l crimes that must, and will, be remedied.

The real problem lies deeper than this. Want is not the incentive to
the traffic of sex in the case of the dancer or chorus girl in regular
employment, of the forewoman in a factory or shop who earns steady
wages, or among numerous women belonging to much higher social
positions. These women choose prostitution, they are not driven into
it. It is necessary to insist upon this. The belief in the efficacy of
economic reform amounts almost to a disease--a kind of unquestioning
fanatical faith. Again and again I have been met by the assurance,
made by men who should know better, as well as by women, that no woman
would sell herself if economic causes were removed. Such opinion
proves a very plain ignorance of the history and facts of
prostitution. It is only a little more scientific than the view of the
woman moral crusader, who believes that the "social evil" can easily
be remedied by self-control on the part of men. One of the worst vices
common to women at present is spiritual pride. One wonders if these
short-cut reformers have ever been acquainted with a single member of
this class they hope to repress by legal enactments or other
measures, such as early marriage, better wages for women, moral
education, the censorship of amusements, and so forth. It is not so
simple. You see, what is needed is an understanding of the conditions,
not from the reformer's standard of thought, but from that of the
prostitute, which is a very different matter. How can any one hope to
reform a class whose real lives, thoughts, and desires are unknown to
them?

My effort to reach bed-rock facts had led me to seek first-hand
information from these women, many of whom I have come to know
intimately, and to like. I have learnt a great deal, much more than
from all my close study of the problem as it is presented in books.
Problems are never so simple in the working out as they appear in
theories. Moral doctrines fall to pieces; even statistics and the
estimates of expert investigators are apt to become curiously unreal
in the light of a very little practical knowledge. I have learnt that
there is no one type of prostitute, no one cause of the evil, no one
remedy that will cure it.

And here, before I go further, I must in fairness state that I have
been compelled to give up the view held by me, in common with most
women, that men and their uncontrolled passions are chiefly
responsible for this hid