🚀 go-pugleaf

years of experience in that position, is quoted as saying: "I
think it is useless to try and deal with the question of the freedom
of Chinese prostitutes by law or by any Government regulation. From
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 e