It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice
question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident
solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no
men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source
of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It
does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing
a shameful business. Also under our present conditions it supplies an
opportunity for graft. But overruling all these disadvantages is the
fact that it facilitates the catching of the men. This is impossible in
hotels and apartment houses, but if men found frequenting the segregated
district were seized and submitted to compulsory examination, it would
only be the blatant sinners who would ever run the risk, and the number
of such customers would be greatly reduced.
This suggestion may appear Utopian, for do not the originators of
prostitution themselves make the laws? However, there now seems some
chance of the public conscience, male and female, being widely aroused
and it is possible that the originators of the whole evil may not escape
the dragnet.