The Decline of Prostitution & The New Morality

One of the most interesting and striking effects of this new morality and the decay of marriage is the obvious decline which has occurred in prostitution. Perhaps it would be more precise to describe the change in terms of the fading appeal that the prostitute has come to have for modern youth. It is not that the economic situation which is the fundamental cause of prostitution has been altered, but that the necessity of the prostitute has diminished with the greater opportunity for sex relations upon the basis of mutual attraction. If the trade of the prostitute has not seriously decreased in connection with men of the old generation, it, nevertheless, has unquestionably declined with the youth of the new. Few men would ever choose the prostitute as a means of expressing their sexual urge if a less indelicate adjustment were attainable. The prostitute has been scorned by the very men who have turned to her for escape.

The story of prostitution is a story of bodies bartered for sustenance. While the history of prostitution had a picturesque career in the life of ancient as well as modern society, it was the Industrial Revolution that turned it from a practice into a plague. The terrific growth of prostitution in the last few centuries attests the evil effects of our economic system and the bankruptcy of the marital institution that has grown out of it. In reference to prostitution and its relationship to monogamous marriage, all men, asserts Bernard de Mandeville, become physically tired of their wives and find the prostitute a very necessary and delectable variation. His own words are striking:

With the advancing independence of women and their revolt against the old morality, the prostitute is beginning to lose her monopoly upon the avenues of erotic escape. With youth this is particularly manifest. At one time the young man had practically no other retreat than that of the brothel. Respectable girls, in the old days, as we have seen, were taught to avoid even the minor intimacies of the kiss before betrothal. The passionate caress was a violation of respectable virtue. In these days of petting and necking, however, and the freedoms that often follow, the difficulties incident to sex expression have largely disappeared. This is well-illustrated by the following quote from New Student, April 7, 1926: 

"Necking in itself has already lowered—and if properly encouraged would still further decrease greatly—the amount of vice among college men. Under the present short-sighted rules, whether it has done the same for college women is doubtful. Twenty or thirty years ago, as some of the boys of that time tell us, it was quite regular and ordinary for a large number of college men to visit the 'tenderloin' districts, with, of course, terrible results. Some fraternities even maintained private institutions of this nature. That was in the pre-necking era. The cloistered students had no contact with decent women, and so they used such means as were at their disposal. But with the advent of the petting-party that has largely changed."

In brief, prostitution has become much less popular among these college men, because, with the loosening of the old morals, sexual experience with women of the new generation is certainly to be preferred.

The young man of today is turning away from the prostitute because he can find his sex expression with the so-called "decent" girl who has adopted the new morals. According to one survey, only 14% of these men had had any contact with the prostitute at all. How important this is one can only realize when he takes into consideration the fact that in the days before the War, when the old morality was still in the stirrups, at least 90% of these men would have had their sex relationships entirely with prostitutes. It has only been with the rise of the new morality that this contamination could be avoided.

What we discover in the decline of prostitution is a realization of the important part that birth control has played in the development of a finer expression of the sexual impulse. While all of the factors which we have considered in connection with the rise of the new morality have been instrumental in bringing about this freer expression of the sexual urge, it has been the invention of birth control methods which has made possible the "geologic shift in the center of gravity from procreation to recreation as the true goal of sex expression." The flapper and the new woman, informed in the ways of enjoying sex as recreation without procreation, are freeing sex expression from its old fetters.

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