Arizona republican., 1913-05-19
Fifteen Thousand Which No Census Has Enumerated Are in One Borough of Greater New York
FIGURES OF BUREAU
 OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
Report of Startling Nature is Forthcoming from Or ganizatiOn of Which John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is the Chairman
ASSOCIATED PRESS DrspArcH1

ASSOCIATED PRESS DrsPArcHI NEW YORK, May IS. Fifteen ! thousand women of the underworld tofOre enumerated-are in one bOr- ough of Greater New York alone This is the estimate of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, an organization of which John D. Rockefeller Jr. is , chairman, as made public tonight in an abstract of q forthcoming report by George T. Kneeland, special in testisator. after a painstaking inquiry into commercialized vice conditions in Manhattan, extending over d period of nearly ten months.
 The report suggests no remedies, fixes no responsibility. That phase is to be dealt with later on. It pur- ports merely to describe accurately vice conditions in New York city with the sole purpose of bringing out the facts" The hope is expressed that subsequently, a satisfactory policy to check the evil may be worked out.
 AIr. Rockefeller himself contributed the foreword to the volume Future reports will deal with conditions in ether large cities in America, and
  combating the problem in Europe Existing preventive. reformatfve and corrective agencies in New York are described as wholly inadequate to their task.
 Aside from a series of chapters dealing in minute frankness with the operation -~of notorious resorts throughout the city. the report treats cf the dance hall evil and Of the alarming spread Of the so- called mas sage parlors. over three hundred Of these exist in the city" says the report, and in many of them not the slightest effort was made to cloak the immoral nature of the business. Operators for these establishments are procured by advertising in the newspapers
 Of the dance halls the report says:
 The public dance hall was found to justify the worst that has been said of it. Of 75 dances reported on only five .Were characterized by the investigators as decent Nor are these dances attended only by hard cned profligates. Young girls some innocent, others, if not entirely in nocent, at any rate not wholly de- prayed and young men not yet al- together VICIOUS, dlltIlu the SdtIttl ings in search of amusement and change.
 Many are innocent working girls. who seek legitimate recreation. The sinister element in attendance is the hired cadets. who attend with the cold biooded purpose of finding new subjects of debuachery and of subse- ouent exploitation for gain These agents of cOmmercialized vice are us ually we'll dressed and we'll hammered and introduce themselves politely and easily to strangers They often pre- tend love at first sight and exhibit marked devotion. by which the girls are deceived and to which they too often yield. When the seduction of the girls is accomplished, they are rut on the strett, and their ruin is complete"
 MT. Kneeland argues. contrary to the expressed view of so many inves- tigating bodies. that girls do not as a general thing take up a life of shame because of the pinch of pow erty He holds that oftener they are victims in their ignorance of the agents of commercialized vice.
 Tt Is idle he says. ito explain away the phenomena on the ground | evitable weakness of human nature; human weakness would demand far fewer and less horrible sacrifices. Most of the wreckage, and the worst of it, iS due to persistent. cunning and unprincipled exploitation: to the banding together in infamous enter prises of madame. procurer, bOtheI- keeper and liquor Vender to carry on deliberately a cold bloOded traffic for their joint profit, q traffic be it added, from which the girl involved procures at the most, with few ex- captions, her bare subsistence, and that only so long as she has a trade value
 The exploiters'' and the ramifica- tions of their traffic is treated at length. By means of money and shrewdness, says the report, the traf- fickers usually evade the law. Thirty houses in the tenderloin were long operated as a combine, it is cited, under the direct control of fifteen or more men. Most of them have been engaged all their lives in the seduc- ton and exploitation of women. New York is their Mecca. The report, Continued on Page Six)