Towards moral bankruptcy / by Paul Bureau.

  • Bureau, Paul, 1865-1923.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Towards moral bankruptcy / by Paul Bureau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with rivals of an inferior type. 1 I have said enough to demonstrate the power and wide extent of the under¬ takings to promote vice which operate in our country. One of our few politicians who interest themselves in the study of this scourge, M. Ferdinand Dreyfus, member of the Senate, declared at a congress, a few years before his death : “ Prostitution, one of the most grievous of our social scourges, is not only at the present time an isolated fact, freely accepted by certain unhappy women who have been led to it by misery, abancloment, or bad example ; but it has become, by the allurement of the vast profits which its agents can secure, an organization, an industry, a business. It has its recruiting agents, its travellers, its markets. Young girls, even children, are merchandise for import and export, and little ones under ten years old arc especially sought for. This powerful organization is, therefore, not ex¬ clusively national. In connection with similar under¬ takings in foreign countries it maintains complicated and profitable relations. This will be seen when we come to discuss international relations : we need only say that the commercial methods employed are so modern and complete as to fully equal those of the great steel or petrol Trusts or the German Kartell Company for supplying colouring materials.* 'On this point may be read in the Relèvement Social of March 15, 1916, two curious authentic letters, reproduced by that valiant lecturer of the “Ligue française pour le relèvement de la moralité publique,” M. Emile Pourèsy. In a town in the South-east a section of this League organized a specially active propaganda of moral teaching among the young people of the class of 1917, so successfully that not one of them frequented the “maison publique” of the town. The manager was much upset at this, and wrote the Commander of the 30th Company of the — regiment of infantry, two most comic letters in which he asserts the “ respectability and good style” of his establishment. ;The great export houses of which the chiefs reside at New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Ayres, are organized like any commercial com¬ panies. The two principal houses of New York have each a president, vice-president, a secretary, and an administrative council. All have their legal counsel to defend them in case of legal difficulties, and all have agreed to adopt the same telegraphic code of which they only know the cypher. (Documents taken from M. Bèrenger’s articles).