(3) _Child labor_ is one of the demoralizing products of our civilization. There are 2,000,000 children wage-earners in the United States. That means children who are denied adequate schooling and free play. They are forced into the mills and factories and tied up to machines. Their minds are dwarfed, their bodies stunted--all for "the hallowed privilege of working for a living." Consult the findings of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, read John Spargo's "Bitter Cry of the Child," peruse the reports of the National Consumers' League and of the National Child Labor Committee, and decide if we are not creating prostitution out of the blood and flesh of children for the money there is in it. Any condition which makes for moral and physical deterioration makes ultimately for prostitution.
(4) The _profits of vice_ promote the traffic in women. Women must be got by fair means or foul in the interest of the business. Pimps, police, politicians, proprietors, cadets, madams, and white slavers--all demand girls. In Newark, Ohio, the people imposed a license of $1000 annually upon each saloon. Enough liquor could not be sold, by every effort, to satisfy the license fee--eighty saloons in a town of 25,000 inhabitants, one saloon to every 65 adult men. Boys had to be made drunkards, gambling had to be added, for the people wanted the $80,000 annually. The burden became so great that the saloons were forced to organize houses of prostitution to help raise the money. By combining these two splendid cooperative business features the town affairs flourished.[1] The story is the same everywhere in America; so long as there are profits to be made in prostitution, the great spirit of business enterprise will demand and secure the bodies and souls of women for exploitation for profits.
[1] "The Thin Crust of Civilization," by Ray Stannard Baker, in _American Magazine_, April, 1911.
Raines Law hotels, excursion steamboats with rooms to rent, massage parlors, and landlords, all offer inducements for the encouragement of prostitution. The prostitute often pays for protection; she pays extra rent to the landlord, fees to the janitor, and a stipend to her protector; she induces men to drink, which gives a profit to the liquor trade; she uses cabs and the telephone much at night; and it is such business interests as these which often connive to share her profits.