H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/February 2, 1916

With the publication of an ecstatic pamphlet by the syndics of the Bonaparte-Levering Society, in which they gravely allege that the sinners lately pursued by their snouters “were extended true Christian sympathy with a helping hand,” the uproar raised by Dr. Walker’s vice report comes definitely to an end, and the sanctified brethren must need rest upon their scaling ladders and keyhole drills until time, in its endless revolutions, brings the wicked out of their secret caves again, and fattens them anew for the chase. At the moment, as everyone knows, the old-time brothels are closed and prostitution is a sub rosa business in our fair city. But, as everyone knows also, it will gradually revive and take heart as day succeeds day, and so, after a while, Baltimore will be ready for another grand cleaning-up, and there will be excellent jobs for gentlemen who can manage it in a spectacular and satisfying manner. At the moment, with the erring under cover and their pursuit extremely difficult, the crusaders take refuge behind the theory that they have been disposed of, and print figures and affidavits to prove it. But no one knows better than they do that the net sum of sexual vice in Baltimore has not been reduced by so much as 1 percent, nor the net sum of venereal disease, and no one knows better that another vice crusade will inevitably follow the one just ended, just as that one followed a previous and half-forgotten one.

I speak here, not as a prophet, but as a historian, for it so happens that I myself once engaged in vice crusading, albeit lightly and without malice. That was so long ago that I hesitate to give a name to the time. I was employed by a newspaper which regarded inflaming the boobs as good business, and it was part of my job to design and execute such inflammations. One was over the sad doings in so-called family entrance hotels in the centre of the city. In company with another journalist—who has now reformed and passes a plate in church every Sunday—I caused the Police Board to close at least a dozen of these hotels, at all events above the ground floor. * * * But I am not liar enough to testify that this action produced any diminution of the social evil. On the contrary, I am convinced (and at the time had the evidence) that its sole effect was to prosper certain business rivals of the hotelkeepers.

§2.

Looking back at the vice report, it is colored in memory by two salient facts. One is the fact that it offered no practicable, nor even intelligible plan for diminishing prostitution in Baltimore, and none whatever for dealing with venereal disease. The other is the fact that its raciness and scandalousness, in the public eye, were due almost entirely to a platitudinous statement of the obvious. In other words, there was nothing in the report that any Baltimorean of reasonably wide information was unaware of, nor anything that any intelligent stranger, familiar with other large cities, should have been surprised by. True enough, the learned commissioners professed astonishment and horror over the things that they reported, but save in the case of the things found out about the baby traffic, that astonishment was, I believe, chiefly bogus. The sum of all their discoveries was merely the fact, already known to everyo0ne, that Baltimore, for all its superficial piety, was really a godless town. Such discoveries stir up a few old maids, but produce no excitement in the mature and civilized. Any police sergeant in the city could have written a vice report quite as thrilling as Dr. Walker’s and perhaps a good deal more comprehensive. He left out, indeed, many things of interest. For example, he evaded entirely the question of the activities and influence of professional snouters and uplifters—a matter important enough to have engaged the attention of several grand juries. Again, he gave no attention to immorality in the public parks, a favorite subject with uplifters. Yet again, he had nothing to say about the state of rectitude among domestic servants, a class peculiarly exposed to temptation.

§3.

Of the inadequacy of the remedies he suggested I have already spoken. Indeed, a rereading of the report engenders the notion that it really suggests no remedy at all. Surely it is absurd to say that the closing of the old brothels is one. In the first place, there is not the slightest evidence, if pious surmise be barred out, that this action has diminished the net sum of prostitution in Baltimore by so much as 1 per cent. In the second place, as the Hon. Abraham Flexner shows on page 19 of the Bonaparte-Levering pamphlet, and as Dr. Walker himself shows in the report, these brothels were already dying spontaneously, thus proving that the business they once counted on was being diverted to other and more secret agencies. In Paris, for example (I am quoting Professor Flexner), there are now but 47 brothels, and in them live but 387 women, whereas the total number of prostitutes in the French capital is reckoned at 50,000. Thus a complete closing of all the existing brothels tomorrow, accompanied by the execution of all the inmates, would reduce prostitution in Paris but seven-tenths of 1 per cent. Even in Baltimore, according to Dr. Walker, the prostitutes reachable by the police constitute but 10 per cent. of the total number. It is thus obvious that closing the brothels, whatever its moral benefits, surely does not dispose of the social evil. The only thing it does actually accomplish is to give the professional smuthounds a chance to posture before the pious as public benefactors, and so rake in what the colored pastors call a good plate. For the rest, as any policeman will tell you, it merely converts many a lazy, slatternly and too-contented-to-be-vicious fancy woman into a slinking and dangerous outlaw. It is a highly significant fact, indeed, that the policemen who have actually to deal with prostitutes are unanimously skeptical of the value of repression. One and all, they believe that it turns prostitutes into pickpockets and worse, promotes the seduction of virtuous girls and brings prosperity to cadets.

§4.

The moralists, aware of this constabulary theory, seek to combat it in a characteristic fashion. That is to say, they seek to make it appear that the police are against repression because it cuts off their graft. As a matter of fact, the exact contrary is true, and if the majority of policemen were dishonest they would welcome repression heartily. It is regulation, not repression, which interferes with grafting, for the proprietor of a regulated house (or at least under the system formerly prevailing in Baltimore) has a quasi-standing in court, and, if the police tried to hold her up it would be easy for her to get relief from above. In point of fact, during the days of regulation by the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City there was very little grafting by the police. It is repression (as in New York) that gradually inveigles the police into selling protection to women. The job set before them is inordinately difficult, and their sympathies, in the main, are with the miserable women they are ordered to hound. Is it any wonder that most of them fall into the habit of winking at what they see, and that the dishonest men among them—always a smaller minority than among Sunday-school superintendents—are misled into accepting presents, and finally, perhaps, into demanding them?

§5.

But enough of all this. The question whether a given administrative proposal is practicable or impracticable, useful or harmless, beneficial or vicious, is no longer of much interest in the United States: we are, for the moment, at least, suffering the delights of government by the inspired and consecrated, and so the only question of importance is whether the proposed scheme is moral or immoral. Of more significance than this vain debate over regulation is Dr. Walker’s naif discovery that women are led into prostitution, not by horrendous efforts of white slave traders, not by the moving pictures, not by leering satyrs, with automobiles, not even by avaricious department-store owners, but by “the desire for money.” Astounding! Worse, it is not that benign desire which craves ease, idleness and luxury. The average prostitute sticks to the life, in other words, not because she could not make a living otherwise, but simply and solely because the only sort of living within her meagre talents would not provide her with the frills and furbelows, the nose-paint and cigarettes, the hearty meals and long, drowsy afternoons which are the wages of her immorality. Dr. Walker, I daresay, was shocked by this discovery. Taken by and large, it is the soundest of the many announced in his report. In the light of it, indeed, a good deal of the rest of his discussion of prostitution fades to mere chatter.

§6.

And out of it, of course, grows another somewhat disconcerting fact, to wit, that the average prostitute is quite contented with her lot and views with alarm any proposal that she change it. Among these fair ladies, indeed, work is synonymous with pain. They would rather kill themselves, as they say, than go behind a counter or into a kitchen. The daughters, in the overwhelming majority, of the lowest classes of the population, and accustomed from infancy to the utmost hardship, they find themselves translated to a sphere in which cleanliness and leisure and luxury reign, and even some show of social amenity. The alternative to their present ease is not merely labor; it is usually downright privation, for their gifts are not many, and their laziness keeps them from marketing them, such as they are, to much profit. Says the amazed Walker:

We have found a few examples of women who have quit the life and gone to work; but these are strikingly scarce, and it is almost the universal testimony of the madames that none of these girls ever go to work unless they are physically unfit to go on with the life.

And then this choice bit:

The one thing that they feel suitable for and for which they would change their mode of living is marriage. Many, many of them, when asked what would induce them to give it up, answered: “To get married.”

Das weig Weibliche! Even in the Tenderloin, among the “lost,” there is an endless reaching out for the immemorial life-preserver! . . . But hear the disillusioned doctor again:

We suspect that if a number of married women would answer absolutely honestly they would tell the girls to remain where they were rather than take a chance on such a hazardous enterprise.

Nay; I do not forge this astonishing dictum. You will find it on page 175 of Vol. I.

§7.

A comparison of the vice report with the pamphlet of the Bonaparte-Levering Society, mentioned above, throws an interesting sidelight upon the value of moralists’ evidence. For example, from page 10 of the latter I take the following astonishing piece of news:

Mental tests show that the average prostitute has the mentality of a child 7 to 12 years of age.

This is what Dr. Walker actually says, after describing his method of examination:

Two hundred and twenty-four were thus examined: 134 were rated as normal, 35 as above normal, 2 very much above normal, 44 slightly below normal and 9 much below normal. That is, there were 53, or 23.06, sub-normal.

Dr. Walker then says that 12 of the 44 classed as “slightly below normal” were really quite feebleminded, and so adds them to the 9 classed as “much below normal,” making 21 girls of such mental strength that they were totally irresponsible” in all. Compare this to the Bonaparte-Levering “average.”

§8.

Such is the vice report, of which no more in this place. It took three years of hard labor to prepare it, and it dazzled and enchanted the town for 10 days. Today, after less than two months, it is already forgotten. But, for all its puerile moralizing and easy jumping to conclusions, there is yet some sound stuff at the bottom of it, and in the long run, I make no doubt, that sound stuff will be rediscovered and made use of. For the present, it goes to waste. We are in the midst of a moral era. Our laws are not made by honest and competent men, but by moralists, pecksniffs, mountebanks. They invent and administer remedies incessantly, each year a new one, but still the patient is doubled up.

What of venereal disease? To what extent, in Dr. Walker’s opinion, does the woman-chase diminish it?