The latest attempt for licensing vice in the United States was made in New Orleans, 1892, in the form of an ordinance proposing to grant to Dr. Wm. Harnon the privilege of levying an inspection tax upon those known as “Public Women” of $0.50 a week for fifteen years.

The “Louisiana Review” said of it:

“A more revolting proposition than this has never come under our notice, and we are amazed that the health committee failed to detect its character, however artfully it may have been screened by the pretext that it was intended to lessen the harm of the social evil.”

The “New Delta,” in its issue of August 31, said:

“The queer and ill-favored monopoly which the ordinance for the regulation of houses of bad repute sought to establish has not been successful on the first effort. It goes back to a committee. Let us hope that it will remain buried there forever, and decent people be saved the infliction of a public discussion of the miserable scheme. Such systems of ‘regulation’ would disgrace the devil, and the proposition for the city to share in the plunder of these poor wretches would shame a Piute village.”

The Woman’s journal, September 19, said:

“It is well that this measure has failed on the first attempt; but to refer a matter to a committee is not necessarily to kill it, and its fate in the committee should be closely watched. The laws establishing the state regulation of vice in England were smuggled through Parliament about 1 o’clock in the morning, when half the members were absent or asleep; but it took seventeen years Of painful and distasteful agitation to repeal them. Prevention of bad legislation is better than cure.”

This attempt was finally defeated through the energetic opposition and work of Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon.