The whip has no terrors for those engaged in
illegitimate financial transactions, for in such transactions the
principal can always afford to arrange that it shall fall on a
subordinate who finds it worth while to run the risks. This method has
long been practised by those who exploit prostitution for profit. To
increase the risks merely means that the subordinate must be more
heavily paid. That means that the whole business must be carried on
more actively to cover the increased risks and expenses. It is a very
ancient fact that moral legislation increases the evil it is designed
to combat.[6]
It is necessary to point out some of the unhappy features of this
agitation, not in order to minimise the evils it was directed against,
nor to insinuate that they cannot be lessened, but as a warning against
the reaction which follows such ill-considered efforts. The fiery
zealot in a fury of blind rage strikes wildly at the evil he has just
discovered, and then flings down his weapon, glad to forget all about
his momentary rage and the errors it led him into. It is not so that
ancient evils are destroyed, evils, it must be remembered, that derive
their vitality in part from human nature and in part from the structure
of our society. By ensuring that our workers, and especially our women
workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their
wages, we shall not indeed have abolished prostitution, which is more
than an economic phenomenon,[7] but we shall more effectually check the
White Slave trader than by the most draconic legislation the most
imaginative Vice-Crusader ever devised.
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