THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION – Reitman -1st HC/DJ 1931 – PROSTITUTION PIMPS
THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION: A STUDY OF THE PROSTITUTE’S “BUSINESS MANAGER” — by Dr. Ben L. Reitman — 1st Edition / 2nd Printing HC/DJ, 1931 — WITH VERY SCARCE “SPECIAL $1.00 EDITION” DUST JACKET — PROSTITUTION AND PIMPING
 Publisher: The Vanguard Press, New York (1931)
THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION: A STUDY OF THE PROSTITUTE’S “BUSINESS MANAGER” by Dr. Ben L. Reitman. First edition / 2nd printing from 1931, with very scarce “SPECIAL $1.00 EDITION” dust jacket. The book’s price was lowered after poor sales with the first edition, due to the “Sexual Liberalism” of the book. The boards and binding are solid and tight save for light shelfwear. The pages are crisp and clean. The dust jacket has chipping, rips and tears but still holds the book firmly. A scarce and fascinating study of prostitution and the pimp, from 1931. Please see below for Contents, and a biography of the forward-thinking Dr. Reitman.Â
Table of Contents
1. The Economic Basis for Pimpdom
2. The Development of the Pimp
3. The Pimp and His Hooker
4. The Pimp and his “Broads”; The Acquisition of “Sisters-In-Law”
5. The Pimp and Young Girls
6. The Pimp and Venereal Disease Control
7. The Pimp and Population
8. The Pimp and the Police
9. White Girls Tell Why They Have Negro PimpsÂ
10. The Pimp and “Easy Money”
11. The Pimp and Personality
12. The Pimp and his Environment.Â
13. The Four Horseman; How a Group of Pimps Became Social Workers
Description and Partial Biography
A sociological study of pimps by Dr. Ben Reitman, founder of the Chicago hobo college, lover and manager of the noted anarchist Emma Goldman, author of “The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha,” and early American advocate of of birth control, free speech, and worker’s rights. and who also began a private organization, the Chicago Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease.
He was the first physician to advocate the distribution of CONDOMS in schools during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.
 In his lifetime the Chicago had high local rates of sexually-transmitted diseases. Beginning about the time of World War I, government efforts against VD emphasized education, case reporting, morals court action against offenders, and the operation of free clinics. Reitman, whose practice and habits gave him first-hand knowledge of the people most at risk for sexually-transmitted diseases, took a different tack. He advised that the only way to solve the problem was to encourage sexually-active men and women to use prophylaxis. Asserting that the “sex urge cannot be controlled” he predicted with prescience that “a time will come when condoms will be on exhibit in high schools”. He wrote in 1938, “We must make sex safe, foolproof.” His candor and the substance of his advice proved too much for the public temper. In the 1930s, those in authority found this kind of talk too close to endorsing illicit sexual behavior.
