4790, or nearly one-third of the whole number, may be said to owe the adoption of their career directly to men, 11,232 to other causes.  He adds that of those pleading poverty a large number were indolent and incapable (G.P.  Merrick, Work Among the Fallen, p. 38).

Logan, an English city missionary with an extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, divided them into the following groups:  (1) One-fourth of the girls are servants, especially in public houses, beer shops, etc., and thus led into the life; (2) one-fourth come from factories, etc.; (3) nearly one-fourth are recruited by procuresses who visit country towns, markets, etc.; (4) a final group includes, on the one hand, those who are induced to become prostitutes by destitution, or indolence, or a bad temper, which unfits them for ordinary avocations, and, on the other hand, those who have been seduced by a false promise of marriage (W.  Logan, The Great Social Evil, 1871, p. 53).

    In America Sanger has reported the results of inquiries made of
    two thousand New York prostitutes as to the causes which induced
    them to take up their avocation: 

Destitution                                        525
Inclination                                        513
Seduced and abandoned                              258
Drink and desire for drink                         181
Ill-treatment by parents, relations, or husbands   164
As an easy life                                    124
Bad company                                         84
Persuaded by prostitutes                            71
Too idle to work                                    29
Violated                                            27
Seduced on emigrant ship                            16
Seduced in emigrant boarding homes                   8
-----
2,000

(Sanger, History of Prostitution, p. 488.)

In America, again, more recently, Professor Woods Hutchinson put himself into communication with some thirty representative men in various great metropolitan centres, and thus summarizes the answers as regards the etiology of prostitution: 

Per cent.

Love of display, luxury and idleness            42.1
Bad family surroundings                         23.8
Seduction in which they were innocent victims   11.3
Lack of employment                               9.4
Heredity                                         7.8
Primary sexual appetite                          5.6

(Woods Hutchinson, “The Economics of Prostitution,” American
Gynaecologic and Obstetric Journal, September, 1895; Id., The
Gospel According to Darwin, p. 194.)

    In Italy, in 1881, among 10,422 inscribed prostitutes from the
    age of seventeen upwards, the causes of prostitution were
    classified as follows: