Heredity or Environment 137
and so easily applied that no man and woman, who have any regard for their safety, can find any excuse for neglecting these sanitary precautions.
The alarmist, who contends that between ninety and one hundred per cent of all prostitutes have gonorrhea or syphilis, or both, is in exactly the same category as his brother alarmist, who claimed that all masturbators were headed for the insane asylum, and that practically all diseases known to man, with the possible exception of wry neck and ingrowing toenails, were due to masturbation. The best informed specialists in genito-urinary practice nowadays contend that not more than five or ten per cent of prostitutes are infected with venereal disease.
Prostitutes know too well that their continued prosperity, and their continued earning power depend upon scrupulous cleanliness and the careful and intelligent use of venereal prophylaxis, as well as prevenceptives. The prostitute has a well-defined fear of pregnancy, as she has of venereal infection, and takes the best of care to escape both these troubles.
As a consequence, it is more likely that, as long as our present form of society exists, she will be a component part of this social structure.
Heredity or Environment
Dr. Arthur E. Morgan, head of the Antioch College, makes a strong point for environment when he contrasts the progress of the Negro races in Africa and America. The American is totally unlike his African brother, due to many years of living in American environment. There is nothing of the American Negro's pathos in the African, and little or no commercial, artistic or professional progress, such as is found among thousands of our splendid Negroes.
Inasmuch as there can be no biological or racial difference between the full-blooded Negro and his African slave grandfather, we may infer that the cause of their differences is environmental.
On the other hand, many students of biology contend that when a child arrives on these banks and shoals of time his