society. What can be done? It is clear that no one force or agency is to be exclusively relied on. All the uplifting forces of society must be simultaneously enlisted in this cause-state, church, school, college, industrial, and charitable corporations, all productive industries, and both preventive and remedial medicine. The attack must be directed against the three principal causes of the present evil conditions: First, against lust in men; secondly, against the weakness, dependence, mental deficiency, and lack of moral principle of the women who supply the demands of men; thirdly, against the greed and depravity of the wretches who maintain a profitable commerce out of this licentious demand and supply.

The struggle against lust in men must bring into play a variety of defensive agencies, such as full occupation for body and mind, manly sports, ambition and energy in the earning of a livelihood, timely knowledge of the good and the evil in sex relations, temperance in both food and drink, and deliverances from mischievous transmitted beliefs, such as belief in the harmlessness of gonorrhea or in the necessity of sexual indulgence for the maintenance of health and vigor in men. For the giving of the information which all young men need, a variety of agencies must be utilized. The best source of the information which the young man needs is the parent, the mother in childhood, the father later; but inasmuch as many parents are too ignorant to give this information, it is indispensable that schools, churches, Christian associations, and the various kinds of clubs maintained for good social purposes should all be utilized. The public press, too, or that part of it which has moral purposes and a sense of responsibility, must lend its aid, and the policy of silence must be abandoned in favor of a policy of high-minded and reserved exposition. It must be made impossible for either young men or young women to plead ignorance as their excuse when they fall into moral and physical degradation.

The second attack must be directed against the lack of moral and mental stamina in girls and young women whose inheritances have been low and whose environment has been dull and miserable. Prostitution is voluntarily resorted to by some responsible women whose propensities are naturally bad, but the great majority of prostitutes are physical, mental, or moral defectives in the strict sense of that word. It is to the interest of all such defectives and of society at large that they be first discovered in their families or at school or in the churches or social settlements or in hospitals and infirmaries, and then segregated and confined under wholesome conditions where they can not be seduced to a vile life nor be abandoned even for an hour to their own imperfect self-control. Here is a great service that the public schools can render to society, and here lies a strong argument in favor of the extension of attendance at school beyond the age of 13

or 14, which is now the limit of school life for a great majority of American children. Family, school, church, and all good social organizations should steadily contend against indolence, love of excitement, self-indulgence, and luxurious tendencies in girls; should prevent the depression or joylessness of extreme poverty; and should provide and cultivate systematically both helpful work and healthful play for all sorts of girls and young women.

The third assault which society should make against licentiousness may be undertaken with prompt decision and with expectation of effecting rapid improvement. This is the assault on commercialized vice. There need be no hesitation in attacking with all the powers of the law the men and women who pander to men by seducing or compelling young women to the horrible existence of the prostitute, owned or leased by a dealer in the gratification of lust, and provide shelter and facilities for the worst of human vices. In that shameful business much intelligence and shrewdness and much capital are employed and much money is made. Some of the money made is freely used to secure immunity, or periods of immunity, from prosecution in the courts. This iniquitous commerce should be put an end to by vigorous action under existing laws. No third party should be allowed to make any profit out of licentiousness. No brokers or commission merchants in vice should be allowed to exist in a civilized community, and no owner of real estate should be allowed to use it himself, or lease it to others, for immoral purposes. But one may say, "The segregation and regulation of brothels are policies which have come down through unnumbered centuries in many nations and under all the great religions of the world. Are we to attempt the uprooting of such ancient policies of toleration and license?" I answer, "Yes; we are;" because those ancient policies have everywhere failed to protect the human race from evils which in the long run will work its destruction. Former generations were not sure of that failure. This generation knows it. Former generations had no adequate means of contending against the diseases which in the human race accompany the perversions and excesses of the sex instincts. We possess these means. Earlier generations had not appropriated the idea of government of the people, for the people, and by the people. For us the interests of the mass override the interests of the individual, particularly when the alleged interests of the individual are corrupting and degrading.

The interest of many thinking people in the subject of eugenics is closely allied to interest in sex hygiene, but zeal for wise breeding is apparently leading to some hasty or ill-considered legislation. The existing legislation to limit selection in marriage is evidence of a wise recognition of the dangers in continuing stocks burdened with inheritable weaknesses, and is so far welcome; but not all the pro

posed prohibitions can be justified by biological science at its present stage. The educated public have much to learn with regard to the proper mating of persons who have some nervous defect. Such persons should mate with those whose ancestry has no such defect. Although it is undesirable that feeble-minded, epileptic, or insane persons should have children, yet if such a person mates wisely, and the children of such a union again mate wisely, the progeny of the third generation will probably be quite as free from nervous defect as the general population is. Again, the reproduction of the feebleminded will not necessarily be diminished by laws which prevent them from marrying. Such persons ordinarily have very little selfcontrol, and, if left free, will have children whether married or not. The laws against undesirable marriages need to be revised in most of the American States, and the public needs to be convinced that no such law can eradicate the evil. Nothing but the compulsory seclusion of all defectives under humane housing, training, and labor conditions will accomplish the eugenic object of the community. Laws which provide that candidates for marriage must be free from syphilis or gonorrhea do good, provided that proper provision be made for the certificate to that effect from a trustworthy physician appointed by the State. The appointment for this duty for an adequate number of physicians by the State boards of health would give a new and important function to these boards. The maintenance of such a staff, furnished with all the means of applying adequate tests in doubtful cases, would be somewhat expensive; but this expense might perhaps be covered in part by a moderate addition to the fee for a marriage license. Each physician would probably require the aid of a man and a woman competent to inquire into the family histories of the applicants for a marriage license.

It is probable that much public instruction will have to be given through newspapers, magazines, lectures, and discussions in men's clubs and women's clubs before sound and effective eugenic legislation can be placed on the statute books. Again, we find that public progress in relation to sex hygiene and eugenics is to be procured chiefly through educational methods. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the processes adopted for diffusing sound knowledge about the normal and the morbid sex relations, the dangers of licentiousness, safe mating with a view to healthy progeny, the prevention of the reproduction of defectives, the destruction of commerce in vice, and the prevention of venereal contagions, should all be carried on plainly, but delicately, without exaggeration or morbid suggestion, without interference with parental rights or religious convictions, and in general in a pure, high-minded, disinterested way. The pioneering part of this work must be done by voluntary associations, as is usual in social reforms; but it should be the constant aim of

these private organizations to enlist gradually the public authorities in this vast undertaking and to transfer to the public treasury as fast as possible the support of all those parts of the work which experience proves to be of sure and permanent public advantage. The pioneering in regard to both research and practical measures will probably continue for many years to be the work of voluntary associations.

B. THE SOCIAL EMERGENCY.

WILLIAM T. FOSTER,

President Reed College, Oregon.

The social emergency that confronts the human race is flaunted before us in many unlovely forms and appears in new aspects wherever we scratch beneath the surface. Study the results of human frailty and the possibilities of racial betterment through any avenue of approach, and we meet the fundamental problems of sexual hygiene and morals. Our cities struggle in vain to free their police forces from graft, while the business of prostitution offers such large and easy profits. Students of municipal recreation centers discover such conditions that they regard parks and playgrounds as physical and moral menaces unless under careful and trained supervision.

The home, the church, and the school have reached a small proportion of the human race with adequate sex instruction, while thousands of quack doctors still ply their vicious trade, widely disseminating falsehoods, and preying upon that fatal ignorance of vital matters that we have carefully cultivated in our children under the name of innocence. The juvenile courts bring in their daily records of pitiful cases. The antisaloon workers present sad evidence of the dependence of commercialized prostitution on the liquor traffic. Decent employers of labor cry out against the competition with employers who expect their young women to eke out a living wage by immoral conduct. Honest keepers of hotels and lodging houses protest that it is useless to keep up the fight for decency while disreputable houses under police protection make exorbitant profits. Students of eugenics find sexual immorality the chief hindrance to racial improvement. Turn where we may within any field of legitimate human endeavor and we run counter to this destructive force; we discern new aspects of the social emergency.

In the fact of this social emergency, there are but few who offer no complaint. They are the white slavers, the pimps and the panderers, the imbeciles and feeble-minded among their victims, the keepers of bawdy houses, the "respectable" owners of property used to promote the joint business of drunkenness and prostitution, dealers

in liquor, municipal officers and police who protect vice for a living, fake doctors who thrive on ignorance and spread disease, and newspapers that make such criminal business possible through advertisements accepted at extraordinary rates.

1. To begin with, there is the history of the question. Many generations have joined in the "conspiracy of silence" in matters pertaining to sex and reproduction. The result is widespread ignorance of matters of the utmost importance to the individual and the race, ignorance of which many good people are proud. During these generations in which the home, the church, and the school have withheld the truth from young people, other agencies have been busy disseminating falsehoods. Having almost no opportunity to hear sex and matrimony discussed with reverence, our young people have almost invariably heard these subjects discussed with vulgarity. Partly as a result of all this has come the general acceptance of the double standard of morality which has bitterly condemned the girlmade her an outcast of society-and excused the boy for the same offense on the specious plea of physiological necessity. With the sanction of this double standard, tacitly accepted by society, the majority of men have grown up in indulgence and have developed habits which are, or which they believe to be, beyond their control. Millions of men who recognize no law in sex life but their own appetites are thus contributed to us by the past. They are factors in the present situation and must be reckoned with.

As a matter of fact the educational phases of social reform are of most immediate importance. Nothing can so profitably occupy the attention of social hygiene societies as the education of the public. If groups of social workers come to serious disagreement on other phases of the present emergency; if the discussion of restricted districts, minimum wage laws, health certificates for marriage, and reporting of disease divides the group into warring camps; all can unite in favor of spreading certain truths as widely as possible; and it is not difficult to agree on at least a few of the many methods which have already proved effective in educational campaigns.

At the outset of our attempt to educate the general public in matters of sex, we face certain factors which govern the scope, time, place, and method of any successful efforts. Failure to give these factors due consideration has brought many attempts to early and unhappy ends, and convinced some people that ignorance is safer than such education.

No aspects are more important than those concerning morals and religion. The restraining fear of disease may and probably will be thrown off by science. Whether education in scientific aspects of the subject will do good or harm in a given case depends on the extent to which moral and religious ideals control the conduct of the indi