ely monogamic basis rendered it more and more difficult for a woman to
dispose of her own person. She belongs in the first place to her father,
whose interest it was to guard her carefully until a husband appeared who
could afford to purchase her. In the enhancement of her value the new idea
of the market value of virginity gradually developed, and where a "virgin"
had previously meant a woman who was free to do as she would with her own
body its meaning was now reversed and it came to mean a woman who was
precluded from having intercourse with men. When she was transferred from
her father to a husband, she was still guarded with the same care;
husband and father alike found their interest in preserving their women
from unmarried men. The situation thus produced resulted in the existence
of a large body of young men who were not yet rich enough to obtain wives,
and a large number of young women, not yet chosen as wives, and many of
whom could never expect to become wives. At such a point in social
evolution prostitution is clearly inevitable; it is not so much the
indispensable concomitant of marriage as an essential part of the whole
system. Some of the superfluous or neglected women, utilizing their money
value and perhaps at the same time reviving traditions of an earlier
freedom, find their social function in selling their favors to gratify the
temporary desires of the men who have not yet been able to acquire wives.
Thus every link in the chain of the marriage system is firmly welded and
the complete circle formed.

But while the history of the rise and development of prostitution shows us
how indestructible and essential an element prostitution is of the
marriage system which has long prevailed in Europe--under very varied
racial, political, social, and religious conditions--it yet fails to
supply us in every respect with the data necessary to reach a definite
attitude towards prostitution to-day. In order to understand the place of
prostitution in our existing system, it is necessary that we should
analyze the chief factors of prostitution. We may most conveniently learn
to understand these if we consider prostitution, in order, under four
aspects. These are: (1) _economic_ necessity; (2) _biological_
predisposition; (3) _moral_ advantages; and (4) what may be called its
_civilizational_ value.

While these four factors of prostitution seem to me those that here
chiefly concern us, it is scarcely necessary to poi