Contributor, v3 1881-1882 by Ezra Taft Benson

Author:Ezra Taft Benson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion

Mormon Polygamy and Christian Monogamy.

IV.

Dr. Napheys, after speaking of the estimated number of prostitutes in the city of Philadelphia as being "twenty thousand," and those of Cincinnati as "seven thousand," says:" But Chicago has the unenviable notoriety of being the city in the United States where this degraded class is most numerous. Prof. Edmund Andrews, M. D., of that city, estimated that, in 1867, there was one public prostitute to two hundred and thirty inhabitants, one hundred more than twice as many in proportion to the population as in New York or Philadelphia, and more than in any of the corrupt capitals of the old world, Paris not excepted!" Now the population of Chicago in 1870 was, in round numbers, three hundred thousand. If the increase between the years 1867 and 1870, was at the same ratio as between the latter year and 1880, she would have had, in the year 1867, about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Now, let us suppose that one in five of these were adult females, or say fifty thousand. Compute the same per cent. of "private" prostitutes as we have found existing in New York and Brooklyn, and add to those called "public," and we arrive at the startling conclusion that about one out of every five adult females in that great commercial centre was, at that date, among the unfortunate ones-the degraded, dishonored creatures of man's unholy passions. And Chicago is a "Christian" city!

"Dr. Sanger, a physician in New York who has had favorable opportunities for investigation in that city, asserts that the whole population of public women changes once in four years; in other words, that every year one fourth of them disappear, and are replaced by fresh accessions to the fated crowd. What becomes of this fourth which in some way vanishes from the knowledge of the police? Dr. Sanger does not hesitate to say that most of them die." Reciting the intoxication, exposures, diseases, and abuses to which the fallen are subject, he continues: "But this, though serious enough, is by no means the worst effect. It is the almost moral death of the prostitute which is the darkest result of her mode of life. The woman who once loses her virtue can never recover her self respect; but she, who, for money, has prostituted her body as a trade, seems to lose hold of all moral principle, and even natural affection. She consorts by necessity and preference with thieves, gamblers and the vilest classes of men. She rarely makes the effort to rid herself from the jaws of death, even when assistance is offered. The ancient heathen wrote over the doors of brothels Hic, habiat voluptas-Here pleasure dwelleth; but the Christian knows" (though he does not seem to realize it)" that a far truer inscription were that which Dante says is writen over the gates of hell-

'Leave every hope, ye who enter here."

The author continues: "The most striking exhibition of their unnatural debasement is the almost entire lack of maternal feeling in these women.

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