price of the dishonor of other women, because at such a price virtue loses
all moral worth. When they read that, as Goncourt stated, "the most
luxurious articles of women's _trousseaux_, the bridal chemises of girls
with dowries of six hundred thousand francs, are made in the prison of
Clairvaux,"[216] they see the symbol of the intimate dependence of our
luxurious virtue on our squalid vice. And while they accept the
historical and sociological evidence which shows that prostitution is an
inevitable part of the marriage system which still survives among us, they
ask whether it is not possible so to modify our marriage system that it
shall not be necessary to divide feminine humanity into "disreputable"
women, who make sacrifices which it is dishonorable to make, and
"respectable" women, who take sacrifices which it cannot be less
dishonorable to accept.

Prostitutes, a distinguished man of science has said (Duclaux,
_L'Hygiene Sociale_, p. 243), "have become things which the
public uses when it wants them, and throws on the dungheap when
it has made them vile. In its pharisaism it even has the
insolence to treat their trade as shameful, as though it were not
just as shameful to buy as to sell in this market." Bloch
(_Sexualleben unserer Zeit_, Ch. XV) insists that prostitution
must be ennobled, and that only so can it be even diminished.
Isidore Dyer, of New Orleans, also argues that we cannot check
prostitution unless we create "in the minds of men and women a
spirit of tolerance instead of intolerance of fallen women." This
point may be illustrated by a remark by the prostitute author of
the _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_. "If the profession of yielding
the body ceased to be a shameful one," she wrote, "the army of
'unfortunates' would diminish by four-fifths--I will even say
nine-tenths. Myself, for example! How gladly would I take a
situation as companion or governess!" "One of two things," wrote
the eminent sociologist Tarde ("La Morale Sexuelle," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, January, 1907), "either prostitution
will disappear through continuing to be dishonorable and will be
replaced by some other institution which will better remedy the
defects of monogamous marriage, or it will survive by becoming
respectable, that is to say, by making itself respected, whether
liked or disliked." Tarde thought this might perh