; lone- 
liness is the worst punishment that can be inflicted 
upon any one, man or woman, alike. Loneliness has 
driven more than one poor girl to suicide or worse. 
It is natural, therefore, that the young girl making 
her way in the world should seek companionship. She 
is but yielding to natural impulse. Here is the great 
danger. The chance acquaintance is not always to 
be cultivated. It is wise and helpful to make friends, 
good, companionable friends. It brightens the way 
and makes easier the hardships of city life, but the 
chance acquaintance too often proves to be an enemy 
in disguise. 
It is easy to meet up with the chance acquaintance 
in the parks, in the theaters, on the streets, in the 
hotels, and too frequently the young girl meets him 
in the house in which she boards. 108 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
The chance acquaintance is usually a youth, well 
dressed, easy and affable in manner, soft tongued and 
polite, in every outward appearance a gentleman. 
Thousands of young women venture to the big 
cities of the country every year and meet just such 
men and make just such chance acquaintances. A 
girl is always trying to match her good intentions, 
or her imagined cleverness, against a big city filled 
with chance acquaintances. The outcome is often 
pathetic and is usually disastrous to the future of 
the trusting girl. 
She may imagine herself worldly wise; she may 
think that she is clever and can take care of herself. 
But it is too frequently the case that the chance 
acquaintance is wiser than the girl, cleverer than 
she is and, usually, stronger of the two. Making a 
living in a wilderness, amidst prowling wolves, is an 
unpleasant business, for one must be continuously 
on guard. 
FALLEN WOMEN IN NASHVILLE NOT DE- 
CREASED. 
(Nashville Tennesseean.) 
Four months have elapsed since the segregated 
district was closed through orders of the board of 
city commissioners, hardly long enough, perhaps, to 
prove whether or not that method solves the oldest 
problem that confronts municipalities. 
Four months after the district was closed it cannot 
be shown that there are any fewer scarlet women in 
Nashville. 
Four months after the district was closed it cannot 
be learned that a single one of the former residents 
has undertaken to earn a lawful livelihood-or has 
been offered an opportunity. 
Four months after the order was issued it appears 
that the enthusiasm first manifested in the spiritual 
and material welfare of the city's unfortunate women 
has waned. With the passing of the Christmas sea- 
son, interest was no longer shown in whether those 
women had places to stay or whether they were suf- 
ficiently clad. No longer was interest shown in 
whether they wanted to leave the life into which mis- 
fortune had placed them. They were left to live or THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
109 
die, anyway, anyhow-except, of course, in a segre- 
gated district. 
Numerous Houses Have Been Closed. 
It has been estimated that 500 women were affected 
by the resolution of the board of city commissioners. 
A hundred or more houses have been closed. Five 
hundred women were put on the streets. An investi- 
gation shows that those five hundred are still resi- 
dents of Nashville and still are plying their trade, 
but in the most wretched circumstances, amid filth 
and disease, for the most part. They are scattered 
into all parts of the city, and any night may be seen 
pandering on the down-town streets. Any afternoon 
and night they may be seen by the score on Fifth 
avenue, on Union street and on Church street. They 
are in all the theaters and picture shows, ever on the 
alert for the chance acquaintance. 
All are not on the up-town streets. It takes money 
for the vogue clothing and make-up that are essential 
to their profession. When the heels of their shoes 
begin to run over, when too many cleanings and 
spongings have brought the shine to the once hand- 
some suits, when the hats no longer stun and their 
gloves are worn through, when the rainy days come 
and there is no money for new outfits, the profitable 
days on the up-town streets are over. Their places 
are taken by recruits and they pass over to Broadway 
and the cross streets, where their shabbiness is not 
so apparent under the dimmer lights. From there 
the fall of the women of the night to the lowest levels 
of Third avenue, north, is rapid. And the end usually 
is at the city hospital, where another "poison" case 
is reported. 
"We do not know," is the invariable response of 
the former proprietors of the district houses when 
asked what has become of the rank and file. 
"Have any of them gone to work?" was asked of 
six or eight former landladies. 
"I have not heard of a single one," was the invari- 
able response. 
"Do you know of a girl who was given an oppor- 
tunity to work-a job?" 
"No," all of them answered. 
"When the district was first closed up committees 
came through and promised that all who wanted jobs 110 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
could get them. But, so far as I know, there was not 
a single instance of where a girl was told that a job 
was waiting for her if she would go after it. All the 
committees assured the girls that there were people 
in Nashville willing and ready to help them by giving 
them work, but I don't know of any girl who was 
directed to a job," said one, who described conditions 
under which the women now are living. 
"Few of the girls, if any, left the city," she said. 
"There was no place to go. Few of them had any 
money or any clothes. They couldn't leave. 
"When the houses were closed by the police some 
of the girls were cared for by the former landladies, 
who were willing to share with them what they had. 
Few had anything, and when that little was spent 
the girls went out on the streets. No woman of the 
district will go out on the street until she is forced 
out. Usually they will beg or steal before they will 
go. They know what it means. They have seen the 
horrors of the filth and the disease. They know it is 
the end. Those that have a little money watch every 
penny of it. Not a cent is spent that is not necessary. 
They hold on and hope that conditions will change, 
that something will happen to keep them from going 
on the street, where there isn't one chance in a mil- 
lion for them. 
"When the order first came to close, the first lot 
of them went out. That was the biggest crowd, and 
since then they have gone one by one. You can see 
them any night on the streets, soliciting. They are 
living anywhere and everywhere. I understand they 
are scattered all over the city. I still have a little 
money left, but when that is gone I don't know where 
I'll go. I am getting old now, and it seems that when 
I reach the point where I can't pay my expenses 
there will be no place for me. You see I am not- 
what is it they call it?-a worthy case." 
THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION. 
(Nashville Tennesseean, Feb. 7, 1916.) 
Not very long ago the houses in the segregated 
district were closed, and the women sent out to make 
their living in unaccustomed ways. 
Many of them, of course, continued on the old way 
in new surroundings, but some of them began the THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
111 
stiff climb back to respectability, a task that, at 
best, is well-nigh impossible. 
The public, of course, will never know just how 
these women fare along the rocky road. Some of 
them will make good and slip gradually out of sight 
of those who have known them. And some will 
climb half the way and slip tragically back to the 
bottom. 
Of some, however, it may be possible to know a 
little as they go along. 
Word came Saturday from a reliable source that 
one of those women has a job-a job that pays her 
$2.50 a week. That is a little less than thirty-six 
cents a day. She could buy three meals-supposing 
that she eats three times a day-paying ten cents 
for each of them, and she would have a nickel left 
to buy clothing and fuel and shelter. She might 
shave the meals a little and have more than a nickel 
a day left for the other three. And those four are 
the essential things-food, clothing, shelter, warmth. 
And-think of it!-this girl has thirty-five cents 
every day for just those four things. Of course, those 
figures are based on the supposition that she will 
not be sick any time, and require medicine and the 
attention of a doctor, and that she never will be so 
indiscreet as to buy a nickel's worth of something 
she doesn't have to have. 
But that is supposing too much. Of course, she 
is going to be sick. Of course she is going to buy 
something she doesn't need. Of course she can't buy 
the four essential things for thirty-five cents a day. 
And of course-well, you may decide for yourself 
whether that girl will climb the hill or lie, a broken 
thing, at its.base. Whatever the cause of her first 
fall, the cause of this second one will be perfectly 
clear-inability to earn by honest work a wage large 
enough to support her. But the world will probably 
not place the blame where it belongs, any more than 
the world placed the blame where it belonged the 
first time she fell. 
She is just one of the struggling girls. There are 
probably others struggling equally hard toward re- 
sults as futile. 
A big stir has been made over those girls, a great 
bustling about to help them. That is a matter over 112 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
which a good many people can be perfectly happy- 
and the girls will be no more miserable than they 
were as "honest working girls." 
The net result of it all? Well, this, at least-the 
Master will have his angel, who writes in the Book, 
blot out the charges against some "scarlet women," 
and the devil will have his imps stoke the furnaces 
to white heat when the souls are on the way of those 
who paid the women thirty-five (a fraction over) 
cents a day. 
WORK OF THE VICE COMMISSION. 
(Nashville Tennesseean.) 
A statement as to the work done by the Nashville 
vice commission, signed by all members except the 
chairman, who is out of the city, was printed in the 
Tennesseean and American. It was brought forth, 
largely, by a news article and an editorial that ap- 
peared in this paper several days ago. Members of 
the commission have felt that, in some sort, they 
were done an injustice. The Tennessean and Ameri- 
can certainly meant no injustice. It has not failed to 
esteem or to applaud the good things that the com- 
mission has done. Any stricture that it may have 
made was not intended as a rifle shot at the com- 
mission but as a broadside at society. We believe 
there is no real difference between what the Ten- 
nessean and American wishes accomplished. Hold- 
ing that belief this paper again offers its sympathy 
and its aid. 
The statement of the commission throws some light 
on the situation that we did not have before. From 
that report the inference is easily drawn that the 
commission would have been able to bring more 
women into its Friendly Aid center and to have 
placed more of them in honorable work had the 
women not been led to believe that they could, in a 
short time, return openly to their old way of life in 
their old locations. Another inference is that the 
police have not strictly enforced the closing order. 
Encouragement that, by remaining in the houses, 
they could return shortly to the old basis is said to 
have been given by persons who took profit from the 
segregated district. That is a class of people with 
whom no right thinking person has the slightest sym- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
113 
pathy. They are the vultures of the tenderloin. 
Mostly, the inmates of the houses are merely pitiable. 
The profit-takers are wholly despicable. They vic- 
timize the women, fatten on the gains for which the 
women sink themselves into living perdition. They 
constitute the greater barrier that stands, ordinarily, 
between the fallen woman and the pathway of return 
to respectable living. She is mortgaged to them, in 
bonds and fetters. It is probably the province of the 
officers of the law more than of any other agency to 
convince the women that the promises of those who 
victimize and despoil them are not to be relied upon. 
The report of the commission shows that a home 
has been maintained into which any woman might 
come for any sort of aid and, from that home, may 
be sent to honorable employment. No statement is 
made-probably none is necessary-as to just how 
many women have come into the home and how many 
have been sent from it to employment. The state- 
ment is made, however, that the number of women 
the commission has been able to aid is something 
less than ten per cent-exactly how much less is not 
stated. Ten per cent, it is said, is the average pro- 
portion of prostitutes who, in any city where the 
segregated district is abolished, respond at all to the 
offers for aid. 
But ten per cent is entirely too small a proportion. 
The fact that other cities have not been able to reach 
more is not proof that it cannot be done. Neither is 
the fact that the commission has been able to influ- 
ence less than ten per cent in Nashville a reflection 
upon the work of the commission. 
In the previous editorial the Tennesseean and 
American said that the doctor, the newspaper man, 
the minister, and good citizens generally have the 
duty equally upon them to assist in this work. To 
that should have been added the commercial bodies 
of the city. It is a work designed to make Nashville 
a more desirable city. Every agency that is inter- 
ested in making Nashville the most desirable city 
possible should take part in it. To depend wholly 
upon persuasion, is utter folly. 
. Prpbably a majority of the women now scattered 
about the streets of Nashvijle or still in the houses 
of the abolished segregated district: are medtail delta- 114 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
quents, mental defectives. They never should have 
been permitted to bring themselves to their present 
plight. Had the principles of psychology and of soci- 
ology been applied, they would have grown up in 
institutions that could have cared for them rather 
than allowed to go blindly to their own certiJn ruin. 
And it is by no means too late now to do a good deal 
along this line. With proper medical aid and a little 
official co-operation, much more than another 10 per 
cent can be added to the number of women who have 
been saved from themselves. The feeble-minded 
prostitute cannot reform. She, of all her guild, is 
the most dangerous. It is the province of government 
scientifically directed to remove her to a place where 
she will injure neither herself nor society. That 
nothing has been done along this line is not charge- 
able to the vice commission-except that the commis- 
sion has not-probably could not-enlist with it this 
sort of service. That service should offer itself. The 
commission should not have to go seeking for it. 
It is not anywhere denied that most of the women 
are in much worse plight now than when the closing 
order was issued. Many of them are suffering. It 
is probable that many of them who refused aid in 
the first instance would accept it now. But it needs 
to be extended anew. The woman of the underworld 
comes to regard herself as hopeless, but she retains 
a remnant of pride-false pride, if you will-that 
keeps her from asking anything. Having so long 
regarded the door of return as barred to her, one 
pointing to the door, though it be wide open, is not 
likely to suffice. There is no reason why it should 
not be pointed again and again. And it was in that 
connection that the Tennessean and American quoted 
the words of Jesus, not to the fallen woman but to 
the man who inquired, "How often shall one sin and 
be forgiven-until seven times?" 
The task that the vice commission undertook is 
the most difficult one in the world. It should not be 
borne by men and women officially representing the 
churches alone. . The city government itself should 
do something. Various organizations of the city 
should do something. All of them, if they unite, can 
do much. Aren't they big enoughs just enough, 
human enough to do it? ... . THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
115 
And, in its last word as in its first, the Tennesseean 
and American wishes to say that it may be com- 
manded for anything that it can do. If more money 
is needed, it stands ready not only to give out of its 
own pocket, but to carry the appeal to all the people 
of Nashville who are able to give. 
THE PROBLEM OF THE YOUNG IN 1915. 
(Commercial Appeal, May 1, 1915.) 
Revelations in the trial of a young man charged 
with violating the age of consent law showed an 
appalling condition of youthful male morals in this 
city. And what is true of Memphis is true of every 
other city in the country. 
We shall give attention to things at home, for a 
home missionary effort is surely needed. 
A young girl, aged 15 years, was a prosecuting wit- 
ness against a young man not 21. It was charged 
that he accomplished her ruin. 
When the case came to trial the defense sought to 
break the force of the indictment by alleging the pre- 
vious bad character of the girl. 
Young boys not of age and young men around town 
got on the witness stand and swore to insinuations 
that the girl, previous to the affair on which the 
indictment was found, was worthless. 
They were glibe of tongue and swift witnesses up 
to a certain point. In murdering the good name of 
the girl they were as indifferent as a small boy killing 
a toad. 
There was a hung jury. Eight stood for conviction 
and four stood for acquittal. One of those who stood 
out for acquittal intimated that it was merely a ques- 
tion of a young man "sowing his wild oats." 
One pimple-faced juror of middle life said human 
nature was human nature and that he was not ad- 
verse to a flirtation and what might follow. 
The others thought that such things were a matter 
of course, and thus the case was not decided. 
A girl only 15 years old cannot be entirely bad, but 
this girl in the court was treated as if she were a 
woman of experience, mature in years and wise to 
the ways of the world. 
She was given no consideration because of her 
tender years. She was scarcely more than a child, 116 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
but she was treated in the court as if she were old 
enough to take care of herself. The stranger in the 
court would have thought that she and not the boy 
was on trial. 
There are many young men in this town between 
the ages of 16 and 21 who are doing nothing. They 
are silly and snobbish. Social viewpoint has come to 
making it a distinction if a young man is idle. 
A father who may have toiled in the field or in the 
shop, who may be prematurely old because of the 
excess of his labor, after having secured a compe- 
tency will not train his own son in habits of Industry. 
A misguided affection causes him to want his boy to 
have a good time and not work as he worked. 
The sons of such parents, many of them not encour- 
aged to labor, are given money to spend and are 
given by their parents automobiles for riding around. 
By day they fill the pool rooms, picture shows and 
cigar stands. By night they run from place to place. 
They ought to be at home and in bed at 10 o'clock. 
Daylight often finds them awake. 
Those who work at night and go home at 2 o'clock 
and 3 o'clock in the morning often see groups of 
these young men suffering from the excesses of their 
first drunk. Nothing so brings out the latent frailties 
and idiocies of humanity as a boy's first drunk. 
In these cases idleness is both father and mother 
of vice. These idle boys do not prey upon the girls 
of their own station of life. Many of them do take 
advantage of young girls who, because of our rotten 
economic conditions, are compelled to labor away 
from home when they should be constantly under 
their mothers' care. 
These girls are regarded as legitimate prey for the 
idle sons of indulgent parents. 
The burdens of poverty as to females is not in the 
loss of the comforts that the rich enjoy, but in the 
moral danger, in the temptations that surround the 
conditions of poverty, even when the child is but a 
child. 
The poor young girl may have an ambitious mother, 
whose ambition is for vain and foolish things. When 
the mother hears her daughter speaking of the atten- 
tion she may be receiving from one in a different sta- THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
117 
tlon of life or alleged social position she too often 
regards it as a tribute to the intelligence and beauty 
of her daughter and as a prospect for an advance- 
ment into a social career. 
The busy father usually leaves the training of the 
family to the wife, and when the boys get around 16 
years, instead of talking to them and counseling 
them, he lets them go their way, says little to them 
and then is surprised when he finds them fetching 
up at the police station. 
When he suggests to his son that there is no double 
standard of morals and that he must keep his body 
and soul clean, he is informed by his would-be blase 
youth that in these days such preachments are not in 
"good form." 
A homily on the observance of the Ten Command- 
ments is answered with a yawn and a statement that 
such sermons might have been in vogue fifty years 
ago, but are now out of date in this age of lady-killing 
clothes and class rings. 
The problem of the morals of young men and the 
evil of their seeking out for destruction young girls 
are more serious than any other thing worth con- 
sidering. 
A confusion of license with freedom which is in 
our attitude of mind towards government goes even 
into the home. If a father attempts to exercise the 
right of a parent over his 18-year-old boy there Is 
probably a revolt. 
The young upstart announces that he is a free 
agent and that it would be a "sacrifice of his liberty" 
if he gave unquestioned obedience to his father's 
commands. 
Religion seems to have lost its grip on the 16-21- 
year-old boys. 
The pulpits resound with denunciation of evils 
which we seek to remedy by political agencies. Often 
are the sins of the mature thundered at, but seldom 
do we hear sermons to parents on their duty in regu- 
lating the lives of their children. 
As for the children themselves, they are practically 
ignored in the things that are of vital importance 
until they become the victims of excesses into which 
they go often unwarned, unconscious of the end of 
the journey they begin. 118 
THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
Men and women ought to have sense enough to 
save themselves. Young boys and young girls are 
incapable of rational thinking, and yet there are few 
of the older ones who attempt to do their thinking 
for them and direct their lives along lines which the 
elders, in the light of their experience, know to be 
safe. 
If human society should concentrate its effort upon 
the proper rearing of boys and girls until they are 
21 years old, then indeed many of the evils which 
men and women are now fighting would not exist. 
Their beginnings are usually in the youthful brain. 
What are the ministers, the teachers, the parents 
of Memphis going to do about this problem, and what 
are the ministers, the teachers and parents of all the 
other communities of this country going to do? 
The work of the devil among children was never 
prosecuted under better advantages than in this year 
of our Lord 1915. 
Young girls begin to have beaux when they are 
about 15. Twenty years ago they did not begin to 
wear long dresses until they were 17. This comes 
from the social ambition of foolish mothers. 
In the winter time the society columns of this 
paper and other papers are filled with stories of 
matinee parties, etc., given by the "younger set" 
(girls 13-14, boys 16-19), and this younger set ought 
never to be out after dark without a chaperon. They 
should be in bed before 10 o'clock. 
We have the theaters and the picture shows and 
other places where children unescorted are permitted 
to go, and these same children, when they go to our 
beautiful parks, are often not accompanied by par- 
ents. 
Then we have the pool room for the boys and other 
places where young men congregate, and there their 
minds are inflamed and their curiosity excited by 
the vulgarity of boys a few years older and sometimes 
by the indecent conversations of men who have lived 
long enough to lose their teeth. A corrupt-minded 
old man is like a pestilence-breeding leper. 
And then we have a line of literature and pictures 
that are as poisonous to the soul as strychnine is to 
the body. ■ • THE WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
119 
Tes, the devil finds in our advancing civilization 
many devices which make his work pleasant and 
easy. 
Let's begin to conserve children. The present old 
ones must take care of themselves. If the children 
are properly trained, then as they grow into men and 
women they will be stronger to resist those things 
which they know if they embrace will finally destroy 
them. 
WHY NOT ALSO HOLD THE MEN? 
(Commercial Appeal, Aug. 28, 1919.) 
A house of not good reputation was raided by the 
police Tuesday night and eleven of the inmates were 
taken to the station. Later they were released under 
a writ of habeas corpus. 
The police said they were holding these women to 
have them undergo certain medical tests. Nobody 
ever suggests having men undergo medical tests. 
A house of this sort seems never to be raided when 
men are there. If the police will adopt a policy of 
raiding these houses when there are men as well as 
women within and hold the men, as they hold the 
women, until medical tests can be made, then we 
will have an end of a condition which the better 
thought of the community believes should not exist. 
There is more damage done now by social diseases 
than by tuberculosis, pneumonia or anything else, and 
these conditions will never be reduced until men who 
are carriers are segregated just as are women who 
are carriers. 
Maybe since the women have got the right to vote 
they can look into this matter and force a programme 
which will be better not only for women, but for men, 
and which will apply not only to women, but to men.