Essays in War Time

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It is not until specialisation becomes necessary and until men are
relieved from the constant burden of battle and the chase that the
frequent superiority of woman is lost. The modern industrial activities
are dangerous, when they are dangerous, not because the work is too
hard--for the work of primitive women is harder--but because it is an
unnaturally and artificially dreary and monotonous work which stifles the
mind, depresses the spirits, and injures the body, so that, it is said,
40 per cent. of married women who have been factory girls are treated for
pelvic disorders before they are thirty. It is the conditions of women's
work which need changing in order that they may become, like those of
primitive women, so various that they develop the mind and fortify the
body. This, however, is an evil which will be righted by the development
of the mechanical side of industry, for machines tend constantly to
become larger, heavier, speedier, more numerous and more automatic,
requiring fewer workers to tend them, and these more frequently men.[3]

It may be added that the early predominance of woman in the work of
civilisation is altogether independent of that conception of a primitive
matriarchate, or government of women, which was set forth some fifty
years ago by Bachofen, and has since caused so much controversy. Descent
in the female line, not uncommonly found among primitive peoples,
undoubtedly tended to place women in a position of great influence; but
it by no means necessarily involved any gynecocracy, or rule of women,
and such rule is merely a hypothesis which by some enthusiasts has been
carried to absurd lengths.

We see, therefore, that when we are approaching the question of the
mental differences of the sexes among ourselves to-day, it is not
impossible to find certain guiding clues which will save us from running
into extravagance in either direction.

Without doubt the only way in which we can obtain a satisfactory answer
to the numerous problems which meet us when we approach the question is
by experiment. I have, indeed, insisted on the importance of these
preliminary biological and historical considerations mainly because they
indicate with what safety and freedom from risk we may trust to
experiment. The sexes are far too securely poised by organic constitution
and ancient tradition for any permanently injurious results to occur from
the attempt to attain a better social readjustment in this matter. When
the experiment fails, individuals may to some extent suffer, but social
equilibrium swiftly and automatically rights itself. Practically,
however, nearly every social experiment of this kind means that certain
restrictions limiting the duties or privileges of women are removed, and
when artificial coercions are thus taken away it can merely happen, as
Mary Wollstonecraft long ago put it, that by the common law of gravity
the sexes fall into their proper places. That, we may be sure, will be
the final result of the interesting experiments for which the laboratory
to-day is furnished by all the belligerent countries.

Definitely formulated statistical data of these results are scarcely yet
available. But we may study the action of this natural process on one
great practical experiment in mental sexual differences which has been
going on for some time past. At one time in the various administrations
of the International Postal Union there was a sudden resolve to introduce
female labour to a very large extent; it was thought that this would be
cheaper than male labour and equally efficient. There was consequently a
great outcry at the ousting of male labour, the introduction of the thin
end of a wedge which would break up society. We can now see that that
outcry was foolish. Within recent years nearly all the countries which
previously introduced women freely into their postal and telegraph
services are now doing so only under certain conditions, and some are
ceasing to admit them at all. This great practical experiment, carried
out on an immense scale in thirty-five different countries, has, on the
whole, shown that while women are not inferior to men, at all events
within the ordinary range of work, the substitution of a female for a
male staff always means a considerable increase of numbers, that women
are less rapid than men, less able to undertake the higher grade work,
less able to exert authority over others, more lacking both in initiative
and in endurance, while they require more sick leave and lose interest
and energy on marriage. The advantages of female labour are thus to some
extent neutralised, and in the opinions of the administrations of some
countries more than neutralised, by certain disadvantages. The general
result is that men are found more fitted for some branches of work and
women more fitted for other branches; the result is compensation without
any tendency for one sex to oust the other.

It may, indeed, be objected that in practical life no perfectly
satisfactory experiments exist as to the respective mental qualities of
men and women, since men and women are never found working under
conditions that are exactly the same for both sexes. If, however, we turn
to the psychological laboratory, where it is possible to carry on
experiments under precisely identical conditions, the results are still
the same. There are nearly always differences between men and women, but
these differences are complex and manifold; they do not always agree;
they never show any general piling up of the advantages on the side of
one sex or of the other. In reaction-time, in delicacy of sensory
perception, in accuracy of estimation and precision of movement, there
are nearly always sexual differences, a few that are fairly constant,
many that differ at different ages, in various countries, or even in
different groups of individuals. We cannot usually explain these
differences or attach any precise significance to them, any more than we
can say why it is that (at all events in America) blue is most often the
favourite colour of men and red of women. We may be sure that these
things have a meaning, and often a really fundamental significance, but
at present, for the most part, they remain mysterious to us.

When we attempt to survey and sum up all the variegated facts which
science and practical life are slowly accumulating with reference to the
mental differences between men and women[4] we reach two main
conclusions. On the one hand there is a fundamental equality of the
sexes. It would certainly appear that women vary within a narrower range
than men--that is to say, that the two extremes of genius and of idiocy
are both more likely to show themselves in men. This implies that the
pioneers in progress are most likely to be men. That, indeed, may be said
to be a biological fact. "In all that concerns the evolution of
ornamental characters the male leads; in him we see the trend which
evolution is taking; the female and young afford us the measure of their
advance along the new line which has to be taken."[5] In the human sphere
of the arts and sciences, similarly, men, not women, take the lead. That
men were the first decorative artists, rather than women, is indicated by
the fact that the natural objects designed by early pre-historic artists
were mainly women and wild beasts, that is to say, they were the work of
masculine hunters, executed in idle intervals of the chase. But within
the range in which nearly all of us move, there are always many men who
in mental respects can do what most women can do, many women who can do
what most men can do. We are not justified in excluding a whole sex
absolutely from any field. In so doing we should certainly be depriving
the world of some portion of its executive ability. The sexes may always
safely be left to find their own levels.

On the other hand, the mental diversity of men and women is equally
fundamental. It is rooted in organisation. The well-intentioned efforts
of many pioneers in women's movements to treat men and women as
identical, and, as it were, to force women into masculine moulds, were
both mischievous and useless. Women will always be different from men,
mentally as well as physically. It is well for both sexes that it should
be so. It is owing to these differences that each sex can bring to the
world's work various aptitudes that the other lacks. It is owing to these
differences also that men and women have their undying charm for each
other. We cannot change them, and we need not wish to.

[1] See, for instance, Blair Bell's _The Sex Complex_, 1916, though
the deductions drawn in this book must not always be accepted without
qualifications.

[2] G. Fritsch, _Die Eingeborene Sued-Afrikas_, 1892, p. 79.

[3] 1 D.R. Malcolm Keir, "Women in Industry," _Popular Science Monthly_,
October, 1913.

[4] See, for many of the chief of these, Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_,
5th Edition, 1914.

[5] W.P. Pycraft, _The Courtship of Animal_, p. 9.

X

THE WHITE SLAVE CRUSADE

During recent years we have witnessed a remarkable attempt--more popular
and more international in character than any before--to deal with that
ancient sexual evil which has for some time been picturesquely described
as the White Slave Traffic. Less than forty years ago Professor Sheldon
Amos wrote that this subject can scarcely be touched upon by journalists,
and "can never form a topic of common conversation." Nowadays Churches,
societies, journalists, legislators have all joined the ranks of the
agitators. Not only has there been no voice on the opposite side, which
was scarcely to be expected--for there has never been any anxiety to cry
aloud the defence of "White Slavery" from the house-tops--but there has
been a new and noteworthy conquest over indifference and over that sacred
silence which was supposed to encompass all sexual topics with suitable
darkness. The banishment of that silence in the cause of social hygiene
is, indeed, not the least significant feature of this agitation.

It is inevitable, however, that these periodical fits of virtuous
indignation by which Society is overtaken should speedily be spent. The
victim of the moral fever finds himself exhausted by the struggle,
scarcely able to cope with the complications of the disease, and, at the
best, only too anxious to forget what he has passed through. He has an
uneasy feeling that in the course of his delirium he has said and done
many foolish things which it would now be unpleasant to recall too
precisely.

There is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that this is what
happened in the White Slave Traffic agitation. It became clear that we
had been largely misled in regard to the evils to be combated, and that
we were seduced into sanctioning various remedies for these evils which
in cold blood it is impossible to approve of, even if we could believe
them to be effective.

It is not even clear that all those who have talked about the "White
Slave Traffic" have been quite sure what they meant by the term. Some
people, indeed, have seemed to think that it meant prostitution in
general. That is, of course, an absurd misapprehension. We are
concerned with a trade which flourishes on prostitution, but that
trade is not itself the trade or (as some prefer to call it) the
profession of prostitutes. Indeed, the prostitute, under ordinary
conditions and unharassed by persecution, is in many respects anything
but a slave. She is much less a slave than the ordinary married woman.
She is not fettered in humble dependence on the will of a husband from
whom it is the most difficult thing in the world to escape; she is
bound to no man and free to make her own terms in life; while if she
should have a child, that child is absolutely her own, and she is not
liable to have it torn from her arms by the hands of the law. Apart
from arbitrary and accidental circumstances, due to the condition of
social feeling, the prostitute enjoys a position of independence which
the married woman is still struggling to obtain.

The White Slave Traffic, therefore, is not prostitution; it is the
_commercialised exploitation of prostitutes_. The independent
prostitute, living alone, scarcely lends herself to the White Slave
trader. It is on houses of prostitution, where the less independent and
usually weaker-minded prostitutes are segregated, that the traffic is
based. 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.[2] Although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay
of prostitution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that
civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prostitution. They offer no
inducements to the more intelligent and independent prostitutes, and
their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those
whose demands are of the humblest character. There is, therefore, a
tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of
prostitution under modern civilised conditions; the prostitute and her
clients alike shun such houses. Along this line we may foresee the
disappearance of the White Slave Traffic, apart altogether from any
social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[3]

It is sometimes said that the relation of the isolated prostitute to her
_souteneur_ constitutes a form of "white slavery." Undoubtedly that may
sometimes be the case. We are here in a confused field where the facts
are complicated by a number of considerations, and where circumstances
may very widely differ, for the "fancy boy"--selected from affection by
the prostitute herself--may easily become the _souteneur_, or "cadet" as
he is termed in New York, who seduces and trains to prostitution a large
number of girls. The prostitute is so often a little weak in character
and a little defective in intelligence; she is so often regarded as a
legitimate prey by the world in which she moves, and a legitimate object
of contempt and oppression by the social world above her and its legal
officers, that she easily becomes abjectly dependent on the man who in
some degree protects her from this extortion, contempt, and oppression,
even though he sometimes trains her to his own ends and exploits her
professional activities for his own advantage. 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. But even this too amply demonstrated fact was not found
sufficiently highly spiced by the White Slave Traffic agitators. It was
necessary to excite the public mind by sensational incidents. Everyone
was told stories, as of incidents that had lately occurred in the next
street, of innocent, refined, and well-bred girls who were snatched away
by infamous brigands beneath the eyes of their friends, to be immured in
dungeons of vice and never more heard of. Such incidents, if they ever
occurred, would be too bizarre to be justifiably taken into account in
great social movements. But it is even doubtful whether they ever occur.
The White Slave traders are not heroes of romance, even of infamous
romance; less so, indeed, than many more ordinary criminals; they are
engaged in a very definite and very profitable business. They have no
need to run serious risks. The world is full of girls who are
over-worked, ill-paid, ignorant, weak, vain, greedy, lazy, or even only
afflicted with a little innocent love of adventure, and it is among
these that White Slave traders may easily find what their business
demands, while experience enables them to detect the most likely
subjects.

Careful inquiry, even among those who have made it their special
business to collect all the evidence that can be brought together to
prove the infamous character of the White Slave Traffic, has apparently
failed to furnish any reliable evidence of these sensational stories. It
is easy to find prostitutes who are often dissatisfied with the life (in
what occupation is it not easy?), but it is not easy to find prostitutes
who cannot escape from that life when they sufficiently wish to do so,
and are willing to face the difficulty of finding some other occupation.
The very fact that the whole object of their exploitation is to bring
them in contact with men belonging to the outside world is itself a
guarantee that they are kept in touch with that world. Mrs.
Billington-Grieg, a well-known pioneer in social movements, has
carefully investigated the alleged cases of forcible abduction which
were so freely talked about when the White Slave Bill was passed into
law in England, but even the Vigilance Societies actively engaged in
advocating the bill could not enable her to discover a single case in
which a girl had been entrapped against her will.[4] No other result
could reasonably have been expected. When so many girls are willing, and
even eager, to be persuaded, there is little need for the risky
adventure of capturing the unwilling. The uneasy realisation of these
facts cannot fail to leave many honest Vice-Crusaders with unpleasant
memories of their past.

It is not only in regard to alleged facts, but also in regard to
proposed remedies, that the White Slave Agitation may properly be
criticised. In England it distinguished itself by the ferocity with
which the lash was advocated, and finally legalised. Benevolent bishops
joined with genteel old maids in calling loudly for whips, and even in
desiring to lay them personally on the backs of the offenders,
notwithstanding that these Crusaders were nominally Christians, the
followers of a Master who conspicuously reserved His indignation, not
for sinners and law-breakers, but for self-satisfied saints and
scrupulous law-keepers--just the same kind of excellent people, in
fact, who are most prone to become Vice-Crusaders. Here again, it is
probable, many unpleasant memories have been stored up.

It is well recognised by criminologists that the lash is both a
barbarous and an ineffective method of punishment. "The history of
flagellation," as Collas states in his great work on this subject, "is
the history of a moral bankruptcy."[5] The survival of barbarous
punishments from barbarous days, when ferocious punishments were a
matter of course and the death penalty was inflicted for horse-stealing
without in the least diminishing that offence, may be intelligible. But
the re-enactment of such measures in so-called civilised days is an
everlasting discredit to those who advocate it, and a disgrace to the
community which permits it. This was pointed out at the time by a large
body of social reformers, and will no doubt be realised at leisure by
the persons concerned in the agitation.

Apart altogether from its barbarity, the lash is peculiarly unsuited
for use in the White Slave trade, because it will never descend on the
back of the real trader. 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. And when we ensure that these
same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous
recreation, we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the
White Slave Traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral
supervision of the young.

No doubt the element of human nature in the manifestations we are
concerned with will still be at work, an obscure instinct often acting
differently in each sex, but tending to drive both into the same risks.
Here we need even more fundamental social changes. It is sheer
foolishness to suppose that when we raise our little dams in the path of
a great stream of human impulse that stream will forthwith flow calmly
back to its source. We must make our new channels concurrently with our
dams. If we wish to influence prostitution we must re-make our marriage
laws and modify our whole conception of the sexual relationships. In the
meanwhile, we can at least begin to-day a task of education which must
slowly though surely undermine the White Slave trader's stronghold. Such
an education needs to be not merely instruction in the facts of sex and
wise guidance concerning all the dangers and risks of the sexual life;
it must also involve a training of the will, a development of the sense
of responsibility, such as can never be secured by shutting our young
people up in a hot-house, sheltered from every fortifying breath of the
outside world. Certainly there are many among us--and precisely the most
hopeless persons from our present point of view--who can never grow into
really responsible persons.[8] Neither should they ever have been born.
It is our business to see that they are not born; and that, if they are,
they are at least placed under due social guardianship, so that we may
not be tempted to make laws for society in general which are only needed
by this feeble and infirm folk. Thus it is that when we seek to deal
with the White Slave Trader and his victims and his patrons we have to
realise that they are all very much, as we have made them, moulded by
their parents before birth, nourished on their mothers' knees. The task
of making them over again next time, and making them better, is a
revolutionary task, but it begins at home, and there is no home in which
some part of the task cannot be carried out.

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