The White Slave Crusade

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Title:     The White Slave Crusade
Author: Havelock Ellis [More Titles by Ellis]

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

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

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

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

The White Slave Traffic, therefore, is not prostitution; it is the _commercialised exploitation of prostitutes_. The independent prostitute, living alone, scarcely lends herself to the White Slave trader. It is on houses of prostitution, where the less independent and usually weaker-minded prostitutes are segregated, that the traffic is based. Such houses cannot even exist without such traffic. There is little inducement for a girl to enter such a house, in full knowledge of what it involves, on her own initiative. The proprietors of such houses must therefore give orders for the "goods" they desire, and it is the business of procurers, by persuasion, misrepresentation, deceit, intoxication, to supply them. "The White Slave Traffic," as Kneeland states, "is thus not only a hideous reality, but a reality almost wholly dependent on the existence of houses of prostitution," and as the authors of _The Social Evil_ state, it is "the most shameful species of business enterprise in modern times."[1]

In this intimate dependence of the White Slave Traffic on houses of prostitution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future. We are concerned, for the most part, with the more coarse-grained part of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and weak-minded part of the army of prostitutes. Although much has been said of the enormous extension of the White Slave Traffic during recent years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger countries. It is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude, youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often scarce.[2] Although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay of prostitution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prostitution. They offer no inducements to the more intelligent and independent prostitutes, and their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those whose demands are of the humblest character. There is, therefore, a tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of prostitution under modern civilised conditions; the prostitute and her clients alike shun such houses. Along this line we may foresee the disappearance of the White Slave Traffic, apart altogether from any social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[3]

It is sometimes said that the relation of the isolated prostitute to her _souteneur_ constitutes a form of "white slavery." Undoubtedly that may sometimes be the case. We are here in a confused field where the facts are complicated by a number of considerations, and where circumstances may very widely differ, for the "fancy boy"--selected from affection by the prostitute herself--may easily become the _souteneur_, or "cadet" as he is termed in New York, who seduces and trains to prostitution a large number of girls. The prostitute is so often a little weak in character and a little defective in intelligence; she is so often regarded as a legitimate prey by the world in which she moves, and a legitimate object of contempt and oppression by the social world above her and its legal officers, that she easily becomes abjectly dependent on the man who in some degree protects her from this extortion, contempt, and oppression, even though he sometimes trains her to his own ends and exploits her professional activities for his own advantage. These circumstances so often occur that some investigators consider that they represent the general rule. No doubt they are the most conspicuous cases. But they can scarcely be regarded as representing the normal relations of the prostitute to the man she is attracted to. She is earning her own living, and if she possesses a little modicum of character and intelligence, she knows that she can choose her own lover and dismiss him when she so pleases. He may beat her occasionally, but all over the world this is not always displeasing to the primitively feminine woman. "It is indeed true," as Kneeland remarks, "that many prostitutes do not believe their lovers care for them unless they 'beat them up' occasionally." The woman in this position is not more of a "white slave" than many wives, and some husbands, who submit to the whims and tyrannies of their conjugal partners, with, indeed, the additional hardship and misfortune that they are legally bound to them. And the _souteneur_, although from the respectable point of view he has put himself into a low-down moral position, is, after all, not so very unlike those parasitic wives who, on a higher social level, live lazily on their husbands' professional earnings, and sometimes give much less than the _souteneur_ in return.

When, however, we put aside the complicated question of the prostitute's relationship to the man who is her lover, protector, and "bully," we have to recognise that there really is a "White Slave Traffic," carried on in a ruthlessly business-like manner and on an international scale, with watchful agents, men and women, ever ready to detect and lure the victims. But even this too amply demonstrated fact was not found sufficiently highly spiced by the White Slave Traffic agitators. It was necessary to excite the public mind by sensational incidents. Everyone was told stories, as of incidents that had lately occurred in the next street, of innocent, refined, and well-bred girls who were snatched away by infamous brigands beneath the eyes of their friends, to be immured in dungeons of vice and never more heard of. Such incidents, if they ever occurred, would be too bizarre to be justifiably taken into account in great social movements. But it is even doubtful whether they ever occur. The White Slave traders are not heroes of romance, even of infamous romance; less so, indeed, than many more ordinary criminals; they are engaged in a very definite and very profitable business. They have no need to run serious risks. The world is full of girls who are over-worked, ill-paid, ignorant, weak, vain, greedy, lazy, or even only afflicted with a little innocent love of adventure, and it is among these that White Slave traders may easily find what their business demands, while experience enables them to detect the most likely subjects.

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

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

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

Apart altogether from its barbarity, the lash is peculiarly unsuited for use in the White Slave trade, because it will never descend on the back of the real trader. The whip has no terrors for those engaged in illegitimate financial transactions, for in such transactions the principal can always afford to arrange that it shall fall on a subordinate who finds it worth while to run the risks. This method has long been practised by those who exploit prostitution for profit. To increase the risks merely means that the subordinate must be more heavily paid. That means that the whole business must be carried on more actively to cover the increased risks and expenses. It is a very ancient fact that moral legislation increases the evil it is designed to combat.[6]

It is necessary to point out some of the unhappy features of this agitation, not in order to minimise the evils it was directed against, nor to insinuate that they cannot be lessened, but as a warning against the reaction which follows such ill-considered efforts. The fiery zealot in a fury of blind rage strikes wildly at the evil he has just discovered, and then flings down his weapon, glad to forget all about his momentary rage and the errors it led him into. It is not so that ancient evils are destroyed, evils, it must be remembered, that derive their vitality in part from human nature and in part from the structure of our society. By ensuring that our workers, and especially our women workers, are decently paid, so that they can live comfortably on their wages, we shall not indeed have abolished prostitution, which is more than an economic phenomenon,[7] but we shall more effectually check the White Slave trader than by the most draconic legislation the most imaginative Vice-Crusader ever devised. And when we ensure that these same workers have ample time and opportunity for free and joyous recreation, we shall have done more to kill the fascination of the White Slave Traffic than by endless police regulations for the moral supervision of the young.

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

It is possible that at some period in the world's history, not only will the White Slave Traffic disappear, but even prostitution itself, and it is for us to work towards that day. But we may be quite sure that the social state which sees the last of the "social evil" will be a social state very unlike ours.

[1] The nature of prostitution and of the White Slave Traffic and their relation to each other may clearly be studied in such valuable first-hand investigations of the subject as _The Social Evil: With Special Reference to Conditions Existing in the City of New York_, 2nd edition, edited by E.R.A. Seligman, Putnam's, 1912; _Commercialised Prostitution in New York City_, by G.J. Kneeland, New York Century Co., 1913; _Prostitution in Europe_, by Abraham Flexner, New York Century Co., 1914; _The Social Evil in Chicago_, by the Vice-Commission of Chicago, 1911. As regards prostitution in England and its causes I should like to call attention to an admirable little book, _Downward Paths_, published by Bell & Sons, 1916. The literature of the subject is, however, extensive, and a useful bibliography will be found in the first-named volume.

[2] This is especially true of many regions in America, both North and South, where a hideous mixture of disparate nationalities furnishes conditions peculiarly favourable to the "White Slave Traffic," when prosperity increases. See, for instance, the well-informed and temperately written book by Miss Jane Addams, _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil_, 1912.

[3] See Havelock Ellis: _Sex in Relation to Society (Studies in the Psychology of Sex)_, Vol. VI., Ch. VII.

[4] "The White Slave Traffic," _English Review_, June, 1913. It is just just the same in America. Mr. Brand-Whitlock, when Mayor of Toledo, thoroughly investigated a sensational story of this kind brought to him in great detail by a social worker and found that it possessed not the slightest basis of truth. "It was," he remarks in an able paper on "The White Slave" (_Forum_, Feb., 1914), "simply another variant of the story that had gone the rounds of the continents, a story which had been somehow psychologically timed to meet the hysteria which the pulpit, the Press, and the legislature had displayed."

[5] G.F. Collas, _Geschichte des Flagellantismus_, 1913, Vol. I., p. 16.

[6] I have brought together some of the evidence on this point in the chapter on "Immorality and the Law" in my book, _The Task of Social Hygiene_.

[7] The idea is cherished by many, especially among socialists, that prostitution is mainly an economic question, and that to raise wages is to dry up the stream of prostitution. That is certainly a fallacy, unsupported by careful investigators, though all are agreed that the economic condition of the wage-earner is one factor in the problem. Thus Commissioner Adelaide Cox, at the head of the Women's Social Wing of the Salvation Army, speaking from a very long and extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, while not denying that women are often "wickedly underpaid," finds that the cause of prostitution is "essentially a moral one, and cannot be successfully fought by other than moral weapons."--(_Westminster Gazette_, Dec. 2nd, 1912). In a yet wider sense, it may be said that the question of the causes of prostitution is essentially social.

[8] This is a very important clue indeed in dealing with the problem of prostitution. "It is the weak-minded, unintelligent girl," Goddard states in his valuable work on _Feeblemindedness_, "who makes the White Slave Traffic possible." Dr. Hickson found that over 85 per cent. of the women brought before the Morals Court in Chicago were distinctly feeble-minded, and Dr. Olga Bridgeman states that among the girls committed for sexual delinquency to the Training School of Geneva, Illinois, 97 per cent. were feeble-minded by the Binet tests, and to be regarded as "helpless victims." (Walter Clarke, _Social Hygiene_, June, 1915, and _Journal of Mental Science_, Jan., 1916, p. 222.) There are fallacies in these figures, but it would appear that about half of the prostitutes in institutions are to be regarded as mentally defective.

[The end]
Havelock Ellis's essay: The White Slave Crusade

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