By the Vice Commission of Chicago.
A Study of Existing Conditions with Recommendations by the Vice Commission of Chicago (a Municipal Body Appointed by the Mayor and the City Council of the City of Chicago) and Submitted as Its Report.
Gunthorp-Warren. (1911) 375 pages.
By Albert W. Elliott.
“In the following pages, I purpose to lay bare the stark facts of the Social Evil, believing that public knowledge of conditions as they really are will prove a power for good; I will strive to tell the unflinching truth, pitiless though it appears, for therein lies the world’s only hope of freedom from error and vice. This book, my reader, is meat for strong men, not milk for babes. The author has devoted six years of his life to rescue work among fallen women, has studied the underworld from New Orleans to New York, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; has entered on the course of his mission, more than three thousand houses of shame and talked with more than fifteen thousand inmates ; he has walked the valley of this terrible shadow meeting its blackened spirits face to face, searching their innermost secrets, praying and working for their deliverance, and crying from the depth of his soul over the hopeless tragedy of it all. Of the intimate, accurate, heart-crushing ex- perience thus gathered, this book is a faithful record.”
Atlanta, GA: Webb & Vary Co., 1914..
by William Burgess
A Historical Review and Study of the Problems Relating to the Subject. “This book was prompted not only by the appeal made to a scholarly mind by the widely scattered data of the long war against vice, but also by personal experience on the field of action where the author has aided achievement in securing organized effort. So rapidly and widely has the struggle against the social evil spread that the local and national groups engaged in it are for the most part unaware of what a diverse world-wide movement they constitute. Each several line of aggressive effort has its own organization and publications, covering the medical and psychopathic, the legislative and police, the educational and protective, the moral and religious attacks upon the hydra-headed evil. This book was prompted not only by the appeal made to a scholarly mind by the widely scattered data of the long war against vice, but also by personal experience on the field of action where the author has aided achievement in securing organized effort. So rapidly and widely has the struggle against the social evil spread that the local and national groups engaged in it are for the most part unaware of what a diverse world-wide movement they constitute. Each several line of aggressive effort has its own organization and publications, covering the medical and psychopathic, the legislative and police, the educational and protective, the moral and religious attacks upon the hydra-headed evil.”
Chicago : Saul Brothers, [1914]. 426p.
By Robert N. Willson.
“The following pages are published in the earnest hope that they may assist in the preservation of the American home circle through their influence upon the boy and the young man. Each of the four chapters was prepared for those who listened to it, and with no idea that it would eventually find its way into print. I have now arranged them in permanent form for the purpose of more widely introducing a difficult and delicate subject in a plain but thoroughly clean way. For years I have felt the need, as an individual and a physician, of a simple, and yet scientifically accurate, presentation of the world's great blemish, its causes, and effects, in such a form that I might safely place it in the hands of the American boy and girl. Each of the chapters comprising this little volume has been chosen with this end in view. Each has been utilized, moreover, in response to a desire, expressed openly and often, by men and women who have the integrity of American manhood deeply at heart.”
Philadelphia, Chicago, The J.C. Winston company , 1905. 174p.
By Howard B. Woolston.
Prior to the entrance of the United States into the world war. “The plans for the study of prostitution in the United States were made before our country entered the world war, and before many important agencies which were la- ter developed by the government had begun to function. The greater part of the field work was done in the first half of the year 1917. The task of putting this and other material connected with the study into shape was inter- rupted by the author's war service. When it was possible to resume the preparations for publication and the matter on hand was reviewed in the light of war efforts, public and private, for the control of commercialized vice, it became evident that we had passed through a transition period. The termination of the war marked the end of the old order of things in the United States and the beginning of a new era characterized by more extensive and concentrated efforts on the part of the government. It was, therefore, decided to divide the study into two parts. In this first volume we will present an account of the conditions of commercialized prostitution, and of the more important agencies developed to meet the situations as they existed prior to and at the time of our entrance into the world war.”
New York: Century Company, 1921. 360p.
By Jane Addams.
“Published in 1912 on the heels of Twenty Years at Hull-House and at the height of Jane Addams's popularity, "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" assesses the vulnerability of the rural and immigrant working-class girls who moved to Chicago and fell prey to the sexual bartering of what was known as the white slave trade. Addams offers lurid accounts--drawn from the records of Chicago's Juvenile Protection Association--of young women coerced into lives of prostitution by men who lurked outside hotels and sweatshops. Because they lacked funds for proper recreation, Addams argues, poor and socially marginalized women were susceptible to sexual slavery, and without radical social change they would perhaps be "almost as free" as young men. In addition to promoting higher wages and better living conditions, Addams suggests that a longer period of public education for young women would deter them from the dangers of city life. Despite its appeal to middle-class readers eager for tales of sexual excess and the rape of innocence, the press and prominent intellectuals criticized A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil for being disproportionately hysterical to its philosophical weight.”
New York: Macmillan, 1912. 219p.
By Rudolph Blackenburg.
Report on Existing Conditions with Recommendations to the Honorable Rudolph Blackenburg Mayor. “Our report is addressed to sane, serious minded men and women who desire to better conditions in our own city; it is not addressed to those who take no interest in the subject, who think the least said and done the better, or who flippantly dismiss it.”
Philadelphia: The Commission, 1913. 179p.
By Increase Mather.
Or, a sermon (preached at the lecture in Boston in New-England the 18th day of the 1 moneth 1674, when two men were executed, who had murthered their master) wherein is shewed that excesse in wickedness doth bring untimely death.
Boston: John Foster, 1879. 25p.
By The Committee of Fifteen
With special reference to conditions existing in the city of New York. . “In the fall of 1900, the city of New York was startled by discoveries in regard to the spread of the Social Evil in certain districts, and as to the extent of flagrant offences against public morality and common decency. A meeting of citizens was held at the Chamber of Commerce in November, as a result of which the Committee of Fifteen was called into existence. The objects which the Committee of Fifteen undertook to accomplish were thereupon stated as follows : (1) To institute a searching inquiry, uninfluenced by partisan considerations, into the causes of the present alarming increase of gambling and the Social Evil in this city, and to collect such evidence as shall establish the connection between existing conditions and those who, in the last analysis, are responsible for these conditions. (2) To publish the results of such investigations in order to put our fellow-citizens in possession of facts, and to enable them to adopt such corrective measures as may be needed. (3) To promote such legislation as shall render it less difficult to reach offenders, and as shall put an end to the shifting and division of responsibility in the local administration of the laws relating to vice and crime, to the end that public officers and their subordinates may be held to a strict accountability for their acts. (4) To suggest and promote the provision of more wholesome conditions and surroundings, in order to lessen the allurements and incentives to vice and crime.”
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902. 188p.
By William W. Sanger.
Its Extent, Causes and Effects Throughout the World. “The history of prostitution around the world from the earliest Egyptian Courtesans to those night houses or street vendors of the late to 19th century. Arguments are unnecessary to prove the existence of prostitution. The evil is so notorious that none can possibly gainsay it. But when its extent, its causes, or its effects are questioned, a remarkable degree of ignorance or carelessness is manifested. Few care to know the secret springs from which prostitution emanates; few are anxious to know how wide the stream ex tends; few have any desire to know the devastation it causes. Society has formally laid a prohibition on the subject, and he who presumes to argue that what affects one may injure all; he who believes that the malady in his neighbor's family to-day may visit his own to-morrow ; he who dares to intimate that a vice which has blighted the happiness of one parent, and ruined the character of one daughter, may produce, must inevitably produce, the same sad results in another circle ; in short, he who dares allude to the subject of prostitution in any other than a mysterious and whispered manner, must prepare to meet the frowns and censure of society.”
New York: The Medical Publishing Co., 1899. 709p.
