Even the most ardent advocates of the registration of prostitutes recognize that not only is the tendency of civilization opposed rather than favorable to the system, but that in the numerous countries where the system persists registered prostitutes are losing ground in the struggle against clandestine prostitutes. Even in France, the classic land of police-controlled prostitutes, the "maisons de tolérance" have long been steadily decreasing in number, by no means because prostitution is decreasing but because low-class _brasseries_ and small _cafés-chantants_, which are really unlicensed brothels, are taking their place.[160] The wholesale regularization of prostitution in civilized centres is nowadays, indeed, advocated by few, if any, of the authorities who belong to the newer school. It is at most claimed as desirable in certain places under special circumstances.[161] Even those who would still be glad to see prostitution thoroughly in the control of the police now recognize that experience shows this to be impossible. As many girls begin their career as prostitutes at a very early age, a sound system of regulation should be prepared to enroll as permanent prostitutes even girls who are little more than children. That, however, is a logical conclusion against which the moral sense, and even the common sense, of a community instinctively revolts. In Paris girls may not be inscribed as prostitutes until they have reached the age of sixteen and some consider even that age too low.[162] Moreover, whenever she becomes diseased, or grows tired of her position, the registered woman may always slip out of the hands of the police and establish herself elsewhere as a clandestine prostitute. Every rigid attempt to keep prostitution within the police ring leads to offensive interference with the actions and the freedom of respectable women which cannot fail to be intolerable in any free community. Even in a city like London, where prostitution is relatively free, the supervision of the police has led to scandalous police charges against women who have done nothing whatever which should legitimately arouse suspicion of their behavior. The escape of the infected woman from the police cordon has, it is obvious, an effect in raising the apparent level of health of registered women, and the police statistics are still further fallaciously improved by the fact that the inmates of brothels are older on the average than clandestine prostitutes and have become immune to disease.[163] These facts are now becoming fairly obvious and well recognized. The state regulation of prostitution is undesirable, on moral grounds for the oft-emphasized reason that it is only applied to one sex, and on practical grounds because it is ineffective. Society allows the police to harass the prostitute with petty persecutions under the guise of charges of "solicitation," "disorderly conduct," etc., but it is no longer convinced