nl_e17

Blackwell, "Age of Consent Legislation," 1895
Even in crime youth is allowed as an extenuating circumstance,
from the general feeling that the young are less able to resist external
influences, and are less responsible for their actions than the adult.
The establishment of reformatories for juvenile offenders testifies to
the belief that their characters are still unformed for good or for evil.
In the case of girls, the State has not only extended exceptional
protection to them as minors in reference to their legitimate social
relations, it has also established a sort of legal majority in reference to
those that are illegitimate. It has fixed an age below which girls are
held to be incompetent of assent to such illegitimate relations.
"Consent," as it is termed, varied in all the different States, until
recently, from the age of seven to twelve years, and in many of them it
is still only ten or twelve. This arrangement amounted virtually to the
protection of children only for the years during which their physical
abuse is so brutal an offense as to excite indignation even among the
majority of persons of vicious life. The protection accorded in other
respects to minors was distinctly and emphatically withdrawn from girls
during the first few years of early womanhood, when it is most needed.
Such legislation is directly in the interests of vice. The line is
drawn just where those who are interested in vice would have it. It is
certainly as illogical as cruel that an age when a girl's consent is not
held sufficient for legal marriage, it should be held sufficient to justify
her destruction. A man may not legally marry the minor daughter of
another without his consent, but he is legally free to seduce her if he
can.
It would seem that our present legislation was influenced more by
respect for property, than by consideration for personal protection.
Virtually it is effective only in regard to the well-to-do class in which
property considerations enter largely into the question of marriage. In
this class the daughters live at home, under the protection of parents
and family connections, to mature age. The only danger to which they
are actually exposed is to that of an imprudent marriage, and against
that the law fully protects them.
The case is entirely different with the majority of girls where
poverty obliges them to go to work as soon as they are capable of
earning. Ignorant, inexperienced, impulsive, they enter the great world
of work, usually into wearisome and ill-paid labor, under the control
and direction of men. For except in domestic service, girls do not come
much in contact with the great body of respectable elder women who
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