The Slavery of Prostitution
- Author:
Maude E. Miner. New York: The Macmillan
v^unipimy, iyio. rp. ouo.
This is the book of which Miss Jane Addams said, “It is a matter of grave moment to the public that the great theme of The Slavery of Prostitution should be freely and rationally discussed by one so well equipped as Miss Miner has been, both by scholarly research and years of probation work in the Night Court.” A reviewer in The Survey adds, “It deals with a subject on which every intelligent citizen, and especially every voluntary or professional social worker, should read one book?and be grateful that he need not read many.”
Miss Miner herself says it “is neither a ‘vice report’ nor a philosophical treatise, but an earnest study of … the condition of a large number of girls and women whom I have known in the Night Court in New York City and of many of the three thousand girls whom I have known through the New York Probation and Protective Association. These girls have not been, except in rare instances, physically enslaved; but through loss of freedom of will and of action they have been bound to prostitution… . The need,” she continues, “has been shown of a vigorous campaign of law enforcement, directed especially against exploiters who stimulate the demand for prostitution and the supply of young girls to meet that demand. Protection of difficult and runaway girls, organization of the Girls’ Protective League, and educational work to lessen demand and supply, have been part of a program of prevention. At the same time that protective barriers must be raised by society around feebleminded, ignorant, untrained, and defenseless girls, educational work must be carried on among boys and girls to strengthen character.”
In spite of the author’s disavowal, a good part of her book does read like the reports of the Vice Committees of large cities. This is because it is made up, like them, of the true stories told by the women who are sick of the life and anxious to get out of it. How they came to go into it, is not so convincingly explained. A psychological analysis is needed of the mental factors which make prostitution seem to many a desirable career. We cannot expect the materials for such a study to be furnished by the women concerned. For one thing, they are in no mood for narrative at the outset. Action takes up the field of their attention, and they are not accessible to investigation. It is only when the glamour has faded and the motive is dead, that they turn their energies to explanation. Naturally this gives only half the story. Psychology will remain incomplete until it can devise some way of getting the other half. The insight of social workers has supplied much of the picture. Now and then the imagination of a creative genius like Casanova has given us a glimpse of the other side. Perhaps no one has yet shown us so much as Miss Miner has in this book of hers. But there is still something lacking. Negro slavery was hideous and degrading, but for all that it had humor, it had laughter. There is not a gleam of humor in the system of prostitution as Miss Miner sees it. As long as humor is left out we have not all the story. Some day there will come a psychologist, or maybe a sociologist, who will take the whole confused thing apart and put it together for us, humor and all. If then we see that the humor from the woman’s side is akin to tragedy we may be on the point of understanding. A. T.
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