opinion often frankly expressed, rarely concealed
with any but the thinnest hypocrisy--the life of prostitution
was not so bad. Did the life of virtue offer any attractive
alternative? Whether a woman was "bad" or "good," she must
live in travail and die in squalor to be buried in or near the
Potter's Field. But if the girl still living at home were not
"good," that would mean a baby to be taken care of, would mean
the girl herself not a contributor to the family support but a
double burden. And if she went into prostitution, would her
family get the benefit? No.

The mothers made little effort to save their sons; they
concentrated on the daughters. It was pitiful to see how in
their ignorance they were unaware of the strongest forces
working against them. The talk of all this motley humanity--of
"good" no less than "bad" women, of steady workingmen, of
political heelers, thieves and bums and runners for dives--was
frankly, often hideously, obscene. The jammed together way of
living made modesty impossible, or scantest decency--made the
pictures of it among the aspiring few, usually for the benefit
of religion or charitable visitors, a pitiful, grotesque
hypocrisy. Indeed, the prostitute class was the highest in
this respect. The streetwalkers, those who prospered, had
better masters, learned something about the pleasures and
charms of privacy, also had more leisure in which to think, in
however crude a way, about the refinements of life, and more
money with which to practice those refinements. The boys from
the earliest age were on terms of licentious freedom with the
girls. The favorite children's games, often played in the open
street with the elders looking on and laughing, were sex games.
The very babies used foul language--that is, used the language
they learned both at home and in the street. It was primitive
man; Susan was at the foundation of the world.

To speak of the conditions there as a product of civilization
is to show ignorance of the history of our race, is to fancy
that we are civilized today, when in fact we
are--historically--in a turbulent and painful period of
transition from a better yesterday toward a tomorrow in which
life will be worth living as it never has been before in all
the ages of duration. In this today of movement toward
civilization which began with the discovery of iron and will
end when we shall have discovered how to use for the benefit of
all the main forces