"As late as the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and in some parts of the country until its close, the most shameless and wide-spread mendicity defied at once the severest official prohibitions and the best meant endeavour of the communes and private individuals."[59] [Footnote 59: Biedermann, "Deutschland im 18 ten Jahrhundert," Vol. I., p. 401.] Then it was that the idea of the disciplinary treatment of vagrants and loafers in general took root, leading in time to the institution all over the country of special houses of detention, not inaptly called Labour Houses, for the reception of these offenders, of the work-shy of every description, and of certain other classes of people who followed a disorderly mode of life. When the Empire was established, the practice of the various States was embodied in the Imperial Penal Code, and Labour House treatment is now the recognised mode of correcting sloth, loafing, and habitual intemperance and immorality throughout Germany. Sections 361 and 362 of the Penal Code define as follows the offences which may entail detention in a Labour House:-- "(1) Whoever wanders about as a vagabond. "(2) Whoever begs or causes children to beg or neglects to restrain from begging such persons as are under his control and oversight and belong to his household. "(3) Whoever is so addicted to gambling, drunkenness, or idleness that he falls into such a condition as to be compelled to seek public help himself, or for those for whose maintenance he is responsible. "(4) Any female who is placed under police control owing to professional immorality when she acts contrary to the police regulations issued in the interest of health, public order, and public decency, or who, without being under such control, is guilty of professional immorality. "(5) Any person who, while in receipt of public relief, refuses out of sloth to do such work suited to his strength as the authorities may offer him. "(6) Any person who, after losing his past lodging, fails to procure another within the time allotted to him by the competent authority and who cannot prove that in spite of his best endeavours he has been unable to do so." An Amendment of the Penal Code dated June 25, 1900, added to this list of offenders procurers and _souteneurs_. The law enjoins that persons convicted of misdemeanours as above may be handed over to the State police authorities after undergoing the allotted imprisonment, with a view to their further detention in Labour Houses, there to be usefully employed under strict control. Some of the Prussian Labour Houses are used, to a small extent, for the reception of youths who are taken from parental control owing to bad behaviour.