Again, consider what endless ripples of effects there will be when once we begin seriously to tackle the housing question. What is the use of talking about decency, when a girl or boy has never known it? When the conditions of their daily life from childhood have been such as to make decency and continence things never experienced? Alcohol taken in excess loosens all the powers of inhibition, and increases the appetites. When by improvements in the living conditions of the masses we have tackled the disease of alcoholism, we shall find we have made some way in other directions too. It is a frequent easy generalisation that a “bad” woman is much worse than a “bad” man. It is said that there is always hope for a fallen man and none for a fallen woman. We shall have to be given far more proof of this than we have ever had, before we will believe that it is a property inherent in the sexes. If we must admit that we do not know how much of the virtue of women is due to the severe penalties on vice, we must also admit that we do not know how much of the incurable badness of women is due to these severe penalties; for society makes it next to impossible for a “fallen” woman to rise, whereas society does not trouble itself even to know whether a man is “fallen” or not. When women think these matters out, they will come to the conclusion that where it takes two to commit an offence, the one who escapes scot-free and attempts to leave the other to bear the double penalty, is perhaps the greater criminal of the two. If two boys steal apples together and A escapes, leaving B to be birched, public opinion is apt to think A rather a mean lad. If, instead of receiving one birching, B were flogged daily for the rest of his life because of A’s delinquency, what would public opinion say of A? or of the wisdom of the schoolmaster? Prostitution will diminish when it is made possible for women to recover lost ground; when a silly girl, who has been enticed away by some man watching for her day of weakness, is not treated as a pariah or expected to lead a life of penitential expiation for ever after. The tone which some rescue-workers adopt towards such girls makes one almost despair. It is an unfortunate thing that, owing to the painful and distasteful nature of what is called rescue work, so much of it is in the hands of women of a devoted and often exalted temperament, which has almost no points of contact with that of the girl who has drifted into an irregular life. Rescue work should be done by men and women who realise that the appetite for pleasure is not an unhealthy appetite, and that affection and a normal family life are the most hopeful engines of rescue. CHAPTER XI THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM (5) COMMERCIALISED VICE “And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.