these conditions of unrestrained sex association. Sex precocity is
furthered in coeducational colleges, in the high school and the home.
Adolescents of both sexes too often are practically unhampered in
their comings and goings, their words and actions. The surreptitious
pocket flask, filled with "hooch," is often a feature of social
parties, dances and affairs frequented by young people. Girls and boys
drink together, and as alcohol weakens moral resistance in the one
case, and stimulates desire in the other, deplorable consequences
naturally result. In the United States the number of girls "sent home"
from colleges, and of high-school girls being privately treated by
physicians to save them from disgrace, is incredibly large.
Parents who do not control the social activities of their daughters,
who permit them to spend their evenings away from home with only a
general idea of what they are doing or whom they are meeting, need not
be surprised if their morals are undermined.
_The Auto._--The advent of the automobile is responsible for an easy
and convenient manner of satisfying precociously aroused sex instincts
in young girls and boys. Often, unconscientious pleasure-seekers roam
the roads in their auto. They accost girls who are walking and offer
them a "lift." When the latter refuse to gratify their desires they
are often beaten and flung from the car. The daily press has given
such publicity to this civilized form of "head hunting," that it is
difficult to sympathize with girls who are thus treated. They cannot
help but know that in nine cases out of ten, a stranger who invites
them to a ride, who "picks" them up, does so with the definite purpose
already mentioned in view.
_Poverty._--Poverty, too, plays a large part in driving young girls
into a life of vice. In all our large cities there are hundreds of
young women who earn hardly enough to buy food and fuel and pay for
the rent of a room in a cheap lodging house. Feminine youth longs for
dress, for company, for entertainment. It is easy enough to find a
"gentleman friend" who will provide all three, in exchange for
"companionship." So the bargain is struck. These conditions exist in a
hundred and one occupations. A young woman may go to a large city as
pure as snow, but finding no lucrative employment, lonely and
despondent, she is led to take her first step on the downward path.
Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity
makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral