PROSTITUTION


(_A chapter for men_)


There are some things so unthinkable that they only continue because
people refuse to think of them. Sweating and slums are two such things,
but the supreme example in the modern world is prostitution.

It is not the prostitute who is unthinkable. She is only the tragic
figure in the center of a devil's drama. It is society's attitude to
her that is unthinkable. By men she is used for their pleasure and then
despised and scorned. By women she is held an outcast, and yet she is
the main buttress of the immunity of ordinary women from danger and
temptation. She is the creation of men who traffic in lust and yet is
held shameless by her patrons. She is the product of the social sins
for which we are all responsible, and yet is considered the most sinful
of us all. Often she was beguiled into her first mistake by the
pretence of love, and because to that pretence she made a natural and
sincere response. Sometimes she was cajoled into her mistake by older
fiends in the shape of women. Sometimes she suffered physical violence
at the hands of male fiends. Often she plunged into sin in desperation
because in the modern world she could not get a living wage in return
for honest work. Sometimes she made a wild, reckless dash towards
excitement because she could no longer endure the stifling, drab, and
hideous monotony coupled with privation which we allow to become the
lot of millions.

To her men show only their worst side, and women generally their