G
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K28515
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/b28093318
THE
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GREAT SCOURGE
AND
HOW TO
CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, LL.B.
END IT
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LONDON
E. PANKHURST
LINCOLN’S INN HOUSE, KINGSWAY, 'W.C.
1913
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CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ------ y
THE END OF A GREAT CONSPIRACY - i A WOMAN’S QUESTION - - - - 13
HOW TO CURE THE GREAT PESTILENCE 24 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT A GREAT EVIL - 38 CHASTITY AND THE HEALTH OF MEN - 49 THE DANGERS OF MARRIAGE— I - - 63
THE DANGERS OF MARRIAGE— II - - 80
THE DECLINE OF THE BIRTH-RATE - 96 WHAT WOMEN THINK - - - - 107
APPENDIX
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PICCADILLY FLAT ------- 134
THE GOVERNMENT AND WHITE
SLAVERY ------ 146
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INTRODUCTION
WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
This book deals with what is commonly described as the Hidden Scourge, and is written with the intention that this scourge shall be hidden no longer, for if it were to remain hidden, then there would be no hope of abolishing it.
Men writers for the most part refuse to tell what the Hidden Scourge is, and so it becomes the duty of women to do it.
The Hidden Scourge is sexual disease, which takes two chief forms — syphilis and gonorrhoea. These diseases are due to pros- titution— they are due, that is to say, to sexual immorality. But they are not con-
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
fined to those who are immoral. ‘ Being contagious, they are communicated to the innocent, and especially to wives. The in- fection of innocent wives in marriage is justly declared by a man doctor to be “ the crowm- ing infamy of our social life.”
Generally speaking, wives who are thus infected are quite ignorant of w^hat is the matter with them. The men w'ho would think it indelicate to utter in their hearing the words syphilis and gonorrhoea, seem not to think it indelicate to infect them with the terrible diseases which bear these names.
The sexual diseases are the great cause of physical, mental, and moral degeneracy, and of race suicide. As they are very wide- spread (from 75 to 80 per cent, of men being infected by gonorrhoea, and a considerable percentage, difficult to ascertain precisely, being infected with syphilis), the problem is one of appalling magnitude.
AND HOW TO END IT
Vll
To .discuss an evil, and then to run away from it without suggesting how it may be cured, is not the way of Suffragettes, and in the following pages will be found a proposed eure for the great evil in question. That eure, briefly stated, is Votes for Women and Chastity for Men. Quotations and opinions from eminent medieal men are given, and these show that ehastity for men is healthful for themselves and is imperative in the interests of the race.
The use of remedies, sueh as mereury and “ 606,” is no substitute for the prevention of sexual disease. Drugs and medical concoc- tions will not wash away the mental and moral injury sustained by the men who practise immorality, nor are they adequate as a eure for the body. The sexual diseases are partieularly intractable to cure, and it is never possible to prove that a eure has been effeeted, so that the disease, while
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
apparently cured, is often only hidden and ready to break out again.
Regulation of vice and enforced medical inspection of the White Slaves is equally futile, and gives a false appearance of security which is fatal. Chastity for men — or, in other words, their observance of the same moral standard as is observed by women — is there- fore indispensable.
Votes for Women will strike at the Great Seourge in many ways. When they are citizens women will feel a greater respect for themselves, and will be more respeeted by men. They will have the power to seeure the enactment of laws for their protection, and to strengthen their economie position.
The facts contained in this book eon- stitute an overwhelming case for Votes for Women. They afford reasons more urgent and of greater human importance than any other, that women should have the Vote.
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IX
The knowledge of what the Hidden Scourge really is, and of how multitudes of women are the victims of it, will put a new and great passion into the movement for political en- franchisement. It will make that movement more than ever akin to all previous wars against slavery.
The facts contained in this book are not without their bearing upon the question of militancy. There has been vigorous criti- cism of the policy of destroying property for the sake of Votes for Women. That criticism is silenced by the retort that men have destroyed, and are destroying, the health and life of women in the pursuit of vice.
One of the chief objects of the book is to enlighten women as to the true reason why there is opposition to giving them the vote. That reason is sexual vice.
The opponents of votes for women know that women, when they are politically free
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
and economically strong, will not be pur- chasable for the base uses of vice.
Those who want to have women as slaves, obviously do not want women to become voters.
All the high-sounding arguments against giving votes for women are a sham — a mere attempt to cover up the real argument against this reform, which argument, we repeat, is sexual vice.
It is said by hypocritical opponents of Votes for Women that women must not vote because men protect them already. Women will not listen to that excuse any longer, now that they know what men’s protection means.
It is in the interests of the nation that these same hypocritical opponents profess to resist votes for women. How hollow that argument is seen to be when it is realised that men are constantly infecting and re-
AND HOW TO END IT
XI
infecting the race with vile disease, and so bringing about the downfall of the nation !
Decidedly, women’s knowledge of the Great Scourge will do more than anything else to bring Votes for Women nearer.
Every young woman who reads these pages will be warned of a great danger, whose existence she may not until now have suspected. It is because of the need that young girls shall have timely warning of this danger that the question is here dis- cussed in very plain and definite terms.
It remains to be said that the ensuing chapters have appeared in the pages of the Suffragette, and are now published as a book in consequence of many urgent requests that they might be available in a more permanent form.
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HOW TO END IT
THE END OF A CONSPIRACY
F ORTY of the most prominent doctors recently signed a manifesto demanding the appoint- ment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the subject of venereal disease — the disease, that is to say, which is caused by sexual vice.
The Government have since appointed a Royal Commission, but out of fifteen of its members, only three are women. Nor has re- presentation been given to the Woman’s Movement in its more modern aspect. It is an intolerable insult that women should be in a minority on such a Commission. They ought
A
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
to have at least equal representation with men. The secret nature of this inquiry is also to be condemned.
The doctors point out that tuberculosis, insanity, scarlet fever, typhoid, cancer, and other diseases are being fought by State and private enterprise, but, they continue, “ in all this organised effort there is one note- worthy omission : there has always been a conspiracy of silence as regards venereal disease.”
The Suffragettes are, according to the judges, not unacquainted vdth conspiracy of one sort, but we would point out that it is long since they refused to be a party to the conspiracy of silence regarding venereal * disease. For a long time they have been clamouring for something to be done to stamp out this frightful plague.
The time has come, say the doctors, when it is a national duty to face facts and to bring
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3
them prominently to the notice of the public. They state as follows the terrible problem with which the public has to deal :
“ The worst form of venereal disease is highly contagious, and dire in its effects. It claims its victims not only from those who have themselves to blame for contracting it. It is one of those diseases that may be trans- mitted from parent to child, so that the off- spring of a sufferer is born with the virus actually in its tissues, to cause, it may be, hideous deformity, or blindness, or deafness, or idiocy, ending often in premature, though not untimely death.”
Truth to tell, further inquiry is hardly necessary, though a Royal Commission ought to be the means of enlightening women as to the nature and extent of this terrible evil. Men already know a great deal, and doctors know most of all. No Royal Com- mission is needed to discover the cause of
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
venereal disease. Its cause is perfectly well known. As one writer has well expressed it, “ the breeding-place of all venereal diseases without exception is in the social institution called prostitution, or sexual promiscuity ; in the debasement and degradation of what should be the highest of physical powers — those involved in the act of generation.”
The doctors urge that both the cure and prevention of venereal disease shall be con- sidered. Women will lay stress upon pre- vention, because even if cure were possible in the physical sense, it is impossible in the moral sense. A community which tolerates prostitution is a community which is morally diseased. The man prostitute (for why should we give this name only to the woman partner in immorality ?) has liis soul infected as well as his body.
We repeat that where these terrible dis- eases are concerned prevention is better than
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cure. It is not only better than cure, but it is the only cure, for whether these diseases are curable even in the narrowest sense of the term is very doubtful, and even when cured they can be contracted again. Every- body admits that one attack of gonorrhoea does not give immunity against subsequent attacks, and the idea that one attack of syphilis gives immunity from other attacks is not very seriously entertained by experts. As one authority says : “ The reason why so few cases of reinfection are seen is because so few cases are really cured, i.e,, they are syphilitic and cannot be reinfected.”
As the hope of curing venereal diseases is so illusory, prevention is obviously the true policy. No individual can hope to avoid these diseases except by abstaining from immoral sexual intercourse, and similarly a nation cannot remain unaffected so long as prostitution exists.
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
Therefore prostitution must go ! At this shrieks of protest will be raised. We shall hear the usual balderdash about “ human nature ” and “ injury to man’s health.” Human nature is a very wide term, and it covers a multitude of sins and vices which are not on that account any the more to be toler- ated. It is human nature to rob and to kill. Cannibalism itself is in the nature of certain human beings. Robbing, killing, and canni- balism are nevertheless all forbidden, and the people who venture to let go their “ human nature ” in these directions are compara- tively few !
Why is human nature to have full scope only in the one direction of sexual \'ice ? The answer to that question is that men have got all the power in the State, and there- fore make not only the laws of the State, but also its morality.
According to man-made morality, a woman
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who is immoral is a “ fallen ” woman and is unfit for respectable society, while an immoral man is simply obeying the dictates of his human nature, and is not even to be regarded as immoral. According to man-made law, a wife who is even once unfaithful to her husband has done him an injury which en- titles him to divorce her. She can raise no plea of “ human nature ” in her defence. On the other hand, a man who consorts with prostitutes, and does this over and over again throughout his married life, has, according to man-made law, been acting only in accord- ance with human nature, and nobody can punish him for that.
One is forced to the conclusion, if one accepts men’s account of themselves, that women’s human nature is something very much cleaner, stronger, and higher than the human nature of men. But Suffragists, at any rate, hope that this is not really true.
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
Tliey have more laith in men than men have in themselves, and they believe that a man can live as pure and moral a life as a woman can. The woman’s ideal is to keep herself untouched until she finds her real mate. Let that be the man’s ideal, too !
U Men’s health can be preserved only at the price of prostitution — such is the ridiculous and wicked theory advanced by many men and some doctors. The truth is, that prosti- tution is the greatest of all dangers to the health of men. In the first place there is the risk amounting to certainty of infection by the terrible disease we are considering. Not only so, but prostitution involves a futile and wasteful expenditure of men’s energ}' — energy which they greatly need to enable them to hold their own in science, art, athletics, industry, and commerce.
And what of women’s health ? Xo longer will they accept the theory that their health
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and dignity are to be sacrificed to the health of the other sex. Merely to state the pro- position that women should suffer physically and spiritually for the benefit of men is to show its falsity. Nature certainly never in- tended so monstrous a thing ! Indeed, it is very plain to anyone with the smallest in- telligence that the ruin of women means the ultimate ruin of men.
It did not need the doctors’ manifesto to warn the more instructed amongst women that prostitution and the diseases caused by it are a menace to themselves and their children. But vast numbers of women are still without this knowledge. Innocent wives are infected by their husbands. They suffer torment ; their health is ruined ; their power to become mothers is destroyed, or else they become the mothers of diseased, crippled, blind, or insane children. But they are not told the reason of all this. Their doctor and
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
their husband keep them in ignorance, so that they cannot even protect themselves from future danger.
Healthy girls enter into marriage without the smallest idea of the risk they are incur- ring. Nobody tells them, as Dr. John W. Barrett tells us in his article in the Bedrock, the scientific review, that “ we know, from very careful insurance medical records, that the great majority of men put themselves in the way of infection before marriage.”
Those who read this statement wall have their minds prepared to receive the further appalling statement, widely accepted by medical authorities, that 75 per cent, to 80 per cent, of men have before marriage been infected with one form of venereal disease. Some of these men may seem to be cured, but we have seen how little cure in this con- nection means. Very sad cases are on record of men who marry when apparently cured.
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and yet infect their wife. It is therefore hardly too mueh to say that out of every four men there is only one who can marry without risk to his bride. Such facts are terrible indeed, and the sooner they are grasped the better for the individual and for the raee.
Even after marriage, danger arises over and over again unless the husband abstains from immoral aets. In future ehapters we shall show more fully what venereal disease means to a woman.
We may point out in passing that prosti- tution and its evils are largely a medical question, and must be dealt with by medical men. Prison doctors administer medieine whieh keeps under control the “ human nature ” of men prisoners who have no natural self-control. Apart from that, to instruct men in sex hygiene is the doctors’ primary duty.
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
It would indeed be an extraordinary thing if the medieal profession, which has dis- covered means of regulating every other bodily function, should be unable to tell men how to regulate the sex function, and to prevent that excessive sex activity which, as they themselves admit, is fatal to the health of the race.
We look to the medical profession, there- fore, to come to the rescue of men whose will- power fails them ; to come to the rescue ot wives whose life will otherwise be blighted by disease ; to come to the rescue of children yet unborn, who, unless help is forthcoming, will enter into a cruel inheritance. A high privilege it will be to rid humanity of a most awful scourge.
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A WO:\IAN’S QUESTION
The Prime Minister has been heard eloquently- discussing the prevention of tuberculosis. A most desirable thing, but it is even more desirable that the Prime Minister shall talk about another and even more terrible form of disease, and that he shall try to prevent it — that he shall strike at the cause of sexual disease.
The cause of sexual disease is the subjec- tion of women. Therefore to destroy the one we must destroy the other. Viewed in the light of that fact, Mr. Asquith’s opposition to votes for women is seen to be an over- whelming public danger.
As we have said, sexual disease — or vene- real disease, as it is commonly called — is more to be dreaded than even tuberculosis.
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
It must first be remembered that the whole truth about the effects, direct and indirect, of venereal disease is not yet known. New discoveries are being made every day, and each discovery reveals fresh reason for the belief that venereal disease is humanity’s greatest enemy.
As everybody knows, the more serious forms of venereal disease are two, namely, syphilis and gonorrhoea. One authority says that among the causes of death syphilis comes next to tuberculosis in frequency. This statement must be supplemented by others before we can realise the full gravity of the matter.
Firstly, owing to the campaign of silence now breaking down, medical certificates for the cause of death are often so arranged as to conceal the part played by syphihs, and therefore the available statistics do not fully represent the facts.
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Secondly, the syphilitic character of vari- ous ailments formerly supposed to be non- syphilitic is now being recognised. Various other ailments are coming under suspicion, and this suspicion that they are syphilitic is only too likely to be established by further medical research.
Thirdly, syphilis, by diminishing the power of resistance of the organism, renders the effect of all illnesses and accidents more serious.
There is also this to be noted in drawing the comparison between tuberculosis and syphilis. Syphilis is a powerful predisposing cause to tuberculosis. Moreover, there is also a form of consumption which is definitely syphilitic. We may also add that syphilis is now recognised as being a strong predis- posing cause to cancer.
Even in the present imperfect state of knowledge, it is safe to say that syphilis, which is one only of the venereal diseases.
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
ousts tuberculosis as the most potent single cause of physical degeneracy and of mor- tality.
For women the question of venereal disease has a special and a tragic interest. It strikes at them in their own person and through their children. A woman infected by syphilis not only suffers humiliation and illness which may eventually take the most revolting form, but is in danger of becoming the mother of deformed, diseased, or idiot children. Why are such children born into the world ? women have often cried in despair. The answer is — Syphilis ! Miscarriage is frequently caused by the same disease. Indeed nothing, as one doctor says, is so murderous to the off- spring as syphilis.
Rather different, though hardly less terrible where women are concerned, is the effect of gonorrhoea. In future chapters we deal more fully with this matter. Here we may say
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that gonorrhoea is one of the most prevalent of all diseases. It is aequired before marriage by 75 per cent, or 80 per cent, of men, and it is very often contracted after marriage by such men as are not entirely faithful to their wives. To men the disease gives compara- tively little trouble, and in the old days the doctors made very light of it.
But to women, owing to their physiological structure, it is one of the gravest of all diseases. A very large number of married women are infected by their husbands with gonorrhoea. The common result is sterility, which prevents the birth of any child, or may prevent the birth of more than one child. Race Suicide !
Generally speaking, the female ailments which are urged by some ignoble men as a reason against the enfranchisement of women are not due to natural weakness, but — to gonorrhoea. Women — and there are so many
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
of them — who “ have never been well since they married,” are victims of gonorrhoea.
An enormous percentage of the operations upon women are necessitated by this disease, which in many cases so affects the organs of maternity as to necessitate their complete removal. Race Suicide again.
These are awful truths, so awful that the woman’s instinct is to keep them hidden, until she realises that only by making these truths known can this appalling state of affairs be brought to an end.
Women have suffered too much from the conspiracy of silence to allow that conspiracy to last one minute longer. It has been an established and admitted rule in the medical profession to keep a wife in ignorance of the fact that she has become the victim of vene- real disease. A bride struck dovTi by illness within a few days, or within a few weeks, of her wedding day is told by her husband
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and the doctor that she is suffering from appendicitis, and under cover of this lie her sex organs are removed without her know- ledge. Women whose husbands contract syphilis, and are in turn infected, are kept in ignorance of this, and are thus unable to protect themselves and to do their duty by the future.
Here we have the woman question in perhaps its most urgent and acute form. Have the Anti -Suffragist women any idea of what the wrongs of women really are ? We beg them to realise that so long as the subjection of women endures and is con- firmed by law and custom, so long will the race be injured and degraded, and women be victimised.
Sexual disease, we say again, is due to the subjection of women. It is due, in other words, to the doctrine that woman is sex and beyond that nothing. Sometimes this
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
doctrine is dressed up in the saying that women are mothers and beyond that nothing. What a man who says that really means is that women are created primarily for the sex gratification of men, and secondarily, for the bearing of children if he happens to want them, but of no more children than he wants.
As the result of this belief the relation be- tween man and woman has centred in the physical. What is more, the relation between man and woman has been that of an owner and his property — of a master and his slave — not the relation of two equals.
From that evil has sprung another. The man is not satisfied to be in relation vdth only one slave ; he must be in relation with many. That is to say, sex promiscuity has arisen, and from that has in its turn come disease.
And so at the beginning of this twentieth century in civilised Britain we have the
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doctors breaking through the secrecies and traditions of long years, and sounding the note of alarm. This canker of venereal disease is eating away the vitals of the nation, and the only cure is Votes for Women, which is to say the recognition of the freedom and human equality of women.
The effect of women’s enfranchisement will, where this question of redeeming the race is concerned, be manifold. There are three sets of people mainly responsible for dealing with the problem — the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, and the medical pro- fession. The medical profession has until now viewed the question of venereal disease chiefly from the standpoint of the man. As woman’s influence increases, her interests and the interests of her children — in a word, the interests of the race — begin to take their due place in medical consideration. This process will not be complete until the equality
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
of women is recognised and enacted by the law. Then we shall have doctors taking the sound, balanced view that the moral and physical health of the race transcends their “ obligation ” to foolish individuals who, for the sake of indulgences of which they themselves are ashamed, would 'wreck the lives of themselves, their wife, and their children. We shall have doctors applying themselves to the task of helping men, if need be by medicinal means, to live as befits a highly-evolved and self-respecting human being.
The outcome of enfranchisement will be to make women hate more than anything else in the world the very thought of selling them- selves into slavery as under the conditions of the present day so many of them do sell themselves. The weapon of the vote will enable them to break down existing barriers to honest livelihood.
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Upon men the effect of women’s enfran- chisement will be to teach them that women are their human equals, and not the sub- human species that so many men now think them ; not slaves to be bought, soiled, and degraded and then cast away.
We know to what bodily and spiritual cor- ruption the subjection of woman has brought humanity. Let us now see to what clean- ness and nobility we can arrive through her emancipation !
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
HOW TO CURE THE GREAT PESTILENCE
The re-education of men upon sexual matters is one of the most urgent needs of the day. At present their minds are chokeful of ignor- ant and unclean superstition as to their o'W'n sex nature, and they entertain beliefs on this question which are directly contrary to medi- cal opinion, and produce the most deplorable results so far as themselves, women, and the race are concerned. Although doctors affirm that a pure and continent life is never the cause of disease, whereas immorality is the greatest of all foes to health, still the opposite theory is maintained by millions of men.
It is because of men’s ignorance and super- stition that prostitution is so widely thought
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to be inevitable. Immoral intercourse with prostitutes men are pleased to term “ the exercise of their natural functions,” and now that a determined crusade is being waged against prostitution, those who wage that crusade are accused of defying Nature. Nature, indeed ! As though Nature had not decreed a punishment for sexual immorality such as she imposes in respect of no other sin.
The horrible disease against which doctors are crying out at the present day is the direct outcome of prostitution, which must hence- forward be classed with the other unnatural vices.
What every woman believes, who is not diseased or else morally corrupted by acute poverty on the one hand or excessive luxury and irresponsibility on the other, is this : sexual intercourse where there exists no bond of love and spiritual sympathy is beneath human dignity. That such intercourse is
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
forbidden by Nature herself, and more strictly forbidden and more harshly punished than any other sin, we have already said. Until men in general accept the views on the sex question held by all normal women, and until they live as cleanly as normal women do, the race will be poisoned, as it is to-day, by foul disease.
Very reluctant are men to receive and act upon this truth. Always they want to sin and escape the consequences. To persist in sexual immorality and to remain free from sexual disease is their impossible ideal. Even now, when the health and sanity of our race are at stake, men are trifling with a great peril, and are pretending that immorality can be made safe.
In the first place, they proclaim that they have found at last the cure for which they have been seeking throughout the centuries. A cure for sexual disease, which is of all
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diseases the most incurable ! — as though Nature had not willed that there should be no way of escape from this scourge except one, and that one way the way of purity. This boasted new cure is called Salvarsan, and men are speaking of this supposed remedy as though its discovery were a licence to them to go and sin in safety.
But what is the truth of the matter ? This cure is by no means proved to be a cure. The doctors are disagreeing about it, and with the best will in the world to believe that Sal- varsan will cure syphilis, they cannot shut their eyes to the very ominous facts which manifest themselves in connection with the use of this remedy. Quite recently an in- quest was held in London upon a man of forty-two, who died after an injection of Sal- varsan. Dr. Willcox, the expert in poisons, who was called to give evidence, expressed the opinion that death was due to delayed
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
poisoning caused by the arsenic in injection. But a little while ago, he said, a woman died in a similar way. A French medical expert, M. Hallopeau, in a treatise on the eradication of syphilis, says :
“ Salvarsan is not without serious draw- backs. In the first plaee, its efficaey is far from being absolute. In a number of cases, which vary according to the statistics from one-tenth to a quarter, the disease is not eured, and at the end of a few months new symptoms appear. In the seeond plaee, the remedy is not harmless when administered, for one has seen up to the present a large number of eases of death admittedly due to its action, and this figure must neeessarily be smaller than the number of deaths that actu- ally occur, for these intimate dramas have only two witnesses — the patient and the doetor, and if the patient disappears it is so mueh to the doetor’s interest to be silent that
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i he must almost necessarily succumb^to^tliis j temptation.”
Dr. Marshall, surgeon to the British Skin Hospital, at a conference held some months ago, refused to admit that the curative power of Salvarsan has been proved, because, as he said, “ In such a disease as syphilis the value of a new drug cannot be estimated till it has been tried for at least ten years. The chief tests of the efficacy of such a drug are its powers in preventing tertiary or parasyphi- litic manifestations and the transmission of disease to the offspring. This remedy,” added Dr. Marshall, “ appears to be liable to cause severe toxic effects, sometimes ending fatally. No doubt many of the deaths after Salvarsan were due to faulty technique and like causes, but a certain number are difficult to explain, except by arsenical posioning.”
These opinions concerning Salvarsan are entertained by many other medical author-
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
ities ; even the diseoverer of Salvarsan, Dr. Ehrlich, now claims no more for it than that it is “ a valuable adjunct to treatment.” It is obvious, even to the lay mind, that a remedy whose advocates allege that it can swittly destroy one of the most virulent and pro- longed of maladies, must be itself a danger- ous substance — a veritable two-edged sword. In fact we are brought back again to the obvious truth that the only certain cure of sexual disease is prevention.
The next method by which men hope to secure immunity from the consequences of ill-doing is that of the State regulation and recognition of vice. Some would disguise this system by calling it by another name. But one man, at any rate, has had the cour- age of his convictions. He is Major French, of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Mliether or not as a representative of the Government is as yet unascertained, he read a paper
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! before the International Medical Congress. He recommends that the State should assume “ the effectual control of openly-practised prostitution by the localisation of irreclaim- able women into certain areas or streets.” These women would be periodically inspected, perhaps once or twice a week, in order to see whether they were diseased, and if diseased they would be isolated and treated, and then men would again begin the task of making them diseased.
Anticipating the objection that the main- tenance and medical treatment of these women victims of immorality would involve a very heavy charge upon the public funds. Major French makes the extraordinary and mendacious statement that prolonged treat- ment is only necessary in the case of syphilis, and that one or two months’ adequate treat- ment and isolation would be sufficient in the case of gonorrhoea. Considering that persons
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
apparently cured of gonorrhoea have three or four years later been known to infect an- other healthy person, the dangerous character of Major French’s false statement will be seen.
There is, according to Major French’s scheme, to be no compulsory medical inspec- tion of men, because, he says, “ men infected with venereal disease are not so dangerous as women, because a woman practising prostitu- tion usually associates with numerous men, and a man could not and does not associate with a like number of women.”
We maintain that, on the contrary, a diseased man is far more dangerous than a diseased prostitute, because every man is free to abstain, and knowing the dangers involved he is a fool if he does not abstain, from inter- course with a prostitute, whereas the man who is diseased can, and in innumerable cases does, communicate his disease to his unsus- pecting wife and to his children.
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The plea for State regulation of vice is, according to 3Iajor French, based on “ the cardinal fact that prostitution has always existed, and unfortunately must continue to do so for all time.” What this means, put into other words, is that men will always sacrifice their own self-respect, and the health of their wife and family, on the altar of im- morality. We think better of men than this, provided that the necessary work of educa- tion and reform is done amongst them. Major French must really speak for himself, and not for other men !
It is contended that since the system of regulated vice was established in connection vdth the Indian Army the percentage of the cases of syphilis in that army has been reduced. Major French in saying this ignores the fact that of late years those at the head of the Indian Army have enjoined upon the soldiers the possibility and the necessity, from the
B
84
THE GREAT SCOURGE
health point of view, of a moral life. Thus Lord Kitehener issued a memorandum to every soldier, in whieh he said : “ It is neces- sary that those who are serving their country in India should exert to the utmost those powers of self-restraint with which every man is provided, in order that he may exercise a proper control over his appetites.”
Lord Kitchener further declared “ that every man can by self-control restrain the indulgence of those imprudent and reckless impulses that so often lead men astray.” Sir George White and Lord Wolseley have issued statements to soldiers on the same lines. The soldiers who become infected by disease are punished by loss of promotion, forfeiture of first-class pay, and in other ways, and this has obviously a salutary effect.
It is to be noticed, too, that a decline in venereal disease has also taken place in the Home Army, although there is no State regu-
AND HOW TO END IT
35
lation of vice where the Home Army is eon- eerned.
Another point to be noticed is that, in spite of the regulation of vice in Berlin, a high medicaljauthority is of the opinion that in that city every man who reaches the age of thirty has, on an average, had gonorrhoea twice, and every fourth or fifth man has had sypliilis ! State regulation of vice has been tried in many countries, and always it has failed — its failure being now almost univer- sally admitted by medical men.
But it is not the opinion of medical men or the opinion of women which will necessarily prevail, if things are left to take their course, and there is danger that an attempt may be made, under cover of what will be called “noti- fication of disease,” to establish some form of State regulation of vice and State control of women of a certain class.
Against any such system women will fight
36
THE GREAT SCOURGE
to the very death. No woman-slavery of that kind ean be tolerated at this time of day. If men venture to re-establish in this country a system according to which certain women will be segregated, controlled, and medically examined for the purposes of vice, that ^vill mean the establishment of a sex war. It will mean that women in general, not only for the sake of the slave women but for their own sake, will regard men as contemptible and degraded beings.
Even though, by the degradation of a slave class of women, men could keep their bodies clean, they could not keep their minds clean, and the modern woman, emancipated as she already is spiritually, and as she soon vdll be politically, will have nothing to do with men who are foul in mind.
The great pestilence, this sexual disease which is ravaging the community, makes a problem that has got to be solved. And now
AND HOW TO END IT
37
that we all know what is wrong, none of us ean rest until it is put right. But the quackery of regulated vice must be put aside once and for all. Also, while medical treatment will, and ought to be, fully available to those diseased, there can be no reliance upon re- medies as a substitute for clean living.
The real cure of the great plague is a two- fold one — Votes for Women, which will give to women more self-reliance and a stronger economic position, and chastity for men.
38
THE GREAT SCOURGE
/
PLAIN FACTS ABOUT A GREAT EVIL
As might be expected, the statements that we make as to sexual disease and its causes evoke a good deal of comment on the part of men. Some men say that they completely endorse our statements of fact, and that they agree with us that Votes for Women and chastity for men are the sole cures for sexual disease. Other men offer criticism.
These critics say, in the first place, that our statements as to the prevalence of sexual disease amongst men are exaggerated. In the second place, they say that the reason of men’s vice is an economic one, and that if men could afford to marry they would no longer have intercourse with prostitutes. It is, of course, principally Socialist men who adopt this second line of argument.
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39
There is a complete answer to both these objections. Firstly, as to the denial of our assertion that 75 per cent, to 80 per cent, of men contract gonorrhoea. Men’s favourite method of arguing against women is to deny their statements of fact. But as it happens, the assertion in question is not made upon our own authority, but upon that of medical men.
This is what great medical authorities say as to the percentage of men who contract gonorrhoea — the malady which is so danger- ous to the wives, who in thousands are in- fected by a diseased husband.
Noeggerath says that in New York, out of 1000 married men, 800 have had gonorrhoea, and that 90 per cent, of these have not been healed and can infect their wives.
Ricord also says that 80 per cent, of men contract gonorrhoea, and says further : “ When anyone has once acquired gonorrhoea
40
THE GREAT SCOURGE
God only knows when he will get well again.”
Neisser, who discovered the gonoccocus, said : “ The statement that of the adult
male population inhabiting large towns, only an insignificant proportion escapes gonorrhoeal injection is not at all exaggerated.'^
Dr. A. Prince Morrow, author of Social Diseases and Marriage, says : “ Gonorrhoea is the most widespread and universal of all diseases in the adult male population, em- bracing 75 per cent, or more.”
Taylor, in his book on venereal diseases, says : “We are certainly warranted in assert- ing that gonorrhoea, taken as a whole, is one of the most formidable and far-reaching in- fections by which the human race is attacked.” Finger, the great German authority on gonorrhoea, says : “ Gonorrhoea of the male urethra is probably the most frequent dis- ease with which the practical physican has
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41
to deal. With it he usually begins his early j practice, and until the end it causes him I many anxious hours. Frequent as is the i disease, it is equally ungrateful as regards a j positive and radical cure.”
Dr. Douglas White, M.D., and Dr. C. H. I Melville, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who jointly prepared a paper on venereal disease read at the Annual Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, said : “ The majority of all young men get gonor- rhcea before the age of thirty.”
These statements of fact may be supple- mented by two further statements. One is that, as James Foster Scott, M.D., expresses it, “ In every case where a woman is infected with gonorrhoea, she is in danger not only of being rendered a permanent invalid and barren, but also of losing her life from peri- tonitis and septicaemia.” In mild cases a woman suffers from that “ poor health ” that
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
is falsely supposed to be Nature’s gift to women. In severe cases the sex organs have to be removed by the surgeon’s knife.
Dr. Prince Morrow says : “ All modem writers on the diseases of women recognise that gonorrhoea is the chief determining cause of the inflammatory diseases peculiar to women.'”
A further point to be noticed is that it is to all intents and purposes impossible for doctors to give a guarantee of cure, so that a man may marry and infect his wife, al- though he was apparently cured at the time of the marriage.
Dr. Prince Morrow shows that a gonorrhoea which appears to be cured may really be lying latent, and he says the experience of all gynaecologists is concurrent in the con- clusion that infection of the wife by latent gonorrhoea in the husband is the most prolific source of illness in married women, often
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43
leading to invalidism, unsexing (by surgical operation), or death.
Taylor says that in very many cases the infection remains dormant, latent, and un- recognised, and these cases may drag on for one or more, and even five, ten, or twenty years without giving any indication of lurking trouble, when for some reason or other the disease may break out again. The result, of course, is that the wife of the man so diseased becomes infected. Other cases are seen, says James Foster Scott, that defy all measures of treatment.
Price, an American authority on the ques- tion at issue, says that out of 1000 abdo- minal operations on women, 950 — all save 50 ! — were the result of conditions due to gonorrhoea.
These few quotations from great authori- ties are more than enough to establish our contention that 75 per cent, to 80 per cent.
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of men acquire gonorrhoea ; moreover, they are a warning to men to abstain from vice and a warning to women of the grave danger of marriage so long as the moral standards of men continue to be lower than their own.
And now to reply to the statement of our critics who say that the reason of sexual vice is an economic one, and that if all men could afford to marry, prostitution would dis- appear. That this contention is unfounded is proved by these facts. Firstly, that rich men, who can perfectly well afford to marrjq are quite as immoral as poorer men. Secondly, that married men as well as unmarried men have intercourse with prostitutes.
The problem of vice is certainly an eco- nomic one in this sense, that where women are economically dependent upon men, they more readily become the ^dctims of vice. It should be noticed that the man’s instinctive endeavour is to keep the woman in a state
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45
of economic dependence. This desire to keep women in economic subjection to them- I selves — to have women, as it were, at their i mercy — is at the root of men’s opposition to I the industrial and professional employment of women.
If a woman can earn an adequate living by the work of her hand or brain, then it I will be much the harder to compel her to I earn her living by selling her sex.
Here we have the reason why a man-made Socialism is not less dangerous to women than man-made Capitalism. So long as men have the monopoly of political power, it will be impossible to restrain their impulse to keep women in economic dependence and so sexually subservient. In this sense, as we have said, the question of White Slavery is an economic one.
But as we have also said, and say again, sexual vice is not caused by the poverty of
•46
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men, because the ranks of the vicious are recruited from the ranks of the rich men, the poor men, and the men of moderate means. As we have further said, and now repeat, marriage does not deter men from vicious courses, because married men as well as un- married men descend to such courses.
The fact is that the sex instinct of these men has become so perverted and corrupted that intercourse with virtuous women does not content them. They crave for inter- course with women whom they feel no obli- gation to respect. They want to resort to practices which a wife would not tolerate. Lewdness and obscenity is what these men crave, and what they get in houses of ill- fame. Marriage does not “ satisfy ” them. They fly to women who will not resent foul words and acts, and will even permit un- natural abuse of the sex function.
The facts brought out by the prosecution
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in the Piccadilly Flat Case, scanty though these lacts were, show how matters stand. No wonder decent women are loth to marry, knowing what they know to-day !
And there is another infamous thing to be told. The men, married and unmarried, who visit bad houses are not content to de- grade women of full age and mature physical development. They want young girls, and, if they can get them, virgins. Bernard Shaw, in his preface to Three Plays hy Brieux, cites Brieux’s contention, and himself seems to endorse it, that no man likes to face the responsibility of tempting a girl to her first step from the beaten path. Mr. Shaw is behind the times, for at the present day it is, as the White Slaves can tell us, “a perfect craze with men ” to have intercourse with the youngest possible girl, and they are especially eager to be the first to ruin her.
Where is the father instinct which should
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THE GREAT SCOURGE
be prompting every man to defend and not to destroy youth and purity ?
The fact is that it is no longer any use for men to try to preserve the illusions of the virtuous woman as to what goes on in the underworld. This men must now accept. A double standard of morality means that they will be more and more cast out by self- respecting women. Until men accept the same moral standard as women, how can it be said that they are fit companions for them ?
The virtuous woman has often been con- demned for shrinking from her “ fallen ” sister and holding out the hand of friend- ship to the fallen man. Not much longer will women continue to deserv^e that re- proach, because they have come to the con- clusion that men are not worthy to associate with them who are not of clean mind and of clean life.
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CHASTITY AND THE HEALTH OF MEN
In urging that votes for women and chastity for men are the double cure for the sexual disease that is destroying individuals and the race, we are met by the excuse that chastitv for men is dangerous to their health, and that immorality is necessary to the preservation of their health.
This excuse is in direct conflict with the highest medical opinion.
Medical testimony is that immorality not only soils and debilitates a man’s body, but also contaminates his mind. Intractable to cure as is the bodily disease caused by im- morality, the brain stains which it produces are even more difficult to wash away.
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But since so many men rank the body higher than the mind, it is above all things important to make them understand that the physical well-being which they think, or pretend to think, that they are achiev- ing by immorality is actually being de- stroyed.
That immorality causes bodily weakness as well as actual disease is obvious, because the sexual act involves a very great expendi- ture of a man’s energy — energy which can, if it is not expended in that way, be trans- formed and expended in other ways, either physical or mental.
In support of our contention we may point out that when athletes are in training sexual intercourse, even in the legitimate relation of marriage and in moderation, has to be com- pletely avoided. Considering that a man goes into training with a \dew to getting himself into a perfect physical condition,
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I the fact to which we have referred is of the very greatest significance, ji And now we will give, one after another, j quotations from medical authorities showing I the desirability, from the point of view of I men’s health, of an equal moral standard I for men and women.
The matter is clearly expressed in the following statement by the late William Acton, M.R.C.S. :
“ The argument in favour of incontinence deserves special notice, as it purports to be founded on physiology. I have been con- sulted by persons who feared, or who pro- fessed to fear, that if the organs were not regularly exercised they would become atrophied, or that in some way impotence might be the result of chastity. There exists no greater error than this, or one more opposed to physiological truth. I may state that I have, after many years of experience.
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never seen an instance of atrophy of llie generative organs from this cause. I have indeed met with the complaint ; but in what class of cases does it occur ? It arises in all instances from the exactly opposite cause — early abuse ; the organs become worn out, and hence atrophy arises. Ever\" year of voluntary chastity renders the task easier by the mere force of habit.”
Sir T. C. Allbutt, K.C.B., M.D., Regius Professor of Physics, Cambridge, says : “ Con- tinence, so far from being harmful, is not harmful at any age.”
John Kellock Barton, M.D., says : “ Con- tinence is possible, and not only compatible with but conducive to health.”
Lionel S. Beale says ;
“ No sufficient valid objections have been established upon reasonable grounds or upon facts of physiology and health to li\dng, nay, to passing the whole life in a state of celibacy.
53
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i
I The argument that if marriage cannot, for various reasons, be carried out, it is never- theless necessary upon physiological grounds that a substitute of some kind should be ; found is altogether erroneous, and without foundation.”
Clement Dukes, M.D., Physician of Rugby School, says :
“ It is a frequent observation instilled into the young at all ages : ‘ I am told it is very bad for me to be continent ; my health will suffer from it.’ No greater lie was ever in- vented. It is simply a base invention to cover sin, and has no foundation in fact.” Very important are the words of G. M. Humphrey, M.D., Professor of Surgery at the University of Cambridge. He says : '"’‘There are no organs so much under con- trol as those of generation. Their functions are neither directly nor indirectly in the least essential to life — scarcely even to the
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well-being of the body. The functions of the testicle, like those of the mammary gland and the uterus, may be suspended for a long period, possibly for life ; and yet its structure may be sound, and capable of being roused into activity.”
Says the great surgeon, Bryant :
“ Unlike other glands, the testicle does not waste or atrophy for want of use, the physical parts of man’s nature being accu- rately adapted to the necessities of his posi- tion, and to his moral being.”
The late Sir James Paget, Sergeant-Sur- geon Extraordinary to the late Queen Victoria, Consulting Surgeon to St. Bar- tholomew’s Hospital, says : “ Chastity does no harm to mind or body ; its discipline is excellent.”
Sir Dyce Duckworth, M.D., Honorary Physician to the King, Treasurer and Re- presentative on the General Medical Council
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of the Royal College of Physicians, says : “ The sexual organs can lie dormant for years, can be left alone, out of considera- tion, and forgotten, so to speak, until the time comes for matrimony.”
Sir Andrew Clarke said : “ Continence
does not harm, does not interfere with de- velopment, elevates the whole nature, in- creases energy, and sharpens insight.”
The opinion of Sir W. R. Gowers, M.D., F.R.S., Lecturer of the Medical Society of London, is expressed as follows :
“ The opinions which on grounds falsely called ‘ physiological ’ suggest or permit un- chastity are terribly prevalent among young men, but they are absolutely false. I assert that no man ever yet was in the slightest degree or way the worse for continence or the better for incontinence.”
The lower moral standard^of^'men"’ has always been a cause of offence to women.
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and men have sought to silence women’s condemnation by assuring them that chastity involves not only injury to the health of men (with this point we have dealt), but also very great physical distress. Upon this matter also the doctors have pronounced, and in a sense destructive of men’s pretensions.
The doctors inform us that the immorahty to which men resort on the pretext of reliev- ing physical distress is, on the contrary, the very cause of that distress.
“ Fallen men,” says James Foster Scott, M.D., “ by continual stimulation of their sexual passions with erotic thoughts, sen- sual conversation and literature, and by the rehearsal of lewd stories, produce in them- selves and in others who fall under their noxious influence an uncontrollable passion.” Says the same authority : “ Intercourse vdth different women is well knovni morbidly to increase desire.”
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Another important statement made by Dr. Scott is this :
“ The proper subjugation of the sexual impulses and the conservation of the complex seminal fluid, with its wonderfully invigorat- ing influence, develop all that is best and noblest in men.”
“ It is incontinent men,” says W. J. Jacobson, Surgeon, Guy’s Hospital, “ who are subject to this constant irritability of the sexual organs, and it is they who, from unshunned excitement, must suffer from an excess of seminal secretions and its results. On the other hand, it is the strictly continent men who keep themselves healthily occupied in mind and body, men who, when attacked by imperious sexual desire, simply sally out and seek in exercise a change of surround- ings ; to such as these the secretion of semen is soon only sufficient to be easily got rid of by an involuntary emission during sleep
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once or twice a month, a state of things which is perfectly natural.”
Here we have stated the fact that Nature has supplied an innocent means of relief for men, upon which they ought to depend instead of polluting the bodies of the white slaves.
A further statement on this point we take from the writings of James Foster Scott, M.D. and C.M. of Edinburgh University, and late Obstetrician to Columbia Hospital for women in Washington. He says :
“ Nocturnal emissions of semen occur oc- casionally in all normal men as desirable physiological events which give convincing proof of virility. Silly men who gain their information from the evil publications of charlatans who are wholly mercenary in their aims, wrongly attribute these losses to some mischief in the generative funetions. The emissions occur with varying frequency
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in different men, and in the same man at different times. If one takes little exereise, oversleeps, lives on a rich diet, uses tea, coffee, or tobacco to excess, and stimulates his mind with erotic fancies and pursuits, he will probably experience them with more frequency than the active man who directs liis energies more to his brain and muscles than to his sensual nature.”
Self-control is perfectly possible. The men who profess to be at times incapable of it, should remember that in prisons men, con- stituted as the}” are, have medicine adminis- tered by the medical officers. If prostitution can thus be abolished in prisons, it can be so in the world of free men. Self-control for men who can exert it ! Medical aid for those who cannot! At all costs prostitution must go and the race be saved.
To sum up ! Chastity for men is not only morally imperative, but is also physiologi-
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cally imperative. Incontinence on the part of men causes a waste of vital force which impoverishes their moral nature and weakens their body.
Furthermore, the incontinence of men gives rise to terrible sexual diseases, whose victims are not themselves alone and the white slaves whom they destroy, but innocent wves and children.
Chastity for men, far from causing atrophy of men’s sexual organs, is the surest guarantee against atrophy. As a high medical authority says ; “No continent man need be deterred by this apocryphal fear of atrophy of the testes from living a chaste life. It is a de- vice of the unchaste — a lame excuse for their incontinence, not founded on any physio- logical law. The testes will see to it that their action is not interfered with. Physio- logically it is not a fact that the power of secreting semen is annihilated in well-
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formed adults leading a healthy life and yet remaining continent.” Sexuality ought to lie dormant until legitimate occasion arises for its use, when it will be found to exist in full natural vigour.
The sexual power of men has been given to them in trust for the perpetuation of the race, and they have not been faithful to that trust. Says a man who is a doctor : “ The secretion of the testicles is the hope of the future of the race, and yet if WTongfully used it is so potent that it may figuratively be classed with the secretions of the poison fangs of venomous reptiles.”
Although by clean thinking and healthy living men can gain control over themselves, they renounce that control, and stimulate their desires by foul thinking, by obscene words, sights, and acts, by alcohol, and even by drugs and unnatural practices.
Although by medical means they can ob-
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tain such aid as may be necessary, and although Nature herself affords an innocent means of relief, these are rejected on the plea that they are dangerous to health. By this excuse men have contrived to bar all ways save the way that eonducts them to the brothel !
It is essential that women shall, for their own protection, take firm hold of these facts. Let them remember that, in the words of Sir Dyce Duckworth, M.D., Consulting Phy- sician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, there are no organs in a man's body that can he better controlled than the sexual organs, and then let them say to men : “ And what of women's health ? Why should it any longer be sacri- ficed, not to your health even, but to your vices ? ”
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THE DANGERS OF MARRIAGE— I
Women have always known that marriage, viewed as a spiritual union, is not without its risks ; that either on the man’s part or the woman’s part love may fail, or that the clash of temperament or opinion may threaten happiness. Hence the old saying that mar- riage is a lottery.
But what women have not known is that marriage as a physical union is (apart from the natural risk of childbirth, which also they foresee) a matter of appalling danger to women.
)
The danger of marriage is due to the low moral standard and the immoral conduct of men. Men before marriage, and often while i they are married, contract sexual disease
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from prostitutes and give this disease to their wives.
“ The infeetion of pure women in marriage is,” says Dr. Prinee Morrow, “ the crowning infamy of our social life.” He says further :
“ Statistics show that the majority of men who marry have contracted disease, and that many are the bearers of contagion to the women they marry. We witness the effects in the women who suffer ill-health, sterility, mutilation of their bodies, and permanent invalidism. Society’s only solicitude is that they suffer in silence. In addition, many of them are compelled to suffer the sight of their babies blinded at birth, children aborted or born with the mark of death upon them, or, if they survive, compelled to bear in their frail bodies the stigmata of degeneration and disease which are the heritage of the prosti- tute. . . . No one can deny that these facts, the saddest facts of human experience, are of
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common occurrence, and they will continue so long as society shuts its eyes to the exist- ( ence of this danger to the family, and from a false sense of prudery or a fastidious nicety refuses to be enlightened.”
I There we have a clear statement, and if anything, an wrzdcr-statement, of the risks
( attendant upon marriage.
What women must realise is that sexual ' disease eommunicated to them by their hus- bands is the cause of the special ailments and the poor health by whieh so many women are
I I afflieted. Women are not naturally invalids, as they have been taught to believe. They are invalids beeause they are the vietims of the sexual diseases known as syphilis and
j gonorrhoea.
Let every woman not yet married remember
i that the vast majority of men contract sexual
i disease in one of its forms before they are
! married. Let every woman learn that to cure c
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a man of such disease is long and difficult, and strictly speaking impossible, since no doctor can give a guarantee that his patient is cured, and vrill not immediately, or in years to come, infect his wife.
The unmarried woman, whereas now she is well and strong, may within one day of her marriage lose her health for ever. This is a hard saying, but it is true, and women have a right to the protection that knowledge gives.
Never again must young women enter into marriage blindfolded. From now onwards they must be warned of the fact that marriage is intensely dangerous, until such time as men’s moral standards are completely changed and they become as chaste and clean-living as women.
A clear statement of the case is given by Dr. Prince Morrow, when he says :
“ The conditions created by the marriage
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j relation render the wife a helpless and unre- i| sisting victim. The vinculum matrimonii is , a chain which binds and fetters the woman r completely, making her the passive recipient of the germs of any sexual disease her hus- band may harbour. On her wedding night she may, and often does, receive unsuspect- I ingly the poison of a disease which may I seriously affect her health and kill her chil- ! dren, or, by extinguishing her capacity for ; conception, may sweep away all the most cherished hopes and aspirations of married life. She is an imiocent in every sense of the word. She is incapable of foreseeing, power- j less to prevent, this injury. She often pays j with her life for her blind confidence in the I man who ignorantly or carelessly passes over ‘ to her a disease which he has received from a I prostitute. The victims are for the most ! part young and virtuous women — ^the idolised daughters, the very flower of womankind.”
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It is not only the men notoriously and obviously immoral who are dangerous as husbands. As Dr. Morrow says :
“ Who are responsible for the introduction of venereal diseases into marriage and the consequent wreckage of the lives of innocent wives and children ? As a rule, men who have presented a fair exterior of regular and correct living — often the men of good business and social position — ^the men who, indulging in what they regard as the harmless dissipa- tion of ‘ sowing their wild oats,’ have en- trapped the gonococci or the germs of s}q)hihs. These men, believing themselves cured it may be, sometimes even with the sanction of the physician, marry innocent women, and im- plant in them the seeds of disease destined to bear such fearful fruit.”
In previous articles it has been shown that an overwhelming majority of men put them- selves in the way of infection before marriage
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by having intercourse with prostitutes, and I that 80 per cent, of these men become diseased These facts give warning to women that the chances are strongly against the man who offers himself to them in marriage being healthy.
The frequency with which married women are infected by sexual disease is very great. Noeggerath, the great authority, stated that three out of five married women are infected by gonorrhoea.
Writing on Gonorrhoea and Puerperal Fever Tausig says that “ every pregnant woman should be examined with a view to detecting a latent gonorrhoea.”
A great many men claim that before mar- riage they are cured of the sexual disease they have contracted, but this, as we have said, is more than they can prove and more than any doctor can certify. Dominant characteristics of the sexual diseases are the length of their
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duration, and their tendency to become chronic, and to recur years after every symp- tom seems to have disappeared.
As Marshall, a great authority on the ques- tion, says : “ In syphilis contagious lesions are known to occur ten years or more after the commencement of the disease, even in cases which have been properly treated.” It must be remembered that the views which doctors take as to the time required for the treatment of gonorrhoea and syphilis become every day more pessimistic. The modem tendency is for doctors to refuse to give to those wishing to marry any guarantee that a cure of sexual disease, in either of its forms, has been effected.
In this connection Marshall savs ; “ The
V
duty of the medical man ends after pointing out to his patient the possible eventualities in case of his marriage.”
The point vitally important to women to
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I bear in mind is that unless their husbands are ) completely chaste and faithful to them after i| marriage, this same danger that they them- ?i selves will be infected arises.
“ Unfortunately,” as Dr. Prince Morrow j says, “ in many cases it is the unfaithful hus- I ! band and father who receives the poison from I a prostitute in an extra-conjugal adventure,
I carries it home, and distributes it to his :j family.”
We have in the past referred in general terms to the effects produced by gonorrhoea j and s}"philis respectively, and now we will I address ourselves to this matter in more detail.
Syphilis is the prime cause of race degene- ration. Insanity, statisticians declare, is on the increase. The cause of that is syphilis. Nerv'e trouble is also on the increase, we are j told — the rush of modern life, telephones,
! and motor cars being, as people fancy,
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the reason of it. The true cause again is syphilis.
This poison of syphilis working in the race and being over and over again reintroduced is producing results that are the despair of doctors and sociologists.
The definition of syphilis as given by Marshall is, that it is “ a contagious disease, chronic in evolution, intermittent in mani- festations, and indefinite in duration, caused by a specific microbe.”
Syphilis is hereditary and can be trans- mitted to the offspring, being, as Marshall expresses it, “ the hereditary disease par ex- cellenceSyphilis is not so prevalent as gonorrhoea, which is contracted by 80 per cent, of men, but complete statistics are un- available, and it is possible that as many as 20 per cent, contract it. This ailment being fiercely contagious, a syphilitic husband al- most certainly infects his %vife.
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Tlie disease passes through three stages — I primary, seeondary, and tertiary. The aim j of a doctor is to prevent the disease reaching ! the tertiary stage. As the appearance of tertiary symptoms is sometimes delayed for many years he can have no assurance that he has been successful.
It used to be thought that syphilis was contagious only in the primary and second- ary stages, but the latest opinion is that it is contagious even in its tertiary stage. Cer- tainly it can be communicated to the offspring in the tertiary stage, and what may happen is this, that an expectant mother is infected by her unborn child, who, having inherited syphilis from its father, in turn infects its mother. Many syphilitic cnildren fall vic- tims to their disease before birth. If they survive birth then they are a source of con- tagion to nurse and to mother.
In the tertiary stages of syphilis any part
I
1
I
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of the body may be affected — ^nose, lips, tongue, throat, lungs, joints, digestive organs, heart, sex organs, eyes, and ears. Above all, the brain, spinal cord, and nervous system are liable to be affected. Inherited syphilis causes mental deficiency, idiocy, malforma- tions of all kinds, and other diseased con- ditions.
That syphilis causes loathsome skin disease is well known. Sometimes it manifests itself in the form of ulcers resembling lupus, but more rapidly destructive in their effect. Ter- rible disfigurement of the face, and especially of the nose, may be caused by syphihs.
Syphilis is an important cause of anaemia, as it acts on the blood by diminishing the number and power of the red blood corpuscles, by diminishing the proportion of haemoglobin, and by increasing the number of the white corpuscles.
Syphilis is also a very important cause of
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heart disease. Says Marshall ; “ Syphilitic disease of the heart is more common than is generally supposed ; in fact, syphilis must be regarded as the chief factor in heart disease, apart from rheumatism. It may be insidious in onset and remain latent a considerable time without giving rise to symptoms, and then cause sudden death in persons appar- ently in the prime of life. True Angina pec- toris must in most cases be due to syphilis, since this is the most frequent cause of the disease of the coronary arteries and aorta.”
“ Probably no disease is more productive of arterial degeneration than syphilis,” says Mott. The veins and the glands are particu- larly subject to damage by syphilis.
Syphilis sometimes produces trouble re- sembling gastric ulcer and disorders of the stomach. Professor Fournier regards inher- ited syphilis as likely to constitute a favour- able soil for the development of appendicitis.
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There are syphilitic forms of pneumonia and pleurisy. That syphilis is a predispos- ing cause to tuberculosis is now admitted.
The sex organs are naturally very subject to attack by syphilis, and much suffering is endured by women on this account. Syphihs is also the chief cause of miscarriage. Its effect in destroying and deforming the next generation is particularly great.
Syphilis is now known to be the cause of Bright’s disease, diabetes, hysteria, eye trouble, producing blindness. It is also re- cognised as a predisposing cause of cancer. “ If the inclusion of sarcoma and carcinoma among the parasyphilitic affections seems to be transgressing the limits of pathological knowledge,” says Marshall, “ we must admit that no other satisfactory explanation of the origin of malignant tumours has yet been brought forward.”
“ Syphilis,” says Fournier, “ds a veritable
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poison to the nervous system.” It is a cause of paralysis, neuralgia, neuritis.
“ One of the principal causes of insanity is syphilis,” says IMarshall. Epilepsy and idiocy are referable to the same cause.
These consequences are not only suffered by the persons who wantonly contract syphilis in the course of immoral living. They are suffered by innocent wives, and as the Bible tells us, the sins of the fathers are visited in the form of syphilitic maladies upon their children and their children’s children.
In a future article we shall have more to say as to the hereditary aspect of this question, but we may here quote the opinion of Mar- shall that the generative effects of syphilis are frequently transmitted to the third gene- ration, and possibly further, only to die out with eventual sterility.
Thus, apart from the women infected in
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marriage, there are numbers of women who have inherited from their forbears the ter- rible legaey of suffering — ^and there are men who also suffer, though they have learned so little by it that they seek in immoral inter- course new infection, which they in their turn transmit to generations yet to come.
The medical profession is constantly dis- covering more about syphilis, and every new discovery teaches them to dread it more as one of the worst enemies of the human race.
The knowledge we already have, as summed up in the facts given above, bears out the saying of a doctor who affirms that syphilis is the principal cause of death occurring before the natural term, and that “ If syphilis and gonorrhoea were eliminated, you would have, from the medical point of view, almost a new world to deal with.”
Syphilis and gonorrhoea can be eliminated
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in two ways. One is that men shall lead chaste hves. If they refuse to do this, then the only other way in which syphilis and gonorrhoea can be exterminated is by ex- terminating the race itself.
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THE DANGERS OF IMARRIAGE— II
Those who declare war upon sexual disease are apt to direct their whole attention to syphilis, leaving gonorrhoea more or less out of account. Thus the doctors who lately memorialised the Government asked for a Royal Commission to inquire into syphilis, and gonorrhoea they did not mention at all. Considering that, as Neisser says, 70 per cent, of the cases of sexual disease which come under the notice of medical men are gonor- rhoeal, the reason why gonorrhoea is thus ignored calls for some explanation.
In the old days there was a sajdng that gonorrhoea need be medically treated only in one way — with contempt. In the hght of
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present medical knowledge it is seen that not only because of its greater prevalence, but because of its devastating effect upon its victims, gonorrhoea is not less terrible than syphilis itself.
Speaking of the relative gravity of syphilis and gonorrhoea Prince Morrow, M.D., says : “ Modern science has taught us that in view of its extensive prevalence, its conservation of virulence after apparent cure, and its ten- dency to invade the uterus and annexial organs, with results often dangerous to life and destructive to the reproductive capacity of the woman, gonorrhoea overshadows syphi - lis in importance as a social peril.”
Further, comparing the effects of sypliilis and gonorrhoea. Dr. jMorrow says :
“ In the case of gonococcic infection, the individual risks the wife is made to incur are much more serious than those following sj^philis. The infection may invade the cavity
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of the uterus and aseend to the annexial organs, eausing salpingitis, ovaritis, peri- tonitis, ete., destroying her eoneeptional capa- city and rendering her irrevocably sterile, to say nothing of the resulting dangers to life and the frequent necessity of surgical opera- tions to remove her tubes and ovaries.” The author of Gonorrhoea in W omen, Valmei Findley, M.D., says : “ I might further add in support of the statement of Morrow that the risks to the wife are greater in gonor- rhoea than in syphilis, that the prospects of cure are better for syphilis.”
It used to be thought that whereas syphihs was a constitutional disease affecting the organism as a whole, gonorrhoea was a purely local disease, affecting only the sex organs. But the greatest experts are now coming to the conclusion that gonorrhoea, besides being a disease of the sex organs, must also be re- garded as a constitutional malady. A state-
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merit on this point made by Dr. Prince Mor- row, is as follows :
“ As the result of modern investigations it may be positively affirmed that the gonococ- cus is susceptible of being taken up by the blood-vessels and lymphatics, and that it may affect almost every organ of the body. Ex- periments have demonstrated its presence not only in the ovaries, tubes, and peri- tonial cavity, which it reaches through progressive invasion of the intermediate mucous membranes, but also in the brain and cord, the endocardium, the pleura, the liver.”
In inquiring into the reasons why this great plague of gonorrhoea is too lightly re- garded, it is impossible to reject the belief that one reason is to be found in the greater severity with which gonorrhoea attacks women as compared with men. Gonorrhoea is in fact the great curse of women, and is the
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cause of most of the special ailments from wliieli they suffer.
Owing to the ravages that gonorrhoea works upon women, womanhood itself has almost eome to be looked upon as a disease.
Women have always wondered why mater- nity and their sex life as a whole should, for so many of them, be indistinguishable from disease. If these are natural funetions, why should they be attended by so mueh illness and pain ? Sexual disease is at the bottom of this mystery. Syphilis inherited and aequired is partly responsible for women’s suffering, but gonorrhoea plays by far the bigger part.
There are medical authorities who believe that of eases of “ women’s diseases ” as many as 90 per cent, or even 95 per eent. are due to gonorrhoea. As one of these authorities says, “ The more the disease is studied and the greater the improvement in baeteriolog^^ the higher is to be found the pereentage.”
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Even the health of unmarried women is affected as the result of the prevalence of sexual disease.
Another point to be remembered is that, gonorrhoea being highly contagious, many girl children contract it from their mother, and one eminent doctor suggests that this gonor- rhoeal infection in infancy is responsible for suffering in later life. Inherited syphilis, too, is responsible for many cases of weak and diseased sex organs.
There is yet another reason which we suspect is keeping the doctors silent on the subject of gonorrhoea, and this is that the problem is so awful in its magnitude and in its character that they shrink from admit- ting its existence.
The fact is that this is an evil absolutely incurable save by one means, namely, the chastity of men — the observance by men of the same moral standard as that accepted
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by virtuous women. This the medical pro- fession ean advise but do not teel themselves able to enforee.
The only people who dare face this evil of gonorrhoea and the only people who can overthrow it are w’omen. When women acquire the necessary influence, political and social, they will have it in their power to convince men that to live cleanly or to be cast out from the society of decent women are the alternatives open to them.
As we have said, the doctors are appalled by the problem which gonorrhoea presents, and well they may be.
To begin with, there is, as we have re- peatedly shown by quotations from the greatest authorities, no disease of the adult male population which approaches gonorrhoea in its prevalence — from 75 to 80 per cent, of men (and some say more than this) being infected by it before marriage. So much for
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the extent of the evil. Now as to the possi- bility of cure.
There is perhaps no disease so difficult to cure. To speak of cure, in the strict sense of the word, is indeed impossible. And when, as so very often happens, a man has, after a first attack of the disease, again exposed himself to infection and has become re- infected, the case is serious indeed.
A man who has contracted gonorrhoea may after medical treatment show no further symptoms, but that is no proof that he is cured. Palmer Findley says that he has repeatedly demonstrated the presence of the gonococcus in the urethra when there was no visible secretion. To believe that the disease is terminated when its symptomatic discharge has disappeared is, he says, “ a delusion,” and he adds :
“Now we are all but ready to say that Noeggerath was right when he said the
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gonococcus can exist in the tissues through- out the lifetime in the individual, and at any time, under favourable influences, the infection may light up what appears to be a new and acute infection, or may transmit a virulent infection without itself becoming manifest.”
A very important statement made by this same authority is as follows :
“ Individuals are observed to infect others, yet apparently are themselves immune to infection. The explanation lies in the pres- ence of a gonorrhoeal infection in the absence of all the clinical signs. In the first indi- vidual the gonococcus had little virulence, but when transmitted to sterile tissues it assumed an active role.”
From this statement it will be seen that a man who is apparently long cured may infect his wife, who will then suffer from gonorrhoea in an acute form, owing to the very fact that
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she has until then been healthy and there- fore presents virgin soil upon which the deadly gonococcus can flourish.
The truth is that a man who by immoral intercourse exposes himself to infection must act on the assumption that he will infect himself for life, and that by so infect- ing himself he is rendering himself unfit for marriage. As James Foster Scott, M.D., says : “No individual who expects ever to marry has any right to indulge in sexual impurity.”
To the frequency with which wives are infected in marriage we referred in our last article. We showed that, according to Noeggerath, three out of five married women suffer from gonorrhoea. We quoted the opinion expressed by another authority that every pregnant woman should be examined for sign of gonorrhoea. Yet another doctor says that he has found more than 25 per
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cent, of expectant mothers suffering from this disease.
The specialist, Ricord, believed that 90 per cent, of women manning men who had contracted gonorrhoea became themselves infeeted with the disease either in an acute or latent form.
Gonorrhoea in women does terrible mis- chief. It is a eause of peritonitis. It gives rise also to disease of the bladder and kid- neys. It may cause gonorrhoeal rheumatism and gonorrhoeal affections of the heart.
It is, however, the sex organs that are primarily open to attack by gonorrhoea. The results of such attack varv in different persons, and range from poor health and debility to very serious diseases, necessitat- ing surgical operation. Gonorrhoea is a potent eause of sterility and miscarriage. It is held by some doctors that the abortive influence of gonorrhoea is as pronounced as
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that of syphilis. Some tumours are due also to gonorrhoea.
Many cases of puerperal fever are attri- butable to gonorrhoea. Says Palmer Findley : “ Every careful observer of obstetric practice of large experience is keenly aware of the frightful prevalence of gonorrhoeal puerperal infections.”
Pregnancy and child-birth have, the medi- cal authorities tell us, a most important effect on the course of gonorrhoeal infection. A woman who has been infected may suffer comparatively little until she is about to become a mother, and then and more especi- ally at the time of child-birth and after it the disease develops and spreads with alarm- ing rapidity. A great deal of suffering ex- perienced by women before and at the birth of their children must be due to gonorrhoea.
The following quotation from James Foster Scott, M.D., is instructive. He says ; “ In
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women gonorrhoea not only tends to be- come chronic and to invade the internal sexual organs with destructive changes, but with each occurrence of menstruation there is also a likelihood of its renewed activity and further spread ; and especially does danger threaten if she become pregnant — the result not showing fully until some weeks after the full-time labour or miscarriage.”
The symptoms of gonorrhoea which medi- cal writers describe are only too familiar to thousands of women. Valentine, an Ameri- can doctor, says :
“ How dismal is the history of many a young woman who marries with all the accompaniments of a wedding celebration. From the husband’s latent gonorrhoea many of them contract conditions which alter their lives and even their characters. They suffer from backache, irregular and painful men- struation, urinary disorders, localised peri-
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tonitis, loss of their healthful beauty, lassi- tude, hysteria, sterility, miscarriages, or death.”
Another doctor says :
“ The chronic or creeping form of gonor- rhoea in women demands a considerable amount of attention. A healthy young woman marries, and in about a year after her marriage she finds that her health is very much impaired. Before marriage she was full of health and spirits, was buoyant and active, but she now feels weak, de- pressed, and irritable, and has vague pains in her body. Formerly her periods were painless and regular. Now they are pain- ful and variable. . . . This is a typical case. The symptoms and signs of the disease may, however, vary greatly from mere vague discomfort and slight menstrual derange- ment to the most distressing disturbances.”
The following words taken from the writ-
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ings of another eminent physician are im- pressive. He says :
“It is common to hear women who con- stantly suffer from uterine torture employ such words as these : ‘ When I was a girl I was quite well. It is only since my mar- riage that I have become ill.’ And every day this confidence, this plaintive refrain, saddens the gynaecologist. It is continual and in- exorable. From the discoloured and suffer- ing faces we may guess a whole past of debility, and the origin is always marriage. The husbands have a quiet conscience. They go about their business, or to the clubs, create fresh pleasure or new relations for themselves, and desert the mournful marriage bed. They can reckon on sympathy, for who does not pity them for having married wives with such bad health.”
Enough has surely been said to prove the dangers of marriage, to show the injury done
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to women by the low standards and immoral conduct prevalent amongst men.
What a cruel mockery it is that men have alleged the very weakness of which their behaviour is the cause as a reason whv women should be condemned to political inferiority !
And what a prospect of emancipation from suffering and illness is opened to women by the medical facts that we lay before them ! For these facts show that it is not Nature that has doomed women to suffering, to illness. These evils are preventable, and now that women have the knowledge so long denied them they can consider how to pro- tect themselves from foul infectious disease.
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THE DECLINE OF THE BIRTH-RATE
The birth-rate is declining. Bishops, men sociologists and others are bewailing the fact. Of course, they blame the women. That, men have done since Adam. They seem to forget that the question of how many children shall be born is one for women to decide, since it is they who have to pay the price of these new lives.
Quite apart from that, there is another sense in which women are responsible for the falling birth-rate, and so far as women are concerned it will fall lower still — not only the birth-rate but the marriage-rate as well.
Marriage becomes increasingly distasteful to intelligent women — not motherhood, but marriage. There are numbers of women who
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long for children, but are not satisfied with tlie marriage laws nor with the men’s stand- ards of husbandhood and fatherhood.
In the first place, the position to which the law relegates a wife is intolerable to self- respeeting women. By law, a wife is not the mother of her own ehild, and her wishes eon- eerning the ehild may be, except in very ex- treme cases, entirely over-ridden, especially where religion and education are concerned.
The English law compels a wife to submit to persistent and degrading immorality on the part of a husband, though one single act of unfaithfulness on her part entitles him to divorce her. If she should wish to take the law into her own hands and leave a hus- band who insults her and probably infects her with disease by frequenting houses of ill- fame, her husband can force her into sub- mission by keeping her children, so that if she leaves him she must also leave them.
D
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Women who know what is the moral stand- ard of those who describe themselves as the “ average man,” and what is the consequence of that standard where themselves and their children are concerned, may well abstain from marriage !
The new realisation by women of the appal- ling prevalence of sexual disease, and the ghastly frequency with which women are infected by their husbands, ’will inevitably check marriage.
Love is stronger than death, the saying goes. But love will not be found stronger than disease, when that disease is caused by vice, which blasphemes love and desecrates love.
There can be no mating between the spiritu- ally developed women of this new day and men who in thought or conduct with regard to sex matters are their inferiors.
Therefore the birth-rate will fall lower yet.
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For severely practical, common-sensible, sanitary reasons women are chary of mar- riage. ^^^len the best-informed and most
D
experienced medical men say that the vast majority of men expose themselves before marriage to sexual disease, and that only an “ insignificant minority,” as one authority puts it — 25 per cent, at most — escape infec- tion ; when these medical authorities further say that sexual disease is difficult, if not impossible, to cure, healthy women naturally hesitate to marry. Mr. Punch’s “ advice to those about to marry — Don’t ! ” has a true and terrible application to the facts of the case.
Perhaps our childless and celibate Bishops may say that it is a woman’s duty, faced by the prospect, if she marries, of being infected by her husband, to sacrifice herself and to marry all the same. They must not be sur- prised if such advice falls upon deaf ears
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“ Sacrifice yourself, sacrifice yourself,” is a cry that has lost its power over women. Why should women sacrifice themselves to no purpose save that of losing their health and happiness ? Now that women have learnt to think for themselves, they discover that woman, in sacrificing herself, sacrifices the race.
If the Bishops, and the whole paek of men who delight in advising, lecturing, and preach- ing to women, would exhort the members of their own sex to some sacrifice of their baser impulses, it would be better for the race, better for women, and better even for men.
Women admit, therefore, that the falling birth-rate is, and will continue to be, in part due to their own deliberate intention. But it is due also in large part to causes for which women are in no way responsible. A great many women are, through no fault of their own, incapable of becoming mothers. The
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reason of this is that they have been infected by venereal disease, which is the great foe to the reproduction of the race.
The two forms of venereal disease operate in different ways. Gonorrhoea causes in- ability to bear any child at all, or, in some cases, inability to bear more than one. It also destroys the capacity for fatherhood, although this is a point which is very often wilfully ignored by those who delight to criticise women.
It is declared by Dr. Prince Morrow that men are ultimately responsible for from 50 to 75 per cent, of sterile marriages — that in 20 to 25 per cent, of such cases the disease has destroyed the husband’s capacity for fatherhood, and in the others the husband has infected his wife, and thus robbed her of the power of maternity.
Such being the connection between the problem of what is called “ race suicide ”
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and the infection of women in marriage, we realise how unjustly women have suffered in the past from self-blame, and the blame of others, for failure to bring children into the world. A childless woman used to be taught that she had failed in her life’s mis- sion. If she had known the facts that women know to-day this might have shown her that she was not herself to blame.
A quotation from a doctor is very much to the point here. He says :
“ In the martyrology of women there is no more pathetic sight than the woman who has been balked of her instinctive desire for children, and who goes from one physician to another in the hope, oftentimes in vain, of having her sterility cured. The instinct and craving for maternity becomes a verit- able obsession. She will, at any cost of time and pain and suffering, submit to any treatment which promises relief — curetting.
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di\nsion of the cervix, and even more for- midable operations upon her pelvic organs. And the satire of it all is that in many cases the husband, inflated with the sense of his own virility, is himself responsible for the sterility.”
These medical statements of fact provide women with a strong defence against the accusation that they are responsible for race suicide.
Another authority on this matter, Grandin, says :
“ From the present standpoint, man is not the ‘ lord of creation, but the exterminator of the species.’ Kill the gonococcus by teaching man the danger to woman and to the species, should she acquire it, and then man returns to the condition he is pictured as having been in before Eve tempted him with the apple, and he weakly said to his Maker, ‘ It is the woman’s fault.’ ”
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And this wise man continues :
“As I have reiterated above, according to my light, the solution of our problem lies in education. Prostitution, the social evil, is responsible to the greatest extent for the dissemination of gonorrhoea and of syphilis. In the toleration of this evil by society, too much stress has been laid upon woman’s part in dissemination and too little on man’s. As has been customary with the latter from the beginning of the world, he points the finger of scorn at woman ; he abets woman in the making of the prostitute the social outcast, and yet, were it not for the solici- tations of the man, for his untrammelled licentiousness, there would be few prosti- tutes. It is time that there should cease to be recognised a different code of morals for man and for woman. That which is wrong in v^oman is equally wrong in man, and in face of the disease under considera-
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tion the man is the chief offender, and the finser of scorn should be first aimed at him. . . . The sexual instinct is a God-given
instinct, its purpose being the perpetuation of the species. Man, largely through ignor- ance of the calamities following the misuse of this instinct, has converted it into one of extermination of the species. Ignorance being at the bottom of his folly, it follows that man, at that age when his instinct is established, should be educated in reference to its purposes, and also in regard to the consequences if the instinct is misused.” Syphilis is a second factor in race suicide. This disease produces miscarriages, often many times repeated in tlie case of the same woman. It causes the birth of dead children, and of children who survive birth only for a few hours, weeks, or months. Syphilis is in fact the prime reason of a high infantile mortality. Mental deficiency, dwarf-
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ism, every kind of physical deformity, even the birth of beings hardly human, are to be found as the result of syphilis.
We say again that it is for those who have inherited from Adam the inclination to blame women for all that goes wrong in the world, now to admit the true facts connected with the falling birth-rate — ^facts that have^so long been kept hidden from w^omen.
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^VHAT WOMEN THINK
For generations women have been very silent, but they have thought the more, and the time has come to put their thoughts into words.
It is now the turn of men who have hitherto done all the talking to listen to what women have to say about life and its problems.
In a world peopled with men and women, the question of the relationship between the sexes is naturally one which occupies a large place in the minds of women as well as of men.
One of the thoughts of women which has now come to the point of expression is — ^that prostitution must go ! They will be told.
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they are told, that such a thing is impossible. But in answer to that they say again, with the utmost firmness — prostitution must go.
They are assured that in the past attempts have been made over and over again to get rid of prostitution, and that such attempts have failed, and always will fail, so long as the world lasts.
Women have a very simple answer to that argument, and it is : “You have never tried to abolish prostitution, and so, of course, you have not succeeded.”
Certainly, efforts have been made to cover up all outward trace of the existence of this loathsome thing, but the real cure for it has never been applied. Beneath all the surface appearance of attacking prostitution, men have cherished the belief that prostitution is necessary, and that immorality and incon- tinence are legitimate for them.
The true cure for prostitution consists in
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this — the strengthening of women, and the education of men.
To strengthen women means, in the first place, to fill them with a higher sense of their OAvn importance as the transmitters of life. Nature, in giving to women the chief share in continuing the race, has singled them out for special honour. It is certainly not the less developed and less powerful sex to whom the great task of maternity has been entrusted.
Their capacity for maternity is, therefore, an evidence of woman’s vitality and special human worth. If only for this reason, women must feel a special pride in being women. They must, and they do, condemn every law and custom which belittles and condemns to social and political inferiority the mother sex to which they belong.
In short, the disfranchisement of women is an insult to motherhood, which can no longer be tolerated. Prostitution is to be
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condemned on the same grounds. This is so, not only because prostitution makes slaves and outcasts of the women slaves used for purposes of vice, and degrades their high sex function, but also because the further effect of prostitution is to poison men’s idea of the sex-relationship, even where all the other women are concerned.
And again, as we have so often pointed out, in prostitution is bred the sexual disease which is communicated to wives, whose health and power of maternity are in consequence injured or destroyed. \Mien maternity holds its rightful place in the world’s regard, prosti- tution will exist no more. But that day vdll not come until women are valued as indivi- duals and as human beings, and not merely as sex beings.
The idea that women exist only for race and sex purposes is held by a great many men who wish to be considered as having in
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view the interests of women and of the race, but it is an idea that is very largely respon- sible for prostitution and vice. “ If wmmen are sex beings and nothing more,” argue the immoral men, “ then those women who are not occupied w-ith child-bearing are fit for nothing more than to satisfy our vices,”
What men, including eugenists and social reformers of all kinds, must realise, is this : The powder of maternity is something which w'omen have in addition to their other powers. The powder of maternity corresponds with the power of paternity, and not to some other pow'er or quality in men. It is true that to give birth to a child makes a great demand upon the vitality of women, but the answer to that is that the vitality is hers, given to her by Nature to meet the need of that vitality.
The belief that w^omen are naturally weak ij the greatest of all delusions. It is true that
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many women’s strength is now, owing to artificial causes, less than it ought naturally to be, but these artificial causes must be done away with. One of them is, as we have already shown, the great prevalence of sexual disease, which directly attacks the sexual health and vitality of women. Want of exercise, unhygienic dress, and other such circumstances contribute to make a great many women weaker than they are by nature.
Yet, even as things are to-day, we find women, in addition to bringing children into the world, doing some of the hardest and most unremitting toil. It is only when the question of wage-earning arises, or when women claim the right to be active in the higher fields of human activity, that it is argued that maternity unfits them for equality with men.
We repeat, then, that for women to estab- lish their freedom and equality with men.
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apart from any question of maternity and sex, is a necessary step towards the abolition of prostitution. It is largely because men have been too much persuaded of women’s unlikeness to themselves, that they have wanted to put and keep them in subjection and exploit them for purposes of vice. For the abolition of prostitution, it is necessary that men shall hold women in honour, not only as mothers, but as human beings, who are like and equal unto themselves.
Another aspect of the problem is economic. More and more women are becoming per- suaded of the fact that, both in marriage and out of it, they must be economically inde- pendent, and that there must be no question of living by the sale of sex. For sex is de- graded by any hint of sale or barter.
As regards the unmarried woman, there must be a security that she can live by selling the work of her hand or brain. It is
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notorious that an enormous percentage of white slaves are forced into slaver}^ by economic pressure, by the impossibility of earning more than a starvation wage, or by the impossibility of earning anything at all. Women’s right to work and to live by her work is, therefore, one of the chief points in their charter of liberty.
Nor are things different where the married woman is concerned. The fact that a wife depends upon her husband for the necessities of life leads, as everybody knows, to a great deal of unhappiness in marriage. Social re- formers, who attach so great an importance to the economic side of every problem, ought to be the first to realise that in the reforming of social conditions it is not enough to put the husband in possession of larger means ; and that to every adult individual — man or woman, wife or maid — must be secured economic independence. And yet
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it is often they who uphold the reactionary theory that married women ought not to be economically independent.
The system under which a married woman must derive her livelihood from her husband — must eat out of his hand, as it were— is a great bulwark of sex-subjection, and is a great reinforcement to prostitution. People are led to reason thus : a woman who is a wife is one who has made a permanent sex-bargain for her maintenance ; the woman who is not married must therefore make a temporary bargain of the same kind.
It is not as though a married woman does not earn her keep by the work she does. Here are some of the avocations which married women pursue : cooking, laundry- work, dressmaking, marketing, mending, scrubbing and cleaning ; bathing, dressing, and general care of infants, house-manage- ment, sick nursing, social entertaining, hus-
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band’s career-making. This varied work, if done by married women, has a money value. It is right, therefore, that a married woman shall get the same monetary payment for her work as is received for the work done by the rest of the community. Nor is it enough, to solve the problem at issue, for a wife to have a legal claim upon a share of her husband’s earnings. That may work well enough in practice where the husband is possessed of large means, but in the vast majority of cases something more than that is needed. Merely to give a woman half her husband’s earnings is to make one per- son’s wage or salary meet the needs of two persons, and perhaps of a family into the bargain. By way of illustration, we may take the case of husband and wife who are both doctors, or actors, or industrial workers. Each earns an independent income, and both should contribute equally to the mainte-
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nance of the family. If, on the other hand, the wife is earning nothing, then the family circumstances are greatly reduced, and the wife can never be in the same sense economi- cally independent. Co-operative housekeep- ing, which not only lightens women’s work by organising it and scientifically directing it, but also brings wage-earning within the reach of every wife without impairing do- mestic comfort, is a system to be heartily encouraged by those who desire the full emancipation of ’vvomen. Of course, married people will always be free to make such ar- rangements as suit their own case, but the type of marriage will in days to come be one in which the wife is economically independent.
More important than everything else as a means of strengthening women’s position is, of course, the gain of the Parliamentary vote. The vote is the symbol of freedom and equality. Any class which is denied the
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vote is branded as an inferior class. Wo- men’s disfranchisement is to them a per- petual lesson in servility, and to men it teaches arrogance and injustice where their dealings with women are concerned. The inferiority of women is a hideous lie which has been enforced by law and woven into the British Constitution, and it is quite hopeless to expect reform between the re- lationship of the sexes until women are politically enfranchised.
Apart from the deplorable moral effect of the fact that women are voteless, there is this to be noticed — that the law of the land, as made and administered by men, protects and encourages the immorality of men and the sex exploitation of women. As an illus- tration of this, we have only to refer to the Piccadilly Flat Case, in which male offenders were screened from punishment, and the woman who had ministered to their vice
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was punislied so much more leniently than are women who destroy property for the sake of the vote. As a further illustration, we may point to the bastardy laws, whieh make it shamefully easy for a man to escape due responsibility for his children born out of marriage, and the fact that the law does not protect young girls after the age of sixteen, and not even up to that age, if a male offender against a girl pleads that he thought her to be over the age of consent. The unequal divorce laws are another illus- tration of the way in which a Parliament elected only by men protects the immorality of men. The scandalous leniency shown in regard to assaults upon infant girls provides another example of the evil caused by the outlawry of women.
There are speeches, pamphlets, and books by the hundred on “ motherhood,” “ mother- craft,” the “ ignorance of mothers,” and so
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forth. What women think is that the public attention ought now to be directed less to the education of women than to the education of men. Fatherhood, father-craft, and the duties and responsibilities of pater- nity are, or rather ought to be, the question of the day.
There are men who urge that almost before she herself leaves the cradle, a girl should be put in training for motherhood. When, and in what way, a girl’s mind should be directed towards motherhood can best be decided by women themselves. Mliat men ought now to do is to train the young of their own sex. As things are at present women are certainly more fit for maternity than men are for paternity.
We have already said that if men were conscious of their paternal duty prostitution would be at an end, because by intercourse with prostitution a man endangers his own
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power to become a father, endangers the health of his wife, and endangers the health and sanity of his offspring. There is no doubt whatever that boys at a very early age ought to be taught their responsibility to the next generation. It is quite futile for women to prepare themselves for motherhood unless men at the same time are preparing themselves for fatherhood. To have wise and healthy mothers avails nothing if there are not also wise and healthy fathers.
One of the lessons that men have to learn is that their sex powers are given to them as a trust to be used, not for the purpose of immorality and debauehery, but to be used, reverently and in a union based on love, for the purpose of carrying on the race.
The rightness and possibility, and the im- perative necessity of an equal moral standard for men and women, is what every man should be taught from youth upwards. This
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women think, and upon this women will more and more resist.
They will be told, of eourse, as they have always been told in the past, that an equal moral standard for men and women is an impossible dream. Such statements have lost all their power to deceive women, who have by this time taken care to arm them- selves with the necessary medical knowledge. Women know that, as one doctor has ex- pressed it, man’s physical nature is accurately adapted to the needs of his moral being, and that the rule of chastity observed by women can also be observed by men to their great advantage in point of health and vigour. In a previous chapter, called “ Chastity and the Health of Men,” there appears the testi- mony of many medical men, which testimony gives overwhelming proof that prostitution and immorality are not in accordance with Nature, but are a violation of Nature’s laws.
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Chastity and continence for men are natural and healthful ; it is unchastity and incon- tinence which destroy men morally and physically.
Now that women are aware of these facts, they treat with contempt the gross cant about men’s sexual needs, by which it is sought to excuse prostitution and vice. The truth is that the desires of men are inflamed to an unnatural degree by impure thought and action, by excess in the way of meat and drink, and by physical and mental indolence.
Sexual disease is also responsible for exag- gerated sexual desire. It is most important that men and women shall have a know- ledge of this fact, which is brought out very clearly in the following quotation from the writings of James Foster Scott, M.D. :
“It is well to remember that at certain stages of gonorrhoea the voluptuous desires of some patients are inordinately intensified.
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The point of importance in this connection is that a most dangerous class of diseased men, with abnormally strong sexual appe- tites, are going about without conscience, supervision, or legal restraint, and using these very women whom so many men feel safe in patronising. . . . Diseased men get reckless in the indulgence of their passions. Not only have they lost their morale, strong in the belief that there is little more for them to acquire, but also the inflammation in the deep urethra morbidly stimulates their pas- sions, so that these men are most highly dangerous to human society, being in fact poisonous men seeking to poison others. Excessively lustful, and governed by no moral restraint, they actively seek to gratify their passions at the expense of any avail- able woman’s health and life, and at the expense of those foolish men who follow in their tracks.”
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When it is reflected that from 75 to 80 per cent, of men contract gonorrhoea, the part which this disease plays in connection with the problem of vice is obviously a very large one.
The truth is that, owing to disease and other causes, the sex desire in men is stronger than is warranted by the interests of society. When some aspiration towards greater liberty and towards self-development on the spiritual plane is concerned, women are often, quite unreasonably, exhorted to sacrifice them- selves to the supposed interests of society as a whole. Now, with great reason, men are called upon, in the interests of themselves and of women and of society as a whole, to keep their desires under due control.
The excuses offered by men for not doing this are many and various. Thus, one man makes his protest in the name of art, and asks indignantly, “ Do you think that any
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artistic manifestation could come out of chastity and normality ? ” Now it is very natural that inspiration should come through a union which is one of love, but that vice and uncleanness are a way to inspiration, is a fallacy with which M. Jean Finot deals very trenchantly in his Problems of the Sexes. He says ; “ How many great minds, irremedi- ably destroyed by misguided voluptuousness, are cut down before having expended for the human race one-tenth of their knowledge ” ; and he quotes Sainte-Beuve, as follows :
“ Who shall say how, in a great city, at certain hours of the evening and the night, there are periodically exhausted treasures of genius, of beautiful and beneficent works, of fruitful fancies ? One in whom, under rigid continence, a sublime creation of mind was about to unfold, will miss the hour, the pas- sage of the star, the kindling moment which will nevermore be found. Another, inclined
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by nature to kindness, to charity, and to a charming tenderness, will become cowardly, inert, or even unfeeling. This character, w'hich was almost fixed, will be dissipated and volatile.”
Art is creative. Sexual excess is a waste of man’s creative energy.
Another grotesque idea wdiich men have entertained, is that by immoral life they excite the admiration of women, and that women think immoral conduct “ manly.” On the contrary, women think it altogether unmanly and contemptible. Strength and cleanliness and self-control — and even more than self- control, a mind which is too big and fine to harbour immoral ideas and intentions — are what women admire in men. Women are in agreement with Forel, who says : “ Sexual intercourse which is bought and sold has no relation to love. As a mode of gratifying the sex instinct it stands even lower in the
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moral scale than the habit of self-abuse. Prostitution is a hot-bed of sexual vice and abnormal practices. By its means, the sexual instinct is perverted and led astray into every imaginable bypath, while women are degraded in the basest of all slaveries.”
Women are aware that excessive sexuality, as manifested in prostitution, is unnatural, and that it leads inevitably to other unnatural praetices. Far from regarding immorality as manly, women regard it as a terrible blemish upon character — as a disqualification for fatherhood, a disqualification for husband- hood.
The normal woman regards the sex act as the final pledge of her faith and her love. The idea that her husband may take a lower view of it is repulsive to her. The thought that, before or after his marriage, prostitution can enter his mind as an alternative to marriage, is intolerable. A woman’s knowledge of
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psychology tells her that a man who is, or has been, immoral inevitably has his sex ideals tainted, and cannot therefore regard marriage as she herself regards it. Thus the black cloud of prostitution necessarily darkens the legitimate sex union.
Another of women’s thoughts born of the more developed sense of comradeship among women, is that so long as there exists a huge class of slave women, the more fortunate women cannot live peaceably and contentedly as though all were well. If some women are corrupted and outeasts, and sacrificed to immorality, this concerns all women, and those who are responsible must be called to account. Besides, as we have seen, woman- hood as a w'hole suffers in health and happi- ness as the result of the maltreatment of the slave class.
It would seem that certain men are alarmed by the dangers of prostitution, and, of course,
E
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they find it expensive. At any rate, we detect a tendency in many quarters to preach to women the observance of a looser code of morals than that they have observed hither- to. “You are asking for political freedom,’’ women are told. “ More important to you is sex freedom. Votes for women should be accompanied, if not preceded, by wild oats for women. The thing to be done is not to raise the moral standard of men, but to lower the moral standard of women.” To this proposal the women reply by a firm and un- qualified negative. Votes they certainly in- tend to have, and that quickly, but they know too well what is the harv’^est of vild oats, and having that knowledge, they refuse to sow any.
When women have the vote, they vdll be more and not less opposed than now to making a plaything of sex and of entering casually into the sex relationship.
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In the opinion ot the Suffragettes sex is too big and too sacred a thing to be treated lightly. Moreover, both the physical and spiritual consequences of a sex union are so important, so far-reaching, and so lasting, that intelligent and independent women will enter into such union only after deep con- sideration, and only when a great love and a great confidence are present.
And here we may, perhaps, deal with the statement made by some men, that women suffer who are not mated with men, and that what they are pleased to term “ the unsatis- fied desires ” of women are a problem. Now, in the old days when marriage was the only career open to women, those who did not marry regarded themselves, and were re- garded, as failures — just as a lawyer might who never got a brief, as a doctor might who never got a patient, as a baker might who never got a customer. But nowadays the
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unmarried women have a life full of joy and interest. They are not mothers of children of their flesh, but they can serve humanity, they can do work that is useful or beautiful. There- fore their life is complete. If they find a man worthy of them, a man fit physically and morally to be their husband, then they are ready to marry, but they will not let desire, apart from love and reason, dominate their life or dictate their action.
It is very often said to women that their ideas of chastity are the result of past sub- jection. Supposing that were’so, then women have the satisfaction of knowing that their subjection has brought them at least one great gain — a gain they wall not surrender when the days of their subjection are over. The mastery of self and sex, w'hich either by nature or by training w^omen have, they will not yield up.
Warned by the evils which the tyranny of
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sex has produced where men are concerned, women have no intention of letting matter triumph over mind, and the body triumph over the spirit, in their case.
This being the point of view of the Suffra- gettes, the most modern of all modern women, it will be seen that out of the present impasse in sex matters, there is only one way — chastity for men, guaranteed and confirmed by the greater independence which the Vote will give to women.
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APPENDIX
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PICCADILLY FLAT
In the Piccadilly Flat Case, with its foul revelations and its still fouler concealments, is summed up the "whole case against Votes for Women.
The Anti-Suffragist theor}' of life and of the position of women leads straight to the hideous state of affairs of which the Flat Case is an illustration.
The Anti-Suffragist believes that women are of value only because of their sex func- tions, which functions he also believes are to be used at the orders and in the ser"vice of men. To state the same thing in other words,
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the Anti-Suffragist man regards women as a subject sex created entirely for sex uses. In- cidentally he expects woman to act as unpaid domestic servant ; or, if he is rich, to pro- mote his individual interests in society or politics ; and he is not unwilling that she shall work in his factory at a starvation wage, unless he can find machinery to do the same work more cheaply.
As he does not hesitate to tell her, the Anti-Suffragist is of opinion that apart from her sex activity the world would get on quite well without her. He does not realise that the same thing might at least as truly be said of men by women.
We repeat that the Anti-Suffragists see in woman, sex and nothing more. Women they hold to be solely and simply females — a sub- human species useful in so far as female, but not otherwise. These females they divide into two classes. Those belonging to the
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first class are expected to give birth to legiti- mate children. They are not recognised by the law as “ persons,” and they are not re- eognised as legal parents of their own children. They are ealled “ wives.” The second class inhabit Piccadilly Flats and other similar resorts. They are ealled “ prostitutes.” They are used for the physical satisfaction of men. In a short time they become diseased and ugly and unfit for use, and that is the end of them ! Their ranks are constantly recruited as a result of the starvation wages paid for honest work, and by means of fraudulent advertisements, bogus marriages, kidnapping, and other trieks.
In addition to the wives who are neither persons nor parents, and in addition to the prostitutes, there are other women who are deseribed by the Anti-Suffragists as “ super- fluous women.” Wives are needed, think the Anti-Suffragists, because some men, at
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any rate, may decide to have a home and family. Prostitutes are needed because of that exaggerated development of the sex instinct which is supposed to be natural where men are concerned. For the rest of womenkind the Anti-Suffragist sees no use at all. In fact, he has a peculiar fear and horror of them.
The demand for Votes for Women means a revolt against wrongs of many kinds — against social injustice and political mismanagement as they affect both men and women. But more than all it is a revolt against the evil system under which women are regarded as sub-human and as the sex-slaves of men. In short., as we have already stated, the de- mand for Votes for Women is an attack upon everything that is represented by the Piccadilly Flat Case.
The facts in that case are not rare and exceptional. There are many such flats.
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There are many such women as those who were its inmates. There are thousands upon thousands of men such as those who fre- quented it. Numbers of these men are respectable husbands and fathers. They pre- tend that after visiting such places they are morally and physically fit to return to their homes and to associate with their clean- minded and clean-living wife and daughters.
Let us take the facts as disclosed in the well-nigh secret proceedings at the Clerken- well Sessions. The girls who were found in the flat were little more than children. If the age of consent were 21 — as it ought to be, seeing that a girl’s property is protected till she is 21 — if it were even 18, the verj^ fact of having immoral intercourse with them would have made the men visiting the flat liable to imprisonment. One of the girls is now only 17 years of age, and it is several months since her connection with the flat
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first began. Another is not much more than 18. Their “ extreme obvious youth,” as it was described in court, was, however, a posi- tive advantage from the point of view of the “ gentlemen ” (“ gentlemen ” was the term employed throughout the case) who were cus- tomers at the flat. These British husbands and fathers had, some of them, asked in writing that their victims should be innocent young girls !
All evidence as to how and when these unhappy children were ruined in the first instance was withheld from the court. But the inference is that a male frequenter of the flat was responsible, at any rate in one case.
The newspaper accounts of the matter, scanty as these were, are enough to show that this flat was a veritable den of iniquity, and one of the lawyers admitted as much when he said “ that all sorts of practices were carried on there, and indeed the girls say
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that they were resorted to, and the instru- ments that were found were in fact used there.”
The men patrons of the Piccadilly Flat, after their share in degrading young girls, after wading through physical and moral filth, went home, and doubtless forbade any “ meddling with the Suffrage question.” This prohibition, we may be sure, was sup- plemented by an attack upon the methods of the Suffragettes, and a statement concerning the means that ought to be adopted to sup- press these militant women. Heaven help and pity the wife of such a man ! She is put in danger of acquiring loathsome disease, and the marriage into which she entered in love and trust is desecrated.
The majority of women do not want the vote, people say. If that be true it is because so many women do not even yet know the facts about their own position. But day by
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day they are learning the truth, and the number of Suffragists is growing in conse- quence. The Anti-Suffragist forces have done their best to keep the tmth hidden, but now they are, in spite of themselves, helping to make it known. The Piccadilly Flat Case is an instance of this. The conniving of men with men to keep the facts of this case concealed from them — that has been to women a great revelation. Here, they plainly see, is a matter which concerns a great many men, and concerns also some who hold very high positions. Only men of great influence and power would have been successful in getting the assent of the authorities to hush up this case. And even then, unless it had been a whole system, and not an isolated and exceptional matter that was involved, this hushing up could not have been achieved. Everybody knows that im- portant men were supporting the Piccadilly
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flat. A great many people know who these men are.
These are the questions which women are asking : Why were women kept out of the police court when this case was being more fully investigated than it was in the final, hushed-up trial ? \Adiy were no men pun- ished, although evidence against them was in the hands of the police ? Was this be- cause there is truth in the rumour that a man very prominent in political and social life is implicated ? Why was the defendant in this case put in the second division, while Miss Annie Kenney and her fellow-conspira- tors were put in the third division ? ^Vhy was she given a sentence of only three months’ imprisonment, while Mrs. Pankhurst was sent to three years’ imprisonment ?
The leniency shown to this woman, who has not merely destroyed property, but has trafficked in flesh and blood, is very remark-
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able when contrasted with the severity shown to Suffragettes. It is easy to see how Queenie Gerald and all others engaged in the same dreadful trade will interpret this leniency. They will believe that men wish them to read into it the following mes- sage :
“ We must for the sake of appearances send you to prison occasionally. But you shall not stay there very long, and you shall not be too uncomfortable while you are there. This little interlude in the pursuit of your lucrative occupation will not, we hope, deter you, or discourage you and your fellow- traders from carrying on the business in future. We regard you and your trade as necessary institutions, and as a source of great gratification to us.”
The Piccadilly Flat Case shows the enemies of Women’s Emancipation hiding, like the ostrich, with their heads in the sand.
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If this case had been fairly and squarely fought out before the public, women’s sus- picions would have been less aroused. As it is, they have been put thoroughly on the alert. They are wanting to know how many more of these plague-spots London contains — for plague-spots they are, spiritually and physically.
In these places men’s ideas about women become tainted, and there arise diseases which are handed on to healthy and unsus- pecting wives and innocent children.
Why should this be, and what is the justification of it ? As we have said, women’s suspicions are aroused. The venom and obstinacy with which their demand for the vote is being resisted is to them a warning that there is more in this question than even they themselves suspected at the be- ginning. All over the world it is vice that finds its interest in the subjection of women.
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and this is so in oiir own country no less than in every other.
Let all women who want to see humanity no longer degraded by impure thought and physical disease come into the ranks of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and help to win the Vote !
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THE GOVERNMENT AND WHITE SLAVERY
No wonder the Government resist the en- franchisement of women ! The reason of their Anti-Suffrage policy is plain. We should as soon expect the White Slave traders to welcome Votes for Women, as w'e should expect the Government to welcome that reform.
The fact is that the Government are themselves White Slavemongers and up- holders of vice. That is why they dare not meet the judgment of women voters.
That the Government are bad employers and are thus responsible for driving women into slavery, is a notorious fact. Working women liave no power to elect j\Iembers of
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Parliament, and so cannot get the protection of an adequate fair wage clause such as working men, through their votes, can obtain. Sweating is, therefore, rampant in connec- tion with the employment of women on Government contracts. But that is not all, and that is not the worst.
The Government are directly responsible for a large measure of White Slavery. They are, in effect, procurers of women for the vicious pleasures of men in the Army and Navy.
The state of affairs in India is thus de- scribed by the Friends’ Association for Abol- ishing State Regulation of Vice :
“ The following system is now in existence practically throughout the Indian canton- ments— the permanent military stations : “1. Certain houses, set aside for immoral purposes, are definitely permitted by the local authorities of the Government of India
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in the cantonments, with the understanding; that the keepers of these houses will abide, by the regulations of the Cantonment Code.
“ 2. When a British soldier is found by the medical officer of the regiment to be suffering • i from disease caused by vice, he is questioned as to the supposed origin of that disease, and if the woman accused lives in one of these houses, she is forthwith surgicallj'' examined by the medical officer, and, if found diseased, is turned out of the house, with the choice of either leaving the cantonments or of pro- ceeding to the ‘ voluntary ’ hospital belong- ing to the Government. She is not allowed to return to her original residence until discharged from the hospital in a supposedly ‘ fit ’ state to resume her former occupation.
“ Under such regulations th e British Govern- ment does that which no Government ought to do, gives a vested interest in houses of this kind. The occupation of a keeper of a
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house of ill-fame, under such circumstances, is absolutely legalised. This tends greatly to the slavery of the women occupying such houses,
“ From a purely medical point of view, under such a system, the Government affords a false security, and holds out a wrecker’s light to men frequenting such houses. The impossibility of the avoidance of the malady, except by avoidance of its cause, is becoming more and more recognised by experts.”
Many of the White Slaves of these brothels, sanctioned and supervised by the Govern- ment, are, it is said, mere children. How are they obtained, and what happens to them when they become hopelessly diseased and thus “ unfit for use ” by the officers and soldiers ?
The British Committee of the International Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice have lately had a corre-
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spondence with the India Office, in which they have urged in vain that the present infamous system shall be ended.
The Government’s abominable conduct where the womanhood of India is concerned has only to be known to make British women more determined than ever to win the vote. Under the rule of men, Indian women have been and are being enslaved, degraded, destroyed.
These awful wrongs are being visited upon innocent women and children in the mother country. Many soldiers return from India diseased, and they infect their unhappy wife and offspring.
The evil is stated by the Friends’ Society for Abolishing State Regulation of Vice in the following terms :
“ There are now 70,000 young Englishmen, soldiers, stationed in these cantonments- They are sent out from this country at the
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rate of 13,000 every year, and after five years of education in the principles of State- sanctioned vice, they are sent back to this country at the same rate, less the number of deaths, and, their time being expired, are scattered all over the towns and villages of the land, there to spread the leaven of this teaching. Further than that, Indian officers who have served on these Cantonment Com- mittees, when they come back to England, in large numbers of cases become members of various public bodies, up to Parhament itself, and so form a leaven in the ruling circles of Society, similar to that set at work by their subordinates amongst the mass of the population.”
If all women realised these facts more plainly there would be no Anti- Suffragists left. IVe doubt whether there would be left even Anti-Militants !
Let women consider the words of an
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ex-ofllcial who for many years had charge of the Government chaklas or brothels. Said he to Dr. Louisa Martindale, author of Under the Surface :
“ I cannot speak too strongly against them. Many a young boy or man comes out to India pure and good. It is the pre- sence of the Government chaklas that first put it into his head to lead a vicious life. Many resist for a time, but when they see their friends and their superior officers mak- ing use of these, and when they are given to understand that the medical inspection makes it safe for them to go, sooner or later they give way and follow the example of the rest. But to start with — ^thej'’ don’t want it.”
Miss Elizabeth Robins in her book. Where Are You Going to ? makes a charge against the naval authorities to which no answer has been forthcoming. It will be remem-
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bered that the sister of little Bettina, who is swept innoeent and unsuspecting into the whirlpool of vice, is herself saved by a man who tells her of the real nature of the house into which she and Bettina have been en- trapped. In order to enlighten her, he tells her of how the very Government of the coun- try" fosters and encourages vice. Into the mouth of this man Miss Robins puts her charge against the naval authorities. First she refers to the case of India. She makes the man say :
“ Take India — I’ve been there. I know an official who had charge of the chaklas. You don’t know what chaklas are ? Your father knew. If you’d gone riding round the cantonments you’d have seen. Little groups of tents. A hospital not far off. Women in the tents. Out there it’s no secret. They’re called ‘ Government women.’ The women are needed by the Army. So there you are.”
154
THE GREAT SCOURGE
Then the indictment runs on :
“ Even Governments (he said) had to recognise human nature and shape their policies accordingly. I was too young to remember all that talk in the Press some years ago about the mysterious movements of British battleships in the Mediterranean. Instead of hanging about Malta the ships had gone cruising round the Irish coast. Why ? The officials said, ‘ For good and sufficient reasons.’ The chorus of criticism died down. The ‘ reasons ’ were kno’svn to those who had to know. Not enough women at Malta. The British fleet spent some time about the Irish coasts. ‘ Human nature ! ’ ”
So a Government who have nothing but insult, treachery, and torture for women are ready to minister to the vices of men.
The soldiers and sailors may ask for healthier quarters or higher pay, and these things may be denied to them because they
AND HOW TO END IT
15/)
cost money ; but their vices the Government arc quite willing to encourage because they cost nothing more than the slavery, disease, and death of women.
For such a condition of affairs the only cure is Votes for Women. When women have political power, equal with that of men, they will not tolerate the exploitation of their sis- ters in India and elsewhere. Nor will they themselves submit to exploitation. They will secure such economic independence and prosperity as shall save them from the dan- ger of being driven to live by the sale of their sex.
As the natural custodians of the interests of the race, and as the natural lawgivers on matters of morality, they will insist that by men, as well as by women, sex power be re- garded as a trust, and be only rightly and reverently used.
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Thirteen reasons why you should join and subscribe to the Women’s Social and Political Union.
1. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U. is in the van of the
Suffrage Movement.
2. BECAUSE It gives a strong and unfaltering political
lead.
3. BECAUSE It is the one Society which is creating a
political situation, and is bringing effective pressure to bear upon the Government.
4. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U., besides fighting for the
vote for women all over the United Kingdom, has undertaken the special task of preventing the Ulster women’s right to vote already conceded by the Unionist leaders, being taken away in consequence of any compromise on the Irish question.
5. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U. takes a leading part at
the by-elections in opposing the can- didates of the Anti-Suffragist Govern- ment.
6. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U. is conducting the biggest
educational campaign for educating the public as to women’s need of the vote.
7. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U. publishes the SUFFRA-
GETTE, the biggest and most widely read Suffrage paper in the world.
8. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U. is taking the lead in fight-
ing against prostitution, and upholding an equal moral standard for men and women.
9. BECAUSE The W.S.P.U., through the columas of the SUFFRAGETTE and otherwise, is enlightening both women and men as to the extent and devastating results of sexual diseases, and is showing that these can neither be prevented nor really cured, except by clean living.
10. BECAUSE Members of the W.S.P.U. are showing a
heroism unsurpassed at any time in the world’s history, and by the pow’er of their spirit are defying torture and facing death itself.
11. BECAUSE Right-minded men and women should
express, by subscribing to the W.S.P.U. Fund, their detestation of the Govern- ment’s methods of torture.
12. BECAUSE The raising of an enormous sum of money
as a protest against forcible feeding and Cat and Mouse torture will show the Government that torture strengthens the W.S.P.U., and is therefore, from the Government’s point of view, a failure.
13. BECAUSE When coercion is broken down by the
heroism of the prisoners and the financial support of the W.S.P.U. sub- scribers, the Government will be com- pelled to find another w^ay of stopping militancy, and the only way of stopping it is Votes for Women.
"Buy and Read
“THE SUFFRAGETTE,’’
Price One Penng, from all Netosagents and Pookstalls.
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When filled in, this form is to be posted, together with postal order, to The Circulation Manager, “The
Suffragette," Lincoln’s Inn House, Kingsway, W.C.
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