Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/44

34 truth. It is in towns where the evil trade between men and women is regulated, not checked, that licentiousness grows rampant, and that vice assumes forms of new atrocity. It is in Brussels and Paris that no young woman can walk alone, even in the daytime, without danger of insult. I possess abundant direct personal evidence from women to prove this statement.

Consider a few of the facts which disprove the superficial and thoughtless assertions relating to existing order and safety in Paris.

To understand the full force of these facts, it must be remembered that Paris is much smaller than London; the Department of the Seine, which corresponds to the Greater London, containing hardly two and a half millions to its four and three-quarter millions, yet the increase of vice, crime, and suicide in Paris is appalling.

"M. Reinach, in the Political and Literary Review, lately published, points out that the constant increase in the number of habitual criminals calls for the reestablishment of transportation and the creation of a new penal colony. In Paris alone there are between 20,000 and 25,000 habitual criminals. He dwells with