The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE BIG STICK ing—and clean-minded withal. To say that all end in the Lock or the river is to say that you know nothing about the subject; for many marry, as Mayhew points out; in fact, Mayhew, in his classic “London Labour and the London Poor” is the only author I know—always excepting Charles Drysdale—who in any way saw the modern London hetaira as she really is. Drysdale in his courageous work, “ The Elements of Social Science,” also points out that the life of the ordinary prostitute is a very much healthier one than that of the average factory girl. The authoress of this work seems to understand this in a way, for in spite of “the awful degradation” which she harps upon, she contradicts her- self by writing: “I may here remark that the girls I come in contact with, if they marry happily, make excellent wives” (p. 66). The cure for the present degradation associated with prostitution is a common-sense one—one of not supposing that we are good and others are bad, of carting away our own manure before writing to the sanitary inspector about other people’s dung, and to cease hatching mysteries between the sheets of our family four-poster. If unions were sanctioned outside the marriage bond, even if such unions were only of an ephemeral nature, there would be no necessity to procure young girls, for natural love-making would take the place of state-fostered abduction. The root of the evil lies neither in the inherent lust of man after woman, which is natural, or of woman after gold, which shows her business-like capabilities; but in the unhealthy point of view adopted by the general public. There is nothing more disgusting in the act of generation, or even in the pleasures asso- ciated with it, than there is in alimentation, with its particular enjoyments. Dessert is quite a superfluous course after a good meal, and yet it is not con- sidered degrading to eat it; and so, as it is not considered a crime to eat for the pleasure of eating, neither should it publicly (privately of course it is not) be considered a crime if unions take place without offspring resulting. This double- faced attitude must have the bottom knocked out of it as well as the front; it must utterly perish. From the natural, that is, the common-sense point of view, there are no such things as moral or immoral unions, for all nature demands is healthy parents and healthy children, healthy pleasures and healthy pains. The Church, the Chapel, and the Registry Office must go; for, so long as they remain, prostitution will spell degradation, and marriage falsehood and hypocrisy. Chaos will not result when Virtue weds with Vice, for what is possible to the savage is possible for us, and the children will be looked after better than ever. Once teach our children the nobility of love, and the pimp, the pander, and the puir-minded presbyter will simply be starved out. Continue to foster the present unhealthy aspect with its “ unfortunate,” its “fallen,” its “awful,” its “ degrada- tion” and its “doom,” and, in spite ofa million Vigilance Society men on every 337