These circumstances so
often occur that some investigators consider that they represent the
general rule. No doubt they are the most conspicuous cases. But they can
scarcely be regarded as representing the normal relations of the
prostitute to the man she is attracted to. She is earning her own
living, and if she possesses a little modicum of character and
intelligence, she knows that she can choose her own lover and dismiss
him when she so pleases. He may beat her occasionally, but all over the
world this is not always displeasing to the primitively feminine woman.
"It is indeed true," as Kneeland remarks, "that many prostitutes do not
believe their lovers care for them unless they 'beat them up'
occasionally." The woman in this position is not more of a "white slave"
than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and
tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional
hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the
_souteneur_, although from the respectable point of view he has put
himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very
unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily
on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less
than the _souteneur_ in return.
When, however, we put aside the complicated question of the prostitute's
relationship to the man who is her lover, protector, and "bully," we
have to recognise that there really is a "White Slave Traffic," carried
on in a ruthlessly business-like manner and on an international scale,
with watchful agents, men and women, ever ready to detect and lure the
victims.
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