positive restraint under all circumstances. Strict continence is
neither injurious to health, nor does it produce impotence. While
self-denial is difficult, since the promptings of nature often seem
imperious, it is not impossible. It is certain that no youth will
suffer, physically, by remaining sexually pure. The demands which
occur during adolescence are mainly abnormal, due to the excitements
of an overstimulating diet, pornographic literature and art, and the
temptations of impure association.
WHY YOUNG MEN GO WRONG
Foul thoughts, once they enter the mind, corrode it. The sensual
glance, the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the smutty story, the
obscene song may be met with on street corner, in the car, train,
hotel lobby, lecture hall and workshop. Mental unchastity ends in
physical unchastity. The habit common to most adolescent boys and
young men of relating smutty stories, repeating foul jokes and making
indecent allusions destroys respect for virtue. In addition there are
such direct physical causes of undue adolescent sexual excitement as
constipation and alcoholism, and such mental ones as nervous
irritability.
To the constant discussion and speculation regarding sex and its
mysteries by the adolescent young male, must be added the artificial
idea that idle prattling on the subject is a sign of "manhood." Thus
many young men whose natural trend is in the direction of decency and
right sexual living, "step out" or "go to see the girls," as the
phrase is, because they think that otherwise "they are not real men."
More subtle in its evil effect, yet somewhat less dangerous
physically, perhaps, than the professional prostitute is the lure of
the "hidden" prostitute, who carefully conceals her derelictions, and
publicly wraps herself in a mantle of virtue.
PROSTITUTION
The training of the average male mind in impure language and thought
during boyhood and adolescence, the cultivation of his animal at the
expense of the moral nature, often leads the adolescent to seek
satisfaction by frequenting the prostitute.
_Prostitution_, known as the "social evil," is promiscuous unchastity
for gain. It has existed in all civilized countries from earliest
times. Prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic
element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer
to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities,