In some of these countries illegitimacy is not considered a great national calamity, for the enormous foundling asylums supply boys for soldiers, and girls for work in the various state institutions many of the girls sinking into the brothels. "It ought to arouse suspicion that this movement is supported by the brothel keepers j but the association has adopted a fair sounding name, the Woman's Kescue League. It proposes to appeal to the women of the country, apparently in the interests of morality, and it professes to be working only for the public health. Now, all these things are deceptive; and when it is considered that they are put forward with the aid of persons who make a living out of vice, you may be sure they are meant to be deceptive.
I have no doubt whatever but that many good people, many good Christians, even, sincerely believe that the regulation of vice is right and proper in the interests of good morals. I am just as sure that if they really knew what regulated vice is they would have none of it; they would recognize it for what Dr. Charles Bell Taylor, on the second reading of a Bill for the Eepeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, in England, called it in the House of Commons, a despotism so obscenely cruel, so hideously unjust, so unconstitutional, that it is impossible to understand how any decent race of men can consent to endure it, even for a day. It is an interesting comment on a movement which asks the decent men and women of Washington for regulation, to read that while the English regulation rules were in force in India, the Parsees of the country and the Buddhists of China defied the Christian English to put the examinations of women in force over their women!"
The London Daily News of November 7th, 1896, says:
"Our Dunkirk correspondent writes: The police authorities here have been advised of the arrival, at an early date, of a gang of evildoers, who, for some time past, have with impunity been engaged in an infamous traffic. These scoundrels, who, in reality, are purveyors for houses of low character in New York, Buenos Ayres, Montevideo, Eio de Janeiro, etc., operate in the usual manner.
By means of advertisements they entrap young girls into accepting situations as governesses, nursery maids, domestic servants, etc. The sequel need hardly be stated. Their victims are conducted to places whose character can be easily defined. Once in such a house, the poor girls are lost forever. Fortunately, full information is now in the hands of the authorities, and the band of unprincipled ruffians, who have already worked so much mischief, will undoubtedly be at no distant date brought to account".
In "unregulated" England such an infamous traffic is not tolerated, while in "regulated" countries it is tacitly countenanced by the police. In the latter countries the governments have salaried spies, policemen, doctors and commissioners; and these men cannot prosper unless they make work for themselves.
Do the wretched young women who live in these houses get rich? Oh, no! They are sold body and soul to the brothel keepers, and are in an abject bondage of slavery to the police and to their mistresses. They have no more chances of getting rich than the live stock on a farm.
"The girls suffer so much that the shortness of their miserable life is the only redeeming feature. Whether we look at the wretchedness of the life itself; their perpetual intoxication; the cruel treatment to which they are subjected by their task masters and mistresses or bullies; the hopelessness, suffering, and despair induced by their circumstances and surroundings; the depths of misery, degradation, and poverty to which they eventually descend; or their treatment in sickness, their friendlessness and loneliness in death, it must be admitted that a more dismal lot seldom falls to the fate of a human being".