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Title: The Traffic in Women Author: Emma Goldman Date: 1910 Language: en Topics: feminist Source: Retrieved on March 15th, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/goldman/ME/whiteslave.html][dwardmac.pitzer.edu]]. Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=472, retrieved on July 5, 2020. Notes: First Published by Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York (1910)
Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery: the white slave
traffic. The papers are full of these “unheard of conditions” in our
midst, and the lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check
the horror.
How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have
been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all
sociologists, should now be made such an important issue?
It is significant that whenever the public mind is to diverted from a
great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency,
gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades?
Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back
entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and
cadets is but aggravated.
To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic by
George Kibbe Turner and others (and by the way, a very superficial
investigation), has discovered anything new is, to say the least, very
foolish. Prostitution was, and is a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on
its business, perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of
the victims of prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has so
far remained to our industrial system, of to economic prostitution.
Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will
baby people become interested, — for a while at least. The people are a
very fickle baby that must have new toys every day. The “righteous” cry
against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It serves to amuse the
people for a little while, and it will help to create a few more fat
political jobs — parasites who stalk about the world as inspectors,
investigators, detectives, etc.
What really is the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women,
but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course: the
merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus
driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With Mrs. Warren
these girls feel, “Why waste your life working for a few shillings a
week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?”
Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know it well
enough, but it doesn’t pay to say anything about it. It is much more
profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than
to go to the bottom of things.
However, there is one commendable exception among the young writers:
Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work The House of Bondage is the first
earnest attempt to treat the social evil — not from a sentimental
Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr. Kauffman
proves that our industrial system leaves most women no alternative
except prostitution. The women portrayed in The House of Bondage belong
to the working class. Had the author portrayed the life of women in
other spheres, he would have been confronted with the same state of
affairs.
Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather
as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her
right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors.
Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one
man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit
it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible
for prostitution.
Just at present our good people are shocked by the disclosures that in
New York City alone one out of every ten women works in a factory, that
the average wage received by women is six dollars per week for
forty-eight to sixty hours of work, and that the majority of female wage
workers face many months of idleness which leaves the average wage about
$280 a year. In view of these economic horrors, is it to be wondered at
that prostitution and the white slave trade have become such dominant
factors?
Lest the preceding figures be considered an exaggeration, it is well to
examine what some authorities on prostitution have to say:
“A prolific cause of female depravity can be found in the several
tables, showing the description of the employment pursued, and the wages
received, by the women previous to their fall, and it will be a question
for the political economist to decide how far mere business
consideration should be an apology — on the part of employers for a
reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the savings of a
small percentage on wages is not more than counterbalanced by the
enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray
the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice, which is the
direct result, in many cases, of insufficient compensation of honest
labor.”
Our present-day reformers would do well to look into Dr. Sanger’s book.
There they will find that out of 2,000 cases under his observation, but
few came from the middle classes, from well-ordered conditions, or
pleasant homes. By far the largest majority were working girls and
working women; some driven into prostitution through sheer want, others
because of a cruel, wretched life at home, others again because of
thwarted and crippled physical natures (of which I shall speak later
on). Also it will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to
learn that out of two thousand cases, 490 were married women, women who
lived with their husbands. Evidently there was not much of a guaranty
for their “safety and purity” in the sanctity of marriage.
Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century, is even
more emphatic in characterizing economic conditions as one of the most
vital factors of prostitution. “Although prostitution has existed in all
ages, it was left to the nineteenth century to develop it into a
gigantic social institution. The development of industry with vast
masses of people in the competitive market, the growth and congestion of
large cities, the insecurity and uncertainty of employment, has given
prostitution an impetus never dreamed of at any period in human
history.”
And again Havelock Ellis, while not so absolute in dealing with the
economic cause, is nevertheless compelled to admit that it is indirectly
and directly the main cause. Thus he finds that a large percentage of
prostitutes is recruited from the servant class, although the latter
have less care and greater security. On the other hand, Mr. Ellis does
not deny that the daily routine, the drudgery, the monotony of the
servant girl’s lot, and especially the fact that she may never partake
of the companionship and joy of a home, is no mean factor in forcing her
to seek recreation and forgetfulness in the gaiety and glimmer of
prostitution. In other words, the servant girl, being treated as a
drudge, never having the right to herself, and worn out by the caprices
of her mistress, can find an outlet, like the factory or shopgirl, only
in prostitution.
The most amusing side of the question now before the public is the
indignation of our “good, respectable people,” especially the various
Christian gentlemen, who are always to be found in the front ranks of
every crusade. Is it that they are absolutely ignorant of the history of
religion, and especially of the Christian religion? Or is it that they
hope to blind the present generation to the part played in the past by
the Church in relation to prostitution? Whatever their reason, they
should be the last to cry out against the unfortunate victims of today,
since it is known to every intelligent student that prostitution is of
religious origin, maintained and fostered for many centuries, not as a
shame, but as a virtue, hailed as such by the Gods themselves.
“It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found primarily
in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social
tradition, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that
was passing out of the general social life. The typical example is that
recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the Temple
of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman, once in her life,
had to come and give herself to the first stranger, who threw a coin in
her lap, to worship the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other
parts of western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of
the eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the temple of
Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules,
dedicated to the service of the goddess.
“The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule,
out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed
a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature,
is maintained by all authoritative writers on the subject. Gradually,
however, and when prostitution became an organized institution under
priestly influence, religious prostitution developed utilitarian sides,
thus helping to increase public revenue.
“The rise of Christianity to political power produced little change in
policy. The leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution.
Brothels under municipal protection are found in the thirteenth century.
They constituted a sort of public service, the directors of them being
considered almost as public servants.”
To this must be added the following from Dr. Sanger’s work:
“Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostitutes would be tolerated if
they pay a certain amount of their earnings to the Church.
“Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical; from one single brothel, which he
himself had built, he received an income of 20,000 ducats.”
In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that direction.
At least she does not openly demand tribute from prostitutes. She finds
it much more profitable to go in for real estate, like Trinity Church,
for instance, to rent out death traps at an exorbitant price to those
who live off and by prostitution.
Much as I should like to, my space will not admit speaking of
prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and during the Middle Ages. The
conditions in the latter period are particularly interesting, inasmuch
as prostitution was organized into guilds, presided over by a Brothel
Queen. These guilds employed strikes as a medium of improving their
condition and keeping a standard price. Certainly that is more practical
a method than the one used by the modern wage slave in society.
Never, however, did prostitution reach its present depraved and criminal
position, because at no time in past ages was prostitution persecuted
and hounded as it is to-day, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, where
Phariseeism is at its height, where each one is busy hiding the
skeletons in his own home by pointing to the sore of the other fellow.
But I must not lose sight of the present issue, the white slave traffic.
I have already spoken of the economic cause, but I think a cause much
deeper and by far of greater importance is the complete ignorance on sex
matters. It is a conceded fact that woman has been reared as a sex
commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and
importance of sex. Everything dealing with that subject is suppressed,
and people who attempt to bring light into this terrible darkness are
persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is nevertheless true that so
long as a girl is not to know how to take care of herself, not to know
the function of the most important part of her life, we need not be
surprised if she becomes an easy prey to prostitution or any other form
of a relationship which degrades her to the position of an object for
mere sex gratification.
It is due to this ignorance that the entire life and nature of the girl
is thwarted and crippled. We have long ago taken it as a self-evident
fact that the boy may follow the call of the wild, that is to say that
the boy may, as soon as his sex nature asserts itself, satisfy that
nature, but our moralists are scandalized at the very thought that the
nature of a girl should assert itself. To the moralist prostitution does
not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but
rather that she sells it to many.
Having been looked upon as a mere sex-commodity, the woman’s honor,
decency, morality, and usefulness have become a part of her sex life.
Thus society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his
general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman
are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that
is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has
played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution.
It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex
matters, which alleged “innocence”, together with an overwrought and
stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our
Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. This state of affairs finds
a masterly portrayal in Zola’s “Fecundity.”
Girls, mere children, work in crowded, overheated rooms ten to twelve
hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a
constant-over-excited sex state. Many of these girls haven’t any home or
comforts of any kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap
amusement is the only means of forgetting their daily routine. This
naturally brings them into close proximity with the other sex. It is
hard to say which of the two factors brings the girl’s over-sexed
condition to a climax, but it certainly is the most natural thing that a
climax should follow. That is the first step toward prostitution. Nor is
the girl to be held responsible for it. On the contrary, it is
altogether the fault of society, the fault of our lack of understanding,
of lack of appreciation of life in the making; especially is it the
criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity
because she has gone from “the path of virtue”; that is, because her
first sex experience has taken place without the sanction of the Church
or State.
The girl finds herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and
society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition are such
that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no
ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up, instead of
throwing her down. Thus society creates the victims that it afterwards
vainly attempts to get rid of.
Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How
would America ever retain her virtue if she didn’t have Europe to help
her out? I will not deny that this may be the case in some instances,
any more than I will deny that there are emissaries of Germany and other
countries luring economic slaves into America, but I absolutely deny
that prostitution is recruited, to any appreciable extent, from Europe.
It may be true that the majority of prostitutes of New York City are
foreigners, but that is only because the majority of the population is
foreign. The moment we go to any other American city, to Chicago or the
middle West, we shall find that the number of foreign prostitutes is by
far a minority.
Equally exaggerated is the belief that the majority of street girls in
this city were engaged in this business before they came to America.
Most of the girls speak excellent English, they are Americanized in
habits and appearance, — a thing absolutely impossible unless they have
lived in this country many years. That is, they were driven into
prostitution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American custom
for excessive display of finery and clothes which, of course,
necessitates money, money that can not be earned in shops or factories.
The equanimity of the moralists is not disturbed by the respectable
woman gratifying her clothesophobia by marrying for money; why are they
so outraged if the poor girl sells herself for the same reason? The only
difference lies in the amount received, and of course in the seal
society either gives or withholds.
I am sure that no one will accuse me of nationalist tendencies. I am
glad to say that I have developed out of them, as out of many other
prejudices. If, therefore, I resent the statement that Jewish
prostitutes are imported, it is not because of any Judaistic sympathies,
but because of the fact inherent in the lives of these people. No one
but the most superficial will claim that the Jewish girls migrate to
strange lands unless they have some tie or relation that brings them
there. The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent years, she had
never left home, not even so far as the next village or town, unless it
were to visit some relative. Is it then credible that Jewish girls would
leave their parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange
lands, through the influence and promises of strange forces? Go to any
of the large incoming steamers and see for yourself if these girls do
not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk.
There may be exceptions, of course, but to state that a large number of
Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any other purpose, is
simply not to know the Jewish psychology.
On the other hand, it speaks of very little business ability on the part
of importers of the white slaves, if they assume that the girls from the
peasant regions of Poland, Bohemia, or Hungary in their native peasant
crude state and attire would make a profitable business investment.
These poor ignorant girls, in their undeveloped state, with their shawls
about their heads, look much too unattractive to even the most stupid
man. It therefore follows that before they can be made fit for business,
they, too, must be Americanized, which would require not merely a week
or a month, but considerable time. They must at least learn the
rudiments of English, but more than anything else they must learn
American shrewdness, in order to protect themselves against the many
uniformed cadets, who prey on them and fleece them at every step.
To ascribe the increase of prostitution to alleged importation, to the
growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highly superficial. I
have already referred to the former. As to the cadet system, abhorrent
as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it is essentially a phase of
modern prostitution, — a phase accentuated by suppression and graft,
resulting from sporadic crusades against the social evil.
The origin of the cadets, as an institution, can be traced to the Lexow
investigation in New York City, in 1894. Thanks to that moral spasm,
keepers of brothels, as well as unfortunate victims of the street, were
turned over to the tender mercies of the police. The inevitable
consequence of exorbitant bribes and the penitentiary followed.
While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they represented a
certain value, the unfortunate girls now found themselves on the street,
absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police. Desperate, needing
protection and longing for affection, these girls naturally proved an
easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of the spirit of our
commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the direct outgrowth of police
persecution, graft, and attempted suppression of prostitution. It were
sheer folly to confute this modern phase of the social evil with the
causes of the latter.
The serious student of this problem realizes that legislative
enactments, stringent laws, and similar methods can not possibly
eradicate, nor even ameliorate this evil. Those best familiar with the
subject agree on this vital point. Dr. Alfred Blaschko, an eminent
authority, convincingly proves in his “Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert”
that governmental suppression and moral crusades accomplish nothing save
driving the evil into secret channels, multiplying its dangers to the
community. In this claim he is supported by such thorough students as
Havelock Ellis, Dr. H. Ploss, and others.
Mere suppression and barbaric enactment can serve but to embitter and
further degrade the unfortunate victims of ignorance and stupidity. The
latter has reached its highest expression in the proposed law to make
humane treatment of prostitutes a crime, punishing anyone sheltering a
prostitute with five years imprisonment and $10,000 fine. Such an
attitude merely exposes the terrible lack of understanding of the true
causes of prostitution, as a social factor, as well as manifesting the
Puritanic spirit of the Scarlet Letter days.
An educated public opinion, freed from the legal and moral hounding of
the prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate present conditions. Willful
shutting of eyes and ignoring of the evil, as an actual social factor of
modern life, can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our foolish
notions of “better than thou,” and learn to recognize in the prostitute
a product of social conditions. Such a realization will sweep away the
attitude of hypocrisy and insure a greater understanding and more humane
treatment. As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can
accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values —
especially the moral ones — coupled with the abolition of industrial
slavery.