toward refinement. But while they had reduced the number of houses of prostitution, the police discovered that they had not reduced prostitution in the least, and when, after a trial of four years, I asked the Director and the Chief of Police what the result of the experiment had been, they said that, aside from the fact that it seemed to make for order in the city, and simplified the work of policing, it had done no good.
The experience was like that of Chicago, where after a police order prohibiting the sale of liquor in houses of prostitution, it was found—according to the report of the vice commission—to be "undoubtedly true that the result of the order has been to scatter the prostitutes over a wide territory and to transfer the sale of liquor carried on heretofore in houses to the near-by saloon keepers, and to flats and residential sections, but it is an open question whether it has resulted in the lessening of either of the two evils of prostitution and drink."
The experience, I think, is probably universal. I used to hear the systems of regulation used in European cities held up as models by the pessimistic as the only practical method of dealing with the problem. Paris was commonly considered as the ideal in this respect; latterly it is apt to be Berlin. But the fact is that the reglementation which for years and years has been in force in Paris is a failure; the experience there was precisely what it was in our little city. And from Berlin, which the well known German genius for organization has made the most
