class.
"The girl of the people falls by the people," stated Reuss in
France (_La Prostitution_, p. 41). "It is her like, workers like
herself, who have the first fruits of her beauty and virginity.
The man of the world who covers her with gold and jewels only has
their leavings." Martineau, again (_De la Prostitution
Clandestine_, 1885), showed that prostitutes are usually
deflowered by men of their own class. And Jeannel, in Bordeaux,
found reason for believing that it is not chiefly their masters
who lead servants astray; they often go into service because they
have been seduced in the country, while lazy, greedy, and
unintelligent girls are sent from the country into the town to
service. In Edinburgh, W. Tait (_Magdalenism_, 1842) found that
soldiers more than any other class in the community are the
seducers of women, the Highlanders being especially notorious in
this respect. Soldiers have this reputation everywhere, and in
Germany especially it is constantly found that the presence of
the soldiery in a country district, as at the annual manoeuvres,
is the cause of unchastity and illegitimate births; it is so also
in Austria, where, long ago, Gross-Hoffinger stated that
soldiers were responsible for at least a third of all
illegitimate births, a share out of all proportion to their
numbers. In Italy, Marro, investigating the occasion of the loss
of virginity in twenty-two prostitutes, found that ten gave
themselves more or less spontaneously to lovers or masters, ten
yielded in the expectation of marriage, and two were outraged
(_La Puberta_, p. 461). The loss of virginity, Marro adds, though
it may not be the direct cause of prostitution, often leads on to
it. "When a door has once been broken in," a prostitute said to
him, "it is difficult to keep it closed." In Sardinia, as A.
Mantegazza and Ciuffo found, prostitutes are very largely
servants from the country who have already been deflowered by men
of their own class.

This civilizational factor of prostitution, the influence of luxury and
excitement and refinement in attracting the girl of the people, as the
flame attracts the moth, is indicated by the fact that it is the
country-dwellers who chiefly succumb to the fascination. The girls whose
adolescent explosive and orgiastic impulses, sometimes increased by a
slight congenital lac