given to men officially
by regulation makes them all the more careless. The multiplication of
the sexual connections of each prostitute increases the danger of
infection at least as much as the elimination of a few diseased
persons diminishes it.

The corruption of the State and its officials, especially the police
and the medical inspectors of brothels, the general depravity which
results from official toleration, and the perversion of ideas of
morality among the public, increase habits of prostitution, and with
it the danger of infection. Assured of impunity the pimps and their
acolytes become more and more audacious and extend their business,
while the prostitutes, whose number is increased by this system, seek
to escape the police and practice their trade clandestinely. It is no
wonder that the swamp to be purified becomes more and more infectious.
Can it be conscientiously said that hygiene has benefited? This is
well seen in Geneva and in France. It is enough to compare the number
of cases of venereal disease and of prostitutes in countries where
regulation is in force, with those which do not employ it, to show the
complete fiasco of the system from the hygienic point of view. On the
average, the number of infectious cases is nearly the same with or
without regulation and depends on many other causes. I cannot enter
into the details here and must refer to the statistics and to the
works published by the Abolitionist Federation (6 Rue St. Leger,
Geneva).

Of all that has been published, nothing appears to me more conclusive
than the masterly statistics of Mounier, for Holland, in 1889. Even
among medical men, the originators of regulation, the abolitionist
point of view is steadily gaining ground. It is beginning to be
understood that the toleration of proxenetism, and even the
inscription and medical inspection of prostitutes, are vicious methods
of social sanitation against venereal infection.

But by the suppression of official toleration and regulation, the
question of prostitution is in no way settled. This has only a
negative action, important for the tactics of those who wish to upset
a scandalous abuse, but which does not respond to the higher task of
extirpating the root of the evil. The positive work will only begin
when the State is relieved of its shameful compact with proxenetism
and prostitution.

In the following chapters we shall examine the remedies which must be
applied to our sexual anarc