The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Science
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Sex instruction
According to statistics about female offenders, domestic service is
morally the most dangerous employment.[27] The reasons for this are two:
the social ostracism and the loneliness, and the low grade of worker. Each
of these causes augments the influence of the other. The application of
industrial standards to this neglected form of work should lead to
improvements.
For those dependent upon employment offices, the seeking of a job may
involve moral danger. The practice of private employment bureaus in
sending unsuspecting girls to immoral places under the pretext of finding
legitimate employment is common. The director of the Municipal Employment
Bureau in Portland says that, the managers of houses are sometimes so bold
as to telephone to the bureau for girls, telling for what purpose the
girls are wanted.[28] One of the private bureaus was detected several
times cooperating in such practices. The menace of such places can
scarcely be overestimated.
We may now conclude our review of the economic phases of social hygiene.
Economic conditions to-day are under indictment as endangering the health
and morals of working-girls and women. Moral delinquency may arise through
temptations met and hardships endured at the place of work; through scanty
wages, inadequate for daily necessities; through lack of sympathetic
consideration on the part of employers; through the stupidity of the
community in adhering to worn-out educational methods that do not train
wage-earners for earning a livelihood; through lack of protective
legislation in regard to hours and conditions of labor. As a matter of
fact, each of these conditions has been found to be an accompaniment of
vice; and taken all together they constitute an environment that makes
clean living difficult. Against the dark background of modern industry
should be portrayed the luxurious conditions that are apparently enjoyed
by those who have taken "the easiest way." In ancient society the status
of the prostitute was that of slave: to-day it is that of an industrial
citizen.[29] If the program of social hygiene comprehended only talking
about sex to working-girls--to laundry-girls, for example, who, after a
day's work of ten hours at the machines, go at night to their
boarding-houses where they wash dishes to eke out a living,--then this
program would not be unlike the advice of a physician who tells a poor man
with tuberculosis that he must go to the country for a year and live on
cream and eggs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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