the Summary Jurisdiction Acts of 1879,
are of a much more hardened character than before, and in addition to
having been guilty of acts of petty larceny, have frequently been
prostitutes for some time anterior to their admission. This being so,
it can hardly be wondered at if the success of reformatories is not so
marked as it was when they were first instituted."

Seeing that reformatories for girls, on account of the more hardened
character of their inmates on admission, are not so successful as
industrial schools, it is certainly within the mark to say that at
least one-fourth of the cases discharged from these institutions
become failures in the space of two years. If the proportion is so
high at the end of two years, what will it amount to at the end of
five? It is then that the young person enters upon what is _par
excellence_ the criminal age, and when that age is reached, I fear
that the proportion of failures increases considerably. In any case we
have sufficient data to show that the protection of the State, when
extended, as it is in the United Kingdom, to helpless and homeless
girls, does not in many instances suffice to keep them on the road of
virtue. Deep-seated instincts manage to assert themselves in spite of
the most careful training, the most vigilant precautions, and until
the moral development of the population, as a whole, reaches a higher
level, it will be vain to hope too much from the labours of State
institutions, however excellent these institutions may be.

It has, however, to be remembered that the fallen class is not by any
means recruited exclusively from the ranks of the helpless and the
homeless. On the contrary, according to the evidence of the Roussel
commission, nearly one half of the minors (44 out of 98) found in the
"maisons de tolerance" of Bordeaux had no domestic or economic
impediments to encounter. External circumstances, as far as could be
seen, had nothing to do with the unhappy position in which they stood,
and the life they adopted appears to have been entirely of their own
choosing. It is true the Bordeaux statistics only cover a small area,
and are not to be looked upon as in themselves exhaustive, but when
these statistics confirm, as they do, the careful observations of all
unbiassed investigators, we cannot be far wrong in coming to the
conclusion that in France, at least, fifty per cent. of the cases of
prostitution are not originally due to the pressure of want. S