Hence to the _male_ vagrant problem is added the corresponding half, the _female_. Since the balance of the sexes is in England already against women, _what becomes of those who in our large towns correspond to the hundreds or thousands of men who live in lodging-houses or lodgings, homeless_? The answer has been becoming ever more plain to me, but it has only been demonstrated by personal suffering. I could not have believed had I not seen. Our streets contain an army of prostitutes, and there has arisen over against the male problem a vast female problem with which our increasing Homes and Refuges and Shelters are unable to cope. _The correlative of the male wanderer is the female prostitute._ A woman must "get her living," and she does it "on the streets." The man who should support her honourably as a wife is himself a wanderer, afraid to incur family ties, but bound by no wholesome home influence to self-restraint. In 1904 I spent three nights in so-called respectable female lodging-houses.[153] They contained between them close on a hundred women, and, with few exceptions, they were all living by prostitution. The hour when a decent woman retires found almost all perambulating the streets. No rest was possible till the early morning, as at all hours they were admitted, many of them drunk. Those not admitted spent the night in hotels, or in some of those "furnished rooms for married couples," which are multiplying in districts near common lodging-houses with fatal rapidity.
Men and women are making fortunes out of this state of things. To my knowledge, a man who was a barman is said now to own sixteen _lodging-houses_, and a cobbler has risen to be proprietor of lodgings for 600 and _two public-houses_. A man can rent a house at 4_s_., and get a little furniture in, and can then let _each room_ for more than the house-rent per week. To places like this drift many young men or women who are stranded far away from home. A girl gets out of a situation; she seeks a women's lodging-house, and if she enters one where the management connives or winks at vice, in three weeks, or less, she may be manufactured into a full-blown prostitute. This state of things is such as should shock every right-thinking English man and woman. In one street in a northern town a young man of eighteen, fresh from home, who was with a companion who unfortunately "knew too much," passed in a short walk seventy-five prostitutes. With these problems on our hands in such magnitude, can we stop to tinker at our Tramp Ward and ask if we are to amend it by giving coffee instead of gruel? The wonder is that any one seeks it; that it is used at all shows the stern pressure of destitution more than anything else. For, as I have stated, and must state repeatedly, the Tramp Ward is itself a factor in national degradation, the mockery of a provision for need; meaning often semi-starvation, weary toil and unrest. A man or woman _must_ emerge from it more unfit for toil, and learn to avoid such a place if possible in future. The tramp uses it as an occasional disinfectant; the genuine working man or woman who is stranded may be forced into it temporarily and learn to be a _tramp_. Mr. Long recently stated that not more than 25 per cent. of the vagrants of the country were in any way within reach of the Local Government Board. The remainder were not paupers, for somehow or other they got a living for themselves. I believe his percentage is too high, owing to the number who simply _sample_ a Tramp Ward and never again enter it. A recent census in Lancashire revealed that out of 936 persons reported only thirty-three were habitual vagrants.[154] Why should they go there? A man who "keeps" (?) a woman can live in idleness on the produce of her industry or sin; a woman can live "on the streets." This has a great deal to do with two features of present-day life--the number of incorrigibly idle, worthless men, who apparently can exist to loaf and drink, side by side with _the deplorable increase of drunkenness among women_.