dominating greatly over the former. Many women find the life attractive and more profitable economically than other occupations. In fact the brothel under intelligent leadership and wise inspection holds many advantages over street walking and individual effort in security and protection with far less risk to both prostitute and client. It has been pointed out that madams of such institutions have more applications for positions than they can use. Numerous writers now hold that no women in the United States today are compelled to enter prostitution for economic reasons. The attitude of one of the most famous madams of the period held no apology for her profession. She felt that she was rendering a social service. A far cry from the lost and degraded sister of popular image!

The government relation to prostitution is perhaps the most confused area of the subject. Official public opinion on the whole condemns prostitutes and prostitution and is reflected in the laws which are not and cannot be enforced, but which are almost impossible to change. The consequence is that bribes and shakedowns are so common on the part of the police (vice squads) and other officials that the government is rightly designated at times as a partner in the business. Payoffs seem to be regarded as a recognized element in its conduct. The authors state an honest young policeman first assigned to the vice squad may find corruption so firmly entrenched that he may have to change assignments or conform to the situation. Entrapment and blackmail are all too tempting and profitable!

A new type of prostitution, or at least a type new to public attention in the United States, is male prostitution, especially in the homosexual field. It seems to have been more common or better known in Europe

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during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was common in ancient times. Whether it is now increasing in the United States is a moot point. The authors discuss the topic thoroughly and the major problem seems to be, as elsewhere, what should be the attitude of the law. Incarceration only accentuates the problem and increases the likelihood that a casual offender, the one who is caught, will be made into a hardened and permanent malefactor.

Doubtless the greatest contribution made by this book lies in its utterly fearless and courageous challenge to the stereotypes and popular images which mark this, the most controversial of all fields. The last chapter, "Sex as Service," presents final climax to the long and intricate discussion which is constructive and suggestive of a new line of thinking which might go far to ameliorate the confusion and heartache now characterizing the subject. We have here another and serious attempt to insert rationality into one of the most difficult aspects of modern culture. All the laws men have ever enacted and all the preachings of so-called moralists in the field of sexuality, and especially prostitution, have never lessened the force of man's instinctive drives and their expression in concrete activities. The problems involved, like all others, can be solved only by rational considerations, no matter how far they go in opposing ingrained folkways, mores, and other limitations to man's free spirit.

In conclusion the authors say: "sex is not essentially dirty or debasing. It becomes so through contact with the guilt-ridden mind of the antisexual moralist, who soils whatever he touches . . . . Prostitution is not in itself degrading or immoral . . . The prostitutes of Japan through the centuries, the betairae of ancient Greece, and the courtesans of the Italian Ren-

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