When it is necessary for a girl to earn her own living, perhaps in a strange city and without any protection, it can readily be seen that she is in imminent peril if she allow the least familiarity, or if she can be persuaded to drink.
A girl of the wealthier classes, no matter how degraded she may become, almost never sinks to a life of prostitution, for few women follow that calling from any other motive than necessity.
Woman is by nature monogamous, and it is well known that almost every prostitute has her "lover" one among her many customers to whom alone she is loyal, whom she sometimes supports, and from whom she often consents to receive the most cruel treatment.
This is explained by the natural adaptation of women to sexual bondage, and by the fact that the supreme wish of a woman, however degraded, is forever and always marriage with one man whom she loves.
The instincts of women are naturally in the direction of purity and the home, and before they canbe led to become prostitutes these natural qualities must either be perverted, or put to the greatest stress by temptation or necessity, or otherwise grievously wounded.
Deep dishonor is due to men who argue in favor of prostitution, for the methods employed to recruit brothels are those of the crafty hunter and the merciless coward. It is the innocent, unsuspecting, unprotected and friendless young girl who is ambushed and entrapped by those of both sexes who frequent these places.
Little by little, and by one device and another, suitable to each victim, the poor girl is drawn into the hunter's net and ruthlessly degraded.
And furthermore, those who haunt these resorts and who have grown old in their experience inveigle their innocent young men acquaintances into this kind of life, telling them nothing of the disease, crime, suffering and lying which such a life entails, and informing them not of the menace to their whole future health and character.
The first step in this direction has turned many a youth toward a career of crime and disgrace. Impurity is the "ill wind" that blows no one any good.
For some callous and seared natures there may be a certain fool's pleasure in it, but no happiness. Pleasure takes no thought of the consequences; even the murderer awaiting execution can take pleasure in the meal of his choice, but happy he cannot be, for happiness demands an assurance of future joy and security.
Impurity cannot add to one's happiness when he reflects upon the sure consequences of disease, illegitimacy, child-murder, and ultimate annihilation that must be the lot of himself and his partner unless they repent, make amends, and alter their ways.
"When Pleasure treads the Paths which Eeason shuns,"then Death treads in its footsteps and leads inevitably to the destruction of every quality which is dear to mankind; and surely the destroyer is more guilty than the destroyed.
We are forced to the conclusion that the harlot is lessguilty than the seducer; and as we study the causes of her downfall let us ever remember, to the unutterable shame of our sex, that woman's extremity is man's opportunity.
The Influences which Direct a Woman into a Life of Prostitution are as numerous as human weaknesses and misunderstandings can make them emanating partly from men, partly from herself.
One would think that a woman would foresee the inevitable ruin that awaits her, and that she would not put herself in the way of temptation. Earely indeed does a woman deliberately enter upon this life from choice, but she is forced into it, or led into it, either by some indiscretion on her part, or infamy on the part of another.