pay for their support. Moreover, the community will, of course, save
the vast sums now passed over by its lustful men to these women. The
saving of health and life will be incalculable. The girls, although
under restraint, will be infinitely better off than they were, and
can in most cases, with patience and education, be made ultimately
to realize their gain; as they grow older and forget their early years
of shame, they can be set free again, with some skilled trade learned,
and some accumulated earnings. Professional prostitution will, of course,
still flourish to a degree underground; but it will be a highly risky
business, attracting far fewer girls, and difficult for the uninitiated
young man to discover. With this outlet for lust partially closed,
there would no doubt tend to be an increase in solitary and homosexual
vice, and in the seduction of innocent girls. But the latter outlet
can be checked by raising the "age of consent" to twenty or twenty-one,
and punishing the seduction of younger girls as rape. And the former
evils, serious as they are, are far less of an evil than the creation
of our present wretched class of professional prostitutes. As a matter
of fact, there would, beyond all question, be a great diminution in
sexual vice, the present amount of it being due by no means wholly
to desire that is naturally imperious, but to the artificial fostering
of that desire by those who hope to profit financially thereby.

IV. Crime?

The gravest of all social ills is-crime. Its treatment
may be considered under the three heads of prevention, conviction,
and the treatment of convicted criminals.

(1) To some extent, not yet clearly determined, the causes of crime
are temperamental, due to congenital defects or overexcitable impulses.