Читать книгу The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them - Brace Charles Loring - Страница 13

LEGAL TREATMENT OF PROSTITUTES

SHOULD LICENSES BE ALLOWED?

The question of the best mode of legally controlling the great evil of prostitution, and confining its bad physical effects, is a very difficult one.

The merely philosophical inquirer, or even the physician, regarding humanity "in the broad," comes naturally to the conclusion that this offense is one of the inevitable evils which always have followed, and always will follow, the track of civilization; that it is to be looked upon, like small-pox or scarlet fever, as a disease of civilized man, and is to be treated accordingly, by physical and scientific means, and must be controlled, as it cannot be uprooted, by legislation. Or they regard it as they do intoxication, as the effect of a misdirected natural desire, which is everywhere thought to be a legitimate object both of permission or recognition by government, as well as of check by rigid laws.