by the fact that the inmates of brothels are older on the average than clandestine prostitutes and have become immune to disease.[163] These facts are now becoming fairly obvious and well recognized.  The state regulation of prostitution is undesirable, on moral grounds for the oft-emphasized reason that it is only applied to one sex, and on practical grounds because it is ineffective.  Society allows the police to harass the prostitute with petty persecutions under the guise of charges of “solicitation,” “disorderly conduct,” etc., but it is no longer convinced that she ought to be under the absolute control of the police.

The problem of prostitution, when we look at it narrowly, seems to be in the same position to-day as at any time in the course of the past three thousand years.  In order, however, to comprehend the real significance of prostitution, and to attain a reasonable attitude towards it, we must look at it from a broader point of view; we must consider not only its evolution and history, but its causes and its relation to the wider aspects of modern social life.  When we thus view the problem from a broader standpoint we shall find that there is no conflict between the claims of ethics and those of social hygiene, and that the cooerdinated activity of both is involved in the progressive refinement and purification of civilized sexual relationships.

III.  The Causes of Prostitution.

The history of the rise and development of prostitution enables us to see that prostitution is not an accident of our marriage system, but an essential constituent which appears concurrently with its other essential constituents.  The gradual development of the family on a patriarchal and largely monogamic basis rendered it more and more difficult for a woman to dispose of her own person.  She belongs in the first place to her father, whose interest it was to guard her carefully until a husband appeared who could afford to purchase her.  In the enhancement of her value the new idea of the market value of virginity gradually developed, and where a “virgin” had previously meant a woman who was free to do as she would with her own body its meaning was now reversed and it came to mean a woman who was precluded from having intercourse with men.  When she was transferred from her father to a husband, she was still guarded with the same care; husband and father alike found their interest in preserving their women from unmarried men.  The situation thus produced resulted in the existence of a large body of young men who were not yet rich enough to obtain wives, and a large number of young women, not yet chosen as wives, and many of whom could never expect to become wives.  At such a point in social evolution prostitution is clearly inevitable; it is not so much the indispensable concomitant of marriage as an essential part of the whole system.  Some of the superfluous or neglected women, utilizing their money value and perhaps at the same time reviving traditions of an earlier freedom, find their social function in selling their favors to gratify the temporary desires of the men who have not yet been able to acquire wives.  Thus every link in the chain of the marriage system is firmly welded and the complete circle formed.