James P. Warbasse opens his 1911 study with a blunt definition: a prostitute is a woman who offers her body for hire for sexual pleasure, distinguishing this from promiscuity without payment or marriage for money. He immediately shifts focus from moral judgment to societal responsibility, arguing that the prostitute is a victim of conditions society maintains. The text proceeds to classify causes into three groups—those affecting both sexes, those affecting males, and those bearing on females—while insisting that two fundamental causes underlie all others: sexual lust in men and poverty in women.

A Classification of Causes

Warbasse structures his argument through a tripartite classification of causes: those affecting both sexes, those affecting first the male, and those bearing especially upon the female. Before enumerating specific factors, he asserts that two fundamental causes—sexual lust on the part of men and poverty on the part of women—underlie all others. Subsidiary causes are then listed, including defective education, which he blames for ignorance of sexual biology and hygiene. He notes that boys and girls learn about sex from vulgar companions, stumbling into love and marriage without vital instruction. Venereal diseases and sexual sins, he argues, are augmented by the ignorance that prudishness insists upon.

Religion as a Contributory Factor

Warbasse does not exempt religious institutions from scrutiny. He points to the Bible's inclusion of salacious and brutal lust as literature used for moral teaching, noting that sexual sinners often quote scripture for their benefit. He also criticizes revival meetings and camp-meetings as sexual orgies among the less enlightened, citing a woman who exclaims, 'Do what you will with this poor vile body, but my soul belongs to Jesus' as an example of dangerous religious fervor. Drawing on his experience in a denominational hospital, he claims that a pitifully large number of sexually ruined young women come from church choirs in small Eastern towns.

The Police Courts as a Prostitution Pipeline

The legal system, Warbasse argues, actively drives women into prostitution. He describes how police courts fine or imprison women for vague offenses like vagrancy, which often means refusing to be blackmailed. If a prostitute pays the fine, she returns to the street needing to recoup her loss; if imprisoned, the brothel replaces her with another girl. First offenders are thrown into cells with criminal women, losing self-respect and feeling too low to rise again. He cites that in New York, 66 percent of arrested women are returned to the street immediately. Warbasse calls for courts to become chambers for scientific diagnosis and social justice rather than ante-chambers to penal methods.

Pathologic and Economic Underpinnings

Beyond social and economic causes, Warbasse identifies pathologic factors such as alcoholism and syphilis in parents causing moral deterioration in offspring, and ill health in women. He frames these as part of a broader argument that society's treatment of prostitutes mirrors ancient superstitions—just as the insane were once chained and the sick thought bewitched, criminals and prostitutes are still treated with outdated methods. He advocates for a scientific and humane approach, suggesting that a better day will dawn when the light of science and humanity is shed upon their misfortunes.

Warbasse's study is a product of its era, using a clinical tone and classification system that reflects early sociological methods. Readers should note that his evidence is drawn from limited sources, including personal hospital experience and a single newspaper case, and that his generalizations about women's character—such as 'her mind is empty of better things'—reveal the period's biases. The text is valuable as a historical document of Progressive-era reform rhetoric, not as a definitive causal analysis.