SOCIAL HYGIENE ORGANIZATIONS of 2,000,000 pieces of educational pamphlets, posters, and placards were purchased for distribution among employees. The outstanding feature of the Division's work is the fact that practically all state health officers have agreed to coöperate in the national effort to carry out the American plan for controlling venereal diseases, and are working with the Public Health Service to that end. STATE Boards of HEALTH At present forty-seven state boards of health are coöperating with the Division of Venereal Diseases of the United States Public Health Service in the control of venereal diseases. The only state that has not yet accepted this service is Nevada. In each of the states which have accepted, a commissioned officer of the Public Health Service Reserve has been designated for venereal-disease control work, as a state health department officer. It is the duty of this medical officer to build up strong community effort that will become more and more self-sustaining. He stimulates the establishment of clinics, conducts educational campaigns, coördinates law-enforcement and social-service activities, and by securing the cordial support of the people of the state, makes it possible to secure needed laws and ordinances. It is hoped to decentralize this work as soon as possible in order that each state may stand on its own feet. To accomplish this it is essential that more state funds be made available, and even now some of the most important states are increasing their yearly budgets for fighting venereal diseases. THE AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION The American Social Hygiene Association is the representative national voluntary organization dealing with problems constituting the general field of social hygiene. It is a membership, nonprofiting corporation and is entirely dependent on voluntary subscriptions for funds. It extends its service to individuals and to private and public organizations interested in any branch of social-hygiene work. For the reason that prostitution and the attendant venereal diseases present a health and social menace of immediate urgency, the Asso SOCIAL HYGIENE ORGANIZATIONS ciation is making the campaign against prostitution and the venereal diseases one of its main endeavors. Through its Law Enforcement Department it aids communities in reducing commercialized prostitution to a minimum and in preventing the creation of new prostitutes. It assists in the drafting of laws and ordinances and advises in matters pertaining to the enforcement of laws which fall in the field of social hygiene. Through its Medical Department, it acts as a clearing house for doctors, clinic directors, hospital superintendents, public-health officials, and others interested in the medical phases of the venerealdisease problem. It coöperates with health authorities in encouraging communities to establish model venereal-disease clinics as part of their public-health administration. The function of the Department of Public Information is to inform the public on social-hygiene topics with a view to creating an enlightened public opinion and to securing favorable action on legislative measures and all other matters having to do with social hygiene. Work with women and girls is another field of social hygiene in which the Association renders first-hand service, especially in communities where efforts are being made for the proper care and rehabilitation of delinquent girls and young women. As rational sex education is one of the foremost needs in the social-hygiene movement, the Department of Education is a most important one. Its endeavor is to stimulate the education of both young and old to the true purpose of sex in life,-to displace the old myths and falsehoods with authoritative information on this subject. LAWS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST ILLICIT SEX RELATIONS The profits in prostitution are what make it the tremendous problem it is. These profits are provided by the men customers to the prostitute. In communities where commercialized prostitution thrives, the bulk of these profits pass to third parties, including the pimps, the procurers, and the madams. All these are in the business not for their health but for the money they can get out of it; therefore they must make it pay. If trade becomes dull, they must stimulate it; if customers drop off they must institute new methods of advertising and soliciting. If the business is attacked they must defend it by whatever methods will cause it to continue to exist. Thus an artificial trade is kept stimulated and a demand created that only a continuous body of fresh recruits can supply. But does such a business have to exist? Who are they who defend it? They are those who exploit or protect prostitution for profit-the pimps and the madams who fatten off the prostitutes, the owners and operators of hotels, rooming-houses, and apartment houses, chauffeurs, bell-boys, dance-hall and cabaret proprietors who cater to assignation or prostitution; politicians and officials who encourage or tolerate violations of the laws for political or financial gain; "shyster" lawyers, bail-bond sharks, and doctors, who in the name of justice or public health, defeat justice, corrupt officials, increase disease, and line their pockets with "blood money."* The old time fallacy that no law was effective against prostitution has been exploded. Commercialized prostitution, whether carried on in red-light districts or in scattered houses, has been and can always be, through persistent law enforcement, suppressed. The main thing to do is to strike at its profits. By taking the profits out of prostitution you take commercialized prostitution out of the community. The profiteers seek other means of making money; the prostitutes seek other employment. This can best be done by persistent law enforcement against the activities of third parties who reap the bulk of the profits, the activities of the men customers who provide all the profits and of the prostitutes who receive them in the first instance. Occasional raids and arrests are not feared. They are accepted as incidents of the business. But when 4 For a summary of the arguments for and against red-light districts see P. 43. LAWS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT officials go after the profiteers, the prostitutes, and their male copartners in the same way that they attack other violators of the law, then prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases are reduced to a minimum. The reasons why laws aimed at the repression of prostitution, aside from its commercial aspects, have not been more successful in the past are not hard to find. One reason is that not until recently did society believe it to be desirable or practicable. It held to the doctrine of sex necessity for men, with the resulting double standard of morals. As long as the public believed that there was one code of morals and conduct for men and another for women, laws against the act of prostitution were aimed or enforced, if at all, only against women. But fortunately for future progress and in justice to both sexes, this doctrine has been exploded in as authoritative a manner as possible. 5 At a meeting of the General Medical Board of the Council of National Defense, May 7, 1917, sexual continence was declared "compatible with health and the best prevention of venereal infections." The American Medical Association at its meeting shortly after adopted a resolution embodying the same statement.5 The army and navy have adopted this principle as the basis of their program for the prevention of venereal diseases and the attaining of the highest physical, mental, and moral development of the men. Since science has demonstrated that there is no such difference in the physiology of men and women as to justify a difference in their moral conduct and obligations, and since the war has cleared away much of the mist of ignorance and hypocrisy concerning sex necessity, the laws against prostitution should be made to apply to men as well as to women. Then law enforcement will be less diffi cult because backed by a fair-minded public opinion. Not until 1919, when a standard form of law on this subject was prepared and presented to the legislatures of the several states by the federal government, was prostitution, with few exceptions, an offense of which a man could be guilty. Now, under this law, a man who has intercourse with a prostitute can be punished as well as the prostitute herself. Eleven states have followed the recommendations of the government and have remodeled their prostitution laws according to this standard form.® 5 For text of resolutions, see pp. 46 and 48. 6 For a copy of this law see p. 55. The eleven states above referred to |