76. American girl, 19 years old, pregnant. Many elements of the feminine mind are demonstrated in her sincerity and truthfulness of understanding. Had no previous knowledge of sex life; did not know men were like that; did not know her own nature and the awakening of passion within herself was overwhelming.
Came to Boston a year ago. Lives with another girl, good as far as she knows. They have never talked about men’s relation with women. It is hard for her to talk about intimate matters, so she does not know how her friend feels. Is a Roman Catholic, but there is no good of her going to church now. She thinks the man would marry her, but how could she marry a man like that? Does not want him to kiss her now. When it was explained to her that this might be because she was pregnant, she was again interested. Perhaps, because how was it she loved to have him kiss her before? Motherhood is natural to her, but to face society unmarried seems an impossibility. When she speaks of her baby, her face lights with a look which is not sentimentalism. “Oh I could love it if I could only let it be born.” None of her family could ever know she was like “that.” “That” means that she could have a child when it is not right to have one. She had not a clear memory of her temptation and actual sex experience. “I was as much to blame as he was, for he did not make me, but I did not realize quite what I was doing, I felt numb. I had so much feeling I had none.”
This girl is difficult to describe. Unusual because with only a little help she could understand herself, probably with the whole of her nature, which few women do. Has the rare gift of seeing things as they are when she wishes to see them differently. Never had much education, went through grammar school, could have gone to high school but wanted to go to work. Works in a restaurant. Earns five dollars a week with meals and tips. Lives with another girl and together they pay $3 a week for their room. Met this man on the street. “All the girls do that.” He did not mean to harm her, she thinks; there was no talk of wrong doing at first; just good friends. “He is a strong man, makes me do things, yet asks me about everything we do. I cannot quite explain it.” (The truthful feminine mind again, the civilized desire to be a comrade warring against the primitive woman who wishes to be captured. Women of this type are particularly sensitive, apparently, particularly to be desired by the masculine mind.)
This girl is wholly natural. She came to me in an impulsive way. “I know a girl who knows a girl who knew you. I must tell some one so I came to you. I am in trouble.” Religion is remote to her as a personal experience. “That is a different part of myself—the part I dream with. I hate myself now. I do not feel like myself, but yet I feel differently. I can never be the same again.”
Many girls of this kind, unmarried and pregnant, do not realize motherhood. It is a misery remote from their consciousness, not a part of their being. With this girl it is. She is 100 per cent feminine, it seems to me, yet with a spirit which is brave and fine. If her maternal instinct dominates, the child will be born. If consciousness to outside influence gets the better, she will have an abortion. I should say it was an even chance, but no one will decide it for her. She is glad of advice, humble in the asking, and sincere, but weighs it all, and another’s mind but shows her her own opinion more clearly. Married the man; perfectly happy.[83]
77. Prostitute, twenty-four years old, of English parentage. Lived in this country since she was ten years old. Typical English type, high cheek bones, clear skin, bold grey eyes; womanly in bearing, with a contradictory dignity and boldness of speech and manner. Went to school through grammar grade, began to work at fifteen. Had nothing in common with her family, had no sex training, did not talk to her mother about things she felt deeply. She said, “I was fond of my mother, but we were not intimate; one does not talk to one’s mother.” Worked at housework, then restaurant work, left home and boarded alone. Was wild and irresponsible, did not understand life, wanted fun and novelty. When eighteen met a business man with plenty of money who was kind to her. There was no talk of marriage. Went with him for three months before sex relation was established. Finally became pregnant. Her family found her and issued a complaint against her as a stubborn child. Her baby was born in a hospital and afterwards she continued to live an irresponsible life but without immorality. “There was only one man in the world for me,” she said, “no one seemed to understand that.” She was misunderstood and was ultimately sentenced to prison, her child cared for by the State.
She is reticent about the father of her child. She swore upon the witness stand she did not know the father of her child, to protect him. He never knew that she was pregnant. In prison she learned much evil. Her life with this one man had been almost innocent, a first realization of sex. She knew nothing about prostitutes, of perverts, of “French immorality”, all of which she learned from other girls and women in prison. She was told a girl was a fool to work hard for nothing when she could have everything for the price of a spirit of adventure. Her love of her child was real and earnest. When she came from prison she went to work in a family with her child. She became of age while here. All the furies of her nature were aroused by her dealings with social workers who judged her wrongly. Her antagonism was interpreted as hardness. “They thought I was a jailbird or something like that. They took the baby away and put it in a place where I could not see it; even the family where I had worked did not know where it was.”
About this time she met some of her prison acquaintances. They made fun of her attempt at virtue. “Why wouldn’t I listen to them? They were all the companions I had had for ten months. The State drove me on the street because I wouldn’t be meek and was saucy to them. I meant to support my baby and they took it away. I’m not a proper person to bring up a child. I’m not, but they (‘they’ is most of the world) made me what I am.”
She is now a regular prostitute. She lives in a tiny apartment of one room, bath, and kitchenette, a cheerless place with a telephone which looks business-like. She helps in the office of the place and cares for some other apartments, and earns enough to pay her rent and a little more. The rest she earns immorally.
“I was innocent,” she said, “until I was 18. I went on the streets for excitement and fun. People said and thought all sorts of things about me which were not true,—my family, the court people, and all. My mother would never have known about the baby if the State hadn’t blabbed. Why do they have to tell a person’s private affairs and sins? My mother had enough trouble without having mine thrust on her. I ought to bear my own troubles without breaking her heart. Social workers think they’re such saints.
“Nowadays girls go wrong younger. Today there are girls on the Common at night, thirteen and fourteen, who know everything bad there is to know. I am not a café girl. You would be disgusted with the café girls. If the city really wants to stop this sort of thing why don’t they shut up the cafés? Some of those girls are awful; some of them are desperate. On the street few girls speak to men. It is the other way round. If a girl is alone on the streets at night the men know what she is there for. There is more money in New York than Boston. I’m not a real sporting girl. They have to be bad, that is willing to do anything a man wants. They get $25, whatever they want, if they are attractive enough, but a girl has to be bad all through to satisfy such men. I usually get $10, sometimes $5 if the man is nice but poor. No girl need go with men that make it worse. It’s bad enough. I never go with a man who has been drinking much and only with a certain kind of men.” As far as could be learned this type bears a resemblance to the kind of man who is the father of her child. She says she still loves him. She has seen him sometimes on the street. It is a temptation but she keeps away. “It makes me tremble and feel sick; besides I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing they took the child away. Oh, how I hate them all. It’s a fierce life. There are two kinds of prostitutes, the ones who would get out of the life any minute if they could earn a decent living any other way, and the ones who were born to the life. Silly fools! they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything else. (The feeble-minded?) Why do I live so if I hate it? What else can I do? I have no education; any work I can get is hard work and I am not strong. I worked for a family all summer as a second girl. My back ached all the time. A maid goes in the back door and out of the back door. In this life she can be comfortable, get plenty to eat, plenty of good clothes, and she is as good as the men with whom she goes.
“I generally get home by eleven or twelve o’clock, sometimes I stay all night. I never have visitors here; I never go with but one man in a night. No one here knows me. What people don’t know won’t hurt them. I generally go to a hotel. Most decent men would rather go to a hotel and pay the extra price for a room. Such hotels are not apt to be raided. I don’t long for the life at all. I cared for that one man. I mean to save money and I am a little ahead. We don’t hate the men half as much as we hate ourselves. They could stop before it was too late if any one would really sympathize with their love of freedom and understand them. Social workers say, “I want to help you”; they just preach. Many of them are women of education. They expect a girl to know all that they know with their years of experience when she is just ignorant. What can she know of herself and men and the world? Things are all wrong between men and women—I don’t know why. People with education ought to think about it. More than half the men we girls meet are married men. The women get tired of their husbands; the husbands get tired of them. Sometimes the wives are sick, sometimes they don’t understand a man’s nature; they are cold and unsympathetic and drive them to girls like us.
“I pretend as far as I can. One might as well do it in the same spirit as any other distasteful work. It may wear out one’s soul but it doesn’t wear out one’s body as much as house work or factory or store work. I haven’t been to church in seven years. I can’t believe much in God. It’s hard to see the justice in anything and the so-called good people think they are so perfect.”
This woman with all her hardness and bitterness cries when she speaks of her child. When I came away she acted the hostess very prettily, picked up my books for me, and showed a gentle side of her nature. “No, I haven’t minded talking of myself,” she said. “Please come again. I have no real friends—you will always find me here alone, and sad.”[84]
Pregnancy and illegal motherhood are among the most tragic of all situations and tend to deprive the girl of her sense of worth, to isolate her socially, and to handicap her economically. But when the girl is not already prepared for demoralization the recuperation in these cases is greater than we should expect. It is a disaster like other disasters, such as sickness and loss of fortune, and a reconstruction of life may follow, perhaps on a lower level. The attitude toward an otherwise orderly girl who has had a sexual experience or borne a child is not so severe as formerly. Frequently the girl marries, often she marries the father of the child. In his study of five hundred unmarried mothers Kammerer says:
“It appears that 48, or 9.6 per cent, of the women in this study married the father of their illegitimate child either before or after confinement; 37 or 7.4 per cent married a man not the father of their child. Figures in regard to the unmarried mother are probably considerably lower than they would have been had it been possible to observe the situation longer. According to the German experience over 30 per cent of the mothers of illegitimate children marry before their child reaches the age of three years.”[85] And since it has been calculated by Adele Schreiber[86] that 50 per cent of all German women are unmarried between the ages of 20 and 30 it appears that the chance to marry on the part of the unmarried mother is very good. (In Germany, however, it is half-customary among peasants and the lower city classes to begin sexual relations before marriage and to marry when pregnancy follows.) At any rate it appears that prostitution is not recruited largely from the victims of love affairs.
The most sensational aspect of the girl’s delinquency is connected with white slavery and the character called “pimp”, “cadet”, or “souteneur.” If a young and simple girl is abducted or captured in the most brutal and audacious way she may nevertheless become broken and submissive, as an animal is broken and trained. She will then be put on the street to “hustle”, or in a house, and her earnings collected. She is held first by fear and then acquires habits and works with the system, like a trained animal. Frequently there is marriage or pretense of marriage and the girl finds that the next step is to go on the street. This is the typical procedure of the white slaver. In addition he purchases girls who are already “broken in” and transfers girls who are already prostitutes from place to place, as notably from Galicia or Hungary to South America.
The other side of the matter, the relation of the girl to the pimp, is connected with her desire for response. When for any reason a girl is “ruined”, on the street, used as a convenience by everybody, she is in a condition of great and unnatural isolation and loneliness and craves a relationship which is personal and intimate. Her attachment to the pimp is simply an underworld love affair. He is her man. She is jealous and he is jealous. She works and brings her earnings as if she were earning in another business. Sometimes her pimp will not allow her to enter the room until she has put $10 under the door. If he abuses her, particularly if he is jealous, she rather welcomes this as a sign of his attachment. That the girl supports a pimp to protect her and keep her out of trouble with the police is not the main element. In European cities where girls are registered by the police and protected as far as possible from this exploitation, they nevertheless support pimps, and in some cities the number doing this is as much as 90 per cent of the registered prostitutes.
It frequently happens also that a girl is drawn or drifts out of her family and community into a bad gang, as in case No. 78, becomes identified with them by assimilation, and cannot free herself. She may then be kept by one of the men or sold into a house. Cases No. 79 and No. 80 are typical of the psychology of the girl in this relation.
78. I am a girl 18 years old and am from a Polish village. Now I am an orphan. I was two years old when my mother died. Several years later my father left for America and left me with my grandfather. After spending several years in America, my father brought me here to New York. I was then 15 years old. I soon went to work and earned $5 a week. My father took the money from me and supported me. And now my troubles begin. After I was here several months, I became acquainted with a boy and through him I became acquainted with several other boys. I was yet young and did not very well understand that the boys accompanied me for their pleasure and not out of friendship. When my father found it out, he began to argue with me in a good way; but as he could not persuade me in a good way, for I did not then understand that it was dear friendship of a father to his child, he began to beat me. After my father gave me a good beating, I became mad; left the house and entered on a wrong path.
My father remained alone and dejected and was forced to marry. I now have a stepmother and I am staying away and I feel that I am falling. I feel that my body is fading along with my soul. When I look at my companions, who shun me, who do not want to know me on account of my immoral life, I envy them. I now realize how bad and wrong my life is; and I see my future in dark colors.
Now when I want to disengage myself from the charlatans and licentious scoundrels in man’s image, I cannot do it. My heart is bound to them. I am attracted to them as to a magnet. When I do not see them for a day, I am almost crazy.
I do not know what to do. The question is; how can I wean myself from the boys, my murderers.... Perhaps it would have been well for me to leave New York altogether and go to some other city?[87]
79. Five pimps were playing cards in a restaurant on Seventh Avenue. The day was very hot. During the afternoon the girl who is “hustling” for one of them came into the restaurant wearing a heavy velvet suit. The wife of the proprietor asked, “What are you doing, wearing a suit like that in this kind of weather?” She replied that though she was bringing home eight, ten, and twelve dollars every night, she could not afford a new dress. “He needs it for gambling,” she said, pointing to her pimp. Leaving the table in anger he deliberately slapped her in the face. “Didn’t you pay $32 for that suit?” he said. “What more do you want?”[88]
80. I met [a police officer] in June 1917.... I fell in love with him right away, to tell the truth. I had been having trouble with my husband and had tried to divorce him, but couldn’t. Anyhow, we were separated. When I was with my husband I was a good girl, and didn’t go out with other men.... I won’t say that he asked me to go into the life I began to lead. That was my own choice. I wasn’t any innocent child. But he told me he could “help” me a lot in the life. He told me, first, to keep within the bounds of his inspection district, and to walk Broadway between 42d Street and 109th, but never to go beyond those lines, or else he couldn’t protect me.... After I had taken a man home, and then the man had left the apartment, Ginton would come in and get some money. How much? Oh—25 per cent, sometimes, or 50 per cent, or maybe even 100 per cent. He was always saying, “Honey, I need money. I have to have $25”, or sometimes he would ask for $10 or $20—never less than $10. Oh, I couldn’t begin to figure how much I gave him. But I didn’t mind that. I loved him, and I always had plenty of money for myself, anyhow.... I don’t mind the money, but I do mind his saying he doesn’t know me. I’d have given him anything I had—I would even now, I think. See this ring? Well, that’s worth $3000. He asked me for it once, and I was going to give it to him, except the other girls wouldn’t let me. I’ve bought him lots of clothes—and you might ask him about the belt with the gold buckle I gave him for a present. Oh—he knows me, all right.
After seeing my folks and talking to them and having them treat me nicely, I made up my mind that when I got back to New York I was going to give up the life I had been leading and get a job and go straight. So I got a place in a hairdresser’s shop at 85th Street and Broadway that paid me $25 a week.
He didn’t like that, and told me so. I guess it was because he wasn’t getting any more money from me. Anyhow, I hadn’t been at work long before he came into the hairdresser’s and said to the boss, “You’d better get rid of that girl; she’s a prostitute.” So I was discharged.
I made another try and got a job in a millinery shop on Broadway, near 95th Street. The same thing happened. He told the people I was working for that I was a street woman, so they had to let me go. He had me discharged from a third job in a store in the same neighborhood. It was impossible for me to get any kind of straight work because of him. I had to go back to the street.[89]
Italians and Jews have been noticeably identified with white slavery. The Italian methods are particularly atrocious, showing the same desperation as their black-hand operations. At the same time Italian girls and Irish are the most intractable among the nationalities. The Jewish operations tend to the form of business organization.
81. I come to this country when I fourteen years old with my mother and father and brothers and sisters. My father go back to Italy three years ago when sick. I work as operator and earn $3 a week. Then I get $6 and for two years I make $9. I walk with my friend Florence who live in same street and we meet Frank Marino drinking soda. He ask me if I have a drink and I say “No”, and he say, “Come on, don’t be bashful, take a drink.” After we take a drink he say, “I take you girls to moving pictures.” I say, “No, I can’t.” He say, “Oh, come on; I own a moving picture place; it do you no harm to go.” We went into a place after a while. When we come out, he say, “You come again to-morrow; I take you again.” I say, “No, I can’t go, my mother would not like.” He walk home with me and I say to him, “If you want to know me, come in; here’s the house; I live here.” He say, “No, you meet me on Wednesday and I take you to moving pictures.” I told him “No.” He say, “Yes, you come.”
Florence say, “You go; maybe he’s your luck; you get married. He seem like a nice fellow.” So I say, “You go with me and I go. I afraid to go alone.” Wednesday we go again and I not tell my mother. Saturday I go with him again and Florence too. He introduce her so she had man, called Jim, to take her. When we come out he say, “I take you now to see my mother and sisters on Charles Street.” I not want to go; I was afraid, but he say, “Florence and Jim go too; my mother and sisters want to see you.”
So we go and he want me to go upstairs and I say, “No, I afraid.” He say, “Oh, you have a bad mind; you think bad. My mother is upstairs waiting for you; come on.” I step into the hall and he shut the door and Florence outside. Then he say, “Come upstairs; don’t have such a bad mind,” and I say, “Why not Florence come too?” and he say, “Oh, Jim got a key, he come.” We get upstairs, he push me in a room and lock the door. He say, “Now I got you here I do what I want,” and I say “No”, and I try to get out and I can’t. Then he takes out a pistol and hold it right up against my ear. He know I was a good girl, and I say, “Are you going to marry me? If you don’t, I kill myself. I will jump out the window.”
I go home to my mother and I tell her. She faint. I most crazy and she too. She says, “He must marry you and your brother must not know or he kill him.” We are a respectable family and my father he has property. I see Frank after this and tell him he must marry me now that he knows I a good girl, and he say he would and on next Tuesday we go to City Hall. He takes out license and we was married by some man there. Then he takes me to a furnished room. All the time we was in this room he just bring me things to eat like crackers, cheese and a little wine. He twice try to make me go on the streets and the first time he beat me and pull my hair and knock me around; he show me a pistol till I faint on the floor and then he throw water over me and tell me not to be so foolish.
One day he take me out with his cousin Jim and his wife Rosie. She’s bad; she goes on the streets. She say, “Why don’t you do what he wants you? Look at me! I have good clothes,” and she showed me a diamond pin. “I get that by doing bad business.” I say, “I go to my mother if he not want to take care of me, or I go to work, and Frank go to work and we have rooms. We buy a little furniture. We not need things so fine.” And my husband, he say, “What you look like with this kind of clothes.” I say, “My mother buy me this suit, it good enough.”
One day he comes in, he bring me a little short dress and red garters and big red bows for my hair. He say, “You put on.” I say, “No, I not put on. I shamed.” Then he slap me and beat me and put pistol to my face and I go way from him and I go down to Carmine Street to Mary, who is a good woman and some relation to him, and I tell her about it. She say, “My God! Is he so bad?” She send for him and say, “What you mean when you get a good girl? What for you want to put her in this bad life?” And he say, “Oh, I don’t want to; I just crazy,” and he say, “Come home, I not ask you any more.”
We go home and his cousin Jim is there and we have coffee to drink and he put something in the coffee. And by and by my head go round and I stupid and he say, “Come out in the air”, and I go out and get on the car and we go some place on the Battery in a house and he leave me there. Pretty soon a man come and he say, “Why you not undressed?” and I say, “I not undress. I not bad girl. I married. I not want to be bad.” And he say, “Then you get out of my house. I not want to get into trouble,” and I go back. I afraid to go home because I get married without my brother seeing the man I marry.
Then Frank say, “I got work in a barber-shop, come.” We go down to Houston and Mott Street and there he get ticket and money and then we go to Gran Central, and get on train. This was Wednesday of the next week when we married. It was six o’clock and we rode and it gets to be nine o’clock and I say, “Where we go? How long it takes?” He say, “We going to Chicago!” Then I cry, “Now I know you put me in the bad life.” He say, “You make noise on train, I kill you.” We get to Chicago and he take me to a house where a man live, his name is Nino Sacco. There he show me razors and pistols and say, “You do not do what I tell you, you be dead.” One day I get out, but that man Sacco, he come after me and take me back. Another time I get out of the house, but every time they catch me and take me back. Then I get sick and cannot do business, and they say, “She no good”, and my husband he write to my brother and say, “You want your sister back, you be on Bleecker Street in drug store, and I give you back your sister. You bring $100 and I give you your sister.”
Then he bring me to New York. He say to me, “You put police on me you be dead girl. I not ’feard for myself, I can get free. I know how. I have had other girls; but you try and I kill you.” Then we met my brother. He gave Frank $100 and he took me home. I wait two days, then I tell police. Frank he get arrested and then we found he had another wife. I was only one month in Chicago, but my life is spoiled and my family ruined and I sick and can’t work. [Marino and Sacco were sentenced to five years in prison.][90]
82. I am a girl from Galicia. I am neither old nor young. I am working in a shop like other girls. I have saved up several hundred dollars. Naturally, a young man began to court me and it is indeed this that we girls are seeking. I became acquainted with him through a Russian [Jewish] matchmaker who for a short while boarded with a countryman of mine. He is really handsome and, as the girls call it, “appetizing.” But he is poor, and this is no disgrace. He became dearer to me every day. One day he told me he was in want owing to a strike, so I helped him out. I was never stingy with him and besides money also bought him a suit of clothes and an overcoat.... Who else did I work for if not him? In short we became happily engaged.
Some time after, we hired a hall in Clinton Street and we were on our way to the bank to draw some money for the wedding expenses and also to enter the savings in both our names. On the way we passed some of his countrymen who were musicians, and we needed music, so we stopped in. He introduced me as his bride. I offered to have them play at our wedding. Incidentally, I inquired about my fiancé and they gave good opinions of him. Only a musician’s boy pitifully gazed at me and remarked, when my fiancé was not near us: “Are there not enough people from the old country to ask for their opinion?” I understood the hint and asked him for an address, which he gave me. Meanwhile, we were late for the bank, and fortunately, too. I could hardly wait for evening when I rushed over to his countryman and inquired about him. They were surprised at my questions and told me he had a wife and three children in —— Street. As I later found out she was the same woman whom he introduced me to as his boarding mistress.... I cannot describe my feelings at that time. I became a mere toy in the mouths of my countrymen. But what more could I do than arrest him? But his wife and children came to court and had him released.
I found out of the existence of a gang of wild beasts, robbers who prey upon our lives and money. I then advertised in a Jewish newspaper, warning my sisters against such a “fortune” as befell me. I was not ashamed and told of my misfortune wherever I came and gave warnings. The East Side has become full of such “grooms”, “matchmakers”, “mistresses”, “sisters”, and “brothers.” Inquire of their countrymen. There are plenty of their kind.
A girl from my country has also married one of the band, the one who was my former matchmaker. To the warnings that he had a wife and child in Europe, she replied, “Well, if she comes she will be welcome.” And good countrymen did indeed send for her and she came with a four-year-old boy. Her predicament is horrible to describe. She is poor and lonely and my countrywoman did not welcome her as she boasted, and her husband said: “Whoever sent for you may support you.”[91]
White slavery has never been a quantitatively important factor as the beginning of delinquency and together with the cadet system it is passing out, partly as the result of public indignation and severe penalties, and partly as the result of the changing attitude of the women concerned, who have become “wise” and are going more “on their own.” Many of them scorn the pimp. The change is a part of the general individualization.