all the surroundings the thing is impracticable." Mr. Lister, another
Registrar General, says: "I don't think the new Ordinance had any real
effect, or could have had any effect upon the sale of women. I don't
think any good is done by preventing women emigrating to San Francisco
or other places, as their fate is just the same whether they go or
not."

The Commissioners state:

"The well-meant system devised by the Registrar General's
Department which requires every woman personally to appear before
an Inspector at the office, and declare her willingness to enter
a licensed brothel, and that she does so without coercion, before
she can be registered, may probably act as some check upon glaring
cases of kidnaping, so far as the licensed brothels are concerned.
But it seems clear that for the supply of such establishments,
there is no need to resort to kidnaping, in the ordinary
acceptance of the term. There can be no doubt that, with the
exception of a comparatively few who have been driven by adversity
to adopt a life of prostitution, when arrived at a mature age, the
bulk of the girls, in entering brothels, are merely fulfilling
the career for which they have been brought up, and even if they
resent it, a few minutes' conversation with a foreigner, probably
the first many of them have ever been brought into communication
with, is but little likely to lead them to stultify the results of
education, according to whose teachings they are the property of
others and under the necessity of obeying their directions. The
idea that they are at liberty not to enter a brothel unless they
wish it, must, to girls so brought up, be unintelligible. To what
other source indeed could they turn for a livelihood? Who can