Such houses cannot even exist without such traffic. There is
little inducement for a girl to enter such a house, in full knowledge
of what it involves, on her own initiative. The proprietors of such
houses must therefore give orders for the "goods" they desire, and it
is the business of procurers, by persuasion, misrepresentation, deceit,
intoxication, to supply them. "The White Slave Traffic," as Kneeland
states, "is thus not only a hideous reality, but a reality almost
wholly dependent on the existence of houses of prostitution," and as
the authors of _The Social Evil_ state, it is "the most shameful
species of business enterprise in modern times."[1]
In this intimate dependence of the White Slave Traffic on houses of
prostitution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future.
We are concerned, for the most part, with the more coarse-grained part
of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and
weak-minded part of the army of prostitutes. Although much has been said
of the enormous extension of the White Slave Traffic during recent
years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked
in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger
countries. It is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude,
youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have
too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane
and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often
scarce.
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