Urban Reform and Sexual Vice in Progressive-Era Philadelphia by James H. Adams (review)

In 1913 Walter Lippmann called Progressive Era moral reformers “well meaning, but unmeaning,” arguing that they tried to solve the human problem of prostitution by neglecting the realities of human nature and the problems of the day. James H. Adams takes the same view in this book about reform and public policy in Philadelphia. Adams explores the intersections of prostitution, moral reform, and municipal government in an attempt to understand why so much concerted activity produced so few fundamental changes. He concludes that the forces for reform created archetypes that bore little relation to reality and that complicated movements for change because the public believed the archetypes and because the distance from reality made meaningful change impossible.

After reviewing earlier archetypes of the “fallen woman” and the “endangered maiden” and exploring the perception of the sexually dangerous city at the turn of the century, Adams comes to 1910 and the heart of his book (16, 19, 40–41). By this time, public opinion had awakened to the necessity of closing the Tenderloin vice district of the city. To help move this along, Philadelphia reformers exploited the nationwide white slave hysteria. They published accounts of young, innocent girls who were lured to dangerous cities by members of the Vice Syndicate. There, procurers kidnapped the girls and sold them to brothels, where, broken by sexual and physical assault, they consented to surrender to the syndicate (54). Reformers claimed that “the existence of the Tenderloin was tangible proof of the syndicate and the best thing to do was eliminate the district” (57). This led to continual raids and arrests that failed to secure convictions. Some blamed the police for this futility, some blamed the court system, and some blamed the Republican machine that controlled Philadelphia. In 1912 a Democrat was elected mayor, and a new era of reform commenced.

Despite the prevalence of articles about the white slave in both reform and popular media, when the new mayor’s vice commission released its findings in 1913, attention was instead placed on police and judicial corruption, which, the commission argued, allowed prostitution to “run rampant” in the city (78). In response, the police force was reorganized, and a specialized Misdemeanants Court was created to hear prostitution cases. The court and social service providers acted as “surrogate parents,” a strategy that placed prostitutes back in the earlier archetype of endangered, morally weak girls who needed protection from their own misguided impulses (81). Adams argues that this was a much more popular idea than other Progressive critiques, which would have involved remaking the social and economic structures that made prostitution a viable alternative for women. However, those salacious stories—for years flaunted by the reformers— argued that fallen women were beyond redemption and would “infect” decent neighborhoods. As a result, residents refused to allow homes or retraining programs for former prostitutes to be built in their neighborhoods, and the promise of the special court was never fulfilled (87–89). Moreover, as time went on and no actual cases fitting the parameters of the white slave narrative appeared, people began to question the arguments and motives of the reformers and their Democratic allies (92).

By 1916 the Democratic-reform coalition had lost much of its power (95). The federal government, as part of its work to protect the morals of servicemen, argued that Philadelphia was a moral cesspool that needed a massive cleanup (135). Adams shows that these charges were less about actual conditions in the city than about the Democrats attempting to portray the resurgent Republican government as ineffective and corrupt. Moreover, focus on commercial vice obscured the real challenges posed by a new archetype. Adams also describes how reformers deployed the archetype of the “charity girl” in an attempt to reconcile the alleged inherent chaste morality of women with a perceived increase in promiscuity (146–47). While promiscuous, the charity girl did not accept monetary compensation for her services and strongly resisted...