nl_e17

Blackwell, "Age of Consent Legislation," 1895
should be their natural guides. These are withdrawn from their world of
industry, and are occupied in domestic life, and those whom the girls
do meet in work are usually not in positions of influence or authority. It
is with men largely that the girls deal, and upon them they depend for
direction and occupation. Even in domestic service girls are removed
from home life, and thrown among associates of the most varied
character, and for whom the mistress usually feels little responsibility.
There is no class in society so helpless, so surrounded by temptation,
as young working girls just growing up. They are surrounded by a
network of snares and pitfalls. For this is the class which is coveted as
a prey by the licentious and by those who live by pandering to
licentiousness.
Though unacknowledged and working under cover, there exists
virtually an organized system of temptation, controlled by old
experienced agents of vice, aiming to sweep as much of this fresh
material as possible into their nets. How constant and insidious this
work is, what craft and what indirect means are employed to entice
young girls into some of the many devious paths that lead downward,
can only be realized by those whose attention and thought have been
especially called to the subject. The testimony given before the
committee of Parliament in reference to the working of the Contagious
Diseases Act, and in the reference to the international traffic in girls, is
full of terrible testimony to the extent of youthful prostitution in great
cities, to the endless ways in which the victims are tempted or
entrapped, and the difficulty of escape when once they fall into bad
hands. The experience of all societies that deal with the young, the
history of the Michigan lumber camps[A], all tell the same story with
endless variations, of the dangers which encompass these years of
early womanhood on its entrance into work of all kinds outside of the
home.
Society unconsciously works into the hands of the tempters. As
cruelly severe toward women as it is criminally indulgent toward men in
these respects, it is enough for a girl to be compromised, or even
suspected, to make it difficult for her to obtain employment and keep in
the ranks of the honest. The whole situation grows out of the different
standard of virtue for men and women, that while chastity is the one
absolute prerequisite to social consideration and even to decent life
among women, it is regarded as an absolutely impossible virtue in
men. Consequently seduction is a minor offense in a man--though it
means destruction to the woman. Virtually a man who seduces a
young woman commits a greater crime than if he killed her, as moral
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