into a kind
of alliance for their mutual benefit, and are sometimes indeed under the
same management. When a hotel is thus run in the interests of
prostitution it has what may be regarded as a staff of women in the
neighbouring streets. In some districts of New York it is found that
practically all the prostitutes on the street are connected with some
Raines Law hotel. These wise moral legislators of New York thought they
were placing a penalty on Sunday drinking; what they have really done
is to place a premium on prostitution[213].

An attempt of a different kind to strike a blow at once at alcohol and
at prostitution has been made in Chicago, with equally unsatisfactory
results. Drink and prostitution are connected, so intimately connected,
indeed, that no attempt to separate them can ever be more than
superficially successful even with the most minute inquisition by the
police, least of all by police officers, who, in Chicago, we are
officially told, are themselves sometimes found, when in uniform and on
duty, drinking among prostitutes in "saloons." On May 1, 1910, the
Chicago General Superintendent of Police made a rule prohibiting the
sale of liquor in houses of prostitution. On the surface this rule has
in most cases been observed (though only on the surface, as the
field-workers of the Chicago Vice Commission easily discovered), and a
blow was thus dealt to those houses which derive a large profit from the
sale of drinks on account of the high price at which they retail them.
Yet even so far as the rule has been obeyed, and not evaded, has it
effected any good? On this point we may trust the evidence of the Vice
Commissioners of Chicago, a municipal body appointed by the Mayor and
City Council, and not anxious to discredit the actions of their Police
Superintendent. "As to the benefits derived from this order, either to
the inmates or the public, opinions differ," they write. "It is
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."[214] That is a mild statement of the results. It may be noted
that there are over seven thousand drinking saloons in Chicago, so that
the transfer is not difficult, while th