e migration to flats--of which an
enormous number have been taken for purposes of prostitution (five
hundred in one district alone) since this rule came into force--may
indeed enable the prostitute to live a freer and more humanizing life,
but in no faintest degree diminishes the prevalence of prostitution.
From the narrow police standpoint, indeed, the change is a disadvantage,
for it shelters the prostitute from observation, and involves an
entirely new readjustment to new conditions.

It cannot be said that either the State of New York or the city of
Chicago has been in any degree more fortunate in its attempts at moral
legislation against prostitution than against drinking. As we should
expect, the laws of New York regard prostitution and the prostitute with
an eye of extreme severity. Every prostitute in New York, by virtue of
the mere fact that she is a prostitute, is technically termed a
"vagrant." As such she is liable to be committed to the workhouse for a
term not exceeding six months; the owner of houses where she lives may
be heavily fined, as she herself may be for living in them, and the
keeper of a disorderly house may be imprisoned and the disorderly house
suppressed. It is not clear that the large number of prostitutes in New
York have been diminished by so much as a single unit, but from time to
time attempts are made in some district or another by an unusually
energetic official to put the laws into execution, and it is then
possible to study the results. When disorderly houses are suppressed on
a large scale, there are naturally a great number of prostitutes who
have to find homes elsewhere in order to carry on their business. On one
occasion, under the auspices of District-Attorney Jerome, it is stated
by the Committee of Fourteen that eight hundred women were reported to
be turned out into the street in a single night. For many there are the
Raines Law hotels. A great many others take refuge in tenement houses.
Such houses in congested districts are crowded with families, and with
these the prostitute is necessarily brought into close contact.
Consequently the seeds of physical and mental disorder which she may
bear about her are disseminated in a much more fruitful soil than they
were before. Moreover, she is compelled by the laws to exert very great
energy in the pursuit of her profession. As it is an offence to harbour
her she has to pay twice as high a rent as other people would have to
pay for