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is meant and what degree of success it achieves in the place in which it is employed.

Mr. Flexner explains regulation as it is practiced in Europe to mean that prostitution is tolerated on certain conditions, mainly by subjecting it to certain rules which practically constitute a license to practice prostitution. In general these rules require that the prostitute apply to the police for permission to carry on her trade; that she register her name and abode; that she agree to live in a particular place, to avoid certain localities and associations, to refrain from certain acts, and to appear at regular intervals for medical examination.

Regulation depends for its success first of all on registering all or nearly all the prostitutes. Mr. Flexner found that "nowhere is more than an unimportant fraction registered, and that the bulk of it is everywhere handled without regulation, even in communities in which regulation is said to exist."

Those who advocate regulation claim that it aids public order and decency. Mr. Flexner shows how far and why it fails in this:

Regulation recognizes prostitution as a legitimate, even if deplorable, means of gaining a livelihood. The woman who has registered with the police is thenceforth authorized to practice prostitution. She has, indeed, no other way of gaining subsistence, for the law stamps her a professional prostitute. To this end she must find customers. Where shall she find them? Obviously on the streets, in cafés, theatres, and other resorts. .Street walking and soliciting in the streets and elsewhere are therefore universal in regulated towns. These practices are objectionable because they offend against public decency; because, by making professional prostitution more profitable, they make it more alluring; because, by increasing the amount of business transacted by the prostitute, they increase the amount of disease she spreads.

Regulation has been advocated for American cities on the ground that in Europe prostitution is confined to disorderly houses which are set off to one side so as not to offend decent people. Mr. Flexner found that:

There is no such thing as segregation of prostitution in Europe; there is no such thing as segregation of even that small fraction of prostitution which is regulated by the police. The forty-seven houses of prostitution in Paris, the six in Vienna, the thirteen in Budapest, the ten in Frankfort, the ninety-eight in Cologne, the seventeen in Geneva, the twenty-two in Rome, the thirty in Stockholm are scattered in various parts of the city. The Hamburg houses occupy more than eight different streets in widely separated sections of the town. The Dresden houses are found on thirty-two different streets. Moreover, in all these cities registered prostitutes live in other streets as well. The situation then is this: the bulk of prostitution even in regulated cities is not regulated at all, it lives where and as it pleases. The minority' may be registered, but only a small proportion of this minority lives in ́ houses, and these

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houses are scattered.

As far as Europe is concerned, segregation is a term which attempts to describe what has no existence whatsoever.

say:

As to the medical inspection of prostitutes, Dr. Flexner has this to

There are several reasons why medical inspection is bound to be futile. In the first place, too few women are examined; for if, as I have said, the police never apprehend more than an unimportant fraction, medical inspection never reaches at all the bulk of those diseased. In the next place, medical inspection does not continuously protect even the registered women. The woman pronounced diseased is forcibly confined to a prison hospital. Now the prostitute resents imprisonment, even in her own hygienic interest. She learns quite early the signs of infection; discovering herself infected, she does one of two things-covers them up, a trick at which she is expert, or, as the phrase is, "disappears"-does not report for medical examination, meanwhile plying her trade in secret. . . .When, therefore, medical inspection is urged on the ground that in Europe it is employed to reduce disease, you may confidently reply that regulation in Europe has most completely collapsed at precisely that point.

VII

THE CASE AGAINST THE RED LIGHT

It is claimed that

SEGREGATION:

Decreases crime by enabling police supervision of a recognized crime center.

Safeguards against sexual perversions by providing an outlet for the unrestrained sexual appetites of men.

Protects boys and young men from contact with the prostitute by removing temptation from the streets and residence districts.

Decreases prostitution by regulation.

Decreases venereal diseases through medical inspection.

Concentrates prostitution, thus facilitating control and reduction.

Enables control of the liquor traffic in connection with prostitution.

The truth is that

SEGREGATION:

Increases crime by fostering viciousness and disease, providing a meeting-place for the idle and vicious, with whom, rather than with the police, the prostitutes sympathize and usually coöperate.

Fosters sexual perversions and abnormalities by educating men in habits of promiscuous sex relations until they cannot be satisfied by the professional prostitute, except by perversions which she is compelled to practice.

Exposes boys and young men to contact with the prostitute, by presenting an ever-present opportunity to "go down the line and see the sights." Provides a showplace for special obscene and depraved exhibitions, to which the youth is lured by "runners" and the sale of lewd pictures.

Increases prostitution by increasing the demand, which increases the supply.

Increases venereal diseases by deceiving the ignorant into a disastrous reliance upon a frequently "faked" and inevitably futile medical inspection.

Increases prostitution, making it familiar by continual advertisement. Affords a place of commerce, otherwise uncertain and precarious, to the least competent of prostitutes, mentally and physically.

Stimulates an illegal liquor traffic, since commercialized prostitution does not flourish without liquor.

Prevents crimes against Incites crimes against women by fostering sexual promiscuity and providing a source of sexual brutalization and degeneracy.

women.

Protects the community from offensive and detrimental proximity of prostitution.

Decreases graft in connection with prostitution, and the exploitation of the prostitute.

Exposes the community by advertising prostitution as a community necessity, making it easily accessible and tolerated, a condition conducive to the moral degradation of the community. Increases graft, by illegal toleration of commercialized crime, tempting the police to exact illegal revenue and confer illegal privilege. Gives free rein to the exploitation of prostitutes.