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Morals Among The Unmmoral

Creator: Eleanor Rowland Wembridge (author)
Date: 1926
Publication: The American Mercury
Source: Available at selected libraries

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SOCIAL INHERITANCE is the passing on to the next generation of the accumulated inventions, customs, and modes of thought of the generation which precedes and produces it. That is one way of saying it. A more concrete statement of the same fact is that the Eskimo child responds enthusiastically to the custom of chewing walrus hide, whereas we, in youth, prefer all-day suckers. He considers that a raw fat fish is a holiday feast, whereas we flee shrieking from the cod-liver oil bottle. Is, or is not, whale blubber delicious? The only answer to the question is that blubber is what you like, if you like that sort of thing. And how young must we begin, if we are to thoroughly enjoy fish-oil as a diet? The physical and mental age has not been determined by scientists, but we are safe in saying -- pretty young. The most casual observation tells us that we tend to remain cold to the customs that did not warm us in our infancy, and warm to those that did, whether they happen to be concerned with diet, politics or table manners. Only by a very considerable jolt in later life can our values be reversed, and even then our nervous system is never wholly convinced.

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But if this is true of codes and manners, can it also be true of right and wrong? Here many practical moralists will not agree. "Sin is sin," they protest. "The moral law must be the same for all, for conscience is a universal and infallible guide." Nevertheless, an observer of many undeniable sinners, offenders not only against legal codes but also against supposedly natural law, is obliged to differ. If one attempts to understand the psychology of habitual offenders, and to study it as one would study the strange folkways of the Bushman, or the African pigmy, one finds no lack of codes to be sure, but a set of them as completely different from our own as if their votaries too had inherited an alien culture, which, in point of fact, they have.

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Perhaps no delinquent exhibits more striking variation from accepted standards than the girl of persistently loose morals. She belongs to a sisterhood which has held throughout history a position of some prominence. She has been laughed at, and thundered against, sought in secret, but shunned in the open, exploited, sentimentalized over, and reformed with such difficulty that she remains the despair of the reformer. In fact, almost every approach has been made to her but the simple one of trying to understand her. And understanding her can only be accomplished by the same means that one attempts to understand, say -- the boll weevil or the gasoline engine. Nothing is gained by exhorting the weevil, the engine, or the girl, if they go wrong. To mend their ways they must be understood.

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What is she then, calmly considered as a social fact? The first discovery which one makes is to be expected, namely, that not all of the species are alike. All immoral girls do not have the same code any more than all moral ones. Their one habit of sex irregularity is no more of a bond between them than the bond of respect for morals makes the tastes of a nun identical with those of a pioneer wife who has raised ten children, handled fifty farm hands, and organized the Grange. Both of the latter fulfil their functions within the law, but aside from their possible common ability to feed a crowd, they have probably hardly one habit in common. So with the sex delinquents. Granted their one tendency to a sex life out of wedlock, they not only may have nothing else in common, but, like the rest of us, they are usually violently unsympathetic with any irregularity which varies from their own. They share our human talent of sliding gracefully out from under a law which they ruthlessly apply to others, but again like us, they do it without conscious hypocrisy. They have absorbed uncritically the tradition as it was passed on to them, and they feel among their groups the fine distinctions which an outsider can no more grasp than the non-academic mind can detect a difference between an LL.D. and an LL.B., or the non-musical appreciate the horrors of singing flat.

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II

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So it was with Millie, who at fourteen married a miner of forty-two. The marriage failing to be a success, she eloped to the city with a taxi-driver, with whom she now lives. She has a factory job and supports Joe when he has gambled away his wages. She cannot afford a divorce ($60) nor does she particularly wish to marry Joe. "Once is enough," says Millie, and she is very scornful of Ella, who is also eighteen. Ella was also reared in a mining town, but ran away, not from her husband, but with him. She supports him by prostitution with men whom he provides. "Dirty Dagoes" is Millie's comment on Ella, and she turns a cold shoulder. ' 'I am living with my own husband, which is more than you can say," retorts Ella, "and I make a better living, at that."

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Yet with all their intolerance for each other's standards they have a certain bond, for both girls are fond of their ill-chosen mates. They have nursed them through many a drunk, or welcomed them back after a period at the workhouse. In short, they show the same consideration for their consorts' peculiarities that many a good wife exhibits toward those of an eccentric but well-loved husband. "The poor fella, he's out of work," explains Ella. Emotionally at least, each girl is, for the present, true to the man of her choice and tries to please him. Each succeeds in holding him as well as any other woman is likely to, and is pleased with herself and with him. Both are subject to arrest under our laws -- and get arrested with about the same frequency and inconvenience as they catch a cold and with as little damage to their self-respect.

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By an accident Corinne also got arrested one day, and sat on the same bench with them. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined. Corinne sells goods in an exclusive shop all day, and knows the difference between a local hat and a French model for $50 as well as her customers. She has the same standards of dress that they have, looks as well in high-priced clothes, and suffers as much as they from clothes of inferior make. Her wages, however, do not cover the expense of such a wardrobe, so she consorts with men who can and will help her pay for it. Millie and Ella loudly protest their affection for their men, but Corinne, when asked if her feelings are engaged with any of hers, gives a shrug which says as plainly as words, "Don't be silly!" Other women marry for a living; eventually she intends to do so herself, and she undoubtedly will. In the meantime she intends to dress well by the only means she can -- for if she does not dress well, she will never induce the type of man she wants to marry her. It is a vicious circle, but as simple as arithmetic. In fact, her behavior is based entirely upon bookkeeping. Finance, and not emotion, has been her downfall. The two unpardonable sins, to her, are to be unwashed and to be a fool, and Millie and Ella are obviously both. They glare at her and call her a brass chicken. She glances at them and their grimy consorts and murmurs, "Page the Board of Health." Each girl is as sure of her own code and as disgusted with those of the others as the most righteous of vestals. Even Ella has her boast: she is the only woman of the three who shares her residence with her own husband.

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Still another type is Pauline. Pauline could not get on at home. Her father demanded her pay envelope and her mother would not let her go to dances. So she ran away, got herself a job, and now lives in a rooming-house. Occasionally she goes broke, and then and then only, she picks up a few dollars on the street to pay her rent and get some clothes. "When I had my teeth out it cost an awful lot, and once I wanted Susie to visit me, and her ticket was $40. But I don't hustle much. Honest I don't. I haven't hustled since last November, when I got my fur coat." It is Pauline's boast that she "hustles" only to pay her honest debts.

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Nina's boast is just the reverse. I recall meeting her just after an interview with Pauline, when I still rashly assumed that because both were young, immoral, and poor, their folkways were the same. Nothing could be further from the case. Nina admitted her irregular habits with the utter lack of embarrassment of a clear conscience, but at some remark of mine based upon Pauline's behavior she flared up.

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"You don't think I am low, do you?" the asked, with her first blush rising to her eyebrows.

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"I thought you just told me yourself what you had done," I answered, astonished at this anger.

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"But do you think I take money for it?" she blazed back. "When I go wild, I go for fun, and because I want to. I would never be so low as to take a cent if I starved for it. That's me all over, Missis. What jazzing round I do, I do for nothing."

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Nina is therefore known among the sisterhood as a Charity, and viewed with admiration or contempt, according to their codes. In some standard vocabularies used in mental examinations the word Charity occurs to test the observer's ability to understand abstract terms. Not for some time did I discover why mention of this virtue caused such embarrassment, and why there was often such a hasty denial of any idea as to its meaning. To be a Charity is to be amiable without payment. It is a badge of distinction to the Ninas who glory in their love of gaiety and their indifference to reward -- but "poor boobs" sneer Pauline and Corinne at the scabs of their trade. "Regular guys we are,'' boast the Charitys. It is as sobering to reflect upon the debasement of this fine old word and the probable connotation of charity hospitals and Sisters of Charity to the Ninas of society, as it is from time to time to note the mismanagement of some banking house operating under the title of Equity, Fidelity, or Trust. If words were conscious, they would shudder at their own misuse.

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III

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But whatever the lines which mark their social levels, and whatever their arguments as to what is high and what is low, there is usually an agreement among sex delinquents that racial lines must be recognized in their profession. The white girl who so far forgets herself as to consort voluntarily with men of the black or yellow races must be low indeed. "A coon or a chink, I should say not! I wouldn't lower myself," says Leona with her pert little cackle. It is the only standard that she knows, but she draws her color line with firmness and with pride.

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However, all girls do not share Leona's scruples. Not only that, but some of them have developed a code by which they convince themselves that other races show them a kindness and deference which they cannot expect from their own. They can even demand polite formalities from their social inferiors which would be absurd if they were not so tragic. Girls of this type usually admit their own degradation with complete candor. "Of course I'm low or I wouldn't stand for it," they say with disarming earnestness. And the exhibition of an emotional life so young, yet so petrified, affects at least one observer like the face of a child with sightless eyes. There is profound pathos in finding ashes where the fires of youth should be, and to watch such a girl linger in the doorway, as she turns inevitably to reenter a life from which it is too late to wean her, is like watching a frail ghost reenter her own grave. After such encounters one understands why Dante incased his lowest Hell in ice, below even the reach of fire. Yet there are still lower depths and more grotesque and distorted folkways -- but is it profitable to multiply examples?

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If so, what other codes shall we include? I say nothing of the wayward rich because there are not so many of them, and whatever their habits, the burden of folly falls not on them, but on the poor. I have ignored the girls of high standards led astray -- the Marguerites and Effie Deans of romance, for they present no psychological riddle. Their codes are usual. They have merely been lured from them by emotion. And to introduce a pleasant note let it be said that although they suffer acutely for a time, their story (the novelists notwithstanding) is likely to end happily. Mr. Woolworth fortunately provides wedding rings within the compass of the most modest purse, and some appropriate man is usually glad to marry the pleasant young "widow" and adopt her child.

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I have not included a study of neurotic sex deviations from the normal, for that is a chapter in itself. I have not even talked about the feeble-minded, for though many prostitutes are undoubtedly feeble-minded or near it, there are also many feebleminded girls who are not prostitutes. Just as the dullest matron may be armor-plated against infidelity, so her equally dull daughter may be genuinely horrified at anything not "nice," if she has been brought up that way. If sufficiently tempted, she may violate her conscience, to be sure, but so may her more gifted sister. The psychological fact remains that she has one, and that it conforms to a socially acceptable standard.

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I am far from hazarding an opinion as to what is the proper sex code for anyone, man or woman. But experience shows this: that unless a girl without means can cultivate the habit, when still young, of living on what she earns, or on what is provided by someone legitimately responsible for her, she is certain to become an economic parasite, to pass on her practices to her younger mates, as children bequeath their hopscotch and their marbles, and eventually, like an unwholesome bird that befouls the nest, to defile her own young. Even the Charitys are not so independent as they boast. Their joy-rides, their shows, and their suppers are payment of a substantial sort. There is nothing to hold any of them from the pursuit of luxuries beyond their purses, save only a certain prejudice in favor of chastity. If this prejudice is absent from their culture, can it be hung like an artificial arm where there is not even a joint to strap it to? Can such girls, and their brothers, ever be made to feel our folkways? If so, how shall we begin? To what emotions shall we appeal?

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Do not tell the girls that if they are vicious they will never marry, for they all do. Do not tell them that they will not marry as good a type of man as they would have married anyway, for they will. Do not tell them that other people do not regard what they do as lightly as they do themselves, for their code is but the reflection of their group, and their own group is their world. Do not try to shame them by saying that promiscuity is a trait of dull women, for they will readily agree. They will insist further that only the rich girl can afford to be dull, untrained, and yet fastidious. Do not try to scare them with the probable consequences to their health, for hygiene as well as chastity is absent from their tradition: a short life and a merry one will be their answer. Do not say that it is illegal, but contemplate the force in that argument the next time you are served with a cocktail.

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Curiously enough, the ethical doctrine of the Earl of Shaftesbury, that bad morals are bad taste, comes the nearest to their understanding. Most of them agree that noisy gobbling of soup is not nice. And sometimes we look out of the window at an alley cat of loose morals, and they laugh ruefully at the resemblance. They hate to think that they look just like that to anybody. And if a reduction of the moral law to that of prowling cats and noisy soup is a decking out of that stern goddess in rather scanty drapery, we must cut our garments from what material we have, on the principle that any drapery is better than none at all.

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Thus far, experience points to the fact that the acquiring of a sex code takes place along about the time that the individual acquires language. Unless the language is learned before, say, the age of ten, it is never the mother tongue. It may be learned with an effort, and lived by if necessary, but it will not be felt. It will show an accent, and in moments of stress, the language of infancy will take its place. I have been told of an English lady who, upon meeting a reformed cannibal, congratulated him upon his change of diet.

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"You no longer believe in cannibalism?" she asked.

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"I do not," he replied with a dignified but appraising glance. "Nevertheless," he added, "nothing will ever taste so good as a plump little English woman's thumb!"

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I am told that the lady moved on rather hastily; and if so, her instincts were entirely sound. No technic can be considered learned unless the knowledge has got past the cerebrum, and is accepted by the spinal cord, the muscles, and the solar plexus. Only then will it operate quickly enough to be of value. If the cannibal's brain had accepted the new code, but the nerves of his stomach had not, he was like our young wantons, whose experience may tell them that their habits needed mending, but whose nervous systems do not yet rise in protest against so simple a method of getting a fur coat as prostituting for it.

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I was once one of a group of guests at a church service in a reformatory for young girl offenders. The palms of David had been chosen for the reading, apparently as least likely to offend the religious sensibilities of Catholic, Protestant or Jew, and the psalm which became branded on my memory was the fifty-fifth. As I listened to the girls' glib responses, the sentimental tears came into my eyes. Was it possible that these little castaways from a great city did not see that David had written the psalm about them? "I have seen violence and strife in the city," they chanted. "Deceit and guile depart not from her streets. For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it. Neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide and my acquaintance". . . .

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The words were too appropriate. I hesitated to look up to see the tragic response which I expected. But did I observe any? Not in the least. The unconscious victims snapped off the final curse, "But Thou, O Lord, shalt bring them down into destruction. Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days," and slammed their Bibles into the racks with the dispatch of those who long for dinner. How strange, I reflected, that they do not realize their own tragedy. And then, glancing at the row of well-bred, well-fed friends beside me, I wondered whether we should have noticed any great relevancy if, instead of the fifty-fifth, the psalm had happened to be the second, with its wild verse, "He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision." Should we have felt at all uncomfortable, or lost our appetites? Not we. We, as well as they, were too well-trained in our code to take the words of an overexcited poet seriously. We, too, would have cast covert glances at the clock, smoothed out our ruffles, and closed our Bibles with a yawn. Why assume that any social tragedy includes us among its chorus? Why get upset? How do we know which of His creatures are so sublimely ludicrous that they make even the Lord laugh?