The blind or perverse zeal of the moral legislators not only intensifies the evils it aims at curing, but it introduces a whole crop of new evils.
How large these sums are we may estimate by the investigation made by the Vice Commissioners of Chicago. They conclude after careful inquiry that the annual profits of prostitution in the city of Chicago alone amount to between fifteen to sixteen million dollars, and they regard this as "an ultra-conservative estimate." It is true that not all this actually passes through the women's hands and it includes the sales of drinks. If we confine ourselves strictly to the earnings of the girls themselves it is found to work out at an average for each girl of thirteen hundred dollars per annum. This is more than four times as much as the ordinary shop-girl can earn in Chicago by her brains, virtue, and other good qualities. But it is not too much for the prostitute's needs; she is compelled to earn so large an income because the active hostility of society, the law, and the police facilitates the task of all those persons—and they are many—who desire to prey upon her. Thus society, the law, and the police gain nothing for morals by their hostility to the prostitute. On the contrary, they give strength and stability to the very vice they nominally profess to fight against. This is shown in the vital matter of the high rents which it is possible to obtain where prostitution is concerned. These high rents are the direct result of legal and police enactments against the prostitute. Remove these enactments and the rents would automatically fall. The enactments maintain the high rents and so ensure that the mighty protection of capital is on the side of prostitution; the property brings in an exorbitant rate of interest on the capital invested, and all the forces of sound business are concerned in maintaining rents. So gross is the ignorance of the would-be moral legislators—or, some may think, so skilful their duplicity—that the methods by which they