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A Statewide Campaign Against Social Diseases: No Compromise with Prostitution, The Country Must Be Kept Clean

Posted By: AlexGolova
A Statewide Campaign Against Social Diseases: No Compromise with Prostitution, The Country Must Be Kept Clean

A Statewide Campaign Against Social Diseases: No Compromise with Prostitution, The Country Must Be Kept Clean by Oklahoma State Board of Health, United States Public Health Service
English | May 28, 2015 | ASIN: B00YI0MVNC | 7 pages | AZW3 | 0.24 MB

Around the time of the First World War, and in the years that followed, the United States embarked on a “social purity” campaign against various “vices”. Social purity campaigns had grown in the Anglophone world in the mid to late 19th century. But in the United States the World War I years and the 1920s were the peak of the influence of these ideas.

Social purity campaigners sought to prohibit and eradicate vices such as prostitution and the use of mind altering substances. Since the 19th century there had been campaigns against alcoholic beverages, especially liquor. After the war, in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, banning alcohol. This amendment banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. The Volstead Act was passed to enforce the Amendment. This was the beginning of prohibition.

In the early 1900s, the American press and lawmakers also became concerned with the growing use of new intoxicants, such as marijuana and cocaine. News reports in the period detailed the negative affects of these drugs on users. Marijuana was described as a drug that had become widely used by Mexican soldiers and prison inmates, and caused insanity. Eventually laws were passed against these substances.

Social purity campaigners also attacked prostitution. Before the early 1900s, prostitution had been tolerated in much of the United States. In some cities designated redlight districts were established to keep prostitution away from “respectable” areas. The most famous of these was Storyville in New Orleans.

But the growing campaign against social vices in the early 20th century led to these redlight districts being shut down. Official tolerance of prostitution largely ended. The redlight districts disappeared and prostitution went underground.

In the World War I era, and immediately afterward, war patriotism was mobilized in the campaigns against drugs, alcohol and prostitution.

This 1919 advertisement, from the Oklahoma State Board of Health and the United States appeared in a small town Oklahoma newspaper. Similar government advertisements were placed in other papers. These ads show the new official efforts to target prostitution.