Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/49

Rh recognized by law. Thus, brothels are encouraged on account of their greater convenience of management; and vicious women, living in their own apartments (who are registered), are indulgently treated that they may not hide away.

A chief police functionary of Brussels, who considers these brothels wholesome institutions, says in his report: "It is important that prostitution should, as far as possible, be concentrated in brothels, where superintendence can be easily exercised and scandal hid. They are useful, too, for the discovery of criminals, who frequently resort to them in order to plunge into wild extravagance."

Whilst the moral sense of womanhood is thus corrupted by laws which protect brothels, and raise female prostitution to the rank of an accepted and regulated trade, the degrading effect upon men becomes no less marked. Men refuse to be registered and inspected: they will be free; the State yields, unwillingly it may be, but from necessity, and leaves to men the freedom which rapidly degenerates into license. Unchecked indulgence of the lower nature becomes gradually a demoniac possession. It craves more and more unnatural excitement. The hideous traffic revealed in this Blue Book is one of the direct results of the efforts of mercenary panderers to supply fresh excitement for diseased appetite. It is a weighty fact, which is supported by incontrovertible