Before dismissing the question of the relations between vagrancy and
destitution there is one more point which still requires to be
considered. According to English law, prostitution is set down as a
form of vagrancy, and the number of persons convicted of this offence
is to be found included in the statistics of vagrancy. We shall,
therefore, consider prostitution in this connection as a form of
vagrancy, and proceed to examine the extent to which it is produced by
destitution. If this grave social disorder were entirely due to a want
of the elementary needs of life on the part of the unhappy creatures
who practice it, we should find an utter absence of it in America and
Australia. In these two important portions of the globe, woman's work
is at a premium; it is one of the easiest things imaginable for
females to get employment; no one willing to work need remain idle a
single day, and the bitter cry of householders, in those quarters of
the world, is that domestic servants are not to be had. But, in spite
of the favourable position in which women stand, as far as work is
concerned in America and Australia, what do we find? Do we find that
there is no such thing as a fallen class in Melbourne and New York? On
the contrary, it is often a subject of bitter complaint by American
and Australian citizens that their large towns are just as bad, as far
as sexual morality goes, as the cities of the old world. The higher
economic position of women does not seem to touch the evil either in
the Antipodes or beyond the Atlantic. It exists among communities
where destitution is an almost unmeaning word; it exists in lands
where no woman need be idle, and where she is highly paid for her
services. In the face of such facts it is impossible to believe that
destitution is the only motive which impels a certain class of women
to wander the streets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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