to those whose weakness it is to explain
all social phenomena by economic causes, and in part to its obvious
plausibility.[169]

Prostitutes are mainly recruited from the ranks of factory girls, domestic
servants, shop girls, and waitresses. In some of these occupations it is
difficult to obtain employment all the year round. In this way many
milliners, dressmakers and tailoresses become prostitutes when business is
slack, and return to business when the season begins. Sometimes the
regular work of the day is supplemented concurrently by prostitution in
the street in the evening. It is said, possibly with some truth, that
amateur prostitution of this kind is extremely prevalent in England, as it
is not checked by the precautions which, in countries where prostitution
is regulated, the clandestine prostitute must adopt in order to avoid
registration. Certain public lavatories and dressing-rooms in central
London are said to be used by the girls for putting on, and finally
washing off before going home, the customary paint.[170] It is certain
that in England a large proportion of parents belonging to the working and
even lower middle class ranks are unacquainted with the nature of the
lives led by their own daughters. It must be added, also, that
occasionally this conduct of the daughter is winked at or encouraged by
the parents; thus a correspondent writes that he "knows some towns in
England where prostitution is not regarded as anything disgraceful, and
can remember many cases where the mother's house has been used by the
daughter with the mother's knowledge."

Acton, in a well-informed book on London prostitution, written in the
middle of the last century, said that prostitution is "a transitory stage,
through which an untold number of British women are ever on their
passage."[171] This statement was strenuously denied at the time by many
earnest moralists who refused to admit that it was possible for a woman
who had sunk into so deep a pit of degradation ever to climb out again,
respectably safe and sound. Yet it is certainly true as regards a
considerable proportion of women, not only in England, but in other
countries also. Thus Parent-Duchatelet, the greatest authority on French
prostitution, stated that "prostitution is for the majority only a
transitory stage; it is quitted usually during the first year; very few
prostitutes continue until extinction." It is difficult, however, to
ascertain precisely of how lar