or incur public disgrace by the commission of some crime which will entitle them to a divorce. They may not in all cases aim directly at this, but they feel a kind of recklessness which leads them to decide that they cannot, under any circumstances, plunge themselves into a worse condition. Some suggestions for removing this evil will be given in Part IV.

Another fruitful cause of prostitution in large cities is the small compensation awarded to female labor. In consequence of this, few are able to earn more than enough to supply present necessities; and when "hard times" prevail, they have neither work nor other resources for subsistence. In such extremities, a few, whose pure souls abhor a life of shame, choose death rather than the princely abode of the courtesan, and end their existence by poisoning or drowning. Many rush into harlotry, for observation has taught them the humiliating fact that men will pay dollars for sexual gratification, who will bestow only pennies in charity. It is estimated that six and one-half millions of dollars are annually paid in this city alone to "pretty waiter girls" and courtesans! When such reward is offered for vice, and want and threatened starvation held out to virtue, it is only surprising that more do not abandon the flickering night-lamp and needle for the dazzling chandelier and the easy-cushioned téte-à-tête of the fashionable brothel.

The "hard times" of 1837, 54, '57, and '61, drove hundreds of New York seamstresses and shop girls to a life of prostitution. The streets of this metropolis throng with this class of females whenever there is a financial pressure, local or general. Some 30,000 women are dependent upon the products of their needle in New York, many of whom have helpless parents and children who look to them for subsistence. Imagine their terrible extremity when thrown out of employment. During the great rebellion, the wives of indigent soldiers, both North and South, were in numerous instances reduced to the necessity of choosing between starvation and prostitution.

It is said that out of 5,000 prostitutes in Paris, whose cases have been minutely examined, 1,400 were reduced to that state by sheer destitution! A writer remarks that "there are fifty or sixty families in Edinburgh, who are almost wholly supported by the secret prostitution of the mother, and three times that number who are partially maintained in the same manner, A daughter had struggled

on six years to support herself and bed-ridden mother by the needle; before sacrificing her virtue she sold the last blanket from her mother's bed, and her own last dress.

"Who will deny that these are startling considerations. And what is true of European cities, is true of American ones, to a greater or less degree. Young girls can always get money in our large cities by bartering their virtue. It is an unfailing dernier resort. Why should it be thought strange that a female, pressed by pale want, should do that which a male will do in the absence of this necessity, and without a scruple? And why, especially, should it excite wonder, while black-hearted seducers and procuresses, knowing this want, swarm thick around, ever ready to take advantage of their distressed condition ?"

For this evil it is difficult to suggest an immediate remedy, such is the spirit of rivalry, speculation, and selfishness, in the commercial world; but there is one which time and change in public opinion may introduce. It is to educate girls as we do boys in the practical business matters of life, and then open to their pursuit all the trades and professions, in order that their fields of industry may not be so unreasonably circumscribed. Our social regulations, which so greatly limit the industrial sphere of women, frequently place them in a condition of want, without shelter for their heads, or food for their stomachs. They are confronted by only two alternatives, beggary or prostitution. In pursuing the former, they meet the frowns and whining excuses of those more fortunate in life; while in the latter, money comes freely from the hands of willing patrons, who not only give them sustenance, but privily flatter their vanity.

Another cause of prostitution has its origin in the ignorance which prevails concerning the power and phenomena of animal electricity, or magnetism, as it is generally termed. All classes of females, from the daughters of the affluent to the pretty shop-girls, contribute inmates to the brothel. In consequence of ignorance in this matter, they are not aware that some men possess electrical power to charm like the snake. Nor are they sufficiently educated in regard to the strange passion existing within themselves, to know how weak, under Bome circumstances, they may become to resist temptation. The philosophy of this charming power will be thoroughly explained in Part Fourth, but the consequences admit at least an allusion here. Coquettish ladies are apt to invite the attention of prepossessing

strange young gentlemen, and coquettish young ladies, I am sorry to say, are numerous. They commence flirting with their admirers with the predetermination of keeping their affections to themselves; still they will venture much to ascertain the sentiments of their pretended lovers. Sometimes they are pleased to see how they can amatively exasperate them; but gradually they become practically mesmerized, when pretty coquettes find themselves, like the fluttering bird before the charming serpent's mouth, utterly unable to control themselves. The keepers of houses of ill-fame in large cities know that many men possess this singular power to charm, though perhaps not one of them knows the mysterious agent they employ to produce this fascination. The result is, that men who are so powerfully electric or magnetic as to be able to exercise such a controlling influence over young women, are stationed in all large manufacturing towns, where female operatives are numerous, to obtain fresh victims for the fashionable dens of prostitution. A partial remedy for this evil may be given in a few words. Young ladies must not make too free with young gentlemen, whose characters are not favorably known in the neighborhood in which they reside. Observance of this rule may sometimes cause Julia to turn her back upon an angel; but as devils are more numerous in travelling pants and waistcoats, so serious a slight will seldom be given to celestial broadcloth.

Still another cause of prostitution is "sexual starvation." As the preceding essay is devoted to this subject, I will only allude to it here as a promoter of licentiousness. There is a natural appetite-an insatiable craving, if denied-of one sex for the society and magnetism of the other. If free social intercourse between men and women be provided and encouraged in some rational and elevating manuer, magnetic equalization would take place in a great measure simply by social contact, and that intoxicating attraction, aggravated by isolation, which, when the sexes come together, is liable to lead to direct venery, would be forestalled. The free interchange of the sexual magnetic elements in an elevated social way, would greatly tend to prevent those earthquake and tornado outbreaks of passion, which result in rape and sexual pollution. The man who is stomach-starved will devour the flesh of his fellow-man, or even his own flesh, as illustrated in narratives of shipwrecks; and the man of strong amative passions, who is sexually starved and

isolated from the female element will, when opportunity occurs, outrage the persons of passionless little girls; or appease his heated desires in sexual contact with women reeking with disease, in the low dens of harlotry. It is utterly useless to shut one's eyes to these facts, and the only way to avert them is to try, by morally elevating means, to so equalize the magnetism of the sexes as to prevent thunder-storms of passion, such as newspapers daily chronicle from one end of Christendom to the other. A partial remedy for sexual starvation is given in the essay on this subject, and those philanthropic men and women, who hope by combined action to repress or exterminate the natural passion of amativeness in other people, while they do not expect to effect such a result in themselves individually, had better expend their ammunition in the direction I have pointed out.

In reviewing some of the principal causes of prostitution, can we not see that if it really be a necessary evil, it is so because of important errors in the training of children; unsuitable civil laws regulating marriage; despotic customs circumscribing the industrial sphere of woman; ignorance of the electrical power of every individual for good or evil; and of the social despotism which separates the sexes? Reformation in the training of children is the first place to begin to extinguish prostitution. So long as the sexual passions of children are stimulated to precocity by an exciting regimen, and goaded to illicit gratification by all sorts of fictitious and exciting literature; so long will there be men who will violate the marriage bed, and destroy virgin purity where the institution of prostitution is not tolerated; and so long will houses of ill-fame be annually furnished with voluptuous young females from all ranks of Society.

Were it universally known to what an alarming extent the pernicious physical effects of prostitution are felt throughout all communities, more decided measures would be adopted under the paternal roof to cut off one of the main tributaries to this gigantic evil. The word of the mother is the law of the household, and she seldom dreams, even if suffering with disease induced by venereal poison, that prostitution can ever inflict a pang in her sheltered home. Why, I have cured hundreds of ladies from nearly every State in the Union, whose diseases arose directly or indirectly from syphilis, and who would have died of grief had I divulged to them the real nature of

their complaints. I will not venture to compute how many have been my patients for the cure of venereal disorders, or diseases arising therefrom. Fowler, in a little work on Amativeness, remarks, "Many do not know how prevalent this disease is in its various forms. Its victims keep their own secret as long as possible, and doctor themselves, excent when their case becomes desperate; and then confide it only to their medical adviser, whose very profession forswears him to keep the secret. Oh! how many of our young men have ruined their constitutions, and become invalids for life, solely by means of this disease or attempts to cure it. Indeed, its prevalence at the Sandwich Islands actually threatens the extinction of that nation, which, at its present rate of mortality, it is computed to effect in about sixty years! And if it goes on to increase in the ratio of its past progression, it will ultimately cut off our race itself! "The fact that SEVERAL THOUSAND COPIES of a little work of less than twenty pages, on the cure of venereal diseases, are sold every month, at one dollar per copy, and that other works of this class sell in proportion, shows conclusively that there are several thousand new victims every month! No patient wants more than a single work, yet TWENTY THOUSAND PER MONTH does not equal the sales of these works, and of course falls short of the number of victims, for none but venereal patients will pay thus dear for so small a book, of no manner of interest to those not thus afflicted. All this, besides all those who indulge with other than harlots by profession! Almost incredible, but nevertheless true!"

I have not the least doubt--and my estimate is based on authoritative figures which cannot lie "that thirty thousand males are daily infected with venereal poison in the large cities of the United States, a majority of whom are residents of inland towns, whither they return to spread the seeds of the loathsome disorder! Men of vicious habits in cities are generally too well acquainted with the different grades of courtesans to contract disease. They know who are "sound," as they express themselves. Their acquaintance with lewd women is not so limited but that they can exercise the privilege of choice. Still, the boasted smartness of these men does not always avail. When the medical seine is drawn, this class is numerously represented. In the public institutions of New York city, about 10,000 cases of venereal disease are annually treated, to say nothing of those who seek the advice of their own physicians.