It is a mistake to say that "all are agreed that the driving power behind women who join the ranks of prostitutes is the most extreme poverty" if by that it is meant that poverty is the driving power behind all women who become prostitutes. The same temperament and lack of delicate sensibility and a high ethical standard that lead so many men to buy the counterfeit of love are operative in inducing many women to sell the counterfeit of love.
This is proved beyond the possibility of successful dispute by the fact that in all historical ages, as
now, very many women entered into loveless marriage relations, not, as some did, of course,
for the bare necessities of a poor home, but that they might thereby enjoy the luxuries and
social position they could not otherwise obtain or otherwise obtain with so little labor. The
psychology that leads some women to thus prostitute themselves within the marriage pale
indubitably leads others to prostitute themselves without that pale.
A not inconsiderable contingent is recruited among young girls who have made a
"misstep" and against whom in consequence a besotted and cowardly public opinion has shut
the door of hope.
Others frankly go out from the light of social respectability because only outside can they
find freedom in the gratification of the imperious desires which they share with their brother
men.
Still others, inexperienced in and impatient of life they regard as "dull" and "prosy" or
as too laborious, go to the underworld for the care freeness, the gayety and frivolity, which
they delude themselves or have been deluded into thinking they will find there without
countervailing vexations and sorrows.
Some have descended to where they are because indulgence in alcoholic stimulants and
in narcotics robbed them of self control and so of self respect, and some have taken their
departure from the hells of unhappy marriage.
For, after all, despite the guess of the economic panaceists, prostitution is not an
exception to the rule that every effect has many causes, near and remote, direct and
contributory. The inevitable corollary is that no remedy is a cure all.
To all the prophesiers of the ultimate triumph of the monogamic ideal, even to the
author himself, I would earnestly commend this most trenchant paragraph of Dr. Jacobi's
essay:
"Nowhere else is causation so complex and so elusive as in the phenomena constituting
social science. Even the immediate effects of present causes can be outlined dimly and with
great difficulty; the remote effects are beyond computation. This obstacle, however, does not
deter our self styled prophets. Seizing some factor now prominent in its influence, they
proceed to construct a definite future upon the basis of its present action, as if any cause will
go on producing its effects for all time, without being crossed and recrossed by thousands of
other causes working out their thousands of effects. It is assumed that one thing will change
while others will remain unchanged".
No one can see today what will be the effect upon monogamy of the free play of
individual and social forces for the next hundred or thousand years. What modifications may
not be wrought by the political and industrial readjustments of woman's sphere, by the advent
of really free divorce, by the intelligent control of conception, by the differentiating work of
group marriage, of polygamy, of polyandry, of trial marriage, of frank variety among selfsupporting
free men and women, by the progress of medical science and sane sociology in
limiting or extirpating venereal disease?