the police commissioner closes with a paragraph which shows with remarkable clearness the difficulties of the problem:

"The Police Department regards the business of vice as a social tragedy, which has gone on from the beginning and presumably will go on to the end; but police action against it is confined, of necessity, to the attempted enforcement of the laws. The police have no other mission or authority. But the efforts to reduce the profits of the business, to secure the adequate punishment of those who engage in it and thus check its growth, have met with practically no helpful or appreciative response from any direction. If a future police commissioner were intending to pursue the same course with respect to the business of vice that has been followed for four years, I should advise him that he might expect loyal support from the police when once he has convinced them that he was in earnest; little encouragement from courts; bitter hostility from persons whose profits were curtailed; indifference from the public; and from a few enthusiasts in the cause of social purity whose admirable purposes are not sustained by straight and intelligent thinking, he would be sure to receive some measure of abusive criticism. I should advise him that unless he held his oath of office in high regard, and cared for no reward other than the consciousness that he had done his duty faithfully, and with some benefit to the

community, it would be better for him personally that he should follow the easy road of indifference, which is always chosen by those who are officially blind."

It is the public indifference, referred to by the police commissioner, that is really at the root of the problem. The secret of all the efforts that have been recounted in the preceding pages is to overcome and to break down this public indifference. With publicity, with awakening interest, and with the determination to do what is at once right and practicable, the first steps in the solution of the problem will have been taken. At no time in the history of the world has the outlook for such progress been so bright as it is at present.

A Record, etc., pp. 49-50.

APPENDIX

THE SANITARY SUPERVISION OF PROSTITUTION.

ON SECTION 79 OF THE PAGE LAW

AN ADDRESS

I

WHEN your President asked me to appear before this Society, I told him that I should not have time to prepare a set paper, but that, as the result of my efforts in connection with the Committee of Fifteen some years ago, I had formed certain opinions which reflection has confirmed, and that I should be glad to say a few words on the subject to-night.

As I take it, in such a question as this, where good men differ so fundamentally-and good women too-it is perhaps wise to approach the subject from a somewhat broader point of view. Some who are in favour of section 79 of the Page law support it frankly and avowedly as the first step-as an entering wedge to some system of reglementation. If I am not mistaken, the gentleman who addressed the Society at its last meeting, Dr. Bierhoff, quite openly stated that this was his opinion. On the other hand, others like Mr. Homer Folks, and perhaps Mr. Mayer, desire to draw a sharp line between reglementation or regulation on the one hand, and the Page law on the other. In the first part of my remarks, therefore, I shall address myself to those who in one way or another favour reglementation; and, secondly, I shall speak to those who, while theoretically opposed to regulation, are nevertheless in favour of the Page law.

'This address was delivered by the author at a meeting of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, on December 22, 1910.

This is not the place to call your attention to the historical aspects of the subject. There is only one point I should like to emphasise, as leading up to the position which I take— and, I may say in this respect, it is the position which, so far as I know, is taken to-day by all the surviving members of the Committee of Fifteen. It is a remarkable fact, that when we came together to investigate the problem, knowing very little about it-just about as much or as little as does the ordinary man or woman, the great majority of us were in favour of regulation on the principle. that it could do no harm and might do some good. It was only after a prolonged study of the situation as regards both the facts and the general principles involved, that the committee came unanimously to the conclusion that regulation or reglementation was inadvisable and inadmissible. Let me then devote a few remarks to an endeavour to point out why we came to that conclusion; for the arguments that held then would hold with most of us to-day.

The method used in ancient times in dealing with this subject was to regard it from the religious, or political, or even the fiscal point of view. We all know that prostitution was subject to various forms of regulation in Greek and Roman times, and that it was made subservient to the political ends just as was the marriage relation itself; and we know, furthermore, that the government in many cases secured large revenues from the quasi-religious organisations under whose ægis these practices were carried on. In the Middle Ages the situation was entirely different. Partly as a result of the Christian doctrine, but chiefly under the influence of the newer civilisation of Germanic type as against the old Romanic type, an effort was made. to repress this hideous evil as far as possible. It is only with the spread of commerce and industry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that we find in the various Italian,

German, and French towns a different attitude taken to it. It was then that the importance of the earlier religious objections diminished, and these unfortunate women were formed into guilds, very much like the other classes of artisans and craftsmen in those days, whose organisations were made to minister to the fancied ends of the communal welfare. Only the other day I was reading in a work on Japan that, in one of the inland towns, they have every five years a great civic procession, headed by all the loose women of the town garbed in beautiful costumes, and every man, woman, and child goes out to see the spectacle. How many realise that this was an early quasi-religious custom throughout Europe? It was a feudal idea which gave rise to this custom in Europe, just as it is a survival of feudalism which explains its continuance in Japan to-day. It does not argue that the Japanese are less good or less wise than we, but simply that they still have survivals of a feudal civilisation which with us has passed away. so far as any effort was made by medieval governments to regulate the institution, it was chiefly to maintain public order. Only after the outbreak of the syphilitic scourge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout all the European countries was a different attitude assumed.

In

In modern times, however, has come the evolution of the true democratic and social way of regarding the problem; and the modern way of looking at the problem differs from the medieval in three respects:

First, in former times the loose women were treated as outcasts and aliens and they were compelled to wear a different garb or costume. Now, with the economic development of modern times, we have gotten over the idea of the alien character of these women, and with the growth of the democratic spirit we feel that they are with us and of us. They may form a separate class, indeed,