259

NO NEED OF PROSTITUTION

Mrs. Peattie Refuses to Accept the Claim That the Wanton Is a Necessity.

A Powerful Arraignment by a Woman of the Plea That Women Must be Debauched.

This is a law-abiding state. Of course. Do we not hasten to arrest the freezing man who steals coal, or the shivering woman who steals clothes? We must do this or the foundation fo the law will crumble.

But we were nevertheless convulsed with amazement when the mayor of Lincoln suggests that a certain law on the statute books be enforced.

Nor are we alone in our amazement. The rest of the world looks with equal surprise and not a little amusement at this extraordinary man, who proposes to see to the enforcement of the statues of his state and the ordinance of his city providing against professional prostitution.

That anarchy is not necessarily so unpopular among men as it is commonly held up to be whenever a redistribution of property is suggested is evidenced by the fact that we have been living in anarchy all along and never noticed it. For if it is not anarchy to disregard a law, then what is it? And the form of anarchy in which we have been so openly indulging appears not alone to have been encouraged by common citizens, but to have been encouraged and supported to the utmost by the makers of the law themselves, the legislators at Lincoln.

Ray Cameron, who has the reputation of being one of the most charming and witty cyprians in Nebraska, says, "I predict that my girls will continue their work secretly until the legislature opens. Then they will come back to their quarters as usual. There is too much money in circulation during legislative sessions for them not to take some risks."

It is incidentally understood that the business interests of Lincoln are likely to suffer greatly from this order of Mayor Weir's and that the business men feel that the order should not be enforced at a time so financially stringent. I have lived in the west too long to underestimate the necessity of systematic "booming" and am tremendously impressed with the last argument; feeling that the continuance in crime of 200 sister women is the merest trifle compared with the dividends which Lincoln merchants will receive as the outcome of flush pocketbooks in the demi-monde. But setting aside for a moment the embarrassment in trade, which must naturally result from the failure of 200 women to offer their bodies daily for sale (immortal [?] thrown in, as a cap to the bargain). I am obliged to confess that I see no reason why Mayor Weir's direction to the chief of police to enforce a law should awaken any discussion. Once before and quite recently has a similar effort been made. That was in Pittsburg, but the authority of the mayor went for nothing; the majesty of the law was scoffed at as if it were no more than the majesty of a king of carnival. Trade reasserted itself, and men continued to break the laws which they themselves had enacted.

It passes my comprehension to understand why the legislature of every state should go to the trouble to enact laws which do not respect themselves nor which they do not respect themselves nor anticipate that others will respect. Can it be that they merely put these statutes on their books to [?] posterity? Or is a fact that society unites in holding up before its composite eye a colossal image of fictitious virtues?

However that may be the 200 prostitutes of Lincoln are told to move on, and move on they will to Omaha, Kearney, Beatrice and Hastings. They will stay away for a brief time, until the vigilance of the police is relaxed, and then they will return. Everyone seems to recognize the fact that they must be back in time for the legislative session. Real politics appear to have difficulty in proceeding without the aid of prostitution.

Men and women who do not believe in innocence are apt to denominate themselves men and women of the world, and they appear to think that by this open confession of their sophistication they have made sufficient apology to society for any vicious views that they may hold, and any overt actions they may commit.

Men and women of the world have often assured me that prostitution is a necessity. I know the queen of England thinks it is. And I am acquainted with a great many wives who assure me that they believe so, and that if professional prostitution were not permitted, it would not be safe for any pure woman to walk the streets alone. I always wonder what sort of personal experience these women must have had to give them such an idea of the brutishness of man. I have noticed, too, that women who tell me that they think such institutions as the Florence Crittenton homes, or the Open Door, immoral. And when they assure me that they consider it injudicious to restrict men in their vices, and immoral to rescue the women these men have ruined, then, indeed do I look upon them with the eyes of pity, knowing that a black leaf of shame lies in their life's book. Only the last great heart sacrifice that a woman can make will cause her to become so indecent in her mode of thinking. When a pure woman thus condones sin it is because her husband or her son is a sinner, and she had to do one of two things--disapprove of the sinner or approve the sin.

There are hundreds of thousands of women who think they are Christians, who have done the latter.

I do not know whether or not these women are as bad as prostitutes. I suppose God knows. But there are some things that I do know.

I know a young wife who says she is glad John has sowed his wild oats, and that she never could have married a ninny. I saw her baby the other day on the street. It's eyes were as blue and innocent as heaven. And on its cheek was a dull, angry sore. I wondered what that sore meant.

I know a young man dying of softening of the brain, and his sweet wife and little children weep for him, loving him still. And the heaven of a home he might have had is guarded from him by angels with flaming swords.

He, too, was a man who had sowed his wild oats.

I know a woman who for years has lived with a polluted man and been forced to acknowledge him as her husband. And she shrinks from him in loathing; she cringes before his tyranny; and she lives with him in bitterness and hate. Why? Because she preferred to live with him as a legalized concubine and enjoy the approval of society rather tan leave him for poverty and the loss of social position. How is she better than the prostitute? Did I say I knew one such woman? I know twenty. And some are young and beautiful, and some are old and plain, but from the eyes of all looks a sorrow ancient as sin, and a bitterness that comes alone with loss of self respect.

For such things is professional prostitution responsible.

As to who is responsible for professional prostitution, that is another matter.

Anyone who chooses to read Chariton Edholm's "Traffic in Girls" will perhaps learn something of the subject. This book is published by the Woman's Temperance Publishing association of Chicago, and contains reports concerning the Florence Crittenton missions, with incidental descriptions of the way in which young girls are entrapped into lives of shame. It also contains the famous reports which Mr. William [?] Stead inside in his [P?] [Mall?] Gazette of the slavery of the brothel.

After reading this book, with its terrible revelations, I have no doubt that many of general interest, and that such things do not happen in Nebraska. I have no means of knowing just how bad Nebraska may be. But I do know of a girl 14 years of age who this week found the shelter of the Open Door. The man who ruined her was over twice her age. The girl has been placed in the Milford home, where she will be cared for physically and morally, and taught a trade, so that when she leaves she will not have to join the ranks of the unhappy sisterhood Two other girls, barely past 16, also found shelter in the Open Door this last week, and will be sent to the state home at Milford. They will leave here, let us hope, armed with the courage to be true to their better selves. Had it not been for the provision tt these institutions make they would have had no choice but to accept the hospitality of some house of wholesale midwifery, from which one emerges only to enter the doors of a house of debauchery.

That the recruits to the sad sisterhood are young maidens, deliberately ruined by men much older than themselves. I am convinced. What else is there for the ordinary woman to do when she finds herself betrayed but to join these miserable ones? The frantic fear, the shame, the suffering, the cruelty of society, leave little choice.

I have often heard it is said that women are much more cruel than men to their fallen sisters. My experience has not corroborated this. On the contrary, the cruelest acts of uncharity of which I have ever known, have been perpetrated by men. The most unjust insinuations which are today poisoning the ear of Omaha society, were concocted in the offices or the clubs, and are being circulated with an [?] worthy of a better cause. As for the women, they have not encouraged these reports, which they believe to be unjust, and to have no substantiation in fact.

If a good woman desires to take a fallen sister into her home for the purpose of helping her to a better life, the good woman's husband is almost sure to overbear her impulses with objections. And I distinctly remember reading a sermon preached in this city by a young and dogmatic clergyman, in which society was cautioned against forgiving the fallen woman. He seemed to think the Lord had a monopoly of forgiveness. I think he afterwards apologized for his attitude by saying that the standard of womanhood ought not to be lowered by her presence in society. But I could not see how the standard of womanly purity could be lowered by the reform of a bad woman. And as for the possible contamination, that counts for nothing. There used to be a saw which said: "Evil communications corrupt this good manners". Like most saws, is only partly true. Mr. George W. Cable puts it very much better when he says that it is not the company we seek, but the reasons we have for seeking it, that makes the difference.

I do not want to be unfair or one-sided. But I feel convinced that in nine cases out of ten it is the brutality of man which is directly responsible for the downfall of woman, and not any innate viciousness in the woman herself. There are stories today being enacted as sad and as tragic as that of Virginia. I will admit that anyone who sees a company of these fallen women together in "the cage" at the city jail, swearing, jeering and laughing with a gaiety more dreadful than any grief, will find it difficult to believe that they were ever pure. But the very violence and excess of their obscenity shows to the thoughtful mind how far they have fallen and what killing shock their sensibilities received when, in some black moment, life was suddenly transformed for them into death--a death without the peace of the grave.

I know they seem happy. I know they resent pity. I know all their coarseness, their harness and their folly. Yet my heart aches for them and I could weep for the curse that curses women, and which seems never to rest on man.

Some time ago a widow, with a child, tried in the Christian city of New York to find a place as housekeeper for a widower. She knew of no other way in which she could earn a living without parting from her child. One morning she blew out the brains of her baby and then herself. Her act was that of a Lucrece.

At the Mission of Our Merciful Savior in Omaha there is today a young widow with a child who tried in Omaha to get a position similar to that desired by the young woman in New York. The experiences she met with caused her to fly to the Mission for refuge. Apropos of all this, I cannot help realling a little "etching" once shown me by Miss Higgins, a young wilter in this town who has much originallity of theme and method. Miss Higgin's little sketch was abrupt tragic and not to be forgotten. Divested of all the phraseology which gave it sharm, the story was briefly this:

A young gentleman had an episode- men must have episodes of course, if they would cut their eye-teeth. The girl he ruined crept away into awretched life cheated of all her birthright of happiness and innocence. The man outgrew his infatuation forgot his wrong doing married a lovely woman and was happy, Moreover he was good. He thought no evil. If he ever remembered his escapade it was to think of himself merely as having been selfish. In time he and his sweet wife had a little daughter. One day she wa stolen from her cradle. No human ingenuity availed to find her. But eighteen years later the woman the young man had been selfish with stood before him, hardened for years of sin into a dreadfull thing, with the soul dead in her, and by her side stood the daughter he had lost in her babyhood.

NO NEED OF PROSTITUTION

Mrs. Peattie Refuses to Accept the Claim That the Wanton Is a Necessity.

A Powerful Arraignment by a Woman of the Plea That Women Must be Debauched.

This is a law-abiding state. Of course. Do we not hasten to arrest the freezing man who steals coal, or the shivering woman who steals clothes? We must do this or the foundation fo the law will crumble.

But we were nevertheless convulsed with amazement when the mayor of Lincoln suggests that a certain law on the statute books be enforced.

Nor are we alone in our amazement. The rest of the world looks with equal surprise and not a little amusement at this extraordinary man, who proposes to see to the enforcement of the statues of his state and the ordinance of his city providing against professional prostitution.

That anarchy is not necessarily so unpopular among men as it is commonly held up to be whenever a redistribution of property is suggested is evidenced by the fact that we have been living in anarchy all along and never noticed it. For if it is not anarchy to disregard a law, then what is it? And the form of anarchy in which we have been so openly indulging appears not alone to have been encouraged by common citizens, but to have been encouraged and supported to the utmost by the makers of the law themselves, the legislators at Lincoln.

Ray Cameron, who has the reputation of being one of the most charming and witty cyprians in Nebraska, says, "I predict that my girls will continue their work secretly until the legislature opens. Then they will come back to their quarters as usual. There is too much money in circulation during legislative sessions for them not to take some risks."

It is incidentally understood that the business interests of Lincoln are likely to suffer greatly from this order of Mayor Weir's and that the business men feel that the order should not be enforced at a time so financially stringent. I have lived in the west too long to underestimate the necessity of systematic "booming" and am tremendously impressed with the last argument; feeling that the continuance in crime of 200 sister women is the merest trifle compared with the dividends which Lincoln merchants will receive as the outcome of flush pocketbooks in the demi-monde. But setting aside for a moment the embarrassment in trade, which must naturally result from the failure of 200 women to offer their bodies daily for sale (immortal [?] thrown in, as a cap to the bargain). I am obliged to confess that I see no reason why Mayor Weir's direction to the chief of police to enforce a law should awaken any discussion. Once before and quite recently has a similar effort been made. That was in Pittsburg, but the authority of the mayor went for nothing; the majesty of the law was scoffed at as if it were no more than the majesty of a king of carnival. Trade reasserted itself, and men continued to break the laws which they themselves had enacted.

It passes my comprehension to understand why the legislature of every state should go to the trouble to enact laws which do not respect themselves nor which they do not respect themselves nor anticipate that others will respect. Can it be that they merely put these statutes on their books to [?] posterity? Or is a fact that society unites in holding up before its composite eye a colossal image of fictitious virtues?

However that may be the 200 prostitutes of Lincoln are told to move on, and move on they will to Omaha, Kearney, Beatrice and Hastings. They will stay away for a brief time, until the vigilance of the police is relaxed, and then they will return. Everyone seems to recognize the fact that they must be back in time for the legislative session. Real politics appear to have difficulty in proceeding without the aid of prostitution.

Men and women who do not believe in innocence are apt to denominate themselves men and women of the world, and they appear to think that by this open confession of their sophistication they have made sufficient apology to society for any vicious views that they may hold, and any overt actions they may commit.

Men and women of the world have often assured me that prostitution is a necessity. I know the queen of England thinks it is. And I am acquainted with a great many wives who assure me that they believe so, and that if professional prostitution were not permitted, it would not be safe for any pure woman to walk the streets alone. I always wonder what sort of personal experience these women must have had to give them such an idea of the brutishness of man. I have noticed, too, that women who tell me that they think such institutions as the Florence Crittenton homes, or the Open Door, immoral. And when they assure me that they consider it injudicious to restrict men in their vices, and immoral to rescue the women these men have ruined, then, indeed do I look upon them with the eyes of pity, knowing that a black leaf of shame lies in their life's book. Only the last great heart sacrifice that a woman can make will cause her to become so indecent in her mode of thinking. When a pure woman thus condones sin it is because her husband or her son is a sinner, and she had to do one of two things--disapprove of the sinner or approve the sin.

There are hundreds of thousands of women who think they are Christians, who have done the latter.

I do not know whether or not these women are as bad as prostitutes. I suppose God knows. But there are some things that I do know.

I know a young wife who says she is glad John has sowed his wild oats, and that she never could have married a ninny. I saw her baby the other day on the street. It's eyes were as blue and innocent as heaven. And on its cheek was a dull, angry sore. I wondered what that sore meant.

I know a young man dying of softening of the brain, and his sweet wife and little children weep for him, loving him still. And the heaven of a home he might have had is guarded from him by angels with flaming swords.

He, too, was a man who had sowed his wild oats.

I know a woman who for years has lived with a polluted man and been forced to acknowledge him as her husband. And she shrinks from him in loathing; she cringes before his tyranny; and she lives with him in bitterness and hate. Why? Because she preferred to live with him as a legalized concubine and enjoy the approval of society rather tan leave him for poverty and the loss of social position. How is she better than the prostitute? Did I say I knew one such woman? I know twenty. And some are young and beautiful, and some are old and plain, but from the eyes of all looks a sorrow ancient as sin, and a bitterness that comes alone with loss of self respect.

For such things is professional prostitution responsible.

As to who is responsible for professional prostitution, that is another matter.

Anyone who chooses to read Chariton Edholm's "Traffic in Girls" will perhaps learn something of the subject. This book is published by the Woman's Temperance Publishing association of Chicago, and contains reports concerning the Florence Crittenton missions, with incidental descriptions of the way in which young girls are entrapped into lives of shame. It also contains the famous reports which Mr. William [?] Stead inside in his [P?] [Mall?] Gazette of the slavery of the brothel.

After reading this book, with its terrible revelations, I have no doubt that many of general interest, and that such things do not happen in Nebraska. I have no means of knowing just how bad Nebraska may be. But I do know of a girl 14 years of age who this week found the shelter of the Open Door. The man who ruined her was over twice her age. The girl has been placed in the Milford home, where she will be cared for physically and morally, and taught a trade, so that when she leaves she will not have to join the ranks of the unhappy sisterhood Two other girls, barely past 16, also found shelter in the Open Door this last week, and will be sent to the state home at Milford. They will leave here, let us hope, armed with the courage to be true to their better selves. Had it not been for the provision tt these institutions make they would have had no choice but to accept the hospitality of some house of wholesale midwifery, from which one emerges only to enter the doors of a house of debauchery.

That the recruits to the sad sisterhood are young maidens, deliberately ruined by men much older than themselves. I am convinced. What else is there for the ordinary woman to do when she finds herself betrayed but to join these miserable ones? The frantic fear, the shame, the suffering, the cruelty of society, leave little choice.

I have often heard it is said that women are much more cruel than men to their fallen sisters. My experience has not corroborated this. On the contrary, the cruelest acts of uncharity of which I have ever known, have been perpetrated by men. The most unjust insinuations which are today poisoning the ear of Omaha society, were concocted in the offices or the clubs, and are being circulated with an [?] worthy of a better cause. As for the women, they have not encouraged these reports, which they believe to be unjust, and to have no substantiation in fact.

If a good woman desires to take a fallen sister into her home for the purpose of helping her to a better life, the good woman's husband is almost sure to overbear her impulses with objections. And I distinctly remember reading a sermon preached in this city by a young and dogmatic clergyman, in which society was cautioned against forgiving the fallen woman. He seemed to think the Lord had a monopoly of forgiveness. I think he afterwards apologized for his attitude by saying that the standard of womanhood ought not to be lowered by her presence in society. But I could not see how the standard of womanly purity could be lowered by the reform of a bad woman. And as for the possible contamination, that counts for nothing. There used to be a saw which said: "Evil communications corrupt this good manners". Like most saws, is only partly true. Mr. George W. Cable puts it very much better when he says that it is not the company we seek, but the reasons we have for seeking it, that makes the difference.

I do not want to be unfair or one-sided. But I feel convinced that in nine cases out of ten it is the brutality of man which is directly responsible for the downfall of woman, and not any innate viciousness in the woman herself. There are stories today being enacted as sad and as tragic as that of Virginia. I will admit that anyone who sees a company of these fallen women together in "the cage" at the city jail, swearing, jeering and laughing with a gaiety more dreadful than any grief, will find it difficult to believe that they were ever pure. But the very violence and excess of their obscenity shows to the thoughtful mind how far they have fallen and what killing shock their sensibilities received when, in some black moment, life was suddenly transformed for them into death--a death without the peace of the grave.

NOT FINISHED