Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 10.

NOT FALL­EN--BUT EN­SLAVED.

The Re­port of the Com­mis­sion af­fords the fol­low­ing in­struc­tive ac­count of the dif­fer­ence in the moral and so­cial sta­tus be­tween the pros­ti­tute of the East and West:

“In ap­proach­ing the sub­ject of pros­ti­tu­tion, as it is found in Hong Kong at the present day, it is ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary for a full and just com­pre­hen­sion of it, to keep in mind two dis­tinct con­sid­er­ations. One is the al­most to­tal iden­ti­ty of the whole sys­tem of pros­ti­tu­tion, which since times im­memo­ri­al is an es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tion all over the large em­pire of Chi­na. The oth­er point to be kept in mind is the rad­ical dif­fer­ence which dis­tin­guish­es the per­son­al char­ac­ter, the life and the sur­round­ings of Chi­nese pros­ti­tutes from all that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the pros­ti­tutes of Eu­rope.” ... “At the present day the Chi­nese pros­ti­tutes of Hong Kong have but very lit­tle to dis­tin­guish them, ei­ther in the past, present, or fu­ture of their per­son­al lives, or in their po­si­tion and sur­round­ings, from the pros­ti­tutes of the 18 provinces of Chi­na.... Those of the pros­ti­tutes of Hong Kong who are in­mates of broth­els li­censed for for­eign­ers on­ly, or who live in sly broth­els for for­eign­ers, have adopt­ed a dif­fer­ent style of dress, but are oth­er­wise in no es­sen­tial point dif­fer­ent­ly sit­uat­ed from pros­ti­tutes in Chi­na, ex­cept that the in­mates of broth­els li­censed for for­eign­ers are sub­ject to com­pul­so­ry med­ical ex­am­ina­tion, and con­se­quent­ly far more de­spised by their coun­try­men and even oth­er pros­ti­tutes.”

“Pros­ti­tutes in Eu­rope are, as a gen­er­al rule, fall­en wom­en, the vic­tims of se­duc­tion, or pos­si­bly of in­nate vice. Be­ing the out­casts of so­ci­ety, and hav­ing lit­tle, if any, prospect of be­ing again ad­mit­ted in­to de­cent and re­spectable cir­cles of life, de­prived al­so of their own self-​re­spect as well as the re­gards of their rel­atives, oc­ca­sion­al­ly even trou­bled with qualms of con­science, they most­ly dread think­ing of their fu­ture, and seek obliv­ion in ex­cess­es of bois­ter­ous dis­si­pa­tion. The Chi­nese pros­ti­tutes of Hong Kong are an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent set of peo­ple.... Very few of them can be called fall­en wom­en; scarce­ly any of them are the vic­tims of se­duc­tion, ac­cord­ing to the En­glish sense of the term, re­fined or un­re­fined. The great ma­jor­ity of them are owned by pro­fes­sion­al broth­el-​keep­ers or traders in wom­en in Can­ton or Macao, have been brought up for the pro­fes­sion, and trained in var­ious ac­com­plish­ments suit­ed to broth­el life.... They fre­quent­ly know nei­ther fa­ther nor moth­er, ex­cept what they call a 'pock­et-​moth­er,' that is, the wom­an who bought them from oth­ers.... They feel of course that they are the bought prop­er­ty of their pock­et-​moth­er or keep­er, but they know al­so that this is the feel­ing of al­most ev­ery oth­er wom­an in Chi­na, li­able as each is to be sold, by her own par­ents or rel­atives, to be the wife or con­cu­bine of a man she nev­er sets eyes on be­fore the wed­ding day, or li­able, as the case may be, to be pledged or sold, by her par­ents or rel­atives, to serve as a do­mes­tic slave in a strange fam­ily.... They have the chance, if they are pret­ty and ac­com­plished, of be­ing wooed ... and they may look for­ward with tol­er­able cer­tain­ty to be­ing made the sec­ond, or third, or fourth, or at any rate the fa­vorite wife of some wealthy gen­tle­man. If not pos­sessed of spe­cial at­trac­tions or wealthy lovers, they look for­ward to be­ing tak­en out of the broth­el by an hon­est de­vot­ed man to share the lot of a poor man's wife. Or they may en­deav­or to save mon­ey by singing, mu­sic and pros­ti­tu­tion com­bined, and not on­ly to pur­chase their free­dom, but to set up for them­selves, buy­ing, rear­ing, and sell­ing girls to act as ser­vants or con­cu­bines or pros­ti­tutes, or they may fi­nal­ly come to keep broth­els as man­agers for wealthy cap­ital­ists or spec­ula­tors. There is fur­ther a cer­tain pro­por­tion of pros­ti­tutes in Hong Kong who have, by the hand of their own par­ents or hus­bands, been mort­gaged or sold in­to tem­po­rary servi­tude as pros­ti­tutes, or who of their own will and ac­cord act as pros­ti­tutes un­der per­son­al agree­ment with a broth­el-​keep­er, for a def­inite ad­vance of a sum of mon­ey, re­quired to res­cue the fam­ily, or some mem­ber of it, from some great calami­ty or per­ma­nent ru­in.”

“There is, how­ev­er, one class of wom­en in Hong Kong who can scarce­ly be called pros­ti­tutes, and who have no par­al­lel ei­ther in Chi­na, out­side the Treaty Ports, or in Eu­rope. They are gen­er­al­ly called 'pro­tect­ed wom­en.' They may orig­inal­ly have come forth from one or oth­er of the above-​men­tioned class­es of pros­ti­tutes, or may be the off­spring of pro­tect­ed wom­en....”

The Re­port de­scribes the sit­ua­tion of the “pro­tect­ed wom­an” in the fol­low­ing terms:

“She re­sides in a house rent­ed by her pro­tec­tor, who lives gen­er­al­ly in an­oth­er part of the town; she re­ceives a fixed salary from her pro­tec­tor, and sub­lets ev­ery avail­able room to in­di­vid­ual sly pros­ti­tutes, or to wom­en keep­ing a sly broth­el, no vis­itor be­ing ad­mit­ted un­less he have some in­tro­duc­tion or se­cret pass-​words. If an in­spec­tor of broth­els at­tempts to en­ter, he is qui­et­ly in­formed that this is not a broth­el, but the pri­vate fam­ily res­idence of Mr. So and So.... This sys­tem makes the sup­pres­sion of sly broth­els an im­pos­si­bil­ity.... The prin­ci­pal points of dif­fer­ence be­tween the var­ious class­es of Chi­nese pros­ti­tutes of Hong Kong and the pros­ti­tutes of Eu­rope amount there­fore to this, that Chi­nese pros­ti­tu­tion is es­sen­tial­ly a bar­gain in mon­ey and based on a na­tion­al sys­tem of fe­male slav­ery.”

“It must not be sup­posed, how­ev­er, from what is said above, that the Chi­nese, as a peo­ple, view pros­ti­tu­tion as a mat­ter of moral in­dif­fer­ence. On the con­trary, the lit­er­ature, the re­li­gions, the laws and the pub­lic opin­ion of Chi­na, all join in con­demn­ing pros­ti­tu­tion as im­moral, and in co-​op­er­ation to keep it un­der a cer­tain check. The lit­er­ature of the Con­fu­cian­ists, which, as re­gards pu­ri­ty and ut­ter ab­sence of im­moral sug­ges­tions, stands un­ri­valled by any oth­er na­tion in the world, does not coun­te­nance pros­ti­tu­tion in any form.... The laws and pub­lic opin­ion ... agree in keep­ing pros­ti­tu­tion rigid­ly out of sight. Al­though the Chi­nese are a Pa­gan na­tion, they have no de­ifi­ca­tion of vice in their tem­ples, no in­de­cent shows in their the­atres, no or­gies in their hous­es of pub­lic en­ter­tain­ment, no parad­ing of lewd wom­en in their streets.... In short, as far as out­ward and pub­lic ob­ser­va­tion goes, Chi­na presents a more vir­tu­ous ap­pear­ance than most Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.”

The re­port goes on to show that nev­er­the­less the prac­tice of polygamy,

“leav­ing the child­less con­cu­bines li­able to be sold or sent adrift at any mo­ment, the law of in­her­itance ne­glect­ing daugh­ters in favour of sons,” and “the uni­ver­sal prac­tice of buy­ing and sell­ing fe­males com­bined with the sys­tem of do­mes­tic servi­tude,” makes the sup­pres­sion of pros­ti­tu­tion dif­fi­cult. “This in­ter­mix­ture of fe­male slav­ery with pros­ti­tu­tion has been no­ticed in Hong Kong at the very time when the Leg­is­la­ture first at­tempt­ed to deal with Chi­nese pros­ti­tu­tion.”

We now un­der­stand the na­ture of this wretched form of slav­ery as car­ried on at Hong Kong. There did not ex­ist a class of wom­en brought to the pitiable plight of pros­ti­tu­tion by the wiles of the se­duc­er, or through the mishap of a lapse from virtue, af­ter which all doors to re­form are prac­ti­cal­ly closed against such, as in West­ern civ­iliza­tion, nor were there those known to have fall­en through in­nate per­ver­si­ty; but such as ex­ist­ed among the Chi­nese were lit­er­al slaves, in the full sense of that word. From the stand­point of these of­fi­cials, for the most part, pros­ti­tu­tion was nec­es­sary. This was plain­ly de­clared in many of­fi­cial doc­uments. The fact that they li­censed broth­els proves al­so that pros­ti­tu­tion was con­sid­ered nec­es­sary. And since nec­es­sary, if the means failed where­by broth­els in the Oc­ci­dent are main­tained, then they must be main­tained by Ori­en­tal means,--which was slav­ery. Un­der such cir­cum­stances, to li­cense pros­ti­tu­tion meant, from the very na­ture of the case, to li­cense slav­ery. To en­cour­age pros­ti­tu­tion, as it al­ways is en­cour­aged by the Con­ta­gious Dis­eases Acts, meant to en­cour­age slav­ery. Hence they rea­soned, and de­clared--to use the lan­guage of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al, Ce­cil C. Smith--that it was “use­less to try and deal with the ques­tion of the free­dom of Chi­nese pros­ti­tutes by law or by any Gov­ern­ment reg­ula­tion. From all the sur­round­ings the thing is im­prac­ti­ca­ble.”

It must be ad­mit­ted that the con­di­tions at Hong Kong fa­vored the de­vel­op­ment of so­cial im­pu­ri­ty. From the mo­ment of British oc­cu­pa­tion, and be­fore, in fact, there were at that place large num­bers of un­mar­ried sol­diers and sailors, many of very loose morals; al­so many men in civ­il and mil­itary po­si­tions as of­fi­cials, and nu­mer­ous mer­chants, etc., most of them sep­arat­ed far from their fam­ilies and the re­straints that sur­round­ed them at home. On the Chi­nese side, there were men ac­cus­tomed to deal with their wom­en as chat­tels, will­ing to sell them to the for­eign­ers.

But we need to in­quire a lit­tle fur­ther in­to the mat­ter be­fore con­ced­ing that be­cause a thing will al­most in­evitably take place, there­fore it is best to li­cense it in or­der to keep it with­in bounds. The su­per­fi­cial sophist says: “Pros­ti­tu­tion al­ways has ex­ist­ed and al­ways will ex­ist. Painful as the fact is, such is the frailty of hu­man na­ture. You can­not make men moral by act of par­lia­ment, and it is fool­ish to try. We will have to li­cense the thing, and thus con­trol it as best we can. That is the on­ly prac­ti­cal way to deal with this evil.” Such rea­son­ing as this ex­hibits the most con­fused no­tions as to the na­ture of law.

No law is ev­er en­act­ed ex­cept with the ex­pec­ta­tion that an of­fense against it will take place. Law an­tic­ipates trans­gres­sion as much as li­cense; but law pro­vides a _check_ up­on of­fens­es and li­cense pro­vides an _in­cite­ment_ to them. “The law was not made for a righ­teous man, but for the law­less and dis­obe­di­ent.” Have not mur­der and steal­ing al­ways ex­ist­ed? Are they not like­ly to ex­ist in spite of laws against them, so long as hu­man na­ture re­mains so frail? Then why not li­cense _them_ in or­der to keep _them_ un­der con­trol? It is per­fect­ly ap­par­ent to all that to li­cense mur­der and steal­ing; would be the surest way of al­low­ing them to get quick­ly be­yond con­trol. “But you can­not make men moral by act of par­lia­ment, and it is fool­ish to try; to put a man in jail will not change him from a thief in­to an hon­est man.” “But,” you re­ply, “we do not pun­ish men for steal­ing and for mur­der for their own good, but for the good of the com­mu­ni­ty at large.” Cer­tain­ly. Then what be­comes of the ar­gu­ment that be­cause men will not be­come pure by act of par­lia­ment they are to be al­lowed to com­mit their depre­da­tions un­mo­lest­ed? The pri­ma­ry ob­ject of law is not re­for­ma­to­ry but pro­tec­tive,--for the vic­tims of law­less­ness.

Our great Law-​Giv­er, Je­sus Christ, ad­mit­ted a cer­tain ne­ces­si­ty of evil, but He did not say, “there­fore li­cense it, to keep it with­in bounds.” He said, “It _must needs be_ that of­fens­es come.” But His rem­edy for keep­ing the of­fens­es with­in bounds was, “woe to that man by whom the of­fense cometh.” As in­evitably as the of­fense was com­mit­ted so in­vari­ably must the pun­ish­ment fall on the of­fend­er's head. That is the on­ly way to keep any evil with­in bounds. This is the prin­ci­ple that un­der­lies all law.

These Hong Kong of­fi­cials who be­lieved in the li­cens­ing of broth­el slav­ery and brought it about, have much to say about the “un­for­tu­nate crea­tures” who were the vic­tims of men. But if the ad­vo­cate of li­cense is self-​de­ceived in his at­ti­tude to­ward this so­cial evil, we need not be de­ceived in him. One does not pro­pose a li­cense as a rem­edy for an evil, ex­cept as led to that view by se­cret sym­pa­thy with the evil. A li­cense of an evil is nev­er pro­posed ex­cept­ing up­on the men­tal ac­qui­es­cence in that evil.

British of­fi­cials who li­censed im­moral hous­es at Hong Kong did not wish the lib­er­tine to be dis­turbed in his depre­da­tions. The Chi­nese mer­chants were able to see this fact if those of­fi­cials were not ready to ad­mit it even to them­selves. They knew how to throw a stone that would se­cure their own glass hous­es. Hence they said in their memo­ri­al to the Gov­er­nor:

“From 80 to 90 per cent of all these pros­ti­tutes in Hong Kong were brought in­to these [li­censed] broth­els by pur­chase, as is well known to ev­ery­body. If buy­ing and sell­ing is a mat­ter of crim­inal char­ac­ter the prop­er thing would be first of all, to abol­ish this evil (con­nect­ed with the broth­els). But how comes it that since the first es­tab­lish­ment of the Colony down to the present day the same old prac­tice pre­vails in these li­censed broth­els, and has nev­er been for­bid­den or abol­ished?”

It is to be not­ed that none of the of­fi­cials at Hong Kong ac­cused the Chi­nese mer­chants of slan­der in say­ing that from 80 to 90 per cent of the thou­sands of pros­ti­tutes in the Colony were ab­so­lute slaves. The Gov­ern­ment was placed in a very awk­ward po­si­tion by this chal­lenge on the part of the Chi­nese. How could a Gov­ern­ment that held slaves in its li­censed broth­els for­bid Chi­nese res­idents hold­ing slaves in their homes? But the Gov­er­nor did not pro­pose to be com­pro­mised. He wrote to the Sec­re­tary of State at Lon­don: “I be­lieve I on­ly an­tic­ipate your in­struc­tions, in giv­ing or­ders that the law, what­ev­er may be the con­se­quences to the broth­el sys­tem, should be strict­ly en­forced so as to se­cure the free­dom of the wom­en.” But he reck­oned with­out his host. The Sec­re­tary of State did not stand by the Gov­er­nor. So far as the records show, the Gov­er­nor and Chief Jus­tice stood alone, his en­tire Ex­ec­utive Coun­cil tak­ing the op­pos­ing side. What was to be done?