In this letter to the editor published in 1915, the writer discusses a recent closing of a prostitution house and how it does not affect men, young and old, who seek out pleasures of the flesh. Loose morals and the “cold, cruel, soulless” men of the church are accused of victimizing women.
This is a juicy read:
Protecting Young Men
Jane Addams has been interviewed by Jane Whitaker and asked if she thinks prostitution can be done away with. In her answer, printed in The Day Book, Jan. 2, 1915, she says in part:
“The closing of the segregated district may have resulted in scattering the evil, but at least that is a protection to our young men, because they do not know just where to go and the segregated district symbolizes vice, visualizes it.”
What kind of young man is Chicago bringing up that they need such “protection?” Are they really worth protecting? And is Miss Adams sure the closing of the worst dens in the “district” has saved anyone? There were “houses” in the old district where women’s bodies were exhibited and sold by the “matron” like an auctioneer sells cattle. A big room would be filled with “our young men,” and older ones, too, who viewed these women and then made their choices.
Their moral sense wasn’t shocked for the reason that they had none.
When the houses of prostitution are closed, men of this kind will know where to go. They will get their desires gratified somewhere, somehow. They are lacking all moral sense and all human sympathy, and when they cannot find prostitutes (because they are scattered!) they will hunt and find innocent and pure girls, as is happening every day. And they will treat them as heartlessly as the prostitutes, as is also happening every day.
Chicago, with all its “religion,” its Sunday schools and other schools, is bringing up a generation of cold, cruel, soulless, selfish young men, devoid of all human sympathy, and a generation of silly, foolish, and weak young women.
The “religion” of the churches is as dead as a herring and doesn’t touch a single problem of human conduct. It deals in prehistoric and medieval superstitions and does nothing else. The public schools fail to develop a more sense or any human sympathies in the children. The purpose of our so-called “higher education” is only to enable the individual to live off the labor of others, to “get on” in the world without doing any useful work, even to the extent of trampling the other fellow down.
Miss Addams and others, please don’t say that any laws and restrictions can save, protect or change the men and women brought up under the influence of such institutions.
–T.J.
Source: The day book. (Chicago, Ill.), 06 Jan. 1915.
