In this intimate dependence of the White Slave Traffic on houses of prostitution, there lies, it may be pointed out, a hope for the future. We are concerned, for the most part, with the more coarse-grained part of the masculine population and with the more ignorant, degraded, and weak-minded part of the army of prostitutes. Although much has been said of the enormous extension of the White Slave Traffic during recent years, it is important to remember that that extension is chiefly marked in connection with the great new centres of population in the younger countries. It is fostered by the conditions prevailing in crude, youthful, prosperous, but incompletely blended, communities, which have too swiftly attained luxury, but have not yet attained the more humane and refined developments of civilisation, and among whom women are often scarce.[2] Although there are not yet any very clear signs of the decay of prostitution in civilisation, there can hardly be a doubt that civilisation is unfavourable to houses of prostitution. They offer no inducements to the more intelligent and independent prostitutes, and their inmates usually present little attraction to any men save those whose demands are of the humblest character. There is, therefore, a tendency to the natural and spontaneous decay of organised houses of prostitution under modern civilised conditions; the prostitute and her clients alike shun such houses. Along this line we may foresee the disappearance of the White Slave Traffic, apart altogether from any social or legal attempts at its direct suppression.[3]