Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-03-27

There are few people in the world who are
willing to admit that their own acts what
ever they may be, are calculated TO work any
injury to society. Their fears of social revo-
luton and dissolution usually spring from the
offenses of which others are convicted
whose propensities they are prone to view
with less indulgence than they do their own.
They would perhaps without difficulty, con-
cede that the losses from strict virtue of
which they are guilty, are compensated for
by the benefit which accrues to some other
party; yet they would greatly dread the effect
upon society at large should their case be
made the basis of rule of general applica-
tion. In the present stage of social philoso-
ply, therefore, it will not do to subscribe to
maxim that looks so much like paradox
MS that private vices are public benefits
and yet there are in it so many symptoms of
possible truth that it need not be lost sight
of in that which is hereafter said, touching
what is emphatically called the Social Evil"
in palmer terms, PROSTITUTION.
In treating of the social evil it may be
laid down as an undeniable proposition that
the blame Of its prevalence belongs as much
10 the male as TO the female. Without the
consent of both it could not exist; and all the
philosophy-and the world is full of it
which contemplates the weaker sex rs the
so's or the principal guilty party, is false to
humanity, barren of good unchristian and
bhrbarous. The law of supply and demand is
Just as operative and just as imperative here
rs in any other avocation. The high state of
civilization which we possess--a sense of JUS
tice TO the material of which mothers and
wives and sisters and daughters are made
requires that the proposition shall be accepted
as the only basis upon which there can be
any fair treatment of the subject, speculative
or practical.
There is another proposition equally true,
and equally necessary with the former: that
the demand comes from the male. The pas
sion, the craving for indulgence, without
which the social evil would find no place in
the world, is in the strongersex--in God-like
man. The other only yields. II is not until
society has shut its doors upon her, and
other modes of sustenance are cut of, that
she becomes a solicitor The base appetite,
the love of evil for its own sake, the volun-
tary self-degradation, and giorying in her
own shame, of which we hear so much from
n certain style of moral reformers, are mostly
fictitious, invented to compensate for the
absense Of a knowledge which they either do
not possess, or dare not exhibit.
What then is prostitution?-for we must
az ;,,g4 ,,F, -
ties before we can treat it us it should be
treated 1t is a state Of subjecton on the
part of one sex to the appetites of the other,
in consideration of support--of the neces-
Baries of life. 1t is an occupation which few
women willingly follow, after having ex-
perienced its pains, its privations, and its
humiliations; but it is one from whch-in
this country-except through the occurrence
of some fortunate accident, or the possession
of extraordinary force of character, none
ever emerge. Society takes care of that.
The trap-door of the Internal pit, when locked
and sealed by theapocalyptc angel, is scarcely
more memorable. .
Stripping the trade of all the pleasures and
delights with which fancy has surrounded it,
and it becomes means by which certain
number of women are saved from nakednesS
and hunger, by becoming slaves to the appe-
tites, or, if the word is preferred, Uiees of the
men. There are thousands of women in this
city who live on year after year with the al
tentative, prostitution or starvation, con-
stantly before them. woman without
means, and with child or parent depend
ing upon her for support can not, unless pos
sessed of extraordinary energies or unusual
facilities, live in Cincinnati at this day by the
labor of her hands She must draw some
revenue from the other SEX by modes de-
nounced as wicked, or starve. Not probably
less than five thousand females in this city
necessarily rely for their means ofsubsistence,
in a greater or less degree, upon practices
holden to be immoral. But for the vices of
the other sex, what would become of them?
1t it easy to say "starve rather than SIM but
let those who prescribe it try it. Charity
might, for brief period, take the place of
Indignant virtue" in their bosoms.
We condemn all alike; the voluntary-if
there are any such-and the involuntary. 1t
will not do to treat even possible sinners with
indulgence. They who are not without sin
are quite willing to prove their goodness by
plentiful casting of stones at the detected.
In nti-Christian Japan, the barbarous people
do differently. She who has been led to
prostitution by want is holden not to be
degraded. Society opens its doors to her.
and, as a wife, she is permitted to forget the
days of her humiliation. In infdel France,
they do differently. There so lax is public
sentiment, that some six or eight per cent. of
the prostitutes of Paris are said to annually
rise TO positions in society as wives and heads
of families. But we should not complain,
perhaps, of our own race of men. In Eng
land there have been recently seen symptoms
Of sympathy and right feeling toward the
poor despised slaves Of the streets; and even
in America, although little heard amid the
stir and hustle of things material, there are
charities already awake, and needing only
knowledge of the right way to expand into
activity. rfCEffslI ,
TIE Gazette accuses the Commercial Of
treating its readers to several columns Of
dead Sheriff's sale advertisements
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