American Antiprostitution and Social Hygiene Movements
Sex worker rights diminished considerably during the social hygiene movement, 1900-1945, and the suppression of commercialized vice. Despite its association with Progressive social reform, this criminalization of prostitution and red light districts punished sex workers and landlords, while failing to deliver real antipoverty relief for the lower class and immigrant women who were the supposed victims of prostitution and white slave traffic. Presented here is rare ephemera from local and national campaigns to end prostitution, 1914-1942.
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[O]n the illegality and inexpediency of segregating commercialized vice in St. Louis
Committee of One-hundred for the Suppression of Commercialized Vice in St. Louis
1914
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How We are Defending the Health of Our Soldiers and Sailors: 309 Houses of Shame Closed
California State Law Enforcement and Protective League; Committee for the Redlight Abatement Bill; Hichborn, Franklin, et al.
1914-1918
Socialist antiprostitution movement ephemera together with an otherwise unrecorded illus. antiprostitution pamphlet for soldiers.
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The Light. No. 155
World's Purity Association
1923
Social hygiene and anti-lynching.
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Thirteen Pamphlets, Offprints, and Reprints from the American Social Hygiene Association
1917-1942
The "white light" of scientific inquiry applied to antiprostitution and social welfare campaigns.
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Techniques of Law Enforcement Against Prostitution: A Manual [...]
National Advisory Police Committee to the Federal Security Administrator
1943
Tactical suggestions ("not for general distribution") for sting operations and vice squads.
