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 D. R. Miller.
“A law demanding only a refrain from violence or abstinence from all that may injure others contains but the negative, while it is lacking in the more important, the positive elements. If men, by closing their eyes to the existence of evil, could thereby banish it, then might it be best for all to close their eyes….it is quite certain that we can never hope to discover, through ignorance, what are the various types of criminal abnormality, nor know the many causes or cures for such estrangements. An intelligent and thorough study of the criminal problem will eliminate from our creed that fatalistic formula which asserts that ‘Evil is good not understood’…”
United Brethren Publishing House (1903) 224 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 the Newark New Jersey Citizens’ Committee.
“The Prostitute.—It is said that there is no prostitution in Newark. It is true that there are practically no bawdy houses. But there is prostitution. The principal streets, railroad stations, post office and other public buildings, many places of amusement, many cafes and backrooms of saloons scattered over practically the entire area of the city are frequented by prostitutes. There are at least 400 of these women who ply their trade in Newark. Many of these belong to the city, but there are many others who come and go, from Harrison, the Oranges, Paterson, Elizabeth, New York and many other nearby towns and cities. Of the more than 1,300 saloons in Newark, the investigators made a special study of ninety-three. They found sixty-four of these which have backrooms where prostitutes were found soliciting or frequenting habitually. The indications- appear to show that these women are paid a commission upon the drinks they induce men to buy.”
Newark, NJ: Citizens' Committee, 1914. 176p.
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 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.
