Conclusions

THE LONG TRANSITION from regulated prostitution to abolition was complicated by issues and ironies that dated from the mid-nineteenth century. People in Salt Lake City found many uses and meanings for prostitutes, prostitution, and reform over those decades, and people have continued to do so ever since.

      One of the first ironies concerned the changes in the city that initially attracted substantial numbers of prostitutes. The gentile men who demanded a share of economic and political power saw railroads and mining as essential for Utah's future. Patrick Edward Connor viewed these industries not only as the keys to prosperity but also as weapons to break Mormon hegemony by attracting overwhelming numbers of gentiles. Female activists like Cornelia Paddock also promoted economic development as an indirect means of purifying Utah's moral climate and saving women from plural marriage. By encouraging miners and railroad workers to come to Utah, those activists abetted a different violation of their vaunted moral code, since those same men provided a customer base for the prostitutes that arrived with them. While Mormons and some gentiles, especially women, professed horror at the presence of prostitutes, some gentile and probably some Mormon men actually welcomed prostitution as a sign the city was becoming more modern and American.

      Women like Kate Flint and those who worked in her brothel were almost certainly indifferent toward the polygamy conflict except for the few times when it directly affected them. Most women who resorted to prostitution probably did so temporarily, out of desperation and lack of options, but some saw financial opportunity in the developing city. Women like Flint, Emma DeMarr, and Sadie Noble established a network of brothels and cribs in the heart of the business district that lasted for decades. They provided sexual services much in demand while they earned profits for themselves and a broad spectrum of businesspeople. Those women who sold sex contributed to the economic, political, and social life of the community and, in a very real sense, the "Americanization" of Salt Lake City. While gentile and Mormon activists used prostitution as a weapon against each other, the antipathies created during the struggle over polygamy may have made it somewhat easier for women to sell sex by hampering effective cooperation against prostitution.

      The responses to prostitution were also marked by multiple ironies and uses. The relatively few non-Mormon female activists in 1870s and 1880s Salt Lake were far more concerned about the supposed threat licentious Mormon males posed to pure womanhood and the Christian home than that posed by a handful of prostitutes on Commercial Street. Mormons were also more concerned about the antipolygamy campaign, although they condemned prostitution as a corrupting influence upon their virtuous community brought by those who opposed their marital practices. After an early attempt at abolishing prostitution, however, LDS city authorities adopted a regulationist policy similar to that in cities across the nation. Brigham Young Hampton's seriocomic effort to use prostitutes to discredit antipolygamists embarrassed Mormons and probably further entrenched regulation. The Saints concentrated on enforcing their moral code within their membership while they parried gentile attacks on LDS morality by constructing a myth of Salt Lake City's former purity under all-Mormon rule. Some Mormons may have also realized that prostitution provided them with a convenient pretext: they could blame gentiles for introducing and supporting immoral women (who had proved difficult to eliminate at any rate), while at the same time those Mormons could share in the economic and social benefits of prostitution.

      The "Americanization" of Salt Lake City after 1890 included the Mormon retreat from plural marriage, a successful gentile attempt to share political and economic power, and the increasing participation of Mormons in capitalistic business practices. These changes had an ironic dual effect upon prostitution: first, regulation was strengthened, as businessmen and municipal authorities of all descriptions defended the profits prostitution earned and the social order regulation supposedly protected. Prostitutes and madams welcomed regulation, although the system only benefited those of the highest status and respectable society still considered them criminals and undesirables.

      But "Americanization" also eventually allowed some Mormons and gentiles to leave the polygamy conflict behind and make common cause against prostitution. The effort to rescue prostitutes was part of some women's attempts to construct their version of a moral community. Reformers' efforts to rescue individual women from brothels or to fight the institution of prostitution were largely unavailing. The women who operated rescue homes did succeed in aiding a small number of individual women. In fact, they were the only reformers who combined sympathy for prostitutes with sustained (albeit largely ineffective) action to improve their lot. The rescue effort barely made a dent in prostitution, however, and was constantly plagued by a shortage of funds and the opposition of respectable neighbors. More and more reformers abandoned the hands-on rescue effort in favor of repressive state action to abolish prostitution.

      Those reformers who demanded abolition also had little success until the campaign against the Stockade. Prostitutes and madams effectively shaped the regulation system and used techniques of mobility and anonymity to stay in business. Male economic and political elites provided powerful support for regulation. Salt Lake's would-be social purity activists also kept splitting along Mormon-gentile lines over the polygamy issue. For example, when activists were seemingly poised to take united action (however limited and ineffective it likely would have been) in the wake of the murder on Victoria Alley, the election of Reed Smoot reopened old wounds.

      The reemergence of polygamy as an issue in Salt Lake City politics during the Smoot controversy led to yet another ironic dual effect. First, an influential madam, Dora Topham, created a new restricted prostitution district—the apotheosis of regulation—at the behest of an avowedly anti-Mormon political party. But Topham's Stockade and the waning of polygamy spurred the emergence of an effective, broad-based abolition alliance that brought down the district and the party. Gentile and Mormon reformers in the new century gradually came to believe that a modern, American city must be free of sexual immorality, especially prostitution. Some Mormons, consciously or not, used the fight against regulated prostitution to prove their mainstream moral credentials. Reformers used both traditional moral arguments and newer scientific ones to demand an end to regulation. Many reformers no longer considered fallen women the victims of lustful men to be rescued and converted back into "true women." Instead, the victim was society itself, and the solution was abolition. The needs or circumstances of the women who sold sex were largely ignored.

      The abolition alliance helps demonstrate the degree to which Mormons and gentiles had reconciled by 1918 and how far the state's "peculiar people" had come into the mainstream of American society. Female progressive reformers were instrumental in this fight, but they fell well short of achieving everything they wanted. While they helped create new institutions and pass legislation to repress prostitution, they certainly did not succeed in implementing a single standard of morality. Nor did they achieve the economic gains for women that might have made prostitution unnecessary.

      The change from regulation to abolition had largely negative effects upon prostitutes. While their lives and livelihoods had never been easy and were often dangerous, regulation offered some advantages. With the end of regulation, prostitutes found that although demand for their services remained strong, they had to bear the burdens of prostitution without those advantages. The end of regulation forced underground (or to the streets) the women who sold sex, but it probably did not significantly lessen their numbers. ¹ The slow pace of improvement in genuine economic opportunities for women (or working-class persons of either gender, for that matter) guaranteed that there would always be women desperate enough to sell sex.

      The arguments surrounding prostitution and polygamy established in the nineteenth century are still evident today. Despite the antipolygamy campaign, the LDS Church's repeated and highly public renunciations of plural marriage, and the Church's extensive efforts to eliminate the practice among its members, some people still live in polygamy. An unknown number of "fundamentalists," not associated with (and condemned by) the mainstream LDS Church, practice polygamy in Utah and surrounding states. After a flurry of prosecutions and publicity in the 1940s and 1950s and violence within polygamist circles in the 1980s, the issue seemed to subside. Polygamy resurfaced in 1998 when a young woman accused her father of beating her when she refused to become the plural wife of a relative. ² The arrest and conviction of Tom Green, the self-described husband of five wives, ignited a highly public debate that features arguments virtually identical to those from the nineteenth-century contest. ³ The rhetorical link between polygamy and prostitution seems to have withered, however, despite an occasional letter to the editor arguing that both practices constitute only slightly different forms of illicit sex. ⁴

      The cycles of police raid and prostitute persistence established long ago are also still evident. In an example reminiscent of century-old patterns, women from throughout the West reportedly came to Salt Lake to take advantage of lax enforcement in 1995. "Asha" and "Unique" told a reporter that they were in San Francisco when they heard that Salt Lake had no jail room for prostitutes, so they quickly made the trip. ⁵ Salt Lake city and county officers declared a joint campaign against prostitution (less than ten days before a mayoral election). The campaign included targeting patrons, although the officers complained that prosecuting customers was much more difficult and expensive. ⁶ While the antiprostitution campaign seemed to bear some short-term fruit, within a month police and citizens complained that the "circuit" prostitutes were back. ⁷ Women still use traditional tactics to stay in business and face familiar risks (as well as deadly newer ones such as AIDS) while authorities in Salt Lake City continue to wrestle with their responses to prostitution.

      These events indicate that the contested meanings and uses of prostitutes, prostitution, and reform are still with us, and will likely be for many years. Hundreds of women will make a more or less voluntary choice to sell sex in Salt Lake City and will face the dangers of abusive customers, disease, and legal prosecution. Men will use them for sex; men and sometimes women will use them for profits and votes. Respectable society will treat prostitutes as criminal threats and will offer them little empathy or assistance. The roles prostitutes played in building the community and closing the Mormon-gentile gap will continue to be overlooked. And despite their lack of power, prostitutes will persevere.

Notes

      1. On similar processes throughout the country, see Hobson, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 156-59; Rosen, "Epilogue," in Lost Sisterhood; and Shumsky and Springer, "San Francisco's Zone of Prostitution," p. 73. See also Groth, Living Downtown, pp. 120-2

      2. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, pp. 177-217; Alexander, Utah, the Right Place, pp. 391-92; and Salt Lake City Deseret Evening News, 5 Aug. 1998.

      3. For the verdict, see Deseret Evening News, 19 May 2001.

      4. Deseret Evening News, 26 Aug. 1998.

      5. Deseret Evening News, 29 Oct. 199

      6. Deseret Evening News, 25, 27 Oct. 1995.

      7. Deseret Evening News, 30 Nov. 1995.