Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE FEMALE REGULATION SYSTEM.
The second method of dealing with sexual evil—revealed to some extent by this evidence—is the Female Regulation System.
This is the plan adopted wherever promiscuous intercourse between the sexes has been distinctly accepted as a necessary part of society.
Under this theory no effort is made to check licentiousness in both sexes, but only to regulate female vice by law, through ordinances framed for the vicious women who take part in such intercourse.
This is the fundamental principle which unites all varieties of the Female Regulation System—whether in its timid commencement in the English Contagious Diseases[1] Act lately adopted, or in the long-tried and logically developed system as we observe it in Brussels. The necessary identity of results, where the same false principle is adopted, will be seen in the facts recorded in the following pages.
Under this system all women of loose or suspicious life are carefully sought for, in order that they may be known to and registered by the police. The purpose of this registration is to bring women under very carefully prepared regulations. On submission to these regulations they may carry on a vicious trade unmolested.
The trade thus carefully ordered and regulated, assumes, in the course of time, all the dimensions of a vast and increasing commerce. Abundant capital is invested in it, talent and ingenuity are exerted to make its resorts attractive and luxurious, and an insatiable demand arises for fresh young articles of commerce.
It is under this system that the infamous trade sprang up which aroused the attention of the British Government.
The evidence in the Blue Book relating to Brussels states that, "Notwithstanding twelve convictions in 1879 and ten convictions in 1880, the brothel-keepers do not hesitate to run the risk of detection and punishment, in view of the material advantage to themselves to be derived from the prostitution of very young girls, who, as inmates of the houses, are more docile, more attractive, more easily deluded, and less exacting than women enrolled for the first time above the age of twenty-one."
The most valuable evidence given as to this foreign system is presented by Mr. Snagge. The weighty character of his evidence is shown by the peculiar nature of his appointment as the special agent of the British Government. Mr. Snagge is an able London barrister, committed to no party or prejudice. This gentleman was chosen and specially appointed by Lord Granville to examine conflicting statements. He was directed to investigate impartially the system in Brussels, and to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the allegations respecting the trade in English girls as connected with that system. Valuable personal evidence is also furnished by members of the Society of Friends, viz.: Mr. Gillet, the esteemed banker, and Mr. Dyer, gentlemen whose names are widely and honorably known.
The chief remarkable difference between the structure of English and of foreign society is the powerful legal organization of female vice which has grown up on the continent.
Mr. Snagge thus describes the manner of life laid down for the girls in licensed brothels by the Brussels municipal authorities. It must be observed that this system, as it grows stronger, always tends to drive women into brothels, on account of the greater ease and efficiency of their management by the police.
"The women in these houses are subjected to obligations without number. They are forced to yield themselves to the first comer, no matter what maybe their repugnance; to incur heavy expenses; to submit to the yoke of the proprietors. They can not show themselves at the doors or windows of the houses; they go out rarely and always under escort; they are entirely subject to the will of the proprietor, and they seize the first opportunity of quitting an existence that affords them so little enjoyment. The result is that brothel-keepers find increasing difficulty in obtaining women. To preserve their popularity with their customers they increase the luxury of their houses, and to procure women they must expend much money."
The theory is that the girls are free to leave, but Mr. Snagge, who visited many houses in company with the officials who have absolute power over them, thus describes the regulations which make the theory entirely false in practice: 1st. The door is always fastened on the inside, the key being kept by the matron. 2d. The girl's own clothes are locked up by the keeper, who furnishes her with clothes which prevent her appearing in the street. 3d. They can only go out with permission of the master or mistress of the house. All these are municipal regulations. 4th. A heavy debt is run up against them—the price paid the procurer being placed on this account—and they are told that the law will not allow them to leave till this is paid. 5th. Those who have been registered under false certificates, which is a penal offence, are held in constant terror of the law. Lastly, they are medically inspected twice a week, and, being always exposed to infection, they spend their time between the brothel, the hospital, and the prison.
The key-note of this whole system is the acceptance through registration of females who, from whatever cause, have begun a life of vice; for registration is the first tentative step taken in the system of female regulation. To this is gradually added the arrangement of minute and stringent regulations respecting residence, dress, behavior, and control of their bodies. As long as they observe the regulations laid down they are unmolested, and are even considered to be fulfilling a necessary and useful function in society.
The idea of wrong-doing is entirely set aside when a prostitute is registered. She becomes by that municipal act an accepted member or trader of the community, and the whole powerful system of accepted and regulated female prostitution follows as a necessary result, as will be seen later.
Besides the organization of licensed brothels, there is an immense number of women living singly in their own apartments (filles isolées), erroneously called clandestine prostitutes by M. Treit. They correspond to the women who have been forced into subjection to the English Contagious Diseases Acts. They are registered, inspected, and subjected to police regulations, and protected as long as they observe the police requirements. There are many intermediate steps leading toward the complete Bastiles of vice as seen in Brussels and Paris. The so-called Maisons de Société of Nice, which train giddy, frivolous girls into soulless debauchery, and sell their temporary use to vicious Americans and English for 1,000 francs, are only variations of the same essentially false principle.[2]
Thirdly, there exists an increasing population of poor working-women, whose wages are not sufficient to maintain them, but are eked out by prostitution. This population, in order to preserve its independence, hides from the police, who vainly strive to capture them.
M. Treit, who has been the legal adviser to the British Embassy in Paris for 25 years, gives the following noteworthy evidence of the police system arranged to entrap women. To quote his own words, "If a woman is suspected of prostitution, one or two or three inspectors, under a different dress— times as a workman, sometimes as a gentleman, and sometimes as a servant—follow the young girl for three or four days before keeping her in. If a girl under age is 'taken by a man in the street,' and the mother refuses to interfere, she is registered at the Prefecture of Police." "At this moment clandestine prostitution is very strong in Paris." "Clandestine prostitutes are registered to the Prefect of the Police." "Every young girl who carries on prostitution must be registered in the Prefecture of the Police, and receive a carte with an indication of the medical visit of her home, of her apartment, age, and family."
M. Treit regrets that all female servants in private houses are no longer under police supervision. He remarks, "The regulations (of Paris) are the best that could be adopted. Berlin and all the large towns of France have adopted the regulations of Paris." (See 531 to 556.)
It is very important to note how the full and complete foreign system, as we see it in Brussels and Paris, grows up gradually as a logical necessity from regulating, instead of checking, vice. This method of regulation always begins with timid tentative efforts directed against women. But it grows bolder as it proceeds, and as public sentiment becomes demoralized, until at length a powerful, independent official organization is created, withdrawn from social criticism, and strong enough to resist social reform. Thus we find all officials engaged in administering the system, from the highest Judge, or Minister of State, to the humblest policeman, are henceforth interested in supporting and defending the system against all criticisms or radical change.
The support given on the continent to the organization of debauchery, by the highest Ministers of State, is thus incidentally noted by Mr. Snagge. "M. Bara, the Minister of Justice, a very distinguished statesman and accomplished Minister, desired me to understand that certain institutions existed in their country, licensing prostitution, for instance, which could not be interfered with." (140.)
"The administration of brothels is a very expensive machinery (there are clerks, medical officers, hospitals, dispensaries, and an extensive special police), the municipality derive a profit from the houses," and "the women pay a fee for their registration." (128-143.)
Again, it is stated, "The municipal authority, the Commissaire de Police, even the medical officers, are very lax indeed in the view they take morally of the whole subject; they think it a wholesome and proper institution." "I found out as the result of these trials, that the police functionaries became so accustomed to this system, that they were color-blind to its abuses. Precautions against abuse have no substantial efficacy. The police functionaries favor the brothel-keepers, and wink at a great deal that goes on." (161-2.) Again, "It is within my knowledge from evidence in these trials, that the girls were told by the brothel-keepers, before the inquiry by the Judge d'Instruction, or by the official, that it would be best to say they were very happy. This is a policeman who is going to inquire—'You had better say you are all right; you are very happy, are you not? if not, you had better leave with him.'" (170-177.)
Again, alluding to the great difficulty which we have had in forcing investigation in Belgium, the British Government agent says: "The municipal authorities of Brussels, who had been long accustomed to regulate the Police des Mœurs, were slow to admit evils on the part of their subordinates. In denying the possibility of irregularity or abuse, they appeared to forget that constant contact with the system is apt to dull the moral faculties of officials who supervise it." (App., p. 142.)
This profound remark on the inevitable degradation of the moral sense, when officials are employed to regulate acts of vice instead of to suppress them, is a weighty fact for a Christian nation to recognize.
We see that the Mayor and Magistrates, the Aldermen and Councilmen, even the Cabinet Ministers and ruling classes, become so accustomed to the plan of accepting females for a life of vice, and minutely and carefully arranging their lives, that so far from seeing anything injurious in such a plan, they defend it with energy, and refuse to see the injustice, tyranny, and demoralization which result from it.
This demoralizing tendency of vice, supported by law, is fully borne out by British experience. Wherever immoral legislation is allowed to proceed, unchecked by a death struggle, with an enlightened and vigorous public opinion, resolved to overthrow it, it immediately begins to exhibit the same signs of awful demoralization, cynicism, and cruelty that we observe in Brussels. This fact is painfully established by the contents of a Parliamentary paper, published last August, which will be read by every just and enlightened man and woman with equal indignation and shame.[3]
The British Pro-Consul at Brussels (Mr. Jeffes) states: "The police have been much to blame; the police have been on far too intimate terms with the keepers of these houses." (303.) "The policemen's visits are not useful in protecting the women, as they are always in accord with the keepers."
A Brussels police agent said to an English philanthropist, who urged him to rescue some unfortunate girls: "We can not injure establishments legally authorized, and in which so much capital is invested." Again, "The police, accustomed to consider this traffic as legal, and even licensed and privileged, always encourage and protect it, and especially protect the brothel-keepers."
A striking fact, in comparing the official demoralization which this system produces on the continent, with the British laissez faire, is shown in the untruths, the denials, the almost insuperable obstacles which arose in Brussels, when English public opinion began to awake to the fact that an organized and very profitable trade had long been going on to sell young English girls into an obscene imprisonment which has no parallel as yet in England.
English officials in London, and wherever they have not been corrupted by acts regulating vice, although they have often been indifferent to, or ignorant of the course of social evil—see 79, 436, 589, 596—still preserve their moral sense. As has been seen, they willingly give testimony about these evils, and they earnestly make suggestions for their removal. But on the continent there is a mighty system of fully organized government force to support female prostitution; a complete police Bastile banded together to prevent investigation, and to protect a cherished institution. So resolved was this organized force not to be investigated, that the English officials who were first employed to inquire into this trade in girls, were quite deceived. False statistics were presented,[4] damaging facts suppressed or denied, and the English newspaper press was induced to give emphatic denial (based on official statements) of terrible and degrading facts, since proved to be completely true! This is certainly one of the strongest proofs that can be given of the official demoralization produced by regulating instead of suppressing promiscuous intercourse. If it had not been that some upright and patriotic men were privately obtaining proof of these infamous facts, at the very time when the Brussels officials were denying them, and misleading Inspector Greenham (who was first sent over to make inquiries),[5] the English people might never have discovered the extent and dismal character of the infamous slavery to which young girls are condemned abroad. The details of this slavery will not here be dwelt on. It is a slavery in which the municipality clutches the young female body, and uses it henceforth as a machine to be kept in order for the vilest purposes. The horrible facts—which are inevitable results of vice organized by the State—are too revolting to dwell upon. But a debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Snagge from every person and particularly from every woman—for the intelligent honesty with which he has collected these facts; also to Earl Granville for choosing this capable investigator, when a former agent sent over from Scotland Yard had been completely hoodwinked. Leaving, therefore, the hideous details in this Blue Book as a lasting testimony to the social corruption produced by legally regulated prostitution, the statement only will here be given in the calm official language used by Mr. Snagge, of the results of the investigations he was desired by the British Government to make. They are contained in the three following answers:
Answer 1. I find it to be established as a fact beyond all doubt that for many years a trade or traffic has been carried on, whereby a very large number of English girls—many, if not most of them, under the age of 21 years—have been enlisted to become inmates of brothels in Continental cities in consideration of fees or "commissions" paid by the keepers of the houses to the persons procuring the girls.
Answer 2. I find that fraud was frequently and successfully practiced; that girls under age were easily enrolled; that in the case of English girls, false certificates of birth were the rule rather than the exception, and that the girls entered upon a life, presently to be described, to which they were almost irretrievably committed before they could possibly become aware of its true nature and condition. I find that in several cases, misrepresentation, falsehood, and deceit marked every stage of the procedure from the moment that the girl was first accosted by the placeur in England to that of her installation in the maison de débauche.
Answer 3. From the point of view of the "procurers" (placeur), young English girls are a form of merchandise to be acquired by industry, and disposed of at a market price per parcel or package. "300 francs par colis" appears to be the ordinary tariff. From the point of view of the brothel-keepers (tenants maisons), the girls form a costly portion of their stock-in-trade; they are, like stock upon a farm, kept in good condition, more or less, and prevented from straying or escaping. From the point of view of the girls themselves, they are in some, if not in most instances, following a calling in which they have accepted a life of degrading and dangerous servitude in order to secure the certainty of a livelihood; in other instances they are victims caught in the widespread net of the placeur, who has pocketed his fee and decamped, leaving them bewildered and helpless, and abandoned to a fate to which, generally, they become accustomed or inured, but from which, now and then, they are rescued or contrive to escape.
This last answer contains in its few unimpassioned words the fact which, above all others, must show to every thoughtful person the really diabolical character of State-regulated vice. This fact is, the cruelty to ignorant women, the degradation inflicted upon all womanhood, by "accepting" the life of lust as an industry that may be permitted and organized by law.
Mark well the words: "The young girl, thoughtless or fallen, 'accepts' the degrading life to secure a certain livelihood; the innocent girl, deceived and sold, becomes accustomed or inured to this hideous soul-destroying bondage." The innocent girl, as well as the fallen girl, although brought up under the influence of what we call Christian civilization, may thus, under the sanction of State and Municipal laws, accept, and will then become accustomed to, the conversion of her body into a machine for obscenity; whilst her soul, with the connivance—nay, under the sanction—of the State, is allowed to fall into the most hideous depths of our social hell! It is this corrupting influence of the law on the moral sense of womanhood, through the "acceptance" by law of a life of public lust for any woman, which is the most direful and ominous sign of this our nineteenth century of Christianity.
Facts disprove the false and dangerous assertion often made, that if prostitution (i.e., the buying and selling the human body for lust) be restrained and gradually destroyed, no virtuous woman could walk the streets in safety. Exactly the opposite is the truth. It is in towns where the evil trade between men and women is regulated, not checked, that licentiousness grows rampant, and that vice assumes forms of new atrocity. It is in Brussels and Paris that no young woman can walk alone, even in the daytime, without danger of insult.[6] I possess abundant direct personal evidence from women to prove this statement.
Consider a few of the facts which disprove the superficial and thoughtless assertions relating to existing order and safety in Paris.
To understand the full force of these facts, it must be remembered that Paris is much smaller than London; the Department of the Seine, which corresponds to the Greater London, containing hardly two and a half millions to its four and three-quarter millions, yet the increase of vice, crime, and suicide in Paris is appalling.
"M. Reinach, in the Political and Literary Review, lately published, points out that the constant increase in the number of habitual criminals calls for the reestablishment of transportation and the creation of a new penal colony. In Paris alone there are between 20,000 and 25,000 habitual criminals. He dwells with emphasis on the spread of crime amongst the young. In 1879, 18 per cent. of all persons tried in France were minors, being an increase of 3 per cent. in three years. This increase is greatest in Paris, where more than half the persons arrested are minors. Out of 26,475 prosecuted in one year, nearly 15,000 were under twenty-one years of age, the prosecutions including a large number of the gravest crimes. The proportion of juvenile crime has almost doubled in three years."
This month we received the following intelligence from France: "Owing to the insecurity of the Paris streets, as proved by the alarming number of murderous assaults revealed at the correctional police courts, M. Camescasse, the Prefect of Police, has asked that three hundred men be added to his force of sergents de ville. Even this increase is considered altogether insufficient under existing circumstances."
"The published statistics of suicides in France during the first three quarters of 1881 exhibit once more that increase in the number of cases which has been observable for several years past—a circumstance the more remarkable since the population has during this period remained almost stationary. In 1878 the number was 6,434; in the past year it is calculated that it will exceed 6,500. In the space of thirty years past the proportionate increase is stated to have been about 78 per cent."
Farther testimony from France gives the clue to the immediate cause of this disruption of society.
"The attention of those suffering from poor wages and only partial employment has been directed by their leaders toward the luxurious lives of the bourgeoisie. There is no doubt that among the less sober and industrious workmen the hatred felt a hundred years ago against the aristocracy is now aimed at that wealthy middle class for which France is remarkable. Madame must have her equipages, Monsieur his mistresses, and the poor suffer."
Again, we have the following statement, written last June, and again and again confirmed: "The state of society in Paris has become very immoral. Obscene literature abounds everywhere, and has led to obscene manners. One of the most repulsive forms of this obscenity is the increase of what are politely called the frail sisterhood, who now infest every quarter, high and low, far and near, to such an extent that from morning to night the streets are encumbered with them. The papers have complained, the inhabitants have petitioned, but to no purpose; somehow or another the Government appears powerless to grapple with the growing evil. It is useless to hide the fact, and whatever squeamish persons may say to the contrary, the truth must be told in plain language. There are things still viler. I allude to their male associates, known as 'les souteneurs' or 'bullies.'"
The increase of this class of vilest criminals—men who live upon women—is inevitable where promiscuous intercourse is regulated, not checked. If rich men buy poor women, leaving them without protection, women will buy poor men to afford them a ruffianly support in the social chaos where they live. We have noted the appearance of this foreign class in London. It has created tumults in Paris, and the unsafe condition of the streets, owing to the increase of ruffians, demands an indefinite increase of the police force.
We dare not dwell upon the atrocious, almost incredible scandals, which leak out in France, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of the police to hush them up. Such crimes as the Bordeaux infamy, the Duphot den of vice, the hideous Fenayron plot, have hitherto been unknown in England. The peculiarity of these atrocities is the astounding sexual corruption which they reveal—a putrefaction of morals, to produce which the element of time is necessary. This complete deprivation of social conscience can only be produced in England through the long-continued and extending influence of immoral law.
When a law is made for vice, such law does not confine its influence to the females engaged in the trade; for the law once established, shows henceforth to every person in the nation, old or young, male or female, what attitude is to be taken with regard to the particular subject of the law.
The influence and action of law necessarily extend in logical sequence, from the first timid establishment of a false principle. Thus the State, accepting promiscuous intercourse as a necessity, registers female prostitutes. As a result of this acceptance, the trade must be made healthy, orderly, and ample. As the indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes necessarily produces disease, this, is the first evil which demands attention as sanitary science advances. The first necessary step in regulating the trade in vice, therefore, is to register those who engage in indiscriminate sexual intercourse. But vicious men carry on promiscuous intercourse, and consequently originate and spread disease. Men, however, will not be registered. The State is, therefore, compelled at the outset to leave the most important half of the trade unregulated—that half, namely, that injures the innocent, the unfallen—and that half that supplies all the capital of the trade, the money without which it could not be continued for a week.
The registration of as many females as possible who carry on the trade, is therefore the only possible method practically open to those who, accepting promiscuous intercourse, wish to try and make it healthy. Every result that we have seen in Brussels necessarily follows, from the logical carrying out of this first false step of accepting promiscuous intercourse through registration of women, as a trade recognized by law. Thus, brothels are encouraged on account of their greater convenience of management; and vicious women, living in their own apartments (who are registered), are indulgently treated that they may not hide away.
A chief police functionary of Brussels, who considers these brothels wholesome institutions, says in his report: "It is important that prostitution should, as far as possible, be concentrated in brothels, where superintendence can be easily exercised and scandal hid. They are useful, too, for the discovery of criminals, who frequently resort to them in order to plunge into wild extravagance."
Whilst the moral sense of womanhood is thus corrupted by laws which protect brothels, and raise female prostitution to the rank of an accepted and regulated trade, the degrading effect upon men becomes no less marked. Men refuse to be registered and inspected: they will be free; the State yields, unwillingly it may be, but from necessity, and leaves to men the freedom which rapidly degenerates into license. Unchecked indulgence of the lower nature becomes gradually a demoniac possession. It craves more and more unnatural excitement. The hideous traffic revealed in this Blue Book is one of the direct results of the efforts of mercenary panderers to supply fresh excitement for diseased appetite. It is a weighty fact, which is supported by incontrovertible and most abundant evidence, that vice in both sexes increases far more rapidly, and assumes an intensity of corruption unknown to us, whenever the State accepts, registers, and guards prostitutes, instead of repressing promiscuous intercourse. In such a State, corruption eats into the life of all classes of the community. Licentiousness rapidly increases, and whenever that increases, unnatural and hideous forms of vice increase also. The Authorities, alarmed by the rising flood of corruption, make more and more stringent regulations for women. A band of spies, under various disguises, seek to entrap women. Assignation houses for married women, unknown to their husbands, are established (through M. Lenaars) in Brussels, in order that the police may supervise them. Minor girls are registered in direct violation of the common law of the land. A law to this effect has lately been passed in Brussels, through the instrumentality of M. Bols. These are logical results of the destructive idea that promiscuous intercourse can be rendered healthy by the inspection of every female. Meanwhile, corruption increases to such an appalling extent, that belief in the possibility of purity in men no longer exists in the minds of men or women.
A merchant of Bordeaux thus writes respecting his country: "Sexual immorality is constantly increasing, not only amongst our youth, but even amongst our boys. I vainly seek a remedy for this flood of evil, which will infallibly destroy us, as the Roman Empire was destroyed."
The one true principle of all legal action in reference to sexual vice, with its deadly evils, is now clearly visible to the intelligence of the 19th century; it is this: Male lust must be restrained, in order to check female obscenity. The action and reaction of cause and effect can not be separated. All attempts to do so, result in increasing corruption.
The facts and causes of national demoralization are now plainly before our eyes. Yet so blind are our legislators, our public press, and large numbers of benevolent men and women, to the inevitable moral evil arising from false principle introduced into law, that vast effort is now being made to extend the destructive system of the Continent into our own country.
The imperative duty of ceaseless effort is now laid upon every just and patriotic man and woman, to secure the establishment of righteous law.
- ↑ See Appendix I.
- ↑ America will do well to forbid the resort of its naval squadron to the neighborhood of a town which, with its gambling suburb Monaco, has become the most dangerous centre of corruption in Europe.
- ↑ See Appendix II.
- ↑ See Note, p. 140 of the Blue Book.
- ↑ Inspector Greenham 's careful report was proved by subsequent events to be worse than useless. (See Appendix, p. 143.)
- ↑ See "La Prostitution en France," just published by Dr. Deprès, of Paris, which proves the effect of regulated prostitution in France in exhausting virile energy, and producing violent and unnatural vice through satiety.