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Full Description
This book examines the intersection and interplay between Progressive-Era rhetoric regarding commercialized vice and the realities of prostitution in early-twentieth-century Philadelphia. Arguing that any study of commercial sexual vice in a historical context is difficult given the paucity of evidence, this work instead focuses on reformers' construction of a cultural view of prostitution, which Adams argues was based more upon their perceptions of the trade than on reality itself. Looking at the urban core of the city, Progressive reformers saw vice, immorality, and decay—but as they frequently had little face-to-face interaction with prostitutes plying their trade, they were forced to construct culturally fueled archetypes to explain what they believed they saw. Ultimately, reformers in Philadelphia were battling against a rhetorical creation of their own design, and any study of anti-vice reform in the early twentieth century tells us more about the relationship between activists and the government than it does about vice itself.
Contents
Chapter 1: American Maidens and Fallen Women: Defining the Gilded Age Prostitute
Chapter 2: Schools of Vice or Virtue: Constructing the Tenderloin
Chapter 3: Reform through Eternal Vigilance: White Slavery and the Vice Commission
Chapter 4: Arguing Success: Deconstructing the Vice Syndicate
Chapter 5: The Color of Vice: "Negro Tenderloins" in Camden and Bethel Court
Chapter 6: The Politics of Prostitution: The Rise of the "Charity Girl"
Chapter 7: Back to Basics: The Unseen Prostitute, 1919-1940
