<DIV>For twenty years Josie Washburn lived and worked in houses of prostitution. She spent the last twelve as the madam of a moderately fancy brothel in Lincoln, Nebraska. After retiring in 1907 and moving to Omaha, she turned to "throwing a searchlight on the underworld," including the "cribs" of Nebraska’s largest city. <I>The Underworld Sewer</I>, based on her own experience in the profession, blazes with a kind of honesty unavailable to more conventional moral reformers.</DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV>Originally published in 1909, <I>The Underworld Sewer</I> asks why "the social evil" is universally considered necessary or inevitable. Washburn minces no words in exposing the conditions that perpetuate prostitution: the greed and graft of landlords, pimps, alcohol vendors, dope dealers, police officers, city administrators, and politicians; the competition for circulation by sensation-seeking newspapers; the indifference or intolerance of law-abiding, church-going citizens; the false modesty that prevents family discussion of venereal disease; the double standard that allows men to indulge their sexuality but punishes women who do so.</DIV>