# The Girl That Disappears/Chapter 15

XV
THE POSITION OF THE PROTECTOR
WHERE the work of the cadet leaves off, the labors of the "protector" begin. He is the immoral woman's man of business. He is her friend, even her lover sometimes, and he is her master at all times.
The police know of many men who have no other vocation, who live entirely from the earnings of their women. Naturally you wonder why they do not arrest them and send them to prison or drive them from the community. There are several reasons. First of all stands the fact that these men make it one of the principal parts of their trade to "stand in" with the political powers. I do not and never have believed that Tammany, as much as I hate Tammany, offi​cially recognizes these fellows. But if they pay their dues regularly and perform their part willingly at election time, Tammany does not ask questions, and when a faithful henchman runs afoul of the police, Tammany will "take care" of him. Policemen know this. Some of them take bribe money to keep hands off, but even the honest men hesitate to arrest a man who is "strong" with the organization. They know, too, that conviction is impossible without the woman's testimony, and in only one case out of a hundred will she testify against her master. The magistrates, either because they are too much impressed by the old rule of letting a score of guilty men escape rather than convict one innocent, seem always to give the prisoner, never the policeman, the benefit of the doubt.
The immoral woman needs a protector as a matter of business. For just as the supply of immoral women is artifically stimulated, so must the demand for their services be arti​fically stimulated. There is not enough depravity in human nature to keep alive a very large business of prostitution. The immorality of women and the brutishness of man has to be persuaded, coaxed and constantly stimulated, in order to keep the social evil its present state of prosperity. The protector finds patrons for his women or for the house in which she works if she be a house dweller. He stands between her and the proprietor of a house who charges her three prices for board and for finery.
If she runs afoul of the police he uses his political pull to secure her release, or failing that he secures a lawyer for her. He takes care of her interests in business and in police court. If she is sent to Blackweirs Island he meets her on her release and provides her with money.
This protector may be selected by a woman after she has entered her life of immorality. She is bound to him by ties of affection ​as well as interest. He represents to her a certain domesticity. He is the one human being with whom she is on a sincere basis. Living in a world of lies, hypocrisy, and pretense, she stands in need of some one man to whom she can reveal her true mind.
Often the protector is also the "cadet," and in many cases he is the legal husband. Case after case has come to the knowledge of investigators where perfectly respectable girls have married in love and good faith men whose deliberate intention it was to live on the proceeds of their shame.
The laws against procuring are very strict, but making laws and enforcing laws are two radically different propositions. In enforcing laws on this particular subject, the police confront that same psychological phenomenon that saves many a protector from prison—the women, from fear or fancied loyalty or shame, will not testify against them. Now and then they do turn on the cadet, but I ​have known magistrates in New York and elsewhere to deal light sentences even then on the theory that "a woman of that sort cannot be believed, anyway."