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Title: The Social Emergency
Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Author: Various
Commentator: Charles W. Eliot
Editor: William Trufant Foster
Release Date: May 18, 2005 [EBook #15858]
Language: English
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THE
SOCIAL EMERGENCY
_Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals_
EDITED BY
WILLIAM TRUFANT FOSTER
PRESIDENT OF REED COLLEGE
PRESIDENT PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION FOR SEX HYGIENE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
[Illustration: Publishers Stamp]
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY WILLIAM TRUFANT FOSTER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
U.S.A.
PREFACE
This volume is the outgrowth of an extension course conducted by Reed
College in Portland, Oregon, in 1913. The course was offered to teachers
and to workers in various other fields of social service as an outline of
the main problems of social hygiene and morals and as a guide to further
study. An edition of forty-five hundred copies of the syllabus of the
course was soon exhausted, and there appeared to be a sufficient demand
for the publication of some of the lectures.
The chapters are the various lectures, condensed by the editor, but
otherwise substantially as given, with the exception of chapters I, II,
and XII, which are here presented for the first time. In the original
course, Reed College fortunately had the services of Calvin S. White,
M.D., and L.R. Alderman, officers of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society.
Their addresses have been omitted, because they were prepared rather to
meet local conditions and the needs of the course than for the general
public. For the same reason the greater part of the addresses of William
House, M.D., and of the editor have been omitted.
_The Social Emergency_ does not purport to be a comprehensive or
systematic treatment of the problems of sex hygiene and morals; it
presents merely the views of a number of persons on certain phases of the
subject. Although no writer is responsible for the ideas of any other
writer, yet nearly all the writers have read and approved all the
chapters. Furthermore, the editor has had the aid of other competent
critics. The proof has been read by Maurice Bigelow, Ph.D., Professor of
Biology, Teachers College, Columbia University; by Calvin S. White, M.D.,
Secretary of the State Board of Health of Oregon and President of the
Oregon Social Hygiene Society; and by William Snow, M.D., Secretary of the
American Social Hygiene Association. Others, including Edward L. Keyes,
Jr., M.D., and Harry Beal Torrey, Ph.D., have read the particular chapters
concerning which they could give expert opinion. The editor is grateful to
all these men, and to Florence Read, Secretary of Reed Extension Courses,
who has given valuable aid. With their help he has endeavored to avoid
the errors, the exaggerations, the narrowness of view, and the hysteria
that characterize some of the current discussions concerning sex and the
social evil.
If there is one dominant truth in this volume, it is that any plan for
meeting the social emergency that would relax the control of moral and
spiritual law over sex impulses is antagonistic, not only to physical
health, but as well to the highest development of personality and to the
progressive evolution of human society.
W.T.F.
REED COLLEGE,
PORTLAND, OREGON,
April, 1914.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. By Charles W. Eliot, LL.D., President Emeritus of
Harvard University 1
I. THE SOCIAL EMERGENCY. By William Trufant Foster, Ph.D., LL.D. 5
II. VARIOUS PHASES OF THE QUESTION. By William Trufant Foster 13
III. PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS. By William House, M.D., Member of the
Executive Committee, Oregon Social Hygiene Society 25
IV. MEDICAL PHASES. By Andrew C. Smith, M.D., Member of the
Oregon State Board of Health 32
V. ECONOMIC PHASES. By Arthur Evans Wood, A.B., Instructor in
Social Economics, Reed College; Member of the Vice Commission, Portland,
Oregon 45
VI. RECREATIONAL PHASES. By Lebert Howard Weir, A.B., Field
Secretary of the Playground and Recreation Association of America 70
VII. EDUCATIONAL PHASES. By Edward Octavius Sisson, Ph.D.,
Commissioner of Education for the State of Idaho; recently Professor of
Education, Reed College 84
VIII. TEACHING PHASES: FOR CHILDREN. By William Greenleaf Eliot,
Jr., A.B., Minister of Church of Our Father, Portland; Member of the
Executive Committee, Oregon Social Hygiene Society 104
IX. TEACHING PHASES: FOR BOYS. By Harry H. Moore, Executive
Secretary, Oregon Social Hygiene Society 127
X. TEACHING PHASES: FOR GIRLS. By Bertha Stuart, A.B., M.D.,
Director of the Gymnasium for Women, University of Oregon 154
XI. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PHASES. By Norman Frank Coleman, A.M.,
Professor of English, Reed College 168
XII. AGENCIES, METHODS, MATERIALS, AND IDEALS. By William Trufant
Foster 190
LIST OF REFERENCES 203
INDEX 219
THE SOCIAL EMERGENCY
INTRODUCTION
_By Charles W. Eliot_
This book is a collection of essays by several authors on the various
aspects of social hygiene, and on the proper means of forming an
enlightened public opinion concerning the measures which society can now,
at last, wisely undertake against the vices and evils which in the human
race accompany bodily self-indulgence and lack of moral stamina.
Till within five years, it was the custom in families, churches, and
schools, to say nothing about sex relations, normal or abnormal; and in
society at large to do nothing about the ancient evil of prostitution, to
provide neither isolation nor treatment for the worst of contagious
diseases, and to regard the blindness, feeble-mindedness, sterility,
paralysis, and insanity which result from those diseases as afflictions
which could not be prevented. The progress of medicine within twenty
years, both preventive and curative, has greatly changed the ethical as
well as the physical situation. The policy of silence and concealment
concerning evils which are now known to be preventable is no longer
justifiable. The thinking public can now learn what these evils are, how
destructive they are, and by what measures they may be cured or prevented.
With this knowledge goes the responsibility and duty of applying it in
defense of society and civilization.
This book is a sincere effort, first, to supply the needed knowledge of
terrible wrongs and destructions; and, secondly, to indicate cautiously
and tentatively the most available means of attacking the evils described.
It is an attempt to enlighten public opinion on one of the gravest of
modern problems--indeed, the very gravest, with the exception of the
warfare between capital and labor. The book is not intended for children,
or even for adolescents, but rather for parents, teachers, and ministers
who have to answer the questions of children and youth about sex
relations, or deal sympathetically with the victims of sexual vice.
All efforts to deal directly with sex relations in schools, churches, and
clubs are hampered, and must be for some years to come, by the lack of
competent instructors in that difficult subject. So far as instruction in
educational institutions is concerned, it seems as if the normal schools
and the colleges for men or for women must be selected for the first
experiments on class instruction. Family instruction is in most cases
impossible; because neither father nor mother is competent to teach the
children what needs to be taught about both the normal and the disordered
sex relations. The ministers and priests are as a rule equally
incompetent. They can give precepts or orders, but not explanations or
reasons. Considerate managers of large industries ought to have a keen
interest in all social hygiene problems, because they nearly concern
industrial efficiency; but it is only lately that business men have begun
to understand the close connection between public health and industrial
prosperity, and most of them are not well informed on the subject.
Against prostitution and drunkenness governments of many sorts have been
struggling ineffectually for centuries. These two evils go together; but
whether taken separately or together no government has yet adopted an
effective mode of dealing with them. Fortunately medical science has
lately placed in the hands of government, and of private associations,
effective means of defense against the social vices and their
consequences; and the new social ethics call loudly on all men of good
will to enlist in the warfare against these ancient evils, which to-day
are more destructive than ever before, because of the prevailing
industrial and social freedom, and the new facilities for individual
traveling, and the migration of masses of men.
This book is intended to arouse public sentiment, spread accurate
knowledge, check rash enthusiasm, and promote well-informed and resolute
action.
CHAPTER I
THE SOCIAL EMERGENCY
_By William Trufant Foster_
Concerning matters of sex and reproduction there has been for many
generations a conspiracy of silence. The silence is now broken. Whatever
may be the wisdom or the folly of this change of attitude, it is a fact;
and it constitutes a social emergency.
Throughout the nineteenth century the taboo prevailed. Certain subjects
were rarely mentioned in public, and then only in euphemistic terms. The
home, the church, the school; and the press joined in the conspiracy.
Supposedly, they were keeping the young in a blessed state of innocence.
As a matter of fact, other agencies were busy disseminating falsehoods.
Most of our boys and girls, having no opportunity to hear sex and marriage
and motherhood discussed with reverence, heard these matters discussed
with vulgarity. While those interested in the welfare of the young
withheld the truth, those who could profit by their downfall poisoned
their minds with error and half-truths. An abundance of distressing
evidence showed that nearly all children gained information concerning sex
and reproduction from foul sources,--from misinformed playmates,
degenerates, obscene pictures, booklets, and advertisements of quack
doctors. At the same time the social evil and its train of tragic
consequences showed no abatement. The policy of silence, after many
generations of trial, proved a failure.
The past few years have seen a sudden change. Subjects formerly tabooed
are now thrust before the public. The plain-spoken publications of social
hygiene societies are distributed by hundreds of thousands. Public
exhibits, setting forth the horrors of venereal diseases, are sent from
place to place. Motion-picture films portray white slavers, prostitutes,
and restricted districts, and show exactly how an innocent girl may be
seduced, betrayed, and sold. The stage finds it profitable to offer
problem plays concerned with illicit love, with prostitution, and even
with the results of venereal contagion. Newspapers that formerly made only
brief references to corespondents, houses of bad repute, statutory
offenses, and serious charges, now fill columns with detailed accounts of
divorce trials, traffic in women, earnings of prostitutes, and raids on
houses. Novels that might have been condemned and suppressed a few decades
ago are now listed among "the best sellers." Lectures on sex hygiene and
morals are given widely, over four hundred such lectures having been given
under the auspices of a single society. Fake doctors, while obeying the
letter of new laws, are bolder than ever in some directions and use the
alarm caused by the production of _Damaged Goods_, for example, as a means
of snaring new victims. Generations of silence, enforced by the powerful
influence of social custom, have been suddenly followed by a campaign of
pitiless publicity, sanctioned by eminent men and women, and carried
forward by the agencies of public education that daily reach the largest
number of human beings--namely, the press, the motion picture, and the
stage.
This far-reaching change in the customs of society is fraught with
immediate dangers, because we do not know whether the mere knowledge of
facts concerning sexual processes, vices, and diseases will do a given
individual harm or good. The effect of such information upon any person is
unquestionably determined by his physiological age, by his nervous system,
by the manner and time of the presentation of the subject; above all, by
his will power and the controlling ideals that are acquired along with
scientific facts. As yet, we have not discovered thoroughly trustworthy
pedagogical principles, administrative methods, and printed materials for
public education in matters of sex. So difficult and complicated are the
problems, and so disastrous are mistakes in this field of instruction,
that the home, the church, and the school--the institutions to which young
people should naturally look for truth in all matters, the agencies best
qualified to solve the problems--are extremely cautious and conservative.
While these agencies, which are concerned primarily with the welfare of
the individual, the family, and society, have made some efforts to solve
the problems, and to discover a safe and gradual transition from the old
order to the new, other agencies, concerned primarily with making money,
have rushed in to exploit the new freedom and the universal interest in
matters of sex. This passing of the old order, and the invasion of the new
order before we are prepared for it, constitute the social emergency of
the twentieth century. Great as are the industrial and political
revolutions of modern times, it is doubtful if anything so deeply concerns
the coming generations as our measure of success in confronting the
present social emergency.
In no other phase of social education are mistakes so serious. Other
changes, demanded by new ideas of the function of the school, have been
made prematurely and clumsily, but without grave danger. We have adjusted
ourselves readily enough to compulsory education, normal schools, higher
education for women, expert supervision, the kindergartens, physical
training, industrial schools, university extension, care of defectives,
and vocational guidance. Every new type of school and every new subject
has been introduced before there were teachers trained for the new work.
We stumbled along. Few were greatly concerned over mistakes in the
teaching of penmanship and spelling and millinery and Latin and algebra.
Few protested against the inefficient teaching of physiology as long as
it rattled only dry bones, and had no evident relation to the physical
functions and health of the student. But the moment men proposed to teach
a subject of vital consequence, there was a cry of protest--and rightly.
Here mistakes will not do: here incompetent teachers cannot be trusted.
Ill-advised efforts to teach sex hygiene may aggravate the very evils we
are trying to assuage. Because the subject is of vital importance,
education in sexual hygiene and morals must proceed cautiously and
conservatively; according to tried methods, psychologically sound; always
under the control of men and women of maturity, who see the present
emergency in its many phases, who know how to teach, whose character is in
keeping with the highest ideals of their work, and who approach their
subject with reverence and their pupils with the joy and inspiration which
come from a large opportunity to serve mankind.
Unhappily, not all of those who have been stimulated by the new freedom of
speech to thrust themselves forward as teachers of sex hygiene, and as
social reformers, are safe leaders. Some are ignorant and unaware that
enthusiasm is not a satisfactory substitute for knowledge. Some are
hysterical. At a recent purity convention, a woman said, "I know little
about the facts, but it is wonderful how much ignorance can accomplish
when accompanied by devotion and persistence." That declaration was
applauded. Some people appear to believe that they will arrive safely if
they go rapidly enough and far enough, even though they may be going in
the wrong direction. Many retard the movement for social hygiene by making
statements they do not know to be true, especially in respect to the
extent of sexual immorality, the number of prostitutes, and the prevalence
of venereal disease. Young people of opposite sexes, finding evidence on
every hand that the traditional taboo is removed, discuss the subject for
personal pleasure.
The books in the field of social hygiene which have most scrupulously and
successfully avoided everything that might be sexually stimulating are not
the ones bought by the largest numbers. The demand for erotic publications
is so great as to warn us in advance that the new freedom will prove
dangerous for many whose minds are already unclean. The propaganda for
social purity is unlike many others, in that there is special danger of
doing injury to the very ones in special need of help. The fact that the
young, the ignorant, the hysterical, and the sexually abnormal, as well as
commercialized agencies, are using the newfound license in dangerous ways
is reason enough for the liberal and whole-hearted support of the American
Social Hygiene Association and affiliated societies.
These private organizations are striving to meet the present social
emergency. They are temporary expedients. Their chief aim is public
education. They should frustrate the efforts of all dangerous agencies and
hasten the day when the home, the church, and the school shall meet their
full responsibilities in the teaching of sexual hygiene and morals.
CHAPTER II
VARIOUS PHASES OF THE QUESTION
_By William Trufant Foster_
It is necessary to take into account all phases of the social emergency.
The question is not merely one of physiology, or pathology, or diseases,
or wages, or industrial education, or recreation, or knowledge, or
commercial organization, or legal regulation, or lust, or social customs,
or cultivation of will power, or religion. It is all of this and more. The
danger is that we shall see only one or two sides of a many-sided problem.
A solution may appear adequate because it leaves essential factors out of
consideration.
One physiological factor in the situation is of fundamental importance,
namely, the discrepancy between the age of sexual maturity and the
prevailing age of marriage,--an artificial condition largely determined by
social customs, by modern educational systems, and by standards of living.
While society has set forward, generation after generation, the age at
which marriage seems feasible, the age of puberty has remained virtually
the same. This unnatural condition--as artificial as the clothes we
wear--is a phase of the emergency which should be considered by those who
condemn as unnatural and forced the education of adolescent boys and girls
in sexual hygiene and morals. Partly as a result of this has come the
general acceptance of the double standard of chastity which has bitterly
condemned the girl--made her an outcast of society--and excused the boy
for the same offense, on the false plea of physiological necessity.
With the sanction of this double standard, tacitly accepted by society,
thousands of prostitutes have been harbored and protected. What shall we
do with them? We may drive them out of certain districts and certain
houses, and even certain cities, but they are still with us, and we are
responsible for them. If they are denied resorts where men seek them, they
will seek men. Most of them are unable, without special training, to earn
a living in any other way, and many of them would not if they could. A
majority are mentally defective and should be wards of society. Any plan
which fails to take care of these women--adequately, permanently, and
humanely--ignores one of the greatest of the problems which history, with
the sanction of society, has made a factor of the present emergency.
The medical phase of the present situation is not often ignored, except by
those who hold that there is no such thing as disease. All countries are
alarmed over the prevalence of venereal infection. Definite information,
however, concerning the extent of these diseases, the sources and
conditions of contagion, and the complications and results, is not to be
had; because society still persists in treating venereal diseases as not
subject to public registration and control, in spite of their terrible
attacks on tens of thousands of innocent victims.
The fear of contracting disease has long been used in attempts to promote
a single standard of chastity. Such fear has no doubt played its part and
will continue to keep many prudent men away from prostitutes. But in
looking forward to the work of the next generation, we must face the need
of higher motives than the fear of disease, for science may at any time
discover positive safeguards against contagion, thus diminishing one of
the factors of the present emergency and by the same stroke accentuating
others.
Of the economic phases of the emergency, there are some which directly
affect the wage-earner. One is the failure of wages to keep pace with the
higher cost of living; another is the increase in the number and
proportion of wage-earning women and the resultant keenness of competition
for places; another is the fact that women workers are for the most part
unorganized and unprotected; another is the occasional effect of
supplementary wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry;
still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls to imitate their
patrons' vulgar displays of finery. But of all the economic factors
contributing to the moral breakdown of girls, the most general and
inexcusable is the failure of our public schools to provide vocational
training, although it is certain that above fifty per cent of all girls
leave the schools to become wage-earners. Failure to gain a living wage is
undoubtedly one of the causes, though seldom the sole cause, of the first
delinquency of some girls.
Other economic conditions serve to promote and intrench the business of
prostitution. These conditions are as real as any other factors and will
block reform until they are squarely met. One of these is the excessive
profit on property used for immoral purposes. The fact that such property
is often owned by persons who pass as respectable members of society does
not make the problem easier. Then there is the intimate connection between
the sale of intoxicating liquors and commercialized prostitution, as
definitely revealed by the investigations of every vice commission.
Another economic factor intrenching prostitution as a business is the
commercial organization which continues to do an international and
interstate business, partly because of our inadequate white-slave laws and
inadequate appropriation for enforcement.
Most important among the economic aids to prostitution as a business are
the high immediate wages of vice in contrast with the low wages of virtue.
A girl in the shop, or factory, or office may be capitalized at six
thousand dollars; in the clutches of a procurer, she may become worth
twenty-six thousand dollars. As a prostitute, she "earns more than four
times as much as she is worth as a factor in the social and industrial
economy, where brains, intelligence, virtue and womanly charm should bring
a premium." In an average lifetime, to be sure, the wages of one woman in
industry are greater than the earnings in the short life of one
prostitute; but from the viewpoint of the man who pockets most of the
earnings, it is more profitable to kill off a dozen women than to keep one
at decent work through an average lifetime. This economic condition is
revealed to the cast-out woman after a few years, on the brink of the
grave; but at the outset of her brief career, she sees the immediate gain,
not the ultimate ruin.
There are other economic factors which will aid all movements for social
hygiene when they are more clearly perceived by those engaged in reputable
business: first, the loss to honest industry due to the reduced efficiency
of sexual perverts, of the diseased, and of those who, through their
ignorance, have been kept in worry by "leading specialists"; and, in the
second place, the inevitable reduction in the profits of legitimate
business due to the excessive profits of illegitimate business.
The recreational pursuits of young people are other factors of immediate
concern to those who would see the problems of social hygiene in their
entirety. Adolescent boys and girls spend most of their leisure time
either in wholesome physical activity conducive to normal sex life or in
various forms of amusement fraught with danger. In seeking innocent
recreation, young people can hardly escape contact with amusements
cunningly devised to excite sex impulses and at the same time to lower
respect for woman. The bill-boards and the picture post-cards, the
penny-in-the-slot machines and the motion pictures, the exhibits of quack
doctors, vaudeville performances, many so-called comic operas, popular new
songs, the dress of women approved by modern fashion,--these all help at
times to prepare young people to fall before the special temptations that
beset all commercial recreation centers. Especially dangerous are the
saloons, billiard rooms, dance-halls, ice-cream parlors, road-houses and
amusement parks. Both male and female enemies of decency frequent these
resorts. They are often schools of sexual immorality, with clever and
persistent teachers. Unless we take them into due account, we cannot see
the whole problem of education in sexual hygiene and morals.
Then there are the legal phases of the situation. We must consider, on the
one hand how much can be accomplished by legislation, in view of all the
known factors in the situation. Our courts, for example, in spasmodically
or regularly rounding up women, fining them ten or fifteen dollars apiece,
and turning them loose, are trying to meet the social emergency by
shutting their eyes to nine out of ten of its essential features. Their
policy gives a clean bill to the male prostitute, arrests the woman, takes
away a part of her earnings, sets her free under the necessity of seeking
new victims to offset the fine, offers her no incentive to lead any other
life, incidentally increases opportunities for police graft, and virtually
gives the sanction of the law to the whole nefarious business. The ostrich
with his head buried in the sand sees our gravest social problem about as
clearly and wholly as do many who are administering laws concerning
prostitution in American cities.
The impotence of laws passed in advance of public education and public
demand is a difficulty often overlooked. Some reformers seem to think
they can eliminate the social evil by getting a law passed. They urge
state legislatures to pass laws requiring every school to teach sex
hygiene. These people think they are going straight at a solution; but
they fail to see the patent fact that there are not now enough competent
teachers for this work; no, not one teacher for every hundred schools.
Another example of futile legislation is the California law requiring the
reporting of cases of venereal diseases. One could easily list a score of
laws in the domain of sexual morals which are ineffective, either because
in their very nature they could not be enforced, or because the public do
not wish to have them enforced. Perhaps there are no factors of the social
emergency so frequently left out of account as the relation of public
education to public opinion and the relation of public opinion to the
possibility of law enforcement.
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
diseases 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.
We must reckon carefully with the centuries of social tradition which have
resulted in the taboo on the subjects of sex and reproduction. It may be
that this conspiracy of silence has proved a failure; it may be that it
has no basis worthy of intellectual respect. It may be that all people
should welcome the new freedom of speech. These are not issues in the
process of education. Our first concern is the actual state of the public
mind; we begin with that or else we fail.
Biologically the all-inclusive issue concerns the survival of the race.
Nature has no favorites: the fittest of the human stock will survive after
others have degenerated and disappeared; the fittest animals will
ultimately people the earth. Sexual degeneracy is the surest road to race
extinction.
No aspects are more important than those concerning morals and religion.
The restraining influences of the 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 individual.
The inadequacy of mere knowledge in the realm of sex hygiene is painfully
evident. To the knowledge of what is right must be added the will to do
the right. As moral and religious instruction is the dominant educational
need of the present generation, so the moral and religious aspects of sex
problems transcend all others in importance.
These are the most important phases of the social emergency. It is
difficult to see them in all their intricate relationships and to realize
that in any one approach we touch only one side of a many-sided problem.
The great majority of our people see only the superficial aspects, or see
one particular phase in distorted perspective, because that is brought
close to them through a special case of misfortune. Even social workers
are in danger of narrowness of vision because of devoted service in
particular fields. The aim of the following chapters is to consider
successively and in right relationships various aspects of the social
emergency.
CHAPTER III
PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS
_By William House_
All instruction in the physiology of reproduction as an aid to sexual
hygiene should be so conducted as to give assurance that the wonders of
the origin and development of life in all its millions of forms be taught
in a respectful, even reverent, spirit. Naught in the universe is more
marvelous than the beginnings of life. Naught else compares with the
wonders of growth and development.
Rightly taught, reproduction may be cleansed from the foul interpretations
which have soiled the minds of countless children, and may be made into a
body of wonderful and sacred truths capable of fortifying youthful minds
against the uncleanness and indecencies which have contributed so largely
to sexual impurity. If it be never forgotten that human ingenuity has been
taxed in untold numbers of unsuccessful experiments to produce life by
other than nature's methods, while the power of reproduction resides in
even the lowliest of living organisms, the mystery and marvel are
multiplied a hundredfold, and the subject of reproduction is invested with
a halo of splendid and inspiring proportions.
* * * * *
The sex organs are the agencies by which every plant and every animal,
each after its kind, brings into the world a succeeding generation. Sex
activity is the result of sex impulse. The imperative need of reproduction
in the scheme of nature is responsible for the presence of sex impulse as
it occurs in every normal adult animal. Were it not for this impulse the
earth would soon become void of life. The human sex impulse is a powerful
one, thought compelling, at times well-nigh overmastering. Though in the
main good, it sometimes produces harmful results. Among the lower animals
the sex function is exercised without thought or knowledge of consequence,
restrained only by the limitations of physical power,--the power to obtain
by might, by conquest. In fully developed mankind, the mind acts as a
constraining force which may control or even completely subdue physical
manifestations of sex impulse.
In adolescents--those who are approaching _maturity_, but are in a
transition state, neither man nor child--sex desire may be as strong as in
those of riper years. Many who are passing through this period know little
or nothing of the forces that pulse through their frames and seem to
consume them with unquenchable fires. These forces are the sex impulses,
the beginning of sex life and sex activity. And as every work of man or
nature while in a state of transition is unstable, less firmly founded,
more easily destroyed or injured than at any other time, so it is that the
adolescent finds himself in greater danger than at any other time of life.
Consumed with incomprehensible desire, which he cannot gratify, he is the
victim of circumstances which cause him distress, yet admit of no relief.
Probably all marriage laws have as their real object the protection of
child life. Without marriage laws there could be no organized society and
the human race would soon sink to the level of the animal world in
general. Under present social conditions marriages are put off longer and
longer. Each succeeding generation is marked by an increase in the age of
those who marry. But the conditions which cause late marriages in no way
lessen the sex impulses or mitigate the distress which these impulses
cause. The impulse to multiply is neither greater nor less than in the
past when marriages generally occurred earlier. Fortunately it is weaker
in the female than in the male. There are those who believe that the male
must exercise it if he would achieve his full strength of mind and body.
Certain political and philosophic sects take cognizance of this belief and
advocate legalized provision for the gratification of the sex impulse even
to the extent of providing for the destruction of the lives of the unborn.
The most pernicious of the false beliefs regarding physiological necessity
are as follows:--
1. That a life of sexual continence is not consistent with the best
physical health.
2. That the exercise of the sex function is necessary to the full
development and preservation of "manly power,"--the power of procreation.
3. That the sexual impulse in man is so imperious that it is impossible
to control it and, therefore, a sexually continent life cannot be expected
of man.
4. That, therefore, the moral standard which we apply to woman cannot be
applied to man.
To correct these erroneous beliefs about the sex function, Dr. M.J. Exner
brought together the testimony of the foremost medical authorities of the
United States. He drew up a statement regarding sexual continence, and
submitted it to leading physiologists for criticism so as to bring its
phraseology wholly within the requirements of scientific precision. It was
then submitted for endorsement to leading medical authorities throughout
the country. The ready and hearty response of 370 of these men in
endorsing the declaration leaves no doubt as to the conviction of the
leading men of the medical profession on this question. The declaration is
as follows:--
"In view of the individual and social dangers which spring from the
widespread belief that continence may be detrimental to health, and of the
fact that municipal toleration of prostitution is sometimes defended on
the ground that sexual indulgence is necessary, we, the undersigned,
members of the medical profession, testify to our belief that continence
has not been shown to be detrimental to health or virility; that there is
no evidence of its being inconsistent with the highest physical, mental
and moral efficiency; and that it offers the only sure reliance for sexual
health outside of marriage."[1]
The erroneous beliefs concerning physiological necessity have been
propagated chiefly on the authority of advertising medical fakers, whose
business depends on misrepresentation and deceit, men whose methods
exclude them from the ranks of reputable physicians. They are also taught
by those within the ranks of the profession who are ignorant or
unscrupulous or both, and who for the most part have no higher incentive
in their profession than the pursuit of the dollar. The teaching of these
men is in most cases more an expression of their own vicious habits than
of real conviction. Both wholly misrepresent the teaching and attitude of
the great majority of physicians who constitute the reputable body of the
profession.
Dr. William H. Howell, Professor of Physiology at Johns Hopkins
University, says: "There is no evidence whatsoever that the sexual
appetite or the act of reproduction has any physiological relationship to
the preservation of the integrity of the individual. This appetite has
been created or evolved and made strong in us for an entirely different
purpose. A sexual necessity exists only so far as the integrity of the
race is concerned; so far as the individual is concerned his sexual
functions may be unused or he may be completely unsexed without any injury
to his bodily health."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The full list of authorities is given in _The Physician's Answer_, by
M.J. Exner, M.D., Secretary, Student Department, International Committee,
Young Men's Christian Associations, Association Press, New York, 1913.
This is the best treatment of the question of physiological necessity. It
is freely quoted in this chapter. [Editor.]
CHAPTER IV
MEDICAL PHASES
_By Andrew C. Smith_
Some idea of the prevalence of venereal diseases in the United States may
be obtained from the following statistics of the census for 1910. The
registration area covered a population of 48,877,893 persons. The figures
are here extended to cover a population of 90,000,000 people: Deaths
ascribed to venereal disease, 5275; spinal cord diseases, 2598; paresis,
4845. Other diseases partly due to syphilis: softening of the brain, a
term indiscriminately used to cover a number of diseases including brain
syphilis and paresis, 2111; paralysis, usually meaning apoplexy, but
always including many cases of brain syphilis, 14,479; premature birth, by
some believed to be the result of syphilis in one half of all cases,
34,174; congenital debility, deaths due in many cases to feebleness of the
child resulting from syphilis, 25,285; blindness, one fourth the total
number of blind in this country estimated at 15,000 to 20,000. Many
estimate that over half of the entire male population have had gonorrhea.
The principal reason for this alarming distribution among all classes of
these infections and their steady increase is ignorance and
misunderstanding of physiological facts, particularly the viciously false
teaching of the street corner that sexual activity is a physiological
necessity.
These diseases would be arrested were there a widespread knowledge of
their disastrous effects. Although young men hear the mischievous lie that
"gonorrhea is no worse than a bad cold," thousands of them are punished
with sterility as a result of the disease. Nearly all the neglected cases
result in so-called ascending infections, reaching the bladder and kidneys
and causing many deaths, and many men carry the infection in dormant form,
to infect innocent wives in later years.
Appalling as are the consequences of gonorrheal infection in men, they are
not so fatal or so far-reaching as syphilis. The causative parasite of
this disease spares not a single tissue in the body and may disturb any or
all of its functions, not even mentality escaping. As a cause of death it
is extremely frequent. Our statistics ordinarily ascribe to syphilis but
a small percentage of the deaths actually due to it; for instance, many of
our cases of spinal disease, paralysis, arterial and other organic
diseases are tabled under other names, although directly due to syphilis.
In women gonococcic infections are even more destructive than in men, as
it is extremely common for the infection to extend to the tubes and to the
peritoneal cavity, thus necessitating dangerous and mutilating operations,
generally followed by sterility and often by death. Syphilis, though less
frequent in women than in men, is nearly if not quite as fatal as in men,
and otherwise similar in its baneful effects. I The child suffers the most
tragic results of venereal infection, for it is always wholly innocent,
yet infected to a greater or less extent, if the parents be syphilitic,
and frequently if the birth-canal be gonorrheally infected. Although
silver nitrate is a remedy for gonorrheal infection, if applied to the
eyes immediately after birth, nevertheless the babe frequently suffers
with infected eyes, and not infrequently with blindness.
If the child's sad infection is syphilis, instead of gonorrhea, there are
still other miseries in store for it. If it is not so fortunate to be
stillborn, it may have infection that ranges from almost imperceptible
degrees to the most loathsome extent that it is possible for animal tissue
to harbor. Its brain may be so invaded by the syphilitic parasites that it
can never attain any degree of mentality; its spinal column maybe so
involved that paralytic conditions will surely result; and if these nerve
centers escape special involvement, other organs may be affected, such as
the stomach, bowels, and liver; if these escape, the bones may be so
deficient in vitality as to be incapable of sustaining the frame as
development proceeds; the skin only may be involved, or the mucous
membranes so affected as to make of the child a perpetual snuffler and
inefficient breather. In most cases of lesser as well as greater mental
defect, the tests show syphilitic infection. Endless are the complications
that may be visited upon the innocent progeny of syphilitic antecedents.
The gonorrheal infections occur in the mucous membranes lining the
cavities, especially those of the urethra and female genital tract. It is
in these tissues that the germ of gonorrhea finds lodgment, and once there
its development is hard to interrupt. Although the growth of the
gonorrheal germ produces acute symptoms, such as discharge and pain, these
pass off under treatment in a few weeks. Unfortunately the disease is far
from cured, for the microbe has found its natural habitat in the
inter-cellular structure of the genital mucus, from which it cannot
readily be dislodged, and from which it may invade other tissues. It may
remain in a state of latency for an indefinite time; then transferred to a
new field, it may resume its original activities. While in this stage of
latency it is difficult to destroy. At this time it is more likely to be
further disseminated, as the patient, ignorant of the condition, is more
likely to convey the disease, which so often occurs in married life after
a long forgotten infection.
The gonococcus (the microbe of gonorrhea) is a pus--producing bacterium,
occurring in pairs, resembling in form two coffee grains, generally with a
distinct interval of separation. Although its natural habitat is the
mucous membrane lining the genito-urinary tracts it may invade the
muscular and serous and other tissues. If often affects the Fallopian
tubes and ovaries and the serous lining of the pelvic and abdominal
cavities. The deeper sub-mucous tissues of the uterus and the male
genito-urinary tracts are also frequently involved, it being sometimes
impossible to eradicate it from these deeper retreats. From these deeper
tissues it is more commonly taken up by the circulation and deposited in
distant parts, frequently in the joints. When it becomes thus
systematically disseminated, the so-called secondary or metastatic lesions
are almost as numerous, though not as virulent, as syphilitic infection.
Recent pathological researchers have found that occasionally the
gonococcus becomes the causative factor in inflammations of the muscles,
tendons, and glands, and in inflammatory conditions of the lungs, kidneys,
heart, and even the brain, spinal cord, and the serous membranes
enveloping these great cranial and spinal viscera.
The individuality and characteristics of the syphilis microbe were not
positively determined until in 1905, Schaudinn, of Germany, convinced the
medical world that it was a spiral, corkscrew-like organism, from a
quarter to one millimeter in thickness, and from four to twelve
millimeters in length. It is not so discriminating as the gonococcus in
its points of inoculation, nor is it as vulnerable to attack; and it is
vastly more destructive to the tissues invaded. It spares no tissue in the
human frame, and resists destruction by any known drugs of vegetable
origin. When in a latent state its presence was often impossible to
determine until, two years after its discovery, a test was worked out by
Wasserman, also of Germany, by which diagnosis of the infection may be
made,--even in latent form,--as in a hereditary case where no clinical
manifestations have yet asserted themselves. There is another valuable
blood test worked out by Noguchi. With these two tests we are now able to
diagnose the disease, almost absolutely, and follow up the treatment till
cure is complete, except in some of the incurable brain and spinal cord
cases.
In 1909, Ehrlich determined, after a series of laboratory experiments on
animals inoculated with the syphilis germ (spirochæta pallida), that a
complex compound, with arsenic as its base, had the desired effect of
destroying the parasite, in a dose not poisonous to the animal. This
compound, first designated as "606," representing its number among his
many laboratory experiments, he later named "salvarsan." With the
assistance of his clinical friends, he soon demonstrated the action of his
compound on man, and gave it freely to the world. Although it is now
almost universally used, it has not proved to be the absolute cure that it
was hoped it would be, as some of the spirochætæ seem to be hidden away
where they are protected from the circulating poison,--to bring forth new
progeny,--thus producing so-called recurrence.
The possibility of the infection of innocent persons is always uppermost
in the mind of the medical man, and should equally concern the layman.
Contaminated articles and utensils, such as towels and common
drinking-cups, have caused many infections. This danger is greater from
syphilis than from gonorrhea, for the reason that the spirochæta pallida
is more virulent than the gonococcus. In our own fields, camps, and mines,
it is common for men to drink from one jug or dipper. Infection almost
surely follows if one of the crowd has a syphilitic sore on the lip. So
intense is the activity of the spirochæta pallida in the primary stage
that it may be borne to innocent parties by unwashed clothes and utensils
of any kind, that have been in recent contact with a primary syphilitic
sore. A dentist's or a doctor's instruments, for instance, are extremely
dangerous as infection carriers, if they are not thoroughly sterilized by
boiling. The danger of infection in syphilis and gonorrhea depends largely
upon the virulence of the individual infection. As some living tubercle
bacilli may be harbored and thrown off with impunity, while others will
destroy the strongest man, regardless of all treatment, so some spirochætæ
or gonococci may be safely disposed of, while others are most deadly.
Of all the sad instances of germ infection, the saddest are those from
venereal germs, for they are disseminated mostly in vice, and inoculated
into the innocent through ignorance. A common cause of infection of the
innocent is the false popular belief that venereal germs are transmitted
only in sexual congress. The truth is that any part of the body is in
danger of inoculation from syphilis if the germ be virulent. So may any
membranous point be infected by the gonococcus, whether conveyed by hand
or instrument or fabric. This explains the number of gonococcic infections
occurring in girl children. They come in membranous contact (at the outlet
of vagina or rectum, or in the eye) with a contaminated article of
clothing, or with the contaminated hands of an infected person. Ignorance
is the cause of nearly all venereal infections. Why, then, should venereal
infection not be eradicated? With adequate education, if there is not
eradication, there will at least be compensation, for the sacrifice will
be mainly of those who will not accept education--the unfit.
The possibility of recovery from syphilis is greater at present than it
has been in the past, but we cannot yet say that the disease is absolutely
curable in a given case. While most cases treated early with salvarsan,
and followed by judicious use of mercury, are curable, there are
nevertheless those which do not thus respond, and which in spite of all
treatment go from bad to worse, till the patient's miseries are ended in
insanity, paralysis, and death.
While the venereal diseases are the greatest physical evils to be
attributed to sex ignorance, there are others chargeable to the same
cause. There are, for instance, important physiological phenomena
pertaining to sex development, ignorance of which is often baneful to the
developing adolescent of either sex. When the boy's voice begins to
change, and hair begins to appear on his face and body, and more thrilling
sensations occasionally command his attention, he should be told, modestly
but distinctly, that a pure and manly function is developing within him,
the sole object of which is reproduction, and he must not consider it in a
vulgar way, nor discuss it with others than his parents or physician or
minister. Tell him that these physical changes of oncoming manhood are due
to the establishment of the secretion of the procreative fluid,--the
semen,--and will be safely cared for by nature. Fortify him against the
mental pollution of the quack advertisement, and the satanically false
teaching of ignorant associates that sexual intercourse is physiologically
necessary, by impressing him with the fact that nature cares for the
disposal of the seminal secretion. When clearly made aware of these simple
sex principles, and convinced that it is unmanly and depraved to consider
them vulgarly, the rapidly developing manly boy will not become a
masturbator or a frequenter of bawdy-houses and a victim of the gonococcic
or spirochætic infections; nor will he become a moral assassin, a seducer
of girls.
The sister, no less than the brother, needs pure, plain, non-prudish sex
education. If her mother is not qualified to impart it, she, like the boy,
should seek the aid of her minister, or physician, or a qualified school
teacher; better a few suggestions from an experienced, modest source than
many suggestions from inexperienced and often lewd companions. As the
brother was told of the physical phenomena accompanying his sex
development, so the sister should be apprised of the physiological
necessity of her periodical functions, and of nature's kindly care and
development of her delicate and wonderful sex mechanism, the sole purpose
of which is maternity. It will fortify her maidenliness to tell her that
much of the world is deceitful and degrading in sex matters, and that if
she would be a perfect woman, mentally and physically, she must vigilantly
guard her virtue, maintaining absolute purity, not only with persons of
the opposite sex, but with persons of her own sex, and the person of her
own self. Incalculable good can be done toward the uplift of wayward
humanity by sex education.
CHAPTER V
ECONOMIC PHASES
_By Arthur Evans Wood_
In any effort for social improvement it is necessary to know conditions
that make both for and against success. This is especially so in social
hygiene, for it is closely related to all aspects of modern life. Lack of
education and false instruction are largely responsible for sexual
immorality. It is not so generally known that economic conditions are
responsible for vice, opinions on this matter ranging all the way from a
denial that economic conditions have anything to do with vice to the
assertion that vice would disappear with the increase in the incomes of
working-people. Assuming that ignorance is the fundamental cause of vice
(an assumption which does not "stand to reason") the results of ignorance
must manifest themselves through the institutions of society. Some
institutions, such as slavery, encourage vice. Likewise, any caste system,
such as feudalism in the Middle Ages, in which there must be depths as
well as heights, supplies the vicious classes. The aim of this chapter is
to show that, while modern economic conditions do not create "the social
evil" they furnish an environment favorable to its spread. If this is so,
an improvement in these conditions must accompany all other measures for
the eradication of vice.
One of the most significant facts of the industrial evolution of the last
half-century is the increase in the number of women who have become
wage-earners outside the home. According to the Federal Census the number
of females fifteen years of age and over, employed as breadwinners in
1900, was 5,007,069, an increase of 34.9 per cent over the number thus
employed in 1890.[2] The largest number in any one occupation, 1,213,828,
were servants and waitresses. Of this class the domestics were not
employed "outside the home." The homes, however, were not their own, and
salutary influences of home life do not exist for the majority of
domestics. In the decade between 1900 and 1910 the increase in the number
of wage-earning women has been even more accelerated than in previous
decades, and to-day probably from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 women in the
United States are industrially employed.
One important aspect of this influx of women into industry is that the
proportion of those in domestic and personal service, which has always
been women's work, has decreased; whereas the proportion of those in
manufacturing, trade, and transportation, which are new employments for
women, has increased.[3] This means that not only are working-girls and
women leaving the homes, but they are also abandoning in increasing
numbers those occupations to which in times past their sex has been most
accustomed. It is impossible that this prodigious change in the sphere and
work of women should not be accompanied by some change in the social and
moral standards that were nourished in the seclusion of the home. Miss
Jane Addams has made the suggestion that perhaps the superior reputation
of women for virtue is due to the fact that, generally speaking, women
have been secluded from the influences of the world.[4]
The increase in the proportion of girls engaged in non-domestic pursuits
means that industrial vocations for women are becoming more dissociated
from the arts of home-making,--a fact which is doubtless the cause of many
an inner struggle.
In the present lack of industrial education young girls who must work to
support themselves or their families drift about from place to place with
no definite vocational aims. Frequently they come to the offices of child
labor commissions wanting work, but not knowing what they can do, or even
what they would like to do. If they do find work, it is rarely of a sort
that offers incentives for a career. Lack of skill, of interests, and of
ambitions result in industrial inefficiency. They are also the usual
accompaniments of moral delinquency.
Even where opportunities for industrial training are offered, they may not
lessen the disparity between industrial opportunities that exist for girls
and womanly tastes. A recent report on the need for a trade school for
girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, advocates a school that will train for
skill in the machine-operating trades, because there is most demand for
workers in these trades.[5] One might think in reading the report that
machines for stitching corsets and underwear provided the ideal vocation
for women. Biological considerations, if no others, would favor
distribution of wage-earning women away from the mechanical pursuits into
those which are more or less associated with the domestic arts.
A further significance for social hygiene of the entrance of women into
industry is that it places a strain upon the spirit of chivalry which is a
basis of right relations between the sexes. Chivalry in men has
accompanied the comparative seclusion of women from the world, and is due
to those instincts which lead men to protect those who are weaker than
themselves. The term "the weaker sex" has a sound physiological basis.
With the passing of the domestic system of industry, however, the
seclusion of women becomes more and more a thing of the past. In factory
and shop they mingle promiscuously with men. Crowds of young working-girls
in every large city at the noon hour throng the streets. If they walk to
and from work they sometimes have to pass unprotected through parts of
the city given over to vice.[6] They thus become familiar with vice
conditions and are often subject to ungentlemanly, if not insulting,
conduct. There are in every community a number of men who are decent only
under restraint, and the economic position of wage-earning girls weakens
that restraint.
Moreover, the phrase "the weaker sex" has lost some of its significance.
Many occupations, such as clerking, stenographing, laundering, and certain
kinds of unskilled factory work are almost entirely taken over by women,
who labor throughout the same working-day as men, and usually at a lesser
wage than men would receive for the same kind of work. Under these
conditions, to talk of the physical weakness of women is to accuse our
civilization of cruelty.
Around wages most of the discussion has centered concerning the economic
aspect of vice. The investigations conducted throughout the country have
revealed a great variety of opinion concerning the relation between low
wages and immorality. There has been much confusion of thought on the
question. It is true, on the one hand, that injustice is done to
wage-earning girls and women of the country when the report is circulated
that the difference between morality and immorality is only one of dollars
and cents. On the other hand, to deny that low wages paid to working-girls
has any bearing on the question of vice is evidence of failure to grasp
the moral problem involved. Morality, to be sure, is always expressed in
the overcoming of difficulties. Yet we can hold a person blameworthy only
if in the full possession of his or her faculties. A poorly nourished,
fatigued girl has no such self-possession. If she does not earn enough on
which to live, and "goes wrong," her inadequate wage is a factor in her
wrong-doing, and the one who pays it to her cannot be rid of his share of
the responsibility. "Sin is misery, misery is poverty. The antidote for
poverty is income,"[7] says Professor Simon N. Patten, who is doing a vast
deal toward bringing economics and morals on speaking terms with each
other.
Vice investigations in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon,
Philadelphia, and elsewhere snow that there are many economic factors
besides wages involved as causes of vice. Some of these other factors are
housing, hours of work morally dangerous employments, associations at
work, and fatigue. The wage, however, is more important than all of these,
for the wage largely governs living conditions, associations and
recreation. The wage often makes the difference between life as mere
existence and life with the opportunities for self-improvement that should
belong to a human being.
It will be of value, then, to note some of the facts about wages that have
appeared in recent surveys made by the Consumers' League of Oregon, by the
State of Massachusetts, and by the Federal Government. After showing that
the minimum cost of living for a self-supporting woman in Portland is $10
a week, the Oregon Survey shows that in the nine principal occupations
employing women in Portland, from 22 to 92 per cent are receiving less
than $10 a week. The table is as follows:--
Occupations Per cent
under $10
Department stores 58.2
Factories 74.7
Hotels and restaurants 49.2
Laundries 92.6
Offices (clerks) 46.4
Offices (stenographers) 22.4
Printing-shops 56.1
Telephone exchanges 50.
Miscellaneous 48.7
Another table shows that in five different employments,--laundries,
factories, offices, department stores, and miscellaneous employment,--out
of 509 women all but 31 (office workers) close the year with a deficit.[8]
A significant point is that among all but factory workers the excess of
expenditures over incomes is greatest among those who live at home. This
disproves the statement often made that those who live at home do not need
a living wage. In conclusion, the _Report_ of the Oregon Survey says: "The
investigation has proved beyond a doubt that a large majority of
self-supporting women in the State are earning less than it costs them to
live decently; that many are receiving subsidiary help from their homes,
which thus contribute to the profits of their employers; that those who do
not receive help from relatives are breaking down in health from lack of
proper nourishing food and comfortable lodging quarters, or are
supplementing their wages by money received from immoral living."[9]
The Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards reports even lower
standards in wages for women. Among wage-earning girls and women over 18
years of age, 93 per cent of the candy-workers, 60 per cent of the workers
in retail stores, and 75 per cent of laundry-women receive less than $8 a
week.[10] In the cotton textile industry, among the 8021 women over 18
years of age whose wages were investigated, 38 per cent received less than
$6 a week.[11] Among the individual stories that are buried in the
_Report_, the following are typical:--
Ernestine is an eighteen-year-old Canadian girl, very pretty and
neatly dressed. Her parents both died several months ago and left her
utterly alone, without living relatives. She worked as a stock girl at
$4.50 a week for two months, was laid off, and went to a summer hotel
as waitress for $3 a week, room and board. She worked there for two
months, or until the season was over, and then came to another store
for $5 a week. She pays $1.50 for her room, including light and heat,
has no carfare, does her laundering, except for shirt waists which
cost her $.30 during the summer. She goes without breakfast or eats
only a banana, gets her lunch for ten or fifteen cents, and her
dinners for twenty or twenty-five cents. She has never paid more than
twenty-five cents for a meal since she started to work. She is just a
child, and is quite bewildered over the problem of facing life on $5 a
week, and is terribly afraid of debt. She is intelligent and
clever.[12]
Jennie is a frail little body, about 40 years old. After working 16
years in a Boston department store her wage was $5 a week.... For
eleven years Jennie's little $5 a week had been the sole support of
herself and her aged mother.... When her astonished employer learned
that she had worked 16 years in his store and attained a wage of only
$5 a week, he raised it $1. So the wage is supplemented by the girls
(in the store) underpaid themselves, but comprehending the woman's
need.... Thus seventeen years of faithful service to one master has
won for Jennie this position of semi-dependence upon charity,
increasing anxiety over an unprovided-for future, and declining health
as a result of her pitiless struggle to stretch a miserable $5 over
the cost of support of herself and mother.[13]
The most comprehensive report has been made by the Federal Government, and
includes a survey of conditions among women in stores and factories in
seven cities[14]. According to this report the average earnings of the
women in retail stores of these cities is $6.88 in the case of those who
live at home, and $7.89 in the case of those who are "adrift."[15] Among
the factory women of these cities the average wage of those who live at
home is $6.40, and of those who are "adrift," $6.78. The Boston
investigation shows that from 11,000 to 12,000 women and girls were living
in lodging- or boarding-houses at an average cost of $5.18 a week for
prime necessities, leaving only $2.24 for clothing and all other expenses.
The following comment is made on this government report by the
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission:--
Although more than half the adrift women (in Boston) live in lodging-
or boarding-houses,--numbering be it remembered between 11,000 and
12,000 girls and women,--two thirds of them lack the use of a
sitting-room and must entertain men as well as women in their
bedrooms. Not a few indications were seen in the course of the
investigation of the demoralizing results of this practice. Many of
the young women in lodgings were young and were friendless and were
earning very low pay. Eighteen per cent of those who were reported
without the use of a sitting-room were under twenty-five. The housing
or food, or both, were reported as bad for a number of these
perilously defenceless young women.[16]
Consideration of wages and standards of living leads to the question, What
is a living wage? Studies in different parts of the country agree that it
is about $10 a week. An estimate made by social workers for the
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission places the minimum at $10.60 for
girls who are adrift, and $8.37 to $8.71 for girls and women living at
home. This estimate, however, made no allowance for unemployment,
sickness, accident, or old age.[17] The Portland Vice Commission and the
Consumers' League of Oregon have adopted a $10 minimum.[18] The first
conference called by the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission adopted
$9.25 a week, or $40 per month, as "the sum required to maintain in frugal
but decent conditions of living a self-supporting woman employed in
mercantile establishments in Portland."[19] To this, however,
representatives of the employees on the conference made objection, stating
that a straight $10 a minimum was the only safe one.
If the minimum is rightly placed at $10, and if the investigations are
true in showing that the majority of self-supporting women the country
over are receiving less than this amount, we may now come to a more
detailed discussion as to the relation between underpayment and vice. It
is just here that it is easy to jump at conclusions. Most people approach
social questions not with a scientific mind, but with preconceptions which
mar their judgment. For example, the socialist exaggerates the effect of
bad wage conditions, and the Woman's Auxiliary Department of the police
exaggerate the influence of home conditions. Again, personal testimony is
unreliable, because, on the one hand, victims of the social evil are
liable to blame external conditions; and, on the other hand, well-fed,
well-housed investigators often underestimate the bad moral effect of poor
nourishment and fatigue.
Of this much we may be certain: low wages poor living, which involves
poor housing, poor food, no savings, and either no recreation or
dependence on others for it. In the federal report on living conditions of
women in stores and factories, it is estimated that in the seven cities
where the investigation took place approximately 65,000 women are
adrift.[20] Since the majority of these are receiving less than the
minimum cost of a decent living, they are "perilously defenseless young
women."
Another federal report,[21] bearing directly on the relation between
conditions of work and vice, concludes that whereas few girls "go wrong"
on account of poverty, the misstep once taken, poverty and want are
powerful deterrents to reform. A fourfold classification is made of
immoral women, as follows: (1) Unmarried mothers; (2) girls who leave and
regain the path of virtue, having their fling for the sake of good times;
(3) occasional prostitutes, who enter the career as a business for a
while; (4) professional prostitutes. Mention should be here made of this
report, because its total effect is to minimize economic causes of
prostitution, placing the responsibility elsewhere than on industrial
conditions. It is to be noted, however, that it does emphasize the
indirect effects of poverty, and does speak of the moral danger lurking in
certain occupations, and of the bad effects of the lack of industrial
education.
More definite responsibility for vice is ascribed to low wages in the
reports of vice commissions. The Chicago _Report_ says that of one group
of 119 immoral women, 18 came from department stores, and 38 said that
they had taken up the career for the need of money. The Portland _Report_
presents 22 women as "Cases in which Low Wage and Vice are closely
associated."[22] The _Report_ continues:--
In presenting the foregoing table and statements from girls, this
commission does not take the position that the low wages of
self-supporting girls is the sole contributing cause of their
delinquency, realizing that there are thousands of girls who would
endure the utmost hardships before yielding themselves to those who
are ready to seduce them. The evidence as to the effect of wage
conditions is taken from the girls themselves, who, perhaps lacking
adequate moral training, have, in the extremities of their position,
allowed themselves to be driven "the easiest way."[23]
In the vice investigation conducted by the Illinois State Senate, 50 girls
in one day testified under oath, 45 of whom said that their downfall had
been due to the lack of money. The foregoing evidence is the kind
unfortunate girls would be likely to give. Nevertheless, making due
allowances, this evidence tends to confirm reports of vice commissions
whose purpose has been strictly scientific.
If a conservative estimate of the proportion of vice due to low wages of
girls would be 10 to 15 per cent, it must not be concluded that this
represents all of the baneful moral effect of poverty. Whatever the other
non-economic causes of vice, they are aggravated where poverty exists. Not
only is this so, but alleged other causes may be partly economic. Bad home
conditions are due not only to the lack of moral discipline, but also to
the lack of income. The average wage of the adult male wage-earner of
that section of the United States lying east of the Rockies and north of
Mason and Dixon's line is said to be about $600. Sometimes the wage is as
low as $500, and in only a few instances as high as $750.[24] If
wage-earning men attempt to support families on these incomes, it means
that they are not able to provide adequately for their wives and children.
If they do not attempt to do so, it means, taking men as they are, an
increase in the army of men who support prostitution. Professor H.R.
Seager has said that prostitution in aid of wages is the greatest disgrace
of our civilization.[25] An accompanying disgrace lies in the fact that
economic conditions and other factors prevent the average male wage-earner
in so large a section of our country from fulfilling his desire for
marriage and a home of the sort that makes for health and happiness.
Besides the low wages of women and men, other economic facts have their
bearing upon sexual hygiene and morals. These facts may be grouped under
the head of industrial stress and strain which is moral as well as
physical. The underpaid factory or store girl is subject to constant
fatigue. In the rush season in department stores, girls often depend upon
opiates for dulling the nervous strain. No trade is free from its special
physical strain. There are, moreover, many morally dangerous trades. Work
as chambermaids in hotels is conspicuously perilous for girls. The Chicago
Juvenile Protective Association says, "The majority of girls who work in
hotels go wrong sooner or later." The modern department stores, which
employ the majority of young working-girls, offer temptations. Mrs.
Florence Kelley refers to work in these stores as "the most dangerous to
morals and health, of all occupations into which children can go."[26] Of
course, it may be said that a "good girl" will not go wrong. It may also
be said that a good social order will not place even good girls daily
under conditions that are liable to bring about a physical or moral
breakdown. Closer analysis of human character reveals the fact that
physical and moral health are more closely associated than we have
hitherto believed them to be.
According to statistics about female offenders, domestic service is
morally the most dangerous employment.[27] The reasons for this are two:
the social ostracism and the loneliness, and the low grade of worker. Each
of these causes augments the influence of the other. The application of
industrial standards to this neglected form of work should lead to
improvements.
For those dependent upon employment offices, the seeking of a job may
involve moral danger. The practice of private employment bureaus in
sending unsuspecting girls to immoral places under the pretext of finding
legitimate employment is common. The director of the Municipal Employment
Bureau in Portland says that, the managers of houses are sometimes so bold
as to telephone to the bureau for girls, telling for what purpose the
girls are wanted.[28] One of the private bureaus was detected several
times coöperating in such practices. The menace of such places can
scarcely be overestimated.
We may now conclude our review of the economic phases of social hygiene.
Economic conditions to-day are under indictment as endangering the health
and morals of working-girls and women. Moral delinquency may arise through
temptations met and hardships endured at the place of work; through scanty
wages, inadequate for daily necessities; through lack of sympathetic
consideration on the part of employers; through the stupidity of the
community in adhering to worn-out educational methods that do not train
wage-earners for earning a livelihood; through lack of protective
legislation in regard to hours and conditions of labor. As a matter of
fact, each of these conditions has been found to be an accompaniment of
vice; and taken all together they constitute an environment that makes
clean living difficult. Against the dark background of modern industry
should be portrayed the luxurious conditions that are apparently enjoyed
by those who have taken "the easiest way." In ancient society the status
of the prostitute was that of slave: to-day it is that of an industrial
citizen.[29] If the program of social hygiene comprehended only talking
about sex to working-girls--to laundry-girls, for example, who, after a
day's work of ten hours at the machines, go at night to their
boarding-houses where they wash dishes to eke out a living,--then this
program would not be unlike the advice of a physician who tells a poor man
with tuberculosis that he must go to the country for a year and live on
cream and eggs.
Even in the case of wage-earning girls who adopt loose ways to satisfy
extravagant desires, their tastes are established by women of the wealthy
and middle classes. The leisure of these women is due to their
wage-earning sisters, who in factories and mills make the cloth, prepare
food-stuffs, and do all sorts of tasks that formerly kept women of the
upper classes at home. Through the instinct of imitation, combined with
the American feeling of democracy, the habits of the well-to-do determine
the ambition of many a working-girl.
Other factors are industrial arrangements which segregate men in
construction and lumber camps for a part of the year, and then, without
providing for their further employment, turn them loose into cities where
only saloons welcome them and cash their checks, and where
disease-infected lodging-houses are their only places of abode.
Furthermore, standing armies take thousands of able-bodied men out of
normal industrial relationships, and keep them in camps that become the
congregating places of prostitutes.
The most hopeful phase of the whole problem that it lies within the power
of the State to transform the industrial environment through progressive
legislation. The law cannot form character, but it can protect that which
has been developed through voluntary effort. Vice is partly a by-product
of industrial chaos which can be eradicated by industrial organization.
When working-people can establish themselves more generally in homes of
their own,--"every man under his vine, and under his fig tree," as it
were,--then they will be able to give more time to their children, and
will perhaps coöperate better in the program for sex instruction.
Economic improvements should include a minimum wage for women, and one for
men based upon the needs of a family; the eight-hour day; insurance
against sickness, old age, and accidents; relief of unemployment; one
day's rest in seven for all continuous industries; industrial education
compulsory for all children; abolition of child labor; and amelioration of
conditions under which women work.
When wage standards are raised, there arises the problem concerning those
who cannot earn a living wage. "Who will pay poor, ignorant Mary Konovsky
more than $6.90 a week?" is a question asked by a manufacturer during a
minimum-wage discussion in New York State. The reply is, If Mary is really
not worth more, she must be sent by the State to an industrial school
until she can earn her living; and if she should be proved to be mentally
deficient (as about 50 per cent of prostitutes are said to be), then she
must be placed in an institution where she can be humanely and permanently
cared for. The impossible alternatives are that she should be denied a
living wage when she can earn it, or that she should be allowed to drift,
in danger of becoming the prey of vicious men.
Meanwhile, before the machinery of a full legislative program can be set
to work, the field is open for voluntary philanthropic endeavor. Welfare
work in stores and factories that is done by some one who acts, not as a
detective with condescending side interests in welfare, but
whole-heartedly and sympathetically can avail much. Real social work in
business establishments should be profitable to employers as well as to
employees. The aim of all public and private effort should be to make
industry not the occasion of stumbling, but what it should be, the
universal means of progress.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Statistical Abstract of U.S._, p. 163. (1911.)
[3] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners in U.S._, vol. IX, p. 20; "History of
Women in Industry."
[4] _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil_, chap. I.
[5] _A Trade School for Girls_, U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin no. 17,
pp. 52 _ff._(1913.)
[6] Portland, Oregon, Vice Commission, _Report_, p. 188. (1913.)
[7] _Social Basis of Religion._
[8] Social Survey Committee of Consumers' League of Oregon, _Report_, pp.
21, 22.
[9] _Ibid._, p. 24.
[10] Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards, _Report_, pp. 51,
114, 157.
[11] _Ibid._, p. 191.
[12] _Report_ of Massachusetts Commission, as above cited, p. 188.
[13] _Ibid._, p. 114.
[14] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners_, vol. V. The cities included were
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and St.
Louis.
[15] By "adrift" is meant the condition of a self-supporting woman who is
alone or of a widow with children to support.
[16] _Report_ of Massachusetts Commission, p. 213.
[17] _Ibid._, p. 222.
[18] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 165.
[19] _Morning Oregonian_, July 24, 1913.
[20] Referred to on p. 211 of the _Report_ of the Massachusetts Commission
on Minimum Wage Boards.
[21] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners_, vol. XV, pp. 81, _ff._; "Relation of
Occupation and Criminality of Women."
[22] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 176.
[23] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 176.
[24] Scott Nearing, _Wages in the United States_, pp. 208, _ff._
[25] _American Labor Legislation Review_, vol. III, no. 1, p. 88.
[26] _Social Diseases_, vol. III, no. 3, p. 9.
[27] See Portland Vice Commission _Report_, p. 193; also _Woman and Child
Wage-Earners_, vol. XV.
[28] Portland Vice Commission _Report_, p. 192.
[29] E.R. Seligman, _The Social Evil_, Introduction.
CHAPTER VI
RECREATIONAL PHASES
_By Lebert Howard Weir_
This chapter is in no sense an attempt to discuss pathologic sex problems,
but rather to show the necessity of providing facilities for normal,
wholesome living for all the people during their leisure time. This will
solve many of the vexing sex problems.
At the outset, it is important to contrast the 27,000,000 hours a year,
during which the school has charge of all the children, with the
135,000,000 hours at the children's free disposal. Yet we are inclined to
charge the schools with the responsibilities of many failures in the
physical and moral make-up of growing boys and girls. The greater part of
the education of the boys and girls is received outside of school through
the various activities which fill up these 135,000,000 hours a year.
Society has, therefore, a great responsibility in directing the activities
of the free time of young people.
People employed in the home, store, factory, shop, or office, in a year
of 365 days spend about 2880 hours of this time in sleep. Taking the
average working-day as nine hours and the number of working-days in the
year as 300, excluding Sundays and holidays, each person is employed in
needful occupations 2700 hours during the year. Out of the working-days, a
total of 2100 hours are at each person's disposal to use as he sees fit.
Of the remaining 60 days, 15 hours of each day are for free use,--or a
total of nearly 35 per cent of the entire year. What are the children,
young people, and adults doing with this time?
One answer is found in the records of the juvenile court, in rescue homes,
in reformatories, in the police and criminal courts, in jails and
penitentiaries, in hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases, the
insane and feeble-minded; another in the fallen women (and men, too), of
whom so much has been said of late; another in the crowded saloons and
busy restaurants in the heart of the city, with their music, bright
lights, food, liquor, and overdressed, painted women with their consorts;
still another in the billiard-rooms and the moving-picture theaters.
The extent to which people of all ages and races resort to the
moving-picture show is known by few people. In Portland, Oregon, a weekly
attendance of 5000 is reported for a house with a seating capacity of 175;
a weekly attendance of 3500 for a house seating 75; a weekly attendance of
25,000 for a house seating 500. Another with a seating capacity of 567
reports a weekly attendance of 22,000. The attendance of all the
moving-picture houses in any city is a startling revelation of the use of
the time of the people.
All forms of leisure-time consumption are offshoots of the one great
common meeting-place of all the people, the street. The street is more
than an avenue for traffic. It is the social meeting-place of many of the
inhabitants. It is the playground of nearly all the children. Its glitter
and glare, its lights and shadows and care-free spirit, attract boys and
girls. They come as moths flutter about the candle flame and often with
equally disastrous results. The call of the street is irresistible. It is
the simplest, most convenient avenue for the satisfaction of that hunger
for pleasure, excitement, amusement, and recreation, common to all ages,
all races, and both sexes. It is the avenue for the spontaneous outpouring
of the spirit of democracy. No matter how thickly the city may scatter its
playgrounds, its athletic fields, boating and swimming centers and
recreation buildings, the street will always have to be reckoned with as
the one great all-engulfing factor in the use of the leisure time of the
people.
Surely the possibilities for good or evil are infinite when the spirit of
youth and age play free, willingly receiving impressions on every hand.
Unfortunately, in the majority of cases the ministry in this field of
infinite character-building possibilities has fallen into the hands of men
who for the most part reckon its possibilities only in terms of the
nickels, dimes, and dollars that pass over the bar or counter or through
the box office. Many of them conceive low opinions of the recreation
desires of the people, furnishing the lurid, the _risqué_, the bold, the
daring forms of entertainment, or coupling it with other lines of
business, as in the case of the saloon, with unfortunate social results.
Can the city afford the commercial exploitations of so much of this
valuable time? The answer must be that it can afford it only when the
ideals of the men conducting these various forms of amusement are as high
as the best that the community would demand if managing similar
institutions. The saloon proprietor is not interested primarily in the
physical and moral welfare of his patrons or in the general social welfare
of the city. He provides various forms of recreation to increase the
patronage of the bar; it is an unwritten law that those who avail
themselves of the card-tables, of the pool- and billiard-tables, the
moving-picture shows in the saloons, and who hear the music, must
patronize the bar. Thirty-six per cent of the pool and billiard licenses
are held by men holding saloon licenses, and in all the large pool- and
billiard-halls, especially in the center of the city, not connected
directly with saloons, liquor is served upon the demand of the patrons.
The evil of the situation is significant when it is remembered that the
larger percentage of the patrons of those places are men under twenty-five
years of age. Profanity is common, and usually gambling is permitted.
Often these pool- and billiard-parlors are the "hang-outs" of vicious,
depraved young men who live upon the earnings of unfortunate women. This
use of the leisure time of men is physically, morally, and socially
dangerous and should not be permitted.
The public skating-rink is fairly free from objectionable features, but
boys and girls attending without proper chaperons often form undesirable
acquaintances. Women of the street and their male companions often attend.
Juvenile court officials are aware of the immoralities springing from this
source.
The amusement parks present almost unlimited possibilities for the
formation of undesirable acquaintances. The fact that they are open in the
evening, and not lighted in all parts, the presence of cafés where liquors
can be had, inadequate police protection, the secrecy possible through the
presence of large crowds, the size of the parks, the distance from the
homes in the city, and the unchaperoned attendance of large crowds of
young people, all make amusement parks dangerous without closer
supervision by public authorities.
In former days the road-house ministered to the legitimate needs of
wayfaring travelers. To-day the name "road-house" is synonymous with the
"bawdy-house" of the city. Located just beyond the borders of towns and
cities, beyond police supervision, catering to men and women who desire
secrecy for their revels and orgies, the road-house is one of the worst
possible institutions now ministering to the leisure time of the people.
In some sections of this country, the public excursion, both by land and
water, is as bad as the road-house. Instead of being a time of relaxation
and recreation, a time of freedom from cares of the workaday life and
enjoyment of pure air, sunshine, and beauties of nature, and of fine
social relationships of people, the excursions have become dissipations of
physical and moral energy. With proper supervision and with proper
standards on the part of promoters of transportation companies, the public
excursion can be a fine constructive factor in the use of the leisure time
of the people.
Festivals and carnivals conducted by the people of a community,
commemorative of national holidays or of historical events or of religious
life, are often admirable. But whenever the festival or carnival becomes a
commercial enterprise for the purpose of attracting crowds to the city,
for advertisement and for gain by merchants and hotel proprietors, young
people are in danger. The city becomes the mecca for undesirable men and
women who prey upon the susceptibilities of the people, animated by the
festival spirit. The hotels are the temporary homes of women of the
street. Every large festival of this kind has been followed by social
evils of the most virulent type. Many a girl and many a boy, yielding to
the influences of the abandonment of the crowd, take the first step in
sexual vice. This type of festival is not socially profitable to a
community, where the commercial aim and purpose predominates. The
commercial exploitation of the recreation and social needs of the people
is usually productive of sexual immorality.
A characteristic feature of American life is the club, union, society, or
order spontaneously formed by the people. No matter what the fundamental
purposes of these groups may be, whether for protection against sickness,
accident, and industrial evils, whether for the study of art, music, and
literature, or for the promotion of physical activities, the primary bond
that brings the group together and holds it together is the social
instinct of mankind.
Those which administer to the play and recreation life of their members
most efficiently are strongest. The dances, card parties, lectures,
entertainments, and other social activities conducted by such groups are
usually under the best kind of social control, far better than any type of
commercial amusement and perhaps better than most public-supervised
amusements. The strength is in the comparative smallness of the group, the
personal acquaintance of the members, the presence of older people with
the young, and the existence of individual and group responsibility and
ideals. Far better social control would result if all public dances and
public skating-rinks and excursions were conducted on this group or
society basis.
One field of neglected social activity is the home as a recreation and
social center. The day of the "party" seems to be past. Parents have thus
lost one strong hold on the character development of their children.
Thousands of parents in the modern city have lost the social spirit of the
home because of crowded living conditions, but there are also thousands,
especially in the Western cities, who still have individual homes; every
such home should be the primary social and recreation center for
adolescent boys and girls. The revival of the small group social in the
home for the young people would be a constructive contribution to some of
the moral problems of the young.
In the leisure-time activities of children, the Sunday supplement or
"funny sheet" of the newspaper is of importance. The funny sheet appeals
not so much through humor as through glaring color and grotesque pictures
which violate every canon of color combination and of art. Exaggerated
types of mischievous children and freakish adults, and equally freakish
and unthinkable mechanical devices, are favorite subjects. Disobedience of
children, premature and unnatural childish love-affairs, domestic
infelicity, the privileges and advantages of bachelorhood are paraded
Sunday after Sunday before the susceptible minds of millions of children.
* * * * *
Multitudinous as are the private agencies administering to the
leisure-time activities of all the people, neither the commercial
amusements nor the numerous spontaneous private organizations answer all
the requirements of social and recreative needs of the people. On the one
hand, commercial amusements, while used and enjoyed by masses of the
people, have been objects of danger and distrust because of their
anti-social effects. On the other hand, the private society, club, order,
and organization are essentially narrow, and formed with other purposes
and ideals in view than ministering to the social and recreative needs and
desires of the people. The providing of ample facilities for the fullest
and most wholesome use of the leisure time of the people is a community
responsibility, just as important to the public welfare as a system of
public education.
This community sense of responsibility did not in the beginning have the
wide constructive vision which characterizes it to-day. It was designed
first as a corrective of pathological social ills, especially relative to
childhood and youth. Congestion in the modern city, an incident and a
result of specialization and expansion of American industrial and
commercial life, caused living conditions inimical to the health and
morals of all the people. As usual the children suffered most. Deprived of
light, air, wholesome living quarters, play space, and the advantages of a
real home, they fell easy victims to disease, sickness, death, and, what
is worse, to the disease and death of ideals and morals. Juvenile faults
and crimes increased at an alarming rate. The therapy of play was applied.
It was soon found, however, that the great mission of playgrounds was not
as a therapeutic agent, but as a preventive and constructive force. The
movement took on large, positive, constructive aims, purposes, and ideals.
It expanded into the playground and recreation movement, with emphasis
upon the latter, aiming to provide for and direct the leisure-time
activities of all the people. Play was restored as the right of every
child, without which no wholesome physical, mental, and moral growth is
possible.
As constructively related to other great social problems, the playground
and recreation movement was found almost universally applicable. Sexual
immorality and the white-slave traffic are combated by recreation centers
where young women obtain under normal conditions the highest ideals and
satisfy the spirit of youth, which is the sign of life itself.
The scope of this larger movement is as follows: It promotes the
establishment of playgrounds within walking distance of every child;
athletic and sport fields for older boys and girls and for men and women;
boating and swimming centers and parks for the use of all; recreation and
social centers in municipal recreation buildings and in school buildings,
where all the people of a community, irrespective of race or creed, may
find opportunity for the fullest possible recreation and social life; it
promotes school and municipal camps, tramping-clubs, and other activities
that cultivate the habit of outdoor life; physical education and athletics
in the schools that reach every child, instead of a few as now; it stands
for school playgrounds, in connection with every school; it seeks to
provide facilities through which musical, literary, dramatic, and artistic
talents of the people may find encouragement and expression, and for a
constructive social supervision of all commercial amusements.
Yet playgrounds and recreation centers are not free from social dangers.
Many of the moral dangers of commercial amusements may arise in
municipally owned and managed systems of recreation. In fact public
playgrounds have become such moral menaces as to warrant their closure in
the interests of public welfare. Some of the worst cases of sexual
immorality coming to the juvenile courts arise in public playgrounds. This
is the result of bringing large numbers of young people into a common play
place without the most careful supervision, guidance, and direction. The
physical growth and health, the morals, the happiness, and the ideals of
citizenship of great masses of the people are so deeply involved in the
right use of the leisure time of the people that to conduct their
activities in any way but according to the highest standards is a civic
crime.
CHAPTER VII
EDUCATIONAL PHASES
_By Edward Octavius Sisson_
The education of youth as it exists has a great gap wherever the subjects
of reproduction and sex are concerned. Children are taught at home many
things about every other part of their lives, but usually nothing about
this; at school they learn the anatomy and physiology of bones and
muscles, of sense-organs, and nervous system, of glands and alimentary
canal, of respiration and circulation; but a sudden silence falls just
before sex is reached. We study everything about life except its origin,
and in ignoring that we lose a most fascinating and beautiful field of
inquiry, an essential part of knowledge, and a vital element in moral
intelligence.[30]
The aims of sex education may be stated in the main as follows:--
(1) The first aim is individual prudence. Every normal human being must
undergo crucial tests and solve vital problems in his own sex life. The
most beautiful successes of life and its most conspicuous failures are
both exceedingly frequent in the realm of sex. The conditions of the
sexual life are sufficiently alike in all normal cases so that the
experience of the race is valuable to the individual in meeting his own
problems. Each child as he passes onward through youth to maturity is
treading a road new to him, not lacking in danger and pitfalls, nor
without opportunities for great reward. Education must give him all the
available advance information concerning the road he is to travel.
(2) The second aim is general intelligence. Sex is a universal element in
all living beings, with the exception of the very lowest; it pervades the
life of the spirit as well as the life of the body. No man, therefore, can
be intelligent concerning things in general without a clear, definite and
accurate knowledge of the fundamental facts of sex. One of the strongest
new visions concerning sex is the marvelous way in it ramifies into all
fields of thought and action. Not a few of the most eminent workers in
modern science incline to consider all aspects of human life, including
even religion itself, as emanations or processes from the sex basis. Such
in particular are G. Stanley Hall in America and Freud in Germany. Without
going to such extremes we may still recognize the fact that in all sorts
of physical and psychic problems in morals, religion, and sociology, sex
plays an important part and must be understood if we are to grasp the
situation and its meaning.[31]
(3) The third aim is social enlightenment. The human spirit in our own day
is manifestly addressing itself to the solution of the special social
problems which involve the sexual life of men. Three of these problems may
be specified: (a) The so-called "social evil," including not merely
prostitution, but also all other forms of waste and injury through sexual
errors; (b) the problem of family life, including marriage and the rearing
of children, as well as pathological aspects such as desertion and
divorce; (c) the vast problem of eugenics or race culture.
In all these fields the problems of sex are involved. Men and women who
desire to bear their whole burden as members of a progressive society must
contribute to the solution of these great social problems, and to do this
wisely must know something about the basic facts of sex life.[32]
The first and basic part of sex education is bodily regimen: children and
youth must live an abundant, vigorous, wholesome physical life.[33] Cities
have threatened to be the "graves of the human species" in this respect.
Sedentary life chokes and misdirects the currents of nervous energy and
the very circulation of the blood. The lad who plays vigorously, even
violently; who can "get his second wind," turn a handspring, do a good
cross-country run, swim the river, possesses a great bulwark of defense
against sexual vice, especially in its secret forms.
The revival of play, of play for all, boys and girls, weak as well as
strong, is one of the most hopeful movements on foot to-day. Let us base
our promotions from grade to grade, and especially for "graduation" from
school, partly upon physical tests, requiring each student to make of
himself physically, not a record-breaking athlete, but the best that can
be made out of the stuff in him.
Food, sleep, clothing, bathing, fresh air,--all these are vital also;
whatever turns the flow and thrill of life into wholesome channels,
abolishes indolence, stagnation, morbidity, and fosters abundance of
bodily life,--such is the regimen of sex health.
No bodily regimen can be effective without mental control. Nowhere does
mind affect body more immediately and powerfully than in the realm of sex.
The educator has two great tasks in this respect: first to improve the
general environment in which the young must live and develop. As things
are, our streets, store-windows, books and magazines, and especially
public amusements, such as theaters and dance halls, abound in sexual
suggestion and stimulation.[34] These agencies stimulate an excessive
stream of sexual desire, with all its physical accompaniments, in boys
and men: the natural and inevitable result is an overwhelming impulse
toward illicit satisfaction in self-abuse or sexual immorality. Society in
self-defense and the interest of its youth must wage war upon this
mercenary exploiting of the sex impulse. Licentious thinking is the great
foe of continence; the saying of Jesus may be paraphrased thus with
physiological correctness: "He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her
hath already committed the sexual act in his _nervous system_."
Hence, the second task in this connection is to arouse and arm the youth
against the lusts of the mind, and lead him in a resolute fight for
mastery over his own thoughts. "Do not harbor in your mind anything you
would fear to have your enemies know, or blush to have your friends know,"
is a good motto for boys and youth.
When we come to instruction in matters of reproduction and sex, the first
principle is that it should be given in organic relation with the rest of
life and thought. It arises naturally in two main connections: in response
to the child's own questions and problems; and as part and parcel of
biological science. The common questions of the little child, "Where does
the baby come from?" or perhaps even earlier, "How does the hen make the
eggs?"--an actual question of a four-year-old--are the signal and the open
door for easy and natural enlightenment. Seize the opportunity: tell the
truth, as simply and briefly as possible, and the beginning is made; watch
for and utilize all such opportunities, as they come, and the main road of
the task is marked out; shock is minimized, if not eliminated, mutual
confidence is engendered, and a priceless reward may be won. But if at
that first question we falter, quibble, blush, lie, jest, or repel, we
have entered the wrong road which leads eternally astray. Let no question
ever be either ignored or neglected, least of all repelled. It is the
golden opportunity for parent, teacher, or friend. To guarantee against
the child seeking promiscuous and irresponsible sources of information,
let his questions ever find the warmest welcome and kindest response at
the parent's knee.[35]
Now the movements of the child's own mind in matters of sex and
reproduction may either be actual questions more or less explicit, or they
may be subtler seekings for light,--hints, vague inquiries, gropings after
what he cannot phrase or hesitates to utter; these inward stirrings are
vital, and the alert and sympathetic and patient parent can in the main
perceive them and bring them to light. But success need not be hoped for
in this respect unless first the beginnings are attended to; uncounted
parents can testify to the infinite difficulty of breaking to the boy or
girl the silence long practiced with the child. Nor will occasional or
spasmodic fits of interest and action by the parent achieve much;
Emerson's proverb holds inflexibly here; "What wilt thou have?" quoth God;
"pay for it and take it." Pay we must in time, in thought, in perseverance
and patience, in study of the problems and self-preparation for the task.
Happily the progress of sex hygiene among adults is yearly increasing the
number of fathers and mothers who are awake and active.
We have spoken of meeting the motions of the child, as though the educator
might never need to take the initiative; in all probability that might be
true in an ideal state. As things are it would be unsafe to rely
absolutely upon questions; the parent and on occasion other educators must
take the initiative in some cases. In doing so, however, the most
scrupulous care should be taken to be sure that the mind of the learner is
ready for the particular instruction.
* * * * *
In biological instruction what is needed is not an artificial appendix or
addendum, but simply that we should cease to mutilate science by omitting
its most fruitful and essential elements. Nature study for little children
is the first available field; it should begin even before the kindergarten
age, with the simplest and easiest observations, and proceed by gentle
gradations of progress; it finds abundant and fascinating material in
growing plants, eggs, brooding chickens, kittens, puppies, and, best of
all, the new baby, where the home questions and the nature study meet in a
profound emotional and intellectual experience.[36]
The botany, zoölogy, physiology, and hygiene the upper grades and the
high school the natural mediums for further scientific treatment.[37] It
will probably be found advisable to separate the sexes for this part of
the work, and have boys taught by men and girls by women. Not a few high
schools and colleges are already carrying on such instruction with entire
success.
It seems quite clear that the school must set itself, wisely, indeed, but
also resolutely and effectively, to provide clear, true, scientific
knowledge of the origin of life and the laws of sex. The educator can,
must, and will answer truly and purely, all questions in these matters on
which the child and youth are now left to random, miscellaneous,
clandestine sources, and get vile, false, and pernicious answers.
* * * * *
As childhood passes into youth and the pubertal changes begin, the
objective curiosity of the earliest years passes gradually into the
intense concern of personal problems. The general principle is the same:
do not drag in the subject of sex and reproduction, but do not evade or
ignore it when it appears; deal with it truly, purely, honestly,
fearlessly, as an essential and organic part of truth and life.
The safe and happy outcome in these personal problems can be guaranteed in
only one way--that the young person should be able to turn with complete
confidence and little embarrassment to some trusted and intimate
counselor, preferably the parent, but otherwise physician, pastor, older
friend, with whom he has already discussed sexual questions, and who he
knows will receive his advances with sympathy, answer his questions with
frankness and intelligence, and hold his confidence sacred. Happy the
youth or maiden who has such a guide in the crises of unfolding powers and
perils.
The chief problem of this part of the education is the accurate and timely
adaptation of what is taught to the needs of the successive periods of
development. Hence chronological or "calendar" age and school grade are
both unreliable guides to the educator: a group of fifteen-year-old boys,
or of eighth grade boys, includes some who are children not yet entered
upon pubescence, others who are mature,--that is, have attained the power
of reproduction,--and still others who are in process of change. These
three groups cannot be treated identically; each period has its own
peculiar needs. The problem of sorting out the individuals and meeting the
needs of each group is difficult because of our traditional neglect of the
whole task. But of any particular lesson we may agree with him who says,
"Better a year too early than an hour too late."
The earliest safeguard, rather regimen than instruction, is the
inculcation of the idea and habit of "Hands off" the sex organs. The
little child is taught this by his mother, and it becomes second nature.
The pre-pubescent boy and girl may receive some slight but impressive
additional perception as to the danger of meddling in any way. They should
also be warned strictly against any other person who offers to tamper with
their sex organs or adjacent parts of the body. Let them understand that
they are justified in any means of defense, the fist, a club, or a stone;
and that the offender is forever damned by his act and must never again
be trusted; and, of course, that they should at once lay the whole case
before their parents or other persons in authority.
The special instruction of the pre-pubescent and pubescent periods is as
yet by no means fully agreed upon among experts. We can give here only a
few points that seem fairly clear.
(1) Girls should know in advance enough of the general facts of
menstruation so that the onset of the period may not cause, as it now does
in thousands of cases, shock and sometimes dangerous errors of conduct.
They should also know that the sexual nature of men is active and
aggressive instead of passive and defensive as in the woman; and that
hence the woman must in general take the leading part in the control of
the sexual relation, or, at least, of those preliminary intimacies that
tend to culminate in sexual union. If it be contended that this is a
delicate and difficult idea to convey, liable to be exaggerated and to
produce false attitudes, the answer is that if difficulty is to deter us
we may as well stop the whole task of sex education before we begin; and
moreover that the disasters now resulting from ignorance are ten times
worse than any probable results of instruction.
This sexual difference means not only that the girl must be intolerant of
improper advances, but also that for her own sake and that of her sister
women she must beware of conduct, attitudes, or forms of dress that tend
unduly to excite the sexual impulses in boys and men.
In view of the enormous morbidity and mortality inflicted upon innocent
women and their children by sexual disease, the girl should learn the main
facts concerning the nature, effects, and incidence of gonorrhea and
syphilis. Health certificates of prospective bridegrooms will probably be
more easily enforced if such intelligence becomes general. The time for
such instruction is difficult to state, and would vary with the social
environment; probably late adolescence would be early enough in most
cases; earlier information is indispensable for girls who by reason of
their economic or social status are peculiarly exposed to sexual
temptation and danger.
Training for motherhood, a great gap in our educational system, is a
closely related theme, of incomparable importance, but beyond the scope
of this work.
(2) Boys should learn early the rewards of continence: that the
conservation of the sexual secretions is the indispensable condition of
manly growth in stature, muscular powers, voice, heart, and brain. They
should learn the possibility and healthiness of continence--always
understanding that mental continence is the prerequisite of physical
continence.
They should know in good time that nocturnal emissions are quite normal,
when not too frequent, and indicate not lost manhood or the danger of it,
but merely the fact that the sexual glands are now for the first time all
developed and active. This is one of the simplest and most commonplace
facts in the whole range of sex knowledge, yet, through ignorance of it,
unknown multitudes of boys have suffered anxiety sometimes amounting to
terror, have become moody and dejected, lost interest in work and studies;
and finally thousands of them, ashamed to ask counsel or enlightenment
from any decent source, have had recourse to the venereal quack, who so
artfully spreads his snares for them in daily paper and widely circulated
pamphlet. Once the victim is in his hands there is almost no limit to the
evil that may result.[38] High-school principals tell of watching the
faces of their boys during a lecture on sex hygiene and noting the visible
signs of relief and new hope when the lecturer explained the true nature
and meaning of emissions.
So far as the so-called "sexual necessity" is concerned, let boys
understand that it is unknown among animals; that its completest
embodiment is found in degenerates and imbeciles; and that athletes,
thinkers, priests, scholars, warriors, the finest men of every type, hold
their passions strictly subject to their wills. Let them know that the
world is well supplied with wretches whom this very "sexual necessity" has
robbed of their precious virile powers, but that the cases of impotence
through chastity are certainly unproved and probably non-existent except
in the imagination of people who want to believe in them. And finally that
numberless fathers of big healthy families were as chaste as the wives who
bore their children.
Boys should learn that the man who insists on premarital sexual necessity
has two roads open to him--one that of the libertine and seducer, the most
contemptible of creatures; the other that of the whore-follower, whom
nature perpetually menaces with vile and pestilential plagues, making him
a misery to himself and menace to all clean persons who associate with
him, especially his future wife and unborn children.
This involves, at least for the present state of society, some information
regarding the two chief venereal diseases: that all prostitutes,
professional or otherwise, are sooner or later infected, and that no
reglementation can give security. They should know something of the
horrors of syphilis, its loathsomeness, its extraordinary power to
penetrate to the physiological Holy of Holies, poison the germ cells, and
damn in advance the unborn children of its victim. They must know the
fatal treachery of gonorrhea: how it lurks unsuspected in the victim who
supposes himself cured, and strikes, like a bolt out of clear sky,
blinding newborn infants, and robbing innocent wives of motherhood,
health, or life itself.
To object to this instruction because it is gruesome, or because it may
seem like intimidation, is sentimentalism: in this matter, as elsewhere in
the realm of knowledge, the truth should scare no one who does not need to
be scared. It is better to be safe than sorry; and it is better to be
scared than syphilitic. "I dare do all that may become a man," says
Macbeth; "who dares do more is none"; let a man dare if he will with his
own body, aye, his own soul; he is but a coward who does not shrink from
buying voluptuous moments with the hazard of wife and child. Hydrophobia
is far less perilous than venereal disease, and if one hundredth as many
were attacked by it the world would be placarded with scarlet danger
signs; the man who decried the precautions as intimidation would be shut
up in a home for imbeciles. If this is intimidation, let us have more of
it.
Above all, boys should learn the beauty and glory of the true relation of
the sexes; the bond of love and unity between man and woman truly
married--in soul as well as body. As he cherishes and vindicates the honor
of his father and mother and sisters, so should he be taught to use his
intelligence and heart to hold sacred in youth the powers and functions
that will enable him to become in turn husband and father, to give a clean
soul and body in marriage to a pure woman, and to pass on the germ of life
to the children of his body. A few lessons on heredity will show him that
he is but the steward of an inheritance that has come down from a thousand
ancestors and may well be perpetuated through generations to come.
Prudence is good; but no narrow selfish motive will meet the need. The lad
who is "good" merely for the sake of his own skin is usually a poor
creature; the finest lad--who might perhaps hazard his own individual
fate--will refuse to gamble with the souls and bodies of those others who
shall be his own flesh and blood. No virtue is safe that is not
enthusiastic: and only altruism is truly enthusiastic.
The boy and girl, now young man and young woman, must both learn that
prostitution is a social sin:[39] the "scarlet woman" has been truly
called the eternal priestess bearing the sins of humanity. This is a vast
theme; we have got beyond the realm of mere sex education;--but truth is
one, and life is one, and neither logic nor humanity will consent to our
stopping short of the whole truth. Social intelligence--the illumination
of man's life with man--the scientific and spiritual comprehension of the
apostolic dictum, "We are all members one of another"--and "if one member
suffer, all members suffer with it"--these are the great arrears of
education. But there never was a time when the spirit of man moved so
rapidly forward as here and now, and the movement for sex education is but
one striking phase of the great advance.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] An examination of tables of contents and indexes of standard school
texts in nature study and biology will reveal the almost universal absence
of all ideas relating to sex and reproduction. There are two or three
recent exceptions.
[31] G. Stanley Hall, _Educational Problems_, vol. I, pp. 388-97, Thomson
and Geddes, _Problems of Sex_, pp. 5-17.
[32] Thomson and Geddes, _op. cit._, pp. 46-52; Saleeby, _Parenthood and
Race Culture_; Morrow, _Social Diseases and Marriage; Hall, Educational
Problems_, vol. I, pp. 424-43.
[33] Fisher, _National Vitality_; Hall, _Youth_, chaps. II, V, VI, XII.
[34] "What makes a Magazine?" _Twentieth Century Magazine_, September,
1912, pp. 11-20; _The Exploitation of Pleasure._ Russell Sage Foundation.
[35] See Mrs. Woodallen Chapman, _The Moral Problem of the Children_, esp.
pp. 61-93. Also the chapter in this book on the education of children.
[36] An epoch-marking book in this field is Miss Torelle's _Plant and
Animal Children and How They Grow._ (Heath.) See also pamphlet, _The
Origin of Life_, by R.E. Blount. (Scott, Foresman & Co.)
[37] "The Teaching of Sex in Schools and Colleges," _Social Diseases_,
October, 1911. Addresses by G. Stanley Hall, Maurice A. Bigelow, Josiah
Strong, Charles W. Eliot, and Mary Putnam Blount, _Sexual Reproduction in
Animals: the Purpose and Methods of teaching it._ Proceedings N.E.A.,
1912, pp. 1324-27.
[38] Hall, G.S., _Adolescence_, vol. I, pp. 459-62.
[39] Jane Addams, _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._
CHAPTER VIII
TEACHING PHASES: FOR CHILDREN
_By William Greenleaf Eliot, Jr._
My children when they were little were fascinated with a book which their
mother used to read to them, called _Mother Nature and Her Helpers._ Each
chapter or lesson was made up of interesting information and ideas
suggested by the pictures. At the head of the first chapter was a picture
of a mother sitting by a cradle with every surrounding and circumstance of
humble, happy home life. Succeeding chapters were upon the cradle and the
home of plants and animals. Ovaries of plants and nests of birds and
squirrels were all set forth in terms of the child's experience of home
life, home-building, home-protecting, and feeding the baby. Doubtless the
design of the author was to lead the child to an understanding and
appreciation of its own home life and love by showing it home life in its
origins and elements. But an equally important implication lay in the
fact that the child was brought into its intimacy with plant and animal
life along the angle of its own human experience and of its own home
ideals. After such an introduction to the homes of plants and animals,
whenever it should seem best to apprise the child of the details of plant
and animal reproduction, the additional facts would instantly find their
places in close relation to facts already familiar and already related to
his highest childish affections and ideals.
For the basis of sexual instruction for a child should be the difference,
not the similarity between man and animals. If the basis is made the
similarity between man and animals, the child, as time goes on and as its
own sexual life increasingly awakens, may tend to imitate animals, may
attempt to justify the natural and unrestrained promiscuousness of its own
instincts, may justify unrestrained sexual life in the name of nature as
against the alleged artificialities of civilization. The basis must be
human, not animal; moral, not biological.
Biology goes far to explain humanity, but the interpretation is found in
the spiritual affections, experiences, and implications of family life.
The family life of animals is constituted of animal instinct freely
followed. The family life of man would be ruined by the free following of
animal instinct. There is a distinct danger in all so-called sex
instruction of children which makes plant and animal life the norm.
The definite and clean instruction of children in the physical facts of
reproduction may rightly and wisely begin with the simple facts,
anatomical and functional, of plants and animals; but it is important that
a true philosophy lie back of this instruction. Man is not only a higher
order of mammalia; he is a worshiper of God and capable of practicing his
presence. And from this base our instruction to children, drawn from the
anatomical and functional life of plants and animals, must always subserve
the moral, the spiritual superiority of man and the human family.
The little child will understand and even idealize plant and animal life
if he learns of plant and animal life first in human terms. His moral
development is menaced if this process is reversed so that a
counter-tendency is set up,--a tendency to interpret the human functions
in animal terms. It is better for the child to humanize animal
relationships than to animalize human relationships,--and this can be
achieved only through a constant observance of the human basis in the
sexual as indeed in all phases of a child's education. The little book
which I mentioned at the beginning does just this,--it introduces the
child to the home life of animals, it interprets animal life in ideal
terms. It lays a basis for relating later information of sex functions to
the home life of plants and animals. At the proper time in a child's
development, he is prepared to place a true and intelligent value upon the
differences between the home life of animals and the home life of human
beings, and to justify intelligently and with full consent of mind and
sanction of conscience the differences of sexual practice as between
plants and animals on the one hand and human beings on the other. He is
prepared to see that it is enough for the sex life of plants and animals
that it be physically and biologically normal. It is not enough for the
true and ideal family life of man that the sex relation should be
biologically normal. It must be morally normal--normal, that is, to the
highest human interests.
The more concrete and detailed problems of method would not be serious if
every child's mind were a blank or even if its instincts were analogous to
normal animals. But neither is the case, and the problem of method and
means of instruction is therefore amazingly complicated. If the sex life
of a child were analogous to that of normal animals, it would not awaken
at all until puberty. And if the child's mind were a blank on sex matters,
it need only be kept from the invasion of wrong ideas from outside. But
the sex life of a child begins long before puberty,--both physically and
mentally. In the child, the physical signs are more or less detached from
the mental signs,--at this or that phase of a child's life, the one or the
other may have precedence; but the two are subtly interrelated, and tend
to contribute to each other. In the human being a sex life that is normal,
both biologically and morally, is an achievement; not a thing which would
take care of itself if the child were left alone and merely kept ignorant
of the abnormal. The human child is born abnormal,--that is to say, with
latent possibilities of sexual abnormality, physical and mental,--and this
by virtue of the mere fact that he is not only with animals a creature of
instinct, but with humanity a being with ideas.
This statement is doubtless oftener true of the sex life of boy children
than of girl children; but it is a fact and a very important fact, and it
lies at the bottom of the problem when we come to consider the details of
instructional method. If it were not for these facts, it would make no
difference who imparted sex information to the child, so the facts were
accurately told; and it would make no difference what facts were given, or
at what age the child received them, if no lies were conveyed. But because
the child's physical and mental sex life awakens early, and because every
child has latent tendencies to abnormality and latent responsiveness to
the abnormal, it is of critical importance that we decide who shall teach
the individual child, when the child shall be informed, and what the child
shall be told. It is of critical importance because, if the instruction
comes wrongly, we may, even with good intentions, contribute to the very
abnormality that we wish to forefend or overcome. With some children we
could perhaps safely take chances so far as the self-awakening sex life
is concerned if we did not know that it is impossible, without more harm
than good to keep the child from such perfectly normal relations with
other children as almost certainly will expose it to disastrous
misinformation a suggestion.
Whatever ought to be said of the importance of the home tradition and
ideals and the general physical and moral regimen of the child (and these
are of supreme importance), the facts of the last two paragraphs lay the
ground for this general statement: that in the case of a child whose moral
and sexual environment has been bad and perverting, proper sex instruction
cannot make matters worse, whereas in the best families much harm may
arise from the lack of such instruction.
If any information is imparted to the child at all, the first instruction
should properly come from one or other of the child's parents. It is
sometimes the case that opportunity for the first information is presented
when the child asks questions. And the supposed question of the child is,
"Where did the baby come from?" Our course would be much smoother if
every child asked its mother or father this question, or if every child
began with this particular question, or if every child asked any question
at all. Sometimes the child asks the nurse this question; sometimes the
child is an only child or for some other reason this question never occurs
to it; sometimes the child's first question pertains to some curiosity
about its own navel, or "where eggs come from," or "why the hen makes
them," or "how they get into the hen," or what is meant by "half shepherd
and half St. Bernard." But children do not ask the questions that the
books say they ask, and ready-made answers do not always apply.
Whether a child asks the conventional questions or the unexpected
questions, and whether it asks questions or not, the parent ought to have
some pretty definite notion of when, what, and how to tell a child. A
child's questions about the baby should be answered truthfully; all such
replies as escape by the stork, cabbage-patch, or grocer-boy route should
be avoided. It goes without saying that children's questions should be met
seriously and even reverently, and that parents should never speak of nor
allude lightly, jokingly, or irreverently to sex relationships in the
child's presence.
A child may ask a question prematurely, or at a time when the parent finds
it impossible to answer in such a way as to make the desired impression or
to avoid the undesirable impression. The postponement should be frankly a
postponement, and the parent should answer the question at some later time
chosen by the parent and upon the parent's own motion. If the child never
affords the parent a natural opening for the first or later conversation,
the parent should make the opening by reference to the recent arrival of a
baby in the child's home, or in some neighbor's family, or even to the
arrival of kittens or chicks.
Such preliminary information should come at or near the first asking of
questions, or if no questions are asked, at any convenient time between
the ages of six and eight years, and in any case before the child goes to
school or mingles much away from home with other children. It is a mistake
to suppose that very much need be said to the young child. If the child's
normal curiosity is satisfied in a clean way from the right source, that
is sufficient. Especially should it be advised of the truth about those
facts concerning which it is liable be misinformed in its contacts with
other children. Only, parents ought to remember that their child, however
carefully brought up and protected, at any time and of its own motion, may
itself be that corrupting "other child" against which we are so sedulously
warned!
Or, again, the child when it has been duly instructed by parents may
without harmful intentions talk too freely with other children. It may do
some harm to other children in this; but what is more likely, it may
receive harm by calling out uninformed and hurtful conversation from the
other side. For this reason, a parent in talking to children should be
careful to explain that they should not talk to others. If they are
properly brought-up children, their modesty will respond, and their
trained obedience will keep faith.
This is the place to try to make clear the importance of such secrecy and
confidence between parents and child. There is a secrecy which adds a
glamour of pleasurable naughtiness, leading straight to prudery and
pruriency with all their consequences. Such secrecy is the sort that
develops when parents do take the child into their confidence. Such
harmful secrecy is not to be confounded with the confidence between parent
and child. In opposing the harmful kind of secrecy, there are those who
very wrongly, as I believe, object to any secrecy; who say, "All things
are clean; why should any difference whatever be made between the lungs or
the stomach, and the sex organs; it is often the very making of any
distinction that causes and helps cause all the trouble." Now the case
against all secrecy would be valid if the premises of the argument were
sound. Roughly speaking, lungs are lungs, and stomachs are stomachs, but
the sex organs and their impulses, reflexes, and irradiations are
connected with the subtlest complexes of mind and affections, inextricably
connected with everything human, with further irradiations into the entire
social body.
By all that makes it important to prevent the private and mutual secrecies
of children, by so much and ten times more is it important to establish
confidential secrecy between parent and child. For in so doing, you not
only prevent the undesirable secrecy, but you build normally on modesty;
you lay foundations for a true sense of shame, disgust, and disgrace; and
in doing so, set up one of the strong defenses against perversions and
prurient allurement and seduction.
Prudery should be made impossible and true modesty conserved by proper
secrecy in sex matters, and back of that by the proper attitude,
conversation, and practice in the child's familiar domestic functions.
Prudery and modesty must not be confounded; for by as much as we condemn
the one, ought we to value the other.
Up to the time, then, that a child goes to school, everything has probably
been done that can be done so far as its instruction is concerned, (1) if
the child has been kept as far as possible from foul suggestions from
others; (2) if the child has had its questions honestly answered or
temporarily though unevasively postponed; (3) if the child knows from its
parents' lips that it came into the world from its mother's body, first
growing there "beneath its mother's heart" until it was strong enough to
be born; and that the mother would never have wished to have her child
grow in her body had it not been that there was a strong man who would
care for both mother and little child with great love and tenderness; that
there has to be a father to love the mother and child, and that,
therefore, mother and child must love the father, and the child must love
both father and mother, and that this love is what makes the home; and (4)
if in the process of imparting information, confidence has been
established and modesty conserved.
Anyone who has ever seen a group of six- to ten-year-old boys and girls
stand side by side and gaze with rapt but natural wonder and delight at a
bureau drawer or chest full of the beautiful little garments waiting and
ready for an expected child can never doubt the wisdom of a child's
knowing from the start some better version of the story than any of the
evasive temporizings of the conventional parent.
What shall the parent do who has never spoken of these things to his child
until now the child is ten, eleven, or twelve years of age, and especially
if the parent has given the child one of these evasive answers in reply to
its innocent questions? It may be said in passing that if the parent has
thus evasively answered the child's first questions, he will never be
bothered in all probability with any more questions. For the best way to
set up the barrier is to answer questions falsely; and one way to
establish confidence and to facilitate further communication is to answer
truthfully.
The child may know more or less than you think it knows. The parent does
not know what a ten- or twelve-year-old child knows or does not know.
Again, a parent does not know at what time or in what way or to what
extent the child's sexual life and impulse have already awakened. And the
parent does not know to what extent the child may know "what ain't so." It
is a mistake in most cases for the parent to try to find answers to these
questions by questioning the child. For just as a parent may start wrong
by deceiving the child, so the child may start wrong by deceiving the
parent, and even a pretty good child, especially after it has been
deceived by the parent, is likely to follow the same cue when it is
questioned by the parent. The parent should not tempt the child to such a
misstep.
Again, the parent, whether mother or father, should never try to open the
conversation or resume it at a time when the boy or girl is likely to be
interrupted or distracted or is eager at the moment to be somewhere else
and doing something else. The mother and daughter quietly sewing together,
or the father and son off for a walk, or sitting on a log, or lying on the
grass, are ready for a confidential talk.
If the boy or girl was deceived in response to its first questions, the
father or mother may retract in some such way as this: "Do you remember,
Molly, that when you asked me where your baby brother came from, I told
you the doctor made us a present? Well, that's the way fathers and mothers
answer little children, just as we told you that Christmas presents came
from Santa Claus. You came to know that papa and mamma are Santa Claus and
that Santa Claus is a fairy story--and so you have probably already
learned how the baby came. The baby really grows in the mother's body--did
you know that? Do you know how long it takes for it to grow there? No? It
takes nine months. Before you were born, you were growing inside of your
mother's body. The blood from your mother's body flowed into your body;
in this way your body grew. When the baby comes out of its mother's body,
it does not hurt the baby, but it hurts the mother. It was so when you
were born, but your mother was so happy to think she was to have a baby
and to feel it growing inside her body that she did not think much about
the pain. If your mother is ever a little tired and cross, you must
remember that she loves you beyond anything that pain can measure and that
she deserves your tenderest care."
At this or some other fitting time, the father or mother may give the
child some further intimation of the process by which the child comes to
grow in the mother's body, and in some such way as follows: "Some one may
have told you how babies come to grow in their mothers' bodies. But most
people are ignorant about these things. I think I can explain it to you a
little if you will look for a moment at this flower that I have in my
hand, because the coming of a baby in the mother's body is in some ways
like the coming of the seed in the body of the flower. You have probably
learned at school in your nature-study work that these are--what? Yes,
the petals. And these stamens, and this is the pistil. Do you notice the
powder on the end of the stamen? That is called pollen. If you put that
powder under magnifying glass, each grain will look like a grain of wheat.
Now, do you notice that the pistil spreads out here at the base like a
vase with a narrow neck and big bowl? I am going to cut the thick part
open. Do you notice those tiny things like seeds? Yes, those are seeds,
but they would not grow just by themselves. A grain of that pollen gets on
to the end of the pistil (sometimes the wind, sometimes a bee puts it
there), and immediately it begins to send a long thread from itself right
down the center of the pistil, and this thread carries at the front the
heart of the pollen grain, and when it reaches the tiny seed the two go
together and the heart of the pollen joins with the heart of the seed and
then it is a true seed and can grow,--and can grow into another plant that
can have flowers that can have seeds, and so on almost forever. No one
fully understands this very wonderful fact. We only know that it is a
fact,--that the heart of a seed from a father flower had to join to the
heart of a seed of a mother flower before a true seed that can grow into
a plant is born. And we only know that something like this is true about
father and mother animals, and that something like this is true of our own
human father and mother."
So much to show how the parent may "break in," for that is often the
crucial thing. After the start is made, details may be found in the books
provided for just this purpose.[40] Indeed, after beginning, it is
sometimes better to put the right book into the boy's hands; or better yet
to read the book with the child. Especially is the latter course
preferable if the book seems at any point unwise,--and there are few books
prepared for children which are not at some point or other unwise. Only,
in all this process of definite instruction in which analogies from the
life of plants and animals are used, the instructor must make sure that
the illustrations are thought of as analogies for the anatomy and biology
only, and guards must be reserved, implicitly and explicitly, against the
child's supposing that everything in plants and animals is normal for
human beings. All that the child learns of reproduction of plants and
animals should be related to the home and affectional life even of
animals, and the analogy between animals and man should stop far short of
that to which in all the animal world there is no real analogy--the life
and meaning of the higher order of human family life.
If the proper person to teach the child is the parent and if the parent
does not know how, the obvious thing to do is to call the parents together
and to try to teach them how. Besides meetings for parents (fathers and
mothers together), excellent results have come from meetings for fathers
and sons addressed by a man, and from meetings for mothers and daughters
addressed by a woman.
The following details as to arrangement and conducting of parents'
meetings may be of value. For such meetings in the public school, the
consent of the local school board must be obtained. This ought not to be
granted if those seeking permission are either cranks or quacks. The Viavi
people are said to be obtaining such permission for use of schoolhouses
under the specious plea of social hygiene. Others, well intentioned but
with extreme purist ideas and unwise methods, occasionally volunteer their
services. The school authorities should be cautious. But when those who
apply are intelligent and honest and above question as to their standing
and judgment, school boards ought not only to consent, but to support and
coöperate. A grudging consent, mixed with indifference, finds its way by
capillary attraction to the school principals and teachers and constitutes
a real hindrance. When the consent of the school authorities has been
obtained, the next step is the selection and training of speakers and the
notification or the parents. Where permitted, the notices or invitations
should be sent out by the school in which the meeting is to be held, by
mail, sealed, to every home in the district whence pupils in that school
come. This should be done even if the local society has to pay the
postage. If the school authorities will not or cannot do this, then cards
of invitation should be sent home through the pupils. In either case, the
invitation should be so worded as to do no harm to the children who may
read it.
Parents' meetings may be addressed by two speakers, a physician and a
layman. The two speakers should get to the schoolhouse in time to see that
the speaker's desk and chair are not on a high platform too far from the
little group of parents. The chair and table should be brought down to the
floor close to the seats and the parents brought forward. The principal of
the school should introduce the layman, accompanying the physician, to be
chairman of the evening. The chairman should make a brief address, as
outlined in the syllabus provided by the Committee on Education of the
Society, introducing the physician. The physician should make a brief
address as outlined in the syllabus, and then, after proper explanations,
the physician should resume his chair. Both physician and layman, seated,
should engage in a dialogue, in which the layman should endeavor with all
the intelligence, sympathy, and skill at his command to put himself in the
place of the humblest parent in the room and ask such questions of the
physician as such a parent might ask or ought to ask. For example:--
Layman, "Doctor, I have a little boy four years old. When ought I to
talk to him about sex matters?"
Physician, "When the child asks questions."
Layman, "What do you mean by that?"
Physician, "Well,--suppose the child asks where the baby came from?"
Layman, "What do you say if the child asks that?"
Physician, "I would tell it that the baby grows in its mother's body,"
etc.
Layman, "I have a little boy eight years old to whom I have never
talked about these things. What do you advise?"
Physician, "I would take the first opportunity, some time when the boy
is not likely to be interrupted. Refer to some newly arrived or
expected baby and tell him frankly where the baby comes from."
Layman, "But Doctor, I have already told him that a stork brought the
baby."
Physician, "Then tell him you told him that as a fairy story like the
Santa Claus story, but that now he is old enough to know the truth.
Then tell him the truth."
Layman, "But I find it hard to talk about these things and I am afraid
my child might ask me questions I could not answer."
Physician, "There are books, a list of which will be handed you, which
you can read, and parts or all of which you can read to your child."
Layman, "What if my child asks me a question I can't answer."
Physician, "Don't dodge or evade. If you must postpone an answer, do
so frankly with a promise that when you can you will answer, or that
you will put him in the way of getting good information by reading or
otherwise."
This conversation should be extended to apply to adolescent boys and girls
and to young men and women. Enough has been given to show the nature and
spirit of the dialogue. The people's interest never flags. The layman must
ask all the strategic questions, and he must keep at it until he gets
answers in simple, understandable terms. If the physician uses "function"
or "coöordinate" or "puberty" or "adolescence" or other academic terms,
the layman must force simple words at every turn; and in any attempts to
describe what a parent should say to a child, the layman should take care
that a child's comprehension is reached and that the parent is guided as,
to vocabulary. Both speakers should lift the level of their counsels above
that of mere physical prudence; they should explain and duly emphasize the
moral issue.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] A classified bibliography is provided at the end of this volume.
CHAPTER IX
TEACHING PHASES: FOR BOYS
_By Harry H. Moore_
The adolescent boy is the hope of our race. He is the man in the making.
Whether he is to be a constructive force, a nonentity, or a destructive
force depends largely on influences during this period. In adolescence the
processes of destruction are quick and sudden. Statistics of reformatories
and prisons show that either crime itself or the moral breakdown which
leads to crime begins in boyhood. A study of the lives of great
constructive characters shows that their success was largely determined by
influences during this period. Certainly, there is no more important task
for our nation than the training of our boys.
Adolescence begins at puberty, the transition period during which the sex
functions come into full prominence. Its beginning is marked by great
physical changes. There are also mental and psychic changes. This fuller
development of sex means for the youth new power, new emotion, new
capacities for enjoyment of life. At this time the will should emerge as
an asset of character. The boy now desires more knowledge of the new world
in which he finds himself. He wants to see it by day and by night. He
wants to be physically active, or entertained. He belongs to some sort of
gang and is loyal to it. His is an age of hero worship.
If the knowledge and the entertainment he finds is wholesome, if the gang
is a good one, if the hero is a noble character, if, with emotion and new
powers, there is also a strong will, all goes well. But if these
influences are not helpful and the will is weak, the result may be quickly
disastrous.[41]
Inquiry into the lives of any considerable number of adolescent boys leads
one to believe that there exists what almost might be called a conspiracy
of silence, misinformation, and bad influence against most boys of this
age. Parents for the most part either evade or answer untruthfully the
questions of their six-, seven-, and eight-year-old boys regarding birth
and reproduction. From this time on, nearly all boys receive many false
and low ideas regarding sex, marriage, and the relationship between men
and women.
After the stork story, there come incorrect versions of reproduction from
boy companions. Then come notes at school, picture cards, comic weeklies,
quack advertisements, and unwholesome vaudeville acts. These destructive
influences come, for the most part, entirely unsolicited, in response to a
normal desire for knowledge and clean entertainment. Boys seldom go to
their first shows to see what is vulgar or sensual. They go for clean fun,
gymnastics, magicians, and other legitimate amusements. The unwholesome
features are thrust upon them.
As a result of these influences on the impressionable mind of the growing
boy, he comes to regard sex as low and vile instead of sacred. He acquires
a vulgar vocabulary which he necessarily uses in his thinking and
sometimes in his conversation. The silence and evasive answers of adults
withhold healthful knowledge and increase curiosity. Curiosity often
leads to investigation, which often results disastrously.
The specific evil results are of three kinds: (1) masturbation; (2)
needless mental suffering due largely to ignorance; (3) illicit
intercourse.
Masturbation is prevalent among boys. Two hundred and thirty-two replies
were received to a question asked college students regarding their
severest temptations of school days. Of these, one hundred and thirty-two
said that masturbation had been one of their severest temptations and one
hundred and thirty-one said they had yielded to it.[42] Similar inquiries
have brought similar results. The sum total of vitality lost to humanity
by this practice is great.
There is much needless mental suffering among boys and young men due to
ignorance and false ideas advanced by quacks. Groundless fear, brooding
anxiety, and despair sometimes start before adolescence and often last
into the twenties. Physical peculiarities of no consequence sometimes
cause boys to fear that they are abnormal. Unaware of the fact that
spontaneous nocturnal emissions are to be expected, many suffer mental
anguish. According to one writer, a single New York dealer had 3,000,000
"confidential" letters, "written to advertising medical companies and
doctors, mostly by youth with their heart's blood."[43] Large sums of
money are obtained by quacks everywhere for treating normal conditions.
Many men have applied to the Advisory Department of the Oregon State Board
of Health after years of worry. Although those who apply are no longer
boys, most of their troubles began in boyhood. A large proportion of the
suffering could have been avoided by simple instruction in sexual hygiene.
Social vice often occurs in adolescent boyhood, both as a direct result of
unmastered passion and as an indirect result of individual vice. In some
cases, the habits a boy forms in his early 'teens make him a subject of
venereal disease in later life. A doctor writes, "I am aware that it is
popularly supposed that self-abuse and sexual intercourse are
antagonistic--by many, the one is regarded as a necessary alternative of
the other. So far from being a protective, the former is a most powerful
provocative of the latter. According to my own observation, it is not the
strongly sexed, the most virile young men, who are most given to
licentiousness, but those whose organs have been rendered weak and
irritable from this unnatural exercise--in whom the habit of sensual
indulgence has been set up, and in whom self-control has not been
developed by exercise."[44] This combination of silence, misinformation,
and bad influence causes a damnable attitude of mind on the part of the
boy toward women, love, marriage, and the home.[45]
The experience of a Chicago business man with his sixteen-year-old son is
told in a recent popular magazine. Whether an actual occurrence or not, it
is typical of conditions in most any city.
I do not desire to convey the idea that our boy was a wicked boy. He
was not. He was just the average type of what we call the "upper
middle-class" boy. He was merely tuned to the low moral tone of the
city. Vice to him was not a monster of hideous mien. He had seen it
from childhood.... I knew that a greater part of his ideas on
patriotism, on women, on the sanctity of marriage were but reflections
of views he had heard expressed, often tritely and cleverly, and
cynicism born of hearing such things flaunted over the footlights or
dished out as "clever" in the newspapers.
In the father's earnest efforts to understand the remedy for the
situation, he is reminded of his own experience when he began life in the
city. He continues:--
The boy's words awakened memories. I recalled the sense of shocked and
shamed decency I felt when first I came to the city, a boy almost, and
fresh from the country; how I tossed in my bed trying to see as right
things that every one in the city appeared to accept as a matter of
course, but that, from earliest boyhood I had been taught to regard as
wicked. I could not for many months become accustomed to seeing
immodestly dressed women on or off the stage, or to hearing
half-veiled indecency flaunted from the stage, blazoned in the
newspapers, or used even in ordinary conversation. I could not get
used to ... scenes and actions directly forbidden as unforgivable at
home.[46]
We are horrified by certain vices, the public now and then cries out
against specific manifestations of lust, and sometimes it is with
difficulty that mobs are restrained from violence But about much of our
immorality there is an attractiveness that has made it acceptable and even
wins for it applause. The influence is there, and it is insidiously and
perniciously working itself into the minds of our boys Many commercialized
amusements now exploit the sex impulse. It is impossible to measure the
effects of such exploitation.
There are brighter pictures. Those who have intimate relation with
hundreds of boys learn to admire the American boy for his earnest desire
to be clean and strong and for his attitude toward the sacred things of
life. If we give the boy positive help, we may expect him to grow into
noble manhood. We would not remove him from all the evil in the world, but
we may expect a minimum of harm as a result of contact with evil. We may
not expect to keep him away from all foul talk; but we may make foul talk
disgust rather than attract him. The American boy is normally clean. If we
will do our part, he will respond.
William Holabird represents a type which may well be taken as an example
in sex education.
While chiefly known to the public as a golfer, Holabird was catcher on
the school baseball team, half-back on the eleven, held the gold medal
for the inter-class track meet, and, in fact, excelled in all athletic
sports. As a scholar he always ranked high. He was devotion itself to
his parents, his brothers and sisters, respectful to his elders, a
leader among his associates, and beloved by all who knew him; tall in
stature and muscled like a Greek god, with clear-cut, delicate,
refined, and manly features.... With a rare combination of strength
and gentleness accompanied by a bearing and life well illustrating "He
was one of nature's noblemen."... A splendid athlete, with a life
without a spot or stain, he was a natural leader and a model for all
the fellows in the school. The younger boys followed and imitated
him.... He hated everything false or unclean or vulgar. To us all, men
and boys alike, it was an inspiration to know him.[47]
Our standards for boys and men have been too low. Charles Wagner says, in
writing of youth and love:--
Chastity has a host of enemies.... These enemies are quick to throw at
your head, as an unanswerable argument, "He who tries to play the
angel, plays the fool."
But he continues:--
Many play the fool who have never tried to play the angel. They have
not fallen into the mud because they tried to fly too high, but
because they began too low down.... A society which permits license in
youth, and counsels it, degrades love.... Sin against love at its
base,--in youth,--and the life of the whole nation is torn, and
suffers immeasurably.... The rule of conduct here is chastity Every
infraction is a sin. Though this law may seem difficult and severe, it
is the only safe one. Morality without it is but rubbish.[48]
A start has been made. During the last decade, we have declared that we
must no longer have two standards of purity, one for the man and another
for the woman. We recognize a difference between the nature of the man and
the nature of the woman; but as our goal and as our standard for practical
life, we have abandoned "the double standard." This is a great advance,
for our young people as a whole measure up fairly well to standards which
society as a whole sets for them. It is entirely within reason to expect a
large majority of our boys to reach full maturity and marriage with an
absolutely clean record, as far as personal and social purity are
concerned. In fact, we should be constantly working toward a time when the
personally impure boy and the socially impure young man will be
eliminated. Both the men and the women of our nation must demand this.
There are many ways by which we may guide and help the adolescent. Only
the abnormal boy is not active and curious. If we do not provide wholesome
activity, boys are likely to find activity which is destructive in its
influence. Therefore, we must do far more than mitigate bad influences. We
must plan proper regimen. We must supply a steady succession of
constructive activities as well as definite instruction to satisfy
curiosity. No other course will do.
In the matter of regimen, wholesome food, sufficient sleep, proper
clothing, bathing, fresh air, and physical exercise are of great
importance. The life and energy and passion of the adolescent boy must not
be checked, but diverted into wholesome and constructive channels.
Excessive mental labor, a sedentary life, pernicious reading,
idleness, can transform into a tormenting and persistent desire that
which, without it would have been easily mastered. On the other hand,
a healthful regimen, energetic habits, amusements and physical fatigue
are diversions so useful that, thanks to them, the most critical years
pass by unnoticed.[49]
A daily cold shower, followed by a vigorous rubdown, is beneficial if the
boy reacts favorably to it. The bath, acts as a sedative.
The value of gymnasium work, track and field athletics, swimming, and
"hiking" is constantly demonstrated in the lives of American boys.
Athletics are to be recommended as possessing a positive prophylactic
value against the indulgence of sensual propensities. Physical
exercise serves as an outlet for the superabundant energy which might
otherwise be directed toward the sexual sphere. In the period of
"storm and stress" which characterizes pubescence and which often
leads to nervous perturbation and excitement ... there is no better
divertitive from sexual thoughts than active athletic exercises pushed
to the point of physical fatigue, as a relief to nerve tension.[50]
In addition, physical exercise tends to develop an ambition to excel, to
become physically strong and robust. With such an ambition, boys realize,
intuitively to a certain extent, that to succeed they must refrain from
vice. Physical exercise has a fourfold moral value: it substitutes
wholesome activity for vice; it serves as an outlet for excess of nervous
energy; it develops the will; it develops ambition to be virile. All
wholesome recreation is an enemy of impurity. Jane Addams says that
recreation is stronger than vice, and that recreation alone can stifle the
lust for vice.[51] Recreation which involves physical activity is the most
helpful to the adolescent boy.
The boy's companions are important. Emerson says, "You send your child to
the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him."[52] Books
which contain high ideals of manhood and also of womanhood are obviously
helpful, as are also dramas of this character. And finally those general
principles of moral and religious education must be used, without which
we can have no strong foundation for clean living.
If we have failed to give proper instruction previous to adolescence, we
now have a golden opportunity (and in thousands of cases, our last
opportunity) to save the adolescent to a life of purity. As a rule, he has
ideas of sex life which are, at least, unwholesome. Curiosity is at a high
pitch, and passion is likely to be strong. Nevertheless, the ambitions and
ideals of a boy at adolescence are high. He will fight to be clean if he
understands that clean living means the acquisition of strength. He would
rather have virility than anything else in the world.
As to method, let us deal with the boy as a creature with reason. The best
plan is to place before boys a standard of virile manhood, and then to
show how such a standard may be met by clean living. Real characters who
have achieved high standards of vigor should be shown as heroes worthy of
imitation. Lincoln is known by most adolescent boys to have been a man of
great physical strength. He was "a man without vices, even in his youth,
but full even in ripe age of the sap of virility."[53] The effect of
clean living upon nations may also be spoken of. Charles Kingsley writes
of the Teuton:[54]--
It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton which enabled him to crush
the decrepit and debauched slave nations.... It had given him more,
that purity of his: it had given him, as it may give you, gentlemen, a
calm and steady brain, and a free and loyal heart; the energy which
comes from self-restraint; and the spirit which shrinks from neither
God nor man, and feels it light to die for wife and child, for people
and for Queen.
Because thousands of our boys are now growing into manhood who will never
receive the advantages of such a plan as we hope will be worked out during
the next decade,--boys who are now at the danger point,--an emergency
exists that must be met in the best way possible. For these boys, we are
now forced to give single talks or short series of talks. Just what facts
should be mentioned in a talk to any particular group of boys is a matter
which must always be governed by the age, development, and environment of
the boys concerned.
The first task for a teacher or a speaker giving a single lesson or a
series of lessons is to set up a high standard of manhood. The lessons may
concern the development and the conservation of virility. The teacher may
explain that virility means not only muscular strength but endurance,
energy, will power, and courage; and that in addition to these, a true man
has chivalry,--he is concerned for the welfare of others, especially for
the safety of women and children. He must possess more than physical
prowess; he must possess human virtues or he is no better than a brute.
The need for the conservation of virility in the race as well as in the
individual should be explained. Boys should see that the conservation of
virility in men is of far more importance than the conservation of our
water-power or our mines,--that we owe a duty not only to ourselves, but
to the nation and to the next generation.
A statement somewhat like the following can then be made: "It is our duty
to pass on to the next generation at least a little more vitality than we
inherited from the past generation. It is, therefore, important that we
understand the main facts of reproduction, so that now we may live right
and make no mistakes which may cause us to reproduce inferior children
when we mature." The speaker may then describe the wonderful and beautiful
process of reproduction in plants, and explain that human reproduction is
a similar process.
Under the subject of the development of virility, much time should be
spent upon a discussion of various ways by which virility can be
developed. The relative values of various kinds of physical exercise,
proper eating, the value of fresh air and of sufficient rest should be
emphasized. It may then be said that in addition to these things an
important source of virility is the absorption of the secretions of
various glands by the blood.
The speaker may make a statement similar to this: "When our bodies were
designed, we were given reproductive organs for two different and distinct
purposes. We have referred to the second and final purpose of
reproduction. You already knew more or less about that. The earlier
function of the reproductive organs is not understood by most boys. It is
this: _the rebuilding of boys into men_. The first purpose and, in some
respects, the most important purpose of the reproductive organs is to
rebuild a boy into a man. It would be absolutely impossible for us to
become men were it not for these organs. I will explain this by three
illustrations."
These three illustrations are generally very effective: an explanation of
the influence of the thyroid gland upon development; a comparison of two
horses, one of which was castrated when a colt; and the effect of
castration upon boys in Oriental countries.
The speaker may then say that the testicles do two things: first,
manufacture the male germ cells, spermatozoa, which are the most highly
potentialized and highly energized portions of matter in all living
nature; and, second, secrete a substance that is absorbed by the blood,
giving tone to the muscle, power to the brain and strength to the nerves.
It should be made clear that this is one of the great sources of virility.
From the illustrations referred to, a boy is likely to draw conclusions
regarding the vital importance of the functions of the testicles and
regarding any possible misuse of them. It may be well at this point to use
a cross-section drawing showing the scrotum, the testicle, the seminal
vesicle, and the bladder.[55] Some teachers will consider it desirable to
add that some boys, who do not understand the high purposes of these
organs, misuse them; that when such boys realize their mistake, if they
stop absolutely and at once, nature comes to the rescue and restores
virility.
The talks should be essentially constructive. To warn boys against
horrible effects of masturbation and to tell them things not to do is a
poor method. It is far better to explain that by keeping clean a boy may
acquire virility. The boy can draw conclusions.
In referring to the normality of seminal emissions, it should be explained
that the fluid excreted by a nocturnal seminal emission comes from the
seminal vesicles up in the body. This will show that the loss of fluid
involved in a nocturnal emission is different from the loss caused by
masturbation.[56] In this connection, boys should be warned against quack
doctors; also against their advertisements which are often worded to scare
the ignorant.
The venereal diseases should be referred to in talks to adolescent boys.
In this connection, the four sex lies may be vigorously contradicted.
These are (1) that gonorrhea is no worse than a bad cold; (2) that sexual
intercourse is necessary for the preservation of health; (3) that
emissions are dangerous and lead to debility, lost manhood, and insanity;
and (4) that one standard of morality is right for men and another for
women.
It should be explained that although both animals and human beings are
endowed with the sex instinct, only human beings have the gift of control.
That the sex instinct is a great blessing, and not a curse, should be made
clear. It may be stated that various blessings are sometimes converted
into sources of destruction when not controlled. A spirited horse is a
source of great enjoyment, but if not controlled may maim us for life.
Fire is a great blessing and a great joy to us when we are camping by a
lake or in the mountains; but, beyond our control, it may cause forest
fires. Temper, the capacity for anger, is highly desirable; but it must be
controlled or murder may result. We must control the sex instinct, or it
may control us and sink us lower than the brutes. On the other hand, if we
control this instinct, we gain virility, a keener appreciation of the
beauties of life, and life itself becomes richer and fuller.
In conclusion, the appeal should be for clean living for the sake of
physical strength and vigor, not for one's own sake, but for the sake of
country and future wife and children.
The standard toward which we are working in sex education involves the
dissemination throughout the school curriculum of such information as we
now give in a single talk. In addition to such nature-study work and
simple biology and physiology and hygiene as should be included in the
lower grades, there should be instruction in biology and in personal
hygiene required for all upper-grammar and all high-school students, as
soon as well qualified teachers are available. In personal hygiene a
proper amount of sex hygiene should be incorporated; and with the
treatment of other diseases, gonorrhea and syphilis should be given
adequate attention; the idea of the whole plan being to place all these
matters in their proper setting, without undue emphasis on matters of sex.
Either (first) as a part of one of these courses or (second) as a part of
some other general course, or (third) as a separate course, the following
subjects should be considered:--
1. What is virility?
(a) Virility and the next generation.
(b) Virility and our nation.
(c) Types of virility.
2. Muscle, exercise, and virility.
(a) How, when, and where to exercise.
(b) "Second wind."
(c) Rest.
(d) Will power.
3. Food, good blood, and virility.
(a) What to eat.
(b) Tobacco.
(c) Clogged-up machines.
(d) Blood and other body fluids.
4. Fresh air, bathing, and virility.
(a) Sleeping-porches, camping.
(b) How to bathe.
(c) Change of clothes.
5. Virility and disease.
(a) Disease generally an unnecessary evil.
(b) Relative seriousness of tuberculosis, typhoid, syphilis, gonorrhea,
diphtheria, colds, headaches, adenoids, enlarged tonsils.
(c) Body and mind.
6. Virility and certain glands.
(a) Importance of the thyroid gland and the testicles.
(b) Difference between stallion and gelding.
(c) Seminal vesicles.
(d) Quack doctors.
7. Virility and reproduction.
8. Fatherhood and the next generation.
In our attitude toward the boy, we must show him that we respect him, that
we have faith and confidence in him, and expect great things of him. We
should meet him on the level of a boy's everyday interests in sport, use
simple language, and no unnecessary technical terms. Some workers with
boys unwisely force confessions of guilt. We should respect the boy's
right of privacy.
When we deal with boys in the mass, the grouping is difficult. Boys who
have reached the period of puberty should be in a separate group from
pre-pubescents, and boys who are well advanced in adolescence--those who
have been pubescent for two or three years--should be taught in still a
third group. This applies to single talks as well as to courses of
instruction.
As far as we know the best basis of division between the pubescent and
pre-pubescent boy (when physical examinations are not possible) is the
change of voice. Only one who understands these matters well and knows the
boys should do the grouping. Even such a man should not adopt an arbitrary
basis of grouping but must take one boy at a time and place him in the
group for which he seems best fitted.
We should endeavor to include the father in our plans of sex instruction
and be careful not to break down such confidence as exists between father
and son. We shall find that only a small proportion of fathers give their
sons any instruction in sexual matters, and that it is difficult to stir
them to action. In one investigation, it was found that one hundred boys
out of one hundred and twenty-one had received no sex instruction from
their fathers.[57]
When confidence between father and son does exist, we should help the
father rather than relieve him of his task. It is difficult to discover
fathers who have confidential relations with their boys unless each family
is dealt with separately. The Oregon Social Hygiene Society has conducted
father and son meetings, and has required the father either to accompany
the boy or sign a card signifying his willingness to have his son attend.
Few fathers have attended, sometimes none at all. On one occasion there
were thirty-five boys and not one father.[58] Requiring permission may be
regarded as an assumption that the talk is questionable; and, furthermore,
the requiring of special permission is likely to create an undesirable
attitude on the part of the boy. Plans for father and son meetings which
will be free from these objections will possibly be developed by other
schools or social hygiene societies. Our aim is so to educate one
generation of boys that when they become fathers they will inform their
son regarding these sacred relationships and functions of life.
* * * * *
The boy is normally clean and wholesome. His first question regarding the
origin of life is a good question. When denied wholesome information, the
further investigation which often follows is indicative of desirable
qualities of character. Later, though disturbed by false ideas which have
been forced upon him, he still wishes to be clean and strong. He desires
to master low passions. He would rather have muscular strength and
endurance and energy and will power and courage and chivalry than any
amount of money. He shudders at the thought of causing suffering to an
innocent woman or child. He would sacrifice his life for the girl whom he
regards as the personification of loveliness and purity. If we will but
deal with him fairly and honestly, he will see in birth an ever-recurring
miracle; he will regard his body as a sacred temple; he will see in sex
power a source of richer and fuller life; he will respect women; he will
regard marriage as the most sacred relationship in life. Thus noble
manhood, a nation's greatest asset, will in large measure be achieved.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] John L. Alexander (editor), _Boy Training._ Association Press, New
York, especially pp. 11 to 22.
[42] _Pedagogical Seminary_, vol. IX, no. 3. Worcester, Massachusetts.
[43] G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. I, p. 459.
[44] Prince A. Morrow in the _Transactions_ (vol. I, p. 88) of the
American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis.
[45] Charles Wagner, _The Simple Life_, p. 181. (McClure, Phillips & Co.)
Caleb Williams Saleeby, _Parenthood and Race Culture._ (Moffat, Yard &
Co.) Francis G. Peabody, _Jesus Christ and the Social Question_, p. 162.
(Grosset & Dunlap.)
[46] "What my Boy Knows," _American Magazine_, New York, April, 1913.
[47] Robert E. Speer, _Young Men Who Overcame_, p. 21. (Fleming H. Revell
Co., Chicago.)
[48] Charles Wagner, _Youth_, pp. 248-50.
[49] Charles Wagner, _Youth_, p. 246.
[50] _The Boy Problem_, Educational Pamphlet no. 4, p. 26, of the American
Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 105 West 40th Street, New York.
[51] Jane Addams, _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets_, p. 20. The
Macmillan Company, New York.
[52] Emerson, _Education_, p. 38. Riverside Monograph Series.
[53] Henry Bryan Binns, _Abraham Lincoln_, p. 356.
[54] Charles Kingsley, _The Roman and the Teuton_, p. 46.
[55] Winfield S. Hall, M.D., _From Youth into Manhood_, p. 32. Association
Press, New York.
[56] Hall, _Reproduction and Sexual Hygiene._
[57] From an investigation conducted by Dr. Winfield S. Hall.
[58] "A Social Emergency," First Annual Report of the Social Hygiene
Society of Portland, Oregon, and the Bulletin of the Oregon Social Hygiene
Society, vol. I, no. I.
CHAPTER X
TEACHING PHASES: FOR GIRLS
_By Bertha Stuart_
The normality of the reaction to sex knowledge depends upon the physical
and mental training of the child. Our thoughts concerning girls run in
fixed grooves. We believe that, in babyhood, instinct leads them to prefer
dolls to their brothers' guns and a little later renders them less active
physically and more gentle and tractable mentally. Because of this
supposed difference in instincts and because of a well-defined picture in
our own minds of the final product we wish to evolve, we build a structure
externally fair, but lacking the foundation to enable it to resist the
stress of time and circumstance. Because of our traditionally different
ways of dealing with girls and boys, we have produced girls who are not
healthy little animals, but women in miniature with nervous systems too
unstable to cope successfully with the strain of our modern complex life.
The stability of the nervous system is dependent upon the proper
development of the fundamental centers. Incomplete development of the
lower parts means incomplete development in the higher. These fundamental
centers are stimulated to growth and development especially by the
activity of the large muscle masses. Not only is the development of the
brain and nervous system dependent upon muscular activity, but the growth
and activity of the vital organs as well,--the heart, lungs, and digestive
system,--and the normality of sex life.
All this we acknowledge in the case of the boy. Even with him, we fail to
live up to our convictions, as is shown by the long hours of inactivity in
school and the lack of suitable activities during recess periods. But on
the whole we encourage the boy to run and climb and jump and take distinct
pride in these accomplishments.
The same accomplishments in our girls occasion alarm; we have an ideal of
gentle womanhood. Even though unrestrained up to the time she attends
school, the girl then enters upon the long career of physical repression
which characterizes her training. Parents, teachers, neighbors, and
schoolmates often seem to conspire to curb all the natural impulses upon
which her health and rounded development depend.
Aside from the reproductive organs, the physical mechanism of the girl is
much like that of the boy. There is no peculiarity in the structure of the
reproductive organs to prohibit vigorous activity. The development and
health of these organs and their ligamentous supports are dependent
primarily upon the quality and free circulation of the blood, both of
which are preëminently the result of fresh air and exercise. If the
muscular system in general is well developed, there is no reason why the
muscular and ligamentous structure of the reproductive organs should not
be equally well developed. To insure their proper development, exercise is
essential.
A questionnaire answered by girls at the University of Oregon shows that,
with few exceptions, plays and games were not indulged in throughout the
high-school period and systematic playing ceased for the majority in the
seventh and eighth grades. This custom prevails throughout the country.
Just at the time when a girl needs abundant and free open-air play to
develop the muscles, train endurance of the heart, and increase the
capacity of the lungs, she omits it altogether. This is one of the chief
factors in the anæmias and poor circulation common in that period. The
derangement in the blood results in digestive disturbances and loss of
appetite, followed by headache and lassitude which further disincline the
girl for activity. Add to this the nervous strain incident to endeavors to
carry on a successful social career, the nerve tension resulting from the
unhygienic clothing assumed at this time, the lack of the steadying
influence of home responsibilities, and we have ample cause for the
nervous, high-strung girl who is becoming so common that we are in danger
of regarding her as the normal girl.
So greatly has the school curriculum encroached upon the home that the
girl has no longer time to share its responsibilities, nor is there longer
time for the family reading-circle, or music, or games for the maintenance
of the unity and fellowship of the home. This condition cannot but react
unfavorably upon the nervous system. If the brain is not rested and the
emotions satisfied by the relationships in the home, a feverish unrest, a
nervous irritability, a futile search supplant the calmness of spirit,
stableness of reactions and depth of contentment which must be long
continued to become a habit of mind.
Our school systems of to-day are designed for a girl as strong physically
as a boy; in fact stronger than most of our city boys. Our girls should
possess as much vitality as our boys; but until we change our methods of
dealing with girls, we must treat them as they exist and not as the normal
individuals we hope some day to evolve. Most girls have
disorders,--"nervousness," headache, backache, constipation, colds,
fatigue, or pain at the menstrual period. So common are these disturbances
that we consult a physician only in extreme cases, and rarely seek the
cause of the condition or attempt more than temporary relief. A pain which
under ordinary circumstances would receive medical attention is viewed
with resignation when coincident with the menses. As a consequence of this
neglect, many girls suffer unnecessary drains upon their vitality.
We find all degrees of menstrual pain. It may be so mild as to be little
more than discomfort, or so intense that unconsciousness results. The pain
may be sharp and knife-like, or it may be a dull ache. It may be
localized, low down in one or both sides, distributed over the whole
abdomen or concentrated in the back. With this pain, there may be
headache, or a headache may be the only symptom. Frequently there is
gastro-intestinal disturbance--nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, or
constipation. In anæmic cases fainting is common.
Local or operative treatment is not as a rule necessary, for the majority
of cases yield to a strict régime of hygienic living. The régime should
include regulation of sleeping, of eating, of hours of work and
relaxation, of dressing and of exercise. The exercise should be prescribed
and directed by a person trained in medical gymnastics.
Frequently mental disturbances are associated with the phenomenon of
menstruation. The most usual symptoms are heightened irritability,
hysterical manifestations and depression. Depression is often the only
symptom; to some girls the premonitory "blues" signify the approach of
the period. Occasionally we encounter the reverse, an excessive
stimulation and feeling of well-being and strength. There is some loss in
the power of concentration. In normal cases, however, this loss is less
than many people suppose it to be. Lassitude and a feeling of general
debility are confined chiefly to the anæmic cases.
The mental symptoms clear up as the physical condition is improved, aided
by a sensible attitude toward the whole process. Often girls who suffer
some pain live through the whole month in dread of the period. This
attitude should be changed, by lessening the pain and by psychic therapy.
Psychic therapy has proved successful in obstinate cases.
The girl who suffers considerably from any of these disorders at the
monthly period should be relieved from the strain of examinations, the
classroom, and lessons which must be learned, although mental hygiene
requires that her mind be kept active and her interests in quiet pleasures
stimulated. She should not be left to introspection and morbidness or to
the sickly sentimental thoughts often recommended for her. This alone
would cause her to exhibit some of the so-called "phenomena" of
adolescence. Many of these phenomena are abnormal and are traceable to low
physical vitality and lack of strong mental interests. The menstrual
period should not be attended by pain or discomfort; nor should our girls
be brought up to regard it as a time of sickness. When our girls are
taught that normal girls experience no indisposition at this time, they
will not be resigned to pain. The high-school life of the girl below the
average in physical vitality cannot be regulated to her advantage in a
co-educational school. Cities should maintain girls' high schools, taught
by women teachers, for all girls upon whom the stress and strain of
competition with normal individuals would react unfavorably. In the
majority of cases, menstrual pain in girls is due to nerve tension, anæmia
and poor circulation, improper clothing, and mental attitude. The girls
who experience no pain are those who have led an active out-of-door life
and have never stopped playing.
The character and arrangement of a girl's clothing is one of the most
important matters in her whole regimen. Clothing may neutralize the
beneficial effects of her otherwise hygienic habits. The long-continued
even though light pressure of the corset--and it is seldom
light--interferes with the free circulation of the blood. The alteration
in intro-abdominal pressure is conducive to misplacements of abdominal and
pelvic organs; the anterior pressure on the iliac bones, the result of the
modern long hip corset, is a fruitful source of partial separation of
sacro-iliac joints--the cause of many backaches. Respiration is limited,
the free play of abdominal muscles is prevented, constipation is promoted,
and digestion is impaired. The strain on muscles and nerves caused by
high-heeled shoes is a prolific source of headache and backache and
reduced efficiency. Women have no conception how greatly their
susceptibility to fatigue is increased and their total efficiency reduced
by their methods of dress. The pity is that the majority will not learn
unless the decrees of fashion change.
The hygienic problems of girls in industry will largely disappear when it
becomes a matter of common knowledge that industrial efficiency is
dependent upon physical efficiency. The physical efficiency of the worker
cannot be maintained at its highest standard when the period allotted to
rest is too short to allow the body to rebuild its tissues and dispose of
the toxic products of fatigue. All activity must be balanced by rest. If
this equilibrium between expenditure and income is disturbed, exhaustion
ensues. If long continued, it results in permanent impairment of health.
The organism poisoned by its own toxic products is incapable of productive
effort and the output will steadily diminish as the fatigue increases. The
present long working day causes a progressive diminution in the vitality
of the worker, defeats its own end, and leaves the girl weak in the face
of temptations.
The housing of unmarried girls is a very serious question. Homes for
working-girls require skillful management and a matron of insight and
sympathy. The bedrooms may be small, but well lighted and ventilated.
There should be a sunny dining-room, a library, several small parlors,
attractively furnished, a gymnasium which could be used for dancing,
shower baths, and an assembly room for concerts, lectures, and moving
pictures. This should be in charge of a trained social leader who would
direct entertainments and stimulate wholesome interests. With an
establishment of this kind we should not find so many of our girls on the
streets or seeking diversion in cheap theaters and dance halls. When girls
are able to live,--not simply exist in the deadening monotony of
alternation between work and sleep,--their heightened mental activity,
interest, and enthusiasm will prove a valuable asset to employers.
One of the chief requisites of the mental training of girls is a
knowledge, supplied at the right time and in the right way, of the
fundamental principles of reproduction. With such knowledge the girl's
mind will not be distracted by curiosity, or become morbid, when, instead
of intelligent response, the girl meets with evasions and attempted
concealments. She should not receive this knowledge in the form of
isolated facts, but as a correlated part of a great whole to be
assimilated gradually. The girl who is trained in this way will understand
and accept human reproduction as a natural process.
Questionnaires show that a majority of girls hear the facts of
reproduction at the age of seven or eight, a few younger, and a few at
the age of ten,--almost none at a later age. The majority hear these facts
from children a year or two older, a few from their mothers, and the rest
from books. A large number experience a feeling of disgust which remains
with them until they receive better information. Their questions disclose
a depth of ignorance and misconception which is appalling.
Girls, at the age of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, should have presented
to them a course in physiology which includes the anatomy and hygiene of
the reproductive organs. This is carefully omitted from present-day
secondary-school textbooks. This course should use charts, pictures, and
models. The significance of menstruation, the hygiene of the period, and
the causes and prevention of pain should be explained. Under the hygiene
of the period, the daily bath should be urged, with caution against
chills, in which lies the only possibility of injury. The fertilization of
the ovum and cell division may be described by use of the blackboard and
embryological models of the later stages of development. The forces which
bring about labor can be explained without unduly stressing the attending
pain.
The course would be incomplete without a discussion of the necessity of
careful selection in marriage from the eugenic standpoint. The perils and
results of the venereal diseases should be told simply and frankly. The
instruction in eugenics, like that in reproduction, should be progressive
and indirect, at least up to the age of seventeen or eighteen years. Again
it may be correlated with plant life by pointing out the beauty of strong,
hardy plants and their relation to the seeds. Children can be taught to
save the seeds of the most beautiful blossoms for the following year.
Instruction can be continued with the lower animals. The child will then
grow up with the idea that strength and vigor and freedom from disease are
desirable qualities, and must exist in the parent if they are to exist in
the offspring. The idea can be readily carried over to the human family.
At the age of seventeen or eighteen, the influence of heredity and the
effects of the racial poisons should be fully explained, and emphasis laid
upon qualities necessary for racial betterment.
For our girls the first need is a sounder physical organism, which can be
attained only through the systematic continuance of physical activities
through childhood and girlhood; the second need is sounder mental
interests, which can be attained only through the systematic guidance of
the mental activities throughout childhood and girlhood; and the third
need is instruction in laws of reproduction.
CHAPTER XI
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PHASES
_By Norman Frank Coleman_
Personal and social hygiene in matters of sex are, in very important ways,
dependent upon moral and religious training. On the other hand, morals and
religion are in important ways dependent upon forces set free by the
growth and activity of sex instincts and powers. One of the most
significant facts in modern social progress is its recognition of this
interdependence of mind and body. We have learned that physical health
depends upon peace of mind, hopefulness, courage, and many other things
that have seemed in the past to be purely mental or spiritual; and we have
learned also that the character of people and the spirit in which they do
their work depend upon their health, upon conditions of food and warmth
and shelter, things which in the past have been regarded as affecting only
the physical man. It is now somewhat out of date to set physical
conditions over against moral and religious; every great human problem is
more and more clearly seen in this day to involve all these conditions in
its rise, and to require thoughtful consideration of them all for its
solution. As we face the problems of sex, we must recognize the importance
of fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, clean cups and clean towels, and
we must also recognize the importance of clean thoughts and high purposes.
We must know clearly the facts of biological and medical science, and with
them in mind we must touch the springs of conduct in affection and
imagination. Our aim must be to achieve that mastery over the forces of
life finely expressed by Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra: "Nor soul helps flesh
more, now, than flesh helps soul."
We may consider, first, how, in matters of sex, flesh helps soul; second,
how soul helps flesh; and third, how in normal childhood and youth soul
and flesh grow together in mutual help.
The first great outstanding fact is that the physical powers of sex reach
maturity in the same years in which the moral and religious instincts are
greatly quickened. If we recall our youth, we must realize that, in the
years between twelve and twenty, our lives were greatly disturbed and
perplexed, and also greatly exalted and inspired by desires and impulses
partly toward the opposite sex and partly toward the service of God and
our fellows. In the normal adolescent boy or girl there is a powerful
expanding and enriching of sex thoughts and desires and purposes. There is
also a rapid development of social sympathy and passion; the revolutionary
movements of all lands are recruited from those who like Shelley have in
their youth vowed,--
"I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check."
And there is a wonderful flowering of the young life in religious feeling
and aspiration; a large majority of religious conversions take place in
adolescence.
We can scarcely escape the conviction that these are not different
awakenings, but rather different phases of the one great awakening of the
young life as it prepares for the tasks and responsibilities of manhood
and womanhood. The part that sex development plays in this awakening has
been variously stressed by different special students of the physiology
and psychology of adolescence. Some scientists have not hesitated to give
it first place and to treat social passion and religious enthusiasm as
secondary manifestations of sex energy.[59] However that may be, we know
that each speaks naturally in terms of the other. The religious mystic of
the Middle Ages was devoted to the Divine Lover or the Heavenly Lady, and
the modern revolutionary is _wedded_ to the Cause. On the other hand, the
lover naturally adopts the language of religion to express his devotion to
the lady of his heart. The water-tight compartment theory of life is in
these days thoroughly discredited. We know that the various powers of soul
and body are related and interdependent, and we feel sure that the
developing powers of sex do have very vital relation to developing powers
of moral purpose and religious aspiration. In support of this relation we
recall the unfortunate effects upon the character of those who by chance
or the barbarity of men have been desexed in childhood. We must allow for
other factors at work here, yet the clearly established facts of the
stunting of mental and moral growth in desexed children reinforce our own
experience and observation, and indicate that the energies that are
developed with sex and maturity are largely available for moral and
religious growth. The youth with full sex consciousness and impulse is
normally the youth of abundant energy for moral and religious activity. It
seems, therefore, quite fundamental to the right understanding of sex that
we consider the body, not the enemy of the soul, but its friend; not a
clog upon the spiritual growth of boy and girl advancing into manhood and
womanhood, but an important source of energy for the upward climb.
When we turn to the second part of our discussion and ask how in matters
of sex soul helps flesh, the need and the fact are clearer and perhaps
more urgent. Dante found the souls of the lustful in the second circle of
hell, driven hither and thither by warring winds,--
"The stormy blast of hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy."
Here we have clear recognition of the two great characters of sex impulse,
its violence and its fitfulness. In the one character it needs to be
subdued that it may not destroy; in the other it needs to be directed that
it may build up.
As we look back through history, and as we look abroad through our land
and through all civilized lands, one of the most conspicuous facts
concerning the powers of sex is their frightful destructiveness. The
spectacle of wasted manhood and womanhood, of depleted powers in body,
mind, and soul, is in history and in present society appalling. It is so
oppressive that it has driven many thoughtful men and women to despair.
Men otherwise hopeful and purposeful here become gloomy and fatalistic;
they have no hope that lust will ever be effectively controlled.
Such pessimism, however, contradicts the history as well as the instincts
of the race. In the face of great evils there have always been those who
would sit down in discouragement despair; every great destructive force in
human history has daunted some men to the point of inactivity. Yet the
evils have been controlled. Ignorant and fearful people have said, "This
thing is beyond human power; it is useless for us to struggle against
fate." Yet men of vision and of courage have struggled and won. No man of
moral passion and religious purpose can adopt an attitude of passive
submission to the forces of destruction. We can admit no necessary evil,
or the battle of human progress is lost. We ask ourselves soberly,
therefore, how this tremendous outrush of destructive energy may be
controlled. The answer is plain. Men have by the agency of fire itself
constructed the means by which fire is controlled and domesticated; they
have turned disease against itself, and by the agency of antitoxins have
conquered it; they are learning to arouse and organize the fighting spirit
of men against its own most ancient and fearful expression and are
enlisting soldiers of peace in a war against war. Even so the race depends
upon the higher affections for control of the lower, and lust is
controlled by love. I talked once to a young man in college who had given
himself to sexual vice when he had been in high school; until a year
before I spoke with him, he had supposed that virtually all men were and
must be sexually indulgent. For twelve months he had kept himself clean. I
inquired why and how. He replied simply that he had fallen in love with a
young woman and wished to marry her. His former course now seemed to him
shameful and unmanly. Lust yielding to love! In one of his sonnets to the
woman who afterward became his wife, Edmund Spenser says:--
"You frame my thoughts and fashion me within:
You stop my tongue and teach my heart to speak:
You calm the storm that passion did begin:
Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak."
In our own experience, as far as we have achieved victory in our own
bodies and minds over our baser passions, we have achieved it by the power
of the higher affections. It is a fact of common experience that love
calms the storm that passion did begin. So Spenser's lady strengthened
passion by her charm, but weakened it by her virtue.
Nor is this the only higher affection that, in the practical experience of
men, has controlled and transformed animal passion. Thousands of fully
sexed men have, through the centuries, turned their bodily and mental
energies so fully to devoted service for God and their fellows as to rise
above the clamoring demands of physical appetite, in the vigorous terms of
the New Testament making themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God's sake.
This is a hard saying, and the experience it treats of must always be
confined to a small number of men; yet it goes far toward demonstrating a
general possibility, and it should effectively dispose of the "necessity"
argument, by which men often excuse their vicious practices.
One thing more should be said on this subject of control. Not only are the
higher, more spiritual affections the most effective masters of the lower;
they are the _only_ effective masters. Public reprobation can do much, but
it is ineffectual with large numbers of relatively unattached members of
society, and it is impotent against secret vice. Motives of cautious fear
are always weak with full-blooded and generous youth, and they are likely
to become weaker with all men as medical science discovers ways to prevent
or escape the most obviously fearful consequences of sexual license.
A familiar phrase comes to my mind, as no doubt it comes to yours: "The
expulsive power of the higher affections"; yet I think that phrase is not
quite suitable. It is not a question of expulsion. It is not wholly a
question of control; it is mainly a question of direction. What we need
to-day with boys and girls for the solving of the sex problems is to
direct those energies, which in their false direction are destructive,
into right and healthful ways; that is, we need to socialize and elevate
that affection, which in baser forms has aspects of ugly animalism.
As one of the solutions of the problem of control it has been proposed to
separate the sexes in the adolescent years. From my point of view, this
would defeat our object. In the association of boys and girls during the
adolescent period, we may enlist the higher affections for the control and
the direction of the powers that are set free by sex impulses developed in
that very period of life.
What happens in the experience of the normal boy? In this period of early
adolescence he finds within himself a wonderful quickening of
mind,--impulses, feelings, longings that he does not understand. These
impulses, feelings, longings, perplex him, it may be for years. They reach
out vaguely, blindly toward the opposite sex, sometimes in a perverted
way, but oftener naturally and honestly. Then the young man falls in love.
At once his more or less vague, cloudy, incoherent, formless feelings and
purposes are concentrated, directed, and fixed in devotion to a young
woman whom he idealizes, almost deifies. That is the first stage in the
natural directing and forming of sex powers and impulses toward social,
moral, and religious ends. Of course the young man may discover, after a
while, that the first object of his fancy is not so angelic as he thought.
By and by his fancy changes and may rove to several other maidens before
he reaches maturity; but each successive experience, if he is true to his
better self, concentrates his affections and directs them, until, if he is
fortunate, in the course of time he finds his true mate and enters upon
marriage. He is now fairly equipped for what most of us know to be a long
course in the discipline of the selfish, the personal, the more or less
brute desires and ambitions of man. Here he learns to subject himself,
his own comfort, his own ends, his own ambitions, to the good of his wife
and her happiness, to the good of his children and the satisfaction of
their needs. Then, more and more, after having concentrated the powers of
his spirit through faithful courtship and through happy marriage and
fatherhood, the man is able to diffuse these same energies through many
channels, for the protection of all sorts and conditions of women and
children. The man is now a citizen, a member of society, with developed
powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these
powers? Not by any supposition that the early sex instincts he felt in his
boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by
gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like
control, depends upon enlightened, purposeful, persistent love.
In the third place, we may consider how, in matters of sex, the flesh and
the soul may grow together in mutual help. The essential facts and the
vital importance of the sex life appeal to the developing boy or girl in
four great relations, in relation to father and mother, in relation to
the strength and grace of his or her own body and mind, in relation to his
or her future family, and in relation to society in general. These appeals
come in successive periods and open the way to healthful instruction and
guidance from childhood up to manhood and womanhood.
Sex questions first arise in the child's mind in connection with
parenthood. The first thing a little boy or girl needs to know is that the
young life is sheltered and fed during long months in the mother's body,
and that the father had a share in that life. Is it not amazing that in
this twentieth century we find many girls twelve years old and over who do
not know that their father had any share in starting their lives? I knew
of a girl nineteen years old, a student in college, who did not know that
a man had any essential part in bringing children into the world, but
supposed, when any question of illegitimate childbirth was raised, that
possibly God punished a bad woman by sending her a baby before she was
married. It is little short of criminal that many girls are allowed to
reach adolescence with no sex thought or image clearly in their minds
except such as they have received directly or indirectly from animals. If
boys and girls knew from the beginning that a part of the father's life
and a part of the mother's life united to form the beginning of their
lives, the question of sex would begin on a plane where there were
religious, moral, and spiritual associations, and an atmosphere of love
and holiness. These young people could then see the facts of sex clearly
instead of through the mists of prurient fancy and suggestion as they see
them now.[60] The boy and girl who know these two tremendous facts of the
nurturing care of the mother before birth, and the coöperation of the
father and mother in the beginning of life, are fortified against the
principal moral and spiritual dangers that they are to face in the future.
The next information and guidance needed by our boys and girls concerns
the influence of sex upon their own development. The objection is
continually raised that it is not well for little children to have sex
thoughts emphasized in their minds. But at present no boy or girl grows up
and plays among other children, or hears talk on the streets, or goes to
work in factory or store, without hearing these facts emphasized day by
day, emphasized unhealthily and distorted shamefully. We propose simply to
have the emphasis shifted and lightened for it will be lightened if the
facts are given truly and in right relations. Boys and girls should learn,
at the same time they are learning facts of nutrition, excretion,
respiration, and circulation of the blood, those facts regarding sex which
are most important for healthy growth of mind and body. They should know
that the organs of reproduction have a definite relation to the natural
and healthful development of the full powers of their bodies in future
years; that internal secretions of these organs coming into the blood help
to build up bones and muscles, help to make their nerve fibers active and
vigorous, help to form their brains, and help to equip them for manly
strength and womanly grace in the years that are to come. These are very
simple matters. These facts of sex can be conveyed by just a few sentences
of clear, considerate, wise information at the right time, in relation to
the other facts of bodily development.
Considering now the period of puberty, we find additional needs, for no
boy or girl reaches puberty, under ordinary conditions, without knowing
that it brings the possibility of fatherhood and motherhood, brings the
possibility of that process that we call fertilization, in which the life
of plants and animals begins. The boy or girl who reaches this age has a
right to know what fertilization means, and what fertilization implies;
has a right to the simple biological facts which will tell him the
relation between the life of the parents and the life of the child, the
mysterious relation in body and mind that we call heredity. The beginning
of the socializing of sex energy and sex power depends upon recognition of
the fact that this power that develops in the young man and young woman at
puberty is not to be used for selfish gratification, is not primarily a
source of pleasure, but has a very direct relation to the health,
intelligence, and happiness of others. This relation may be enforced by a
simple study of succeeding generations of flowers and the ways in which
forms, colors, and sizes originate and are handed down from generation to
generation in wonderful variety. Or it may be illustrated from an
observation of the beginnings of sex in infusoria; how tiny animals in
stagnant water grow to full size and each divides simply into two to form
a new generation; how this simple asexual process continuing for several
generations results in growing weakness and old age, steadily decreasing
size, steadily decreasing vitality until there comes a time when one
infusorian unites with another. There sex begins. That union of two
individuals is required to restore youth, to refresh vitality and energy,
and to produce greater variety in the forms of life. When a boy or girl
knows these simple facts, he is better able to understand the power of
reproduction than he can possibly be if they are not before him, or if all
he has heard has been ceaseless reiteration of the pleasures of selfish
indulgence of sex appetite.
Finally, when the boy and the girl come into later adolescence and face
manhood and womanhood, they are ready to know some of the larger social
aspects of sex. They are ready to know of the diseases brought on by
perverted sex habits; of the frightful waste of those who give themselves
to licentiousness, the frightful waste of strength and youthful energy
not only in those that actually go down, but in those that survive. More
than that, seeking right relations of themselves to society, they need to
know the social aspects of sex. The young man needs to know what it means
for a woman to bear a child; he needs to know the social and economic
dependence of the pregnant woman and of the young mother, so that he may
realize what the power of fatherhood means in the actual work of society.
I cannot imagine any man talking glibly of the necessary evil, or of man's
inability to control sex passions, if he knows the social facts of sex.
Any young man who knows even a part of the burden his mother bore for him,
if he has a spark of manhood in his being, is surely fortified against
temptation to selfish indulgence. If, beyond that, he can see the relation
of the home to society, the relative steadiness and dependability of a
worker with a wife and children, who bears the home burdens in a man's
way, as compared with the floating, homeless wanderer who walks our
streets; if he knows these central facts and the dependence of the home
upon the faithfulness of the man and the presence of the man, if he has a
spark of patriotism in his heart, he must realize in his thought and in
his practice the necessity for the socialization of that passion which,
though it begin in individual and selfish forms, issues in such fateful
social consequences.
The solution of this great, urgent, pressing problem, which we are feeling
the weight of more and more in these years of careful investigation of our
social conditions, will come in frankly recognizing the beginnings upon
which the whole sex life in mind and body is based, and in transforming
fundamentally important animal instincts and desires into higher
affections, humanizing them for the sake of the loved one, for the sake of
family, for the sake of the social brotherhood and sisterhood in which we
are members.
My closing word is one which seems to me most significant of the true, the
beautiful, the victorious way out of so much discouragement and so much
crime,--that is the word "consecration." That word includes two essential
ideas, the ideas of sacredness and coöperation. The problems of sex will
never be solved until the sacredness of sex is recognized, for sex is
vitally and indissolubly bound up with the two greatest facts that you
and I know. The greatest fact of the organized world around us is life,
the greatest fact of the spiritual world into which we lift our souls is
love, and the beginnings of life and the beginnings of love are in sex. No
boy or girl will readily understand what life means except as he has some
clear, wise teaching about sex; no boy or girl will fully understand what
love means except through recognition of the dignity and worth and purity
of the fundamental facts and powers of sex.
Who shall give this enlightenment? I think it must be clear that this
enlightenment cannot be given by the very young and inexperienced person,
that the facts can be rightly given only by some person who knows their
sacredness for himself or herself. They can be given best by a mature
person who has seen and felt what they mean. In the long run, I have no
doubt that our boys and girls will get the information that they must have
from their parents, for the father and the mother are the best qualified
to give it. I have named both the father and the mother, for the solution
of our problem is not only in knowing the sacredness of sex, it is also
in working together for the elevation of sex life. We shall not be able,
we men, in the future, to sit down and say, "Oh, well, John will learn
from his mother"; "Mary's mother will make that clear to her"; "Their
mother does these things." It will not be possible for the socializing of
the sex instincts and the ripening of the sex powers to be made clear to
young people except as men and women both recognize the sacredness of the
sex relation and undertake to make things clear to boys and girls. Men
must give up their selfish indifference to evil conditions, and
women--some women--must give up the bitterness and hardness that come into
their hearts and their faces when they think of the suffering that their
sex has endured at the hands of man. This is not a problem for one sex. It
cannot be solved by either half of the great whole of humanity. We know
this to be true in our personal life; it is equally true in our social
life. It is only by the girding-up of the whole spirit of man to go forth
and meet his duty as a lover, as a husband, as a father, and it is only by
the girding-up of all the powers of the woman to lead and to help, that
the family is organized. In this great human family of ours the man and
the woman in days that are coming will coöperate to remove from our midst
the blackest and most fearful perversion of the natural powers of our
race. We do not believe in sitting down idly before this problem and
saying, "It has always been, it always will be." In this great day of
moral and spiritual progress, with powers that we have inherited from our
forefathers in this land and other lands, we know that there is no
necessary evil. We are learning what the evil of sex is, and how it
arises, and we are beginning to use the forces at hand for its
destruction. Conscience is kindling and determination is hardening among
our people that this thing shall cease to be. The ape and the tiger shall
yet die from our midst, and man's spirit shall triumph in his flesh.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] A. Forel, _The Sexual Question_, chap. XII, "Religion and Sexual
Life"; William James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, chap. I;
especially the first footnote.
[60] F.W. Foerster, _Marriage and the Sex Problem_, chap. IV; especially
section (d), "The Educational Significance of Monogamy."
CHAPTER XII
AGENCIES, METHODS, MATERIALS, AND IDEALS
_By William Trufant Foster_
At the outset we observed that the present social emergency is not
concerned merely with diseases, or physiology, or laws, or wages, or
suffrage, or recreation, or education, or religion. All of these phases of
the present situation, and many others, must be taken into account in our
attempted solution of the problem of sex hygiene and morals. A person who
believes that he can offer a quick and certain way out of our difficulties
appears to have no comprehension of the problem. This much, however, is
certain: the greatest need is public education. The policy of silence has
failed. Accurate and widespread knowledge is a necessary condition of
progress, whatever may be the chosen direction. The main questions at
issue concern the Agencies, Methods, Materials, and Ideals of
education.[61] The following propositions are intended as a brief summary
of the most important truths concerning each of those four aspects.
I. AGENCIES
1. As there are but few parents who can and will give the necessary
instruction, it must be given by other agencies, at least until a new
generation of parents has been prepared to meet this responsibility.
2. Although the failure of parents calls for the immediate action of other
agencies, the instruction should be so conducted as to break down the
barriers of false modesty and establish confidence between parents and
children.[62]
3. As the public school is the only agency of formal education that
reaches nearly all of the children of the nation, sex instruction must
eventually be given in all public schools; only thus can we bring forward
a new generation of parents, equipped with the knowledge and desire to do
their duty by their children.
4. As a majority of our boys and girls do not enter high school, some
instruction in matters of sex should be given in grammar schools.
5. No community should introduce direct sex education into the schools as
a part of the curriculum, until it has informed parents, cultivated
favorable public opinion, and obtained the services of teachers who are
qualified for the work by nature and by special preparation.
6. All normal schools and all college departments of education should at
once embody, in their courses for teachers, instruction in the matter and
methods of sex education, and adequate instruction should be provided for
teachers now in service; and within a reasonable time after such
opportunities have been offered in a given State, certificates to teach in
that State should be granted only to those who have had the prescribed
preparation.
7. As there is not now a sufficient number of public school teachers
prepared to teach sex hygiene, such teaching must be done in part, at
least for many years, by private agencies.
8. Lectures should be arranged for parents by churches, schools, colleges,
clubs, granges, boards of health, and other organizations; but no one
should be accepted as a lecturer until he is approved by a board of
health, social hygiene society, college, or other organization which is
unquestionably competent to pass judgment on the qualifications of the
speaker.
9. Since there are adults in every community that will not be reached,
even when sex education becomes a part of the day-school curriculum, such
instruction should be offered in continuation schools, in social
settlements, in Young Men's Christian Associations, in college extension
courses, in factories, stores, lumber-camps, car-shops,--indeed, wherever
the happy connection can be made between those who need the help and those
who are surely qualified to give help.[63]
II. METHODS
1. Sex instruction as a rule should not be isolated; it should not be
prominent; it should be an integral part of courses in biology, hygiene,
and ethics. "Specialists" in sex education are undesirable as teachers of
boys and girls, in or out of school.
2. As there is a discrepancy between the age of puberty and the age of
marriage, due to artificial conditions of modern society, it is important
that sex consciousness and sex curiosity should develop slowly:
accordingly, sex instruction, unlike instruction in other subjects, must
seek to satisfy rather than to stimulate interest in the subject;
questions must be answered truthfully, but the answers must not lead the
curiosity of the child beyond the information that is immediately
necessary for the guidance of his own conduct.
3. The aims of sex education can be fully attained only by the
encouragement of every means for keeping the mind occupied throughout
waking hours with wholesome thoughts and the body sufficiently active in
vigorous work and play, preferably out of doors.
4. Lectures and class instruction should be provided only for carefully
selected groups: almost nothing can be gained, and much may be lost, by
presenting the subject before miscellaneous audiences.
5. At every age, in every class, there are likely to be individuals who
need certain instruction not needed by the entire class: such instruction
should be given privately.
6. Books dealing directly with human sex life should not be given to
children before the age of puberty; some of the books most widely used are
dangerous; instruction should come directly from parent or teacher.
7. Traveling exhibits, made up of concrete and vivid materials, and
prepared with due consideration of all the accepted principles of sex
education, may be used effectively and inexpensively to bring the truths
before many thousands of adults in many places.[64]
8. Against commercialized prostitution, the educational campaign should be
one of pitiless publicity: the public should know the names of all persons
engaged in promoting the business, whether they are prostitutes (including
female _and male), or liquor dealers, owners of houses, owners of real
estate, lessees, proprietors, financial backers, policemen, or
politicians; their connection with the traffic should be proclaimed by
means as effective as the "tin-plate" signs for disorderly houses.
9. Reliable investigations should be made further to reveal the
relationships between sexual immorality and venereal diseases, on the one
hand, and, on the other hand, between sexual immorality and ignorance, low
wages, injurious clothing, lack of wholesome amusements, low dance-halls,
grills, moving-picture houses, vaudeville shows and so-called legitimate
theaters, mental deficiency, armies and navies, and--most important of
all--the liquor traffic; and the outcome of such investigations should be
made known through persistent campaigns of public education.
10. The conclusions of every vice commission and of every other dependable
investigation--not the details--must be kept before the public, until the
truth is common knowledge that segregation never segregates; that
safeguarding clinics never safeguard; that medical control never controls;
that official protection of immorality increases immorality; and that, if
there be any such thing as a necessary evil, it is not the shameless
partnership of government and vice.[65]
III. MATERIALS
1. Elementary nature-study for children and biological study for boys and
girls of high-school age may lead gradually and safely to the teaching of
plant and animal reproduction, provided that the subject is not left on
the plane of animal life; it is a mistake to suppose that the teaching of
biology necessarily promotes right conduct in matters of sex.
2. Subordinate and incidental to instruction in normal sex processes,
warning should be given of the dangers of individual vice, illicit sexual
intercourse, and venereal diseases; but such instruction should be given
only to groups that are homogeneous in respect to sex, physiological age,
and social environment, or preferably, to individuals.[66]
3. Instruction concerning venereal disease, which leaves the impression
that the chief danger of illicit intercourse is "getting caught," should
not be tolerated: knowledge of facts though scientifically accurate, is
not necessarily protection to the individual or to society.
4. As sex instruction for young people has none but practical aims,
hygienic and moral, only such knowledge concerning sex processes,
reproduction, and diseases should be given at each period as is necessary
for the welfare of the individual at that period.
5. The practice of masturbation is sufficiently common among both boys and
girls to call for warnings to all children at the earliest ages; any
teacher or parent should be qualified to help in individual cases.
6. The education of adolescent boys must stress the six great truths that
will fortify them against the main arguments of the enemies of decency and
health:--
(1) Sexual intercourse is not a physiological necessity; continence was
never known to impair physical or mental vigor.
(2) There can be but one standard of chastity; the purity a man demands
for his sister, he must achieve for himself.
(3) Seminal emissions are natural among healthy men; usually they need
cause no concern.
(4) Gonorrhea is a terrible disease, with tragic consequences that one can
never fully foretell; syphilis is worse.
(5) Every woman who offers her body for prostitution is, sooner or later,
a probable source of contagion; clean living is the only positive
safeguard against venereal disease.
(6) Nearly every "advertising specialist" is a criminal of the most
contemptible type; the only safe adviser is the doctor in reputable
standing who is not afraid to sign his name to his prescription or to his
advice.
IV. IDEALS
1. "The function of education is to guide the intellect into a knowledge
of right and wrong, to supply motives for right conduct, and to furnish
occasions by which alone can moral habits be cultivated." (Drummond.)
2. The first aim of sex education is necessarily to bring about an
open-minded, serious, if possible a reverent, attitude toward sex and
motherhood, in place of the traditional secrecy and vulgarity; a teacher
who cannot do this should do nothing.[67]
3. In so far as the sex life of animals is made the basis of instruction,
the _difference_ between man and the lower animals is the point to
emphasize; otherwise the facts of animal life may appear to justify
irresponsible sex activities, whereas the glory of man is his control over
animal instincts.
4. Since it is not ignorance of what is right, but rather the will to do
the right, that is usually responsible for sexual delinquency among
adults, the program of public education must include more effective moral
education in all grades of all schools; every subject, properly taught, is
a means of cultivating will power, of strengthening character; but the
school curriculum is now made to yield but a small part of its
possibilities.
5. The appeal must be made to self-respect and to chivalry; especially
through history and literature the idea of sex must be spiritualized; the
right education of the emotions is fundamental.[68]
6. Through the study of heredity and eugenics, the social responsibility
of the individual may be made to serve as a higher incentive for right
conduct than the fear of disease.
7. If there is one truth concerning sex education that needs emphasis
above all others, it is that all plans for meeting the social emergency
must strengthen the control of moral and spiritual law over sex impulses;
otherwise sex education may be antagonistic not only to physical health,
but as well to the highest development of personality and to the
progressive evolution of human society.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] The best expression of the consensus of opinion of those who should
know most about the subject is the _Report of the Special Committee on the
Matter and Methods of Sex Education_ issued by the American Federation for
Sex Hygiene, New York, December, 1912.
[62] _Sex Education_, by Ira S. Wile, M.S., M.D. (New York, 1912), aims to
assist parents to banish the difficulties and to suggest a course of
instruction. It is a brief and wholly admirable treatise.
[63] _Progress_, the second annual report of the Oregon Social Hygiene
Society, gives some account of the most extensive public education that
has been conducted in this country.
[64] The Exhibit of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society has been seen by
over 50,000 people, at a total cost of less than two cents for each
person.
[65] Especially valuable are the two volumes by Abraham Flexner, written
for the Bureau of Social Hygiene. See List of References.
[66] See _American Youth_, New York, April, 1913 ("Sex Education Number").
An article by George W. Hinckley tells of the ideal way in which he gives
individual instruction to his boys at Good Will Farm, Hinckley, Maine.
[67] "Sex-instruction as a Phase of Social Education," in _Religious
Education_, 1913, by Maurice A. Bigelow, is one of the best articles on
this subject.
[68] F.W. Foerster, _Marriage and the Sex Problem._ No book on this
subject has reached a higher plane of idealism. At the same time it is
scientifically sound.
LIST OF REFERENCES
CHAPTERS I, II
GENERAL SURVEY
_Prepared by Maida Rossiter, Librarian, Reed College_
Addams, Jane. _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._ New York, 1912.
American Federation for Sex Hygiene. Report of the Sex Education Sessions
of the Fourth International Congress on School Hygiene. New York, 1913.
American Medical Association. _Nostrums and Quackery._ Chicago.
Bloch, Iwan. _Sexual Life of our Time in its Relation to Modern
Civilization_; tr. by Eden Paul. St. Louis, 1911.
Brieux, Eugene. _Damaged Goods._ In his _Three Plays._ New York, 1911.
Commonwealth Club of California. _The Red Plague._ Commonwealth Club of
California. _Transactions_, vol. VI, no. 1, May, 1911; vol. VIII, no. 7,
August, 1913.
Dealey, J.Q. _The Family in its Sociological Aspects._ Boston, 1912.
Ellis, Havelock. _Task of Social Hygiene._ Boston, 1912.
Flexner, A. _Prostitution in Western Europe._ New York, 1913. Bureau of
Social Hygiene Publications.
---- _Prostitution in the United States._ (In preparation.) Bureau of
Social Hygiene Publications.
Foerster, F.W. _Marriage and the Sex Problem_; tr. by Meyrick Booth. New
York, 1912.
Forel, August. _Sexual Question_; tr. by C.F. Marshall. New York, 1908.
Fosdick, R.D. _European Police Systems._ New York 1913.
Kneeland, G.J. _Commercialized Prostitution in New York City._ New York,
1913. Bureau of Social Hygiene Publications.
Morrow, P.A. _Social Diseases and Marriage._ New York 1904.
Northcote, Hugh. _Christianity and Sex Problems._ Philadelphia, 1906.
Seligman, E.R.A., ed. _Social Evil._ Ed. 2, rev. New York, 1912.
Sisson, E.O. _Educational Emergency._ Atlantic Monthly, vol. 106, pp.
54-63, July, 1910.
Thomson, J.A., _and_ Geddes, P. _Problem of Sex._ New York, 1912.
Westermarck, Edward. _History of Human Marriage._ New York, 1903.
Wilson, R.N. _American Boy and the Social Evil._ Philadelphia, 1905.
Zenner, Philip. _Education in Sexual Physiology and Hygiene._ Cincinnati,
1910.
CHAPTER III
PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS
_Reproduction_
Exner, M.J. _The Physician's Answer._ New York, 1913.
Howell, W.H. _Textbook of Physiology._ Ed. 4. Philadelphia, 1911.
Landois, Leonard. _Textbook of Human Physiology._ Ed. 10. Philadelphia,
1904.
Marshall, F.H.A. _Physiology of Reproduction._ New York, 1910.
_Heredity and Eugenics_
Castle, W.E. _Heredity._ New York, 1911.
Darbishire, A.D. _Breeding and the Mendelian Theory._ New York, 1911.
Davenport, C.B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911.
Ellis, Havelock. _Problem of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911.
Jordan, D.S. _Heredity of Richard Roe._ Boston, 1911.
Kellicott, W.E. _Social Direction of Human Evolution._ New York, 1911.
Punnett, R.C. _Mendelism._ New York, 1911.
Saleeby, C.W. _Methods of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1912.
---- _Parenthood and Race Culture._ New York, 1909.
Walter, H.E. _Genetics._ New York, 1913.
Winship, A.E. _Jukes-Edwards; a Study in Education and Heredity._
Harrisburg, 1900.
CHAPTER IV
MEDICAL PHASES
Dock, L.L. _Hygiene and Morality; Medical, Social and Legal Aspects of
Venereal Diseases._ New York, 1910.
Fisher, Irving. _National Vitality._ Washington, 1910. U.S. 61st Cong., 2d
Sess. Senate Doc. 419.
Hall, W.S. _Biology, Physiology, and Sociology of Reproduction_ also,
_Sexual Hygiene._ Ed. 11. Chicago, 1906.
Keyes, E.L. _Observations of the Persistence of Gonococci in the Male
Urethra._ American Journal of the Medical Science, January, 1912.
Morrow, P.A. _Social Diseases and Marriage._ Philadelphia, 1904.
Taylor, R.W. _Practical Treatise on Genito-Urinary and Venereal Diseases
and Syphilis._ Ed. 3. Philadelphia, 1904.
CHAPTER V
ECONOMIC PHASES
Adams, T.S., _and_ Sumner, H.L. _Labor Problems._ Ed. 8. New York, 1911.
Chap. I.
Addams, Jane. _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._ New York, 1912.
Butler, E.B. _Women and the Trades._ New York, 1909.
Flexner, Abraham. _Prostitution in the United States._ New York. (In
preparation.) Bureau of Social Hygiene Publications.
---- _Prostitution in Western Europe._ New York, 1913. Bureau of Social
Hygiene Publications.
Fosdick, R.D. _European Police Systems._ New York, 1913. Bureau of Social
Hygiene Publications.
Goldmark, Josephine. _Fatigue and Efficiency._ New York, 1912.
Kelley, Florence. _Some Ethical Gains through Legislation._ New York,
1905.
Kneeland, G.J. _Commercialized Prostitution in New York City._ New York,
1913. Bureau of Social Hygiene Publications.
More, L.B. _Life Earner's Budgets; A Study of Standards and Cost of Living
in New York City._ New York, 1907.
Roe, C.G. _Panders and their White Slaves._ Chicago, 1910.
Ryan, J.A. _A Living Wage._ New York, 1910.
Sanger, W.W. _History of Prostitution._ New York, 1913.
Seligman, E.R.A., ed. _Social Evil._ Ed. 2, rev. New York, 1912. Chap. I.
Streightoff, F.H. _Standard of Living among Industrial People of America._
Boston, 1911.
U.S. Bureau of Labor. _Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States._
Washington, 1911-12. Vols. 5, 15.
U.S. Immigration Commission. _Steerage Conditions; Importation and
Harboring Women for Immoral Purposes...._ Washington, 1911. U.S. 61st
Cong., 3d Sess. Senate Doc. 753.
Reports of Commission, vol. 37.
Vice Commission Reports.
A list of vice commissions is printed at the end of these references.
CHAPTER VI
RECREATIONAL PHASES
Addams, Jane. _Spirit of Youth and the City Streets._ New York, 1912.
Allen, W.H. _Civics and Health._ Boston, 1909.
Camp-Fire Girls of America. _Manual._ New York, 1913.
Chicago Vice Commission. _Report_, 1911.
Collier, John. _Moving Pictures; Their Function and Proper Regulation._
Playground Magazine, vol. 4, pp. 232-39, October, 1910.
_Health Department Control of Venereal Diseases. Social Diseases_, vol. 2,
nos. 2-3, April and July, 1911.
Israels, Mrs. C.H. _Dance Problem._ Playground Magazine, vol. 4, pp.
242-50, October, 1910.
Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago. Reports on dance halls, moving
picture theaters, saloons, department stores, etc. Chicago, 1911-12.
Minneapolis Vice Commission. _Report_, 1911, pp. 129-31.
Perry, C.A. _Wider Use of the School Plant._ New York, 1910.
Playground Association of America. _Proceedings_, 1907 to date. New York,
1908 to date.
Russell Sage Foundation. Recreation Bibliography. New York, 1912.
Ward, E.J., ed. _Social Centers._ New York, 1913.
CHAPTER VII
EDUCATIONAL PHASES
American Federation for Sex Hygiene. _Proceedings_, 1913. New York, 1913.
Report of the Sex Education Sessions of the Fourth International Congress
on School Hygiene and the Annual Meeting of the Federation at Buffalo,
August 27-29, 1913.
---- Report of Special Committee on the Matter and Methods of Sex
Education. Presented before the Sub-Section on Sex Hygiene of the
Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, held in
Washington, D.C., September 23-28, 1912. New York City, 1913.
Cocks, O.G. _Engagement and Marriage: Talks with Young Men._ New York,
1913. Sex Education Series. Study no. 4.
Cook, W.A. _Problems of Sex Education._ Journal of Educational Psychology,
vol. 4, pp. 253-60, May, 1913.
Ellis, Havelock. _Studies in the Psychology of Sex._ Philadelphia,
1900-10. 6 vols.
Hall, G.S. _Adolescence._ New York, 1908. Chap. VI.
---- _Educational Problems._ New York, 1911. Chap. VII.
Hall, W.S. _Sexual Knowledge._ Philadelphia, 1913.
---- _Strength of Ten._ 1909.
Henderson, C.R. _Education with Reference to Sex._ National Society for
the Scientific Study of Education. 8th Yearbook, 1909.
Lyttleton, Edward. _Training of the Young in Laws of Sex._ New York, 1900.
Manny, F.A. Bibliography of Sex Hygiene. _Educational Review_, vol. 46,
pp. 168-76, September, 1913.
Moll, Albert. _Sexual Life of the Child._ New York, 1912.
Phelps, Jessie. _Teaching of Sex in Normal Schools._ National Conference
of Charities and Corrections. _Proceedings_, 1912, pp. 267-70.
Putnam, H.C. _Sex Instruction in Schools._ National Society for the
Scientific Study of Education. 8th Yearbook, 1909, pt. 2.
Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Educational pamphlets.
No. 1. _Young Man's Problem._
No. 2. _Instruction in Physiology and Hygiene of Sex for Teachers._
No. 3. _Relations of Social Diseases with Marriage and their Prophylaxis._
No. 4. _Boy Problem._
No. 5. _How my Uncle the Doctor instructed me in Matters of Sex._
No. 6. _Health and Hygiene of Sex._
Thomas, W.I. _Sex and Society._ Chicago, 1907.
Wagner, Charles. _Youth._ New York, 1905. Book 3.
Warthin, A.S. _Sex Pedagogy in the High School._ In Johnston, C.H., ed.,
High School Education. New York, 1912.
Wile, I.S. _Sex Education._ New York, 1912. Bibliography, pp. 149-50.
Willson, R.N. _American Boy and the Social Evil._ Philadelphia, 1905.
---- _Education of the Young in Sex Hygiene; A Textbook for Parents and
Teachers._ Philadelphia, 1913.
CHAPTER VIII
TEACHING PHASES
_For Children_
Chapman, Mrs. Rose Wood Allen. _How Shall I Tell my Child?_ Chicago, 1912.
Hall, W.S. _Strength of Ten._ 1909.
Lyttleton, Edward. _Training of the Young in Laws of Sex._ New York, 1900.
Moll, Albert. _Sexual Life of the Child._ New York, 1912.
Morley, Margaret. _Renewal of Life._ Chicago, 1906.
Torelle, Ellen. _Plant and Animal Children; how they grow._ Boston, 1912.
CHAPTER IX
TEACHING PHASES
_For Boys_
_Boys' Venereal Peril._ Chicago, 1911. (16-18 years.)
Hall, W.S. _From Youth into Manhood._ New York, 1910. (11-15 years.)
---- _Instead of Wild Oats._ Chicago, 1912.
---- _John's Vacation; A Story for Boys._ Chicago, 1913.
---- _Life's Beginnings._ New York, 1912. (10-14 yrs.)
Lowry, E.B. _Truths; Talks with a Boy concerning himself._ Chicago, 1911.
Morley, M.W. _A Song of Life._ Chicago, 1902. (Young men.)
Oker-Blom, Max. _How my Uncle, the Doctor, instructed me in Matters of
Sex._ Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. Educational Pamphlet no.
5. (10-14 years.)
Sperry, L.B. _Confidential Talks with Young Men._
Wegener, Hans. _We Young Men._ Philadelphia, 1911. (21 years and upward.)
Wilson, R.N. _American Boy and the Social Evil._ Philadelphia, 1905. (18
years and upward.)
---- _Nobility of Boyhood._ Philadelphia, 1910. (14-18 years.)
_Young Man's Problem._ New York, 1912. Society of Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis. Educational Pamphlet no. 1.
CHAPTER X
TEACHING PHASES
_For Girls_
Chamberlain, A.F. _The Child; A Study in the Evolution of Man._ Ed. 2.
London, 1911.
Cleaves, M.A. _Education in Sexual Hygiene for Young Working Women._
Charities and the Commons, vol. 15, pp. 721-24, Feb. 24, 1906.
Dudley, Gertrude, _and_ Kellor, F.A. _Athletic Games in the Education of
Women._ New York, 1909.
Gesell, A.L. _Normal Child and Principles of Education._ Boston, 1912.
Goldmark, J.C. _Fatigue and Efficiency._ New York, 1912.
Gordon, H.L. _Modern Mother._ New York, 1909.
Hall, W.S. _The Doctor's Daughter; A Story for Girls._ Chicago, 1913.
---- _Life Problems; A Story for Girls._ Chicago, 1913.
Johnson, G.E. _Education by Plays and Games._ Boston, 1907.
Lowry, E.B. _Herself; Talks with Women concerning themselves._ Chicago,
1911.
---- _False Modesty._ Chicago, 1912.
---- _Confidences; Talks with a Young Girl concerning herself._ Chicago,
1910.
Mosher, E.M. _Health and Happiness._ New York, 1912.
Oppenheim, Nathan. _Care of the Child in Health._
---- _Development of the Child._ New York, 1908.
Partridge, G.E. _Genetic Philosophy of Education._ New York, 1912.
_Plain Talks with Girls about their Health and Physical Development._
Salem, 1912. Oregon State Board of Health. Circular no. 4.
Puffer, J.A. _The Boy and his Gang._ Boston, 1912.
Saleeby, C.W. _Woman and Womanhood._ New York, 1911.
Smith, N.M. _Three Gifts of Life._ New York, 1913.
Sperry, L.B. _Confidential Talks with Young Women._ Chicago, n.d.
Tyler, J.M. _Growth and Education._ Boston, 1905.
CHAPTER XI
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PHASES
Abbott, Lyman. _Womanhood._ Oregon Social Hygiene Society. Circular no.
16.
Bible. Mark X, 2-12. Compare Deut. XXIV, 1-4.
Bible. Matt. V, 27-30.
Bible. I Cor. 7.
Foerster, F.W. _Marriage and the Sex Problem._ New York, 1912.
Hall, G.S. _Adolescence._ New York, 1908. Chaps. XIII-XV.
Hamilton, Cosmo. _A Plea for the Younger Generation._ New York, 1913.
James, William. _Varieties of Religious Experience._ New York, 1911. Chap. I.
PERIODICALS
The following periodicals are sources of news in regard to sex education,
sex hygiene, and allied subjects:--
_American Breeders' Magazine; A Journal of Genetics and Eugenics._
Published quarterly by the American Breeders' Association. Washington,
D.C. Sent to members, annual membership, $2.00.
American Medical Association: _Journal._ Published weekly by the American
Medical Association, 535 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, Ill. $5.00 yearly.
_American Physical Education Review._ Published monthly by the American
Physical Education Association, Springfield, Mass. $3.00 yearly.
_Eugenics Review._ Published quarterly by the Eugenics Education Society,
6, York Buildings, Adelphi, London. _4s. 6d._ yearly.
_Journal of Educational Psychology._ Published monthly, except July and
August, by Warwick & York, Baltimore, Md. $2.50 yearly.
_Social Diseases._ Published quarterly. 105 West 40th Street, New York
City. $1.00 yearly.
_Survey; A Journal of Constructive Philanthropy._ Published weekly by the
Survey Associates, 105 East 22d Street, New York City. $2.00 yearly.
_Vigilance._ A monthly magazine correlating constructive efforts for the
suppression of the social evil. Published monthly by the American
Vigilance Association, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. $1.00 yearly.
U.S. Commissioner of Education. Monthly record of current educational
publications. Bibliography, published monthly, devotes one section to sex
hygiene. Sent free from Commissioner's Office, Washington, D.C.
ORGANIZATIONS INTERESTED IN SOCIAL HYGIENE
American Federation for Sex Hygiene. Combined with American Vigilance
Association to form American Social Hygiene Association.
American Health Defense League. 37 Liberty Street, New York City.
American Medical Association. 535 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago. Secy., Dr.
Alex. R. Craig.
American Purity Alliance. 207 East 15th Street, New York City.
American Social Hygiene Association. 105 West 40th Street, New York
City. Secys., Dr. William Snow, J.B. Reynolds.
American Unitarian Association. Department of Social and Public Service.
Committee on Sex Education and Hygiene. Boston, Mass.
American Vigilance Association. Combined with American Federation for Sex
Hygiene to form American Social Hygiene Association.
Bureau of Social Hygiene. Members: Davis, Katharine B.; Warburg, Paul M.;
Murphy, Starr J.; Rockefeller, John D., Jr., Chairman. P.O. Box 579, New
York City.
California Social Hygiene Society. San Francisco. Secy., C.N. White.
Chicago Society of Social Hygiene. 100 State Street, Chicago. Secy., W.T.
Belfield.
Colorado Society for Social Health. Denver, Colo.
Committee of Fourteen. 27 E. 22d Street, New York City. Secy., F.H.
Whitin.
Commonwealth Club of California. 804 First National Bank Building, San
Francisco, Cal.
Connecticut Society of Social Hygiene. 42 High Street, Hartford, Conn.
Secy., T.N. Hepburn.
Detroit Society for Sex Hygiene. 33 High Street E., Detroit, Mich. Secy.,
Raymond E. Van Syckle.
Friends' Committee on Philanthropic Labor. Park Avenue and Laurens Street,
Baltimore, Md.
Illinois Vigilance Association. 153 Lasalle Street, Chicago.
Indiana Society of Social Hygiene. 723 Hume-Mansur Building, Indianapolis,
Ind. Secy., Dr. H.G. Hamer.
Indiana State Board of Health. Indianapolis, Ind. International Congress
on School Hygiene. Fourth meeting held in Buffalo, August 27-29, 1913.
International Purity Association.
Juvenile Protective Association. 816 South Halsted Street, Chicago.
Los Angeles Society of Social Hygiene. 311 Higgins Building, Los Angeles,
Cal.
Maryland Society of Social Hygiene. 15 E. Pleasant Street, Baltimore, Md.
Secy., Howard C. Hill.
Massachusetts Association of Boards of Health. Boston, Mass.
Massachusetts Society for Sex Education. 7 Hancock Avenue, Boston, Mass.
Massachusetts State Board of Health. State House, Boston, Mass.
Mexican Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis of Venereal Diseases.
Milwaukee Society of Social and Moral Hygiene. Milwaukee, Wis.
National Conference of Charities and Corrections. Angola, Ind. Secy.,
Alexander Johnson.
National Consumers' League. 105 East 22d Street, New York City.
National Education Association. Ann Arbor, Mich. Secy., D.W. Springer.
National Purity Association. 79 Fifth Avenue, Chicago.
New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Social Diseases. East Orange,
N.J. Secy., Dr. Thomas N. Gray.
New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford. Laboratory of Social
Hygiene. Supt., Katharine Bement Davis.
New Zealand Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis.
Oregon Social Hygiene Society. 703 Selling Building, Portland, Ore. Secy.,
H.H. Moore.
Oregon State Board of Health. 720 Selling Building, Portland, Ore. Secy.,
Dr. Calvin S. White.
Pacific Coast Federation for Sex Hygiene. Portland, Ore. Secy., H.H.
Moore.
Pennsylvania Society for the Study and Prevention of Social Diseases. 1708
Locust Street, Philadelphia. Secy., R.N. Wilson.
Rhode Island State Board of Health. State House, Providence, R.I.
St. Louis Society of Social Hygiene. St. Louis, Mo. Secy., Dr. H.E.
Kleinschmidt.
School of Eugenics of Boston. 168 Newbury Street, Boston, Mass.
Seattle Society of Hygiene. League Building, Seattle, Wash. Secy., Dr.
Sydney Strong.
Social Purity and White Cross Movement. The Philanthropist, P.O. Box 2554,
New York City.
Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. 611 Tilden Building, 105 West
40th Street, New York City. Secy., Dr. E.L. Keyes, Jr.
Spokane Society of Social and Moral Hygiene. 420 Old National Bank
Building, Spokane, Wash. Secy., Dr. J.R. Lantz.
Texas State Society of Social Hygiene. San Antonio, Texas. Secy., Dr. T.Y.
Hull.
Triennial Congress for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. Fifth
meeting held in London, June 30-July 4, 1913.
Washington State Board of Education. Olympia, Washington.
West Virginia Society of Social Hygiene. Elkins, West Va. Secy., O.G.
Wilson, Supt. of Public Schools.
World's Purity Federation. LaCrosse, Wis. Pres., B.S. Steadwell.
REPORTS AND INVESTIGATIONS
MUNICIPAL
Atlanta, Ga. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1912.
Chicago. Vice Commission. _Social Evil in Chicago._ Chicago, 1911.
Cleveland. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1911.
Columbia, Mo. Vice Commission. Appointed March, 1913.
Columbus, Ohio. Appointed March, 1913.
Denver, Colo. Vice Commission. Appointed September 15, 1912. Became Denver
Morals Commission January 31, 1913.
Grand Rapids. Morals Efficiency Commission of the Citizens. To carry on
work started by Committee of 41.
Hartford, Conn. Vice Commission. Appointed January, 1912.
Jacksonville, Fla. Vice Commission. Appointed September, 1912.
Kansas City. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1912.
Little Rock, Ark. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1912.
Macon, Ga. Vice Commission. Appointed January, 1913.
Minneapolis. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1911.
New York City--
Seligman, E.R.A., ed. _Social Evil._ New York, 1912.
Kneeland, G.J. _Commercialized Prostitution in New
York City._ New York, 1913.
Philadelphia. Vice Commission. _Report._ Philadelphia, 1913.
Portland, Ore. Vice Commission. _Report_, 1913.
Rochester. Vice Commission. _Report._
St. Paul, Minn. Morals Committee. _Report._
San Francisco--
Commonwealth Club of California. _Report on Prevalence
of Venereal Diseases._ February, 1911.
Shreveport, La. Vice Commission. Appointed April, 1913.
Syracuse. Moral Survey Committee. _Report on the Social
Evil in Syracuse._ 1913.
STATE
Illinois. Vice Commission. Appointed February, 1913.
Maryland. Vice Commission. Appointed March, 1913.
Massachusetts. Vice Commission. Established April, 1913.
Missouri. Vice Commission. Appointed April, 1913.
Wisconsin. Vice Commission. Established May, 1913.
STANDING COMMISSIONS
Pittsburg, Pa. Morals Efficiency Commission. Appointed May, 1912.
Chairman, Frederick A. Rhodes.
Minneapolis. Morals Commission. Appointed March, 1913. Chairman, Dr.
Marion D. Shutter.
Denver. Morals Commission. Appointed January 31, 1913. Chairman, Rev. H.F.
Rail.
New York. Committee of Fourteen.
Chicago. Morals Court.
INDEX
Addams, Jane, cited, 47, 139.
Adolescence, a critical period, 127;
begins at puberty, 127;
information and entertainment sought during, 128, 129;
evils to which it is exposed, 130-34;
ways in which the boy may be helped during, 137-41.
Adolescents, sex impulse in, 27.
Agencies of sex education, summary, 191-93.
American Social Hygiene Association, 12.
Amusement parks, dangers of, 19, 75.
Armies, dangers of their camps, 67.
Athletics, benefits of, 138.
_See_ Play.
Bathing, benefits of, 138.
Bill-boards, evils of, 19.
Billiard rooms, dangers of, 19, 74.
Biological aspect of the social emergency, 23.
Blindness, sometimes due to venereal infection, 32, 34.
Boating, 82.
Bodily regimen. _See_ Regimen.
Books, 7, 11, 195.
Boston, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Botany, study of, in upper grades and high schools, 93.
_Boy Problem, The_, quoted, 138.
Boys, pre-pubescent and pubescent instruction to be given to, 98-102;
teaching phases for, 127-53;
adolescence of, 127-30;
evils to which they are exposed (masturbation, mental suffering, illicit
intercourse), 130-34;
are normally clean, 134, 152;
ways in which they may be helped during adolescence, 137-41;
subjects and methods of instruction for, 142-49;
conditions to be observed in giving instruction to, 149-52.
Camps, construction and lumber, 66;
military, 67;
school and municipal, 82.
Card parties, 78.
Carnivals, 76, 77.
Castration, effect of, 144.
Chastity, double standard of, 14, 136, 146.
Chicago, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, quoted, 63.
Chicago Vice Commission, report of, 60.
Child labor, abolition of, 68.
Children, infection in, 34, 35.
Clean living, importance of, to be indicated to the boy, 140, 141, 147.
Clothing of girls, 157, 161, 162.
Clubs, social, 77, 80.
Colleges, instruction in sex relations to begin in, 3;
sex education for teachers to be given in, 192.
Commissions, vice, 51-61.
Companions of the boy, 139.
Consecration, 186, 187.
Consumers' League of Oregon, 57.
Contagion, sources and conditions of, 15.
_See_ Venereal infection, Venereal diseases.
Control. _See_ Self-control.
Cost of living, 16.
_See_ Wages and vice.
Dance-halls, 19.
Dances, 78.
Degeneracy, sexual, road to race extinction, 23.
Department stores, employment of girls in, 63.
Diseases. _See_ Venereal diseases.
Domestic service, 46-48, 64.
Double standard of chastity, 14;
abandonment of, 136, 146.
Dress of women, 19.
Drunkenness and prostitution, 3, 4.
Economic phases of immorality, 16-18, 45-69;
women as wage-earners, 46;
wages and immorality, 50-62;
industrial stress, and dangers in seeking employment, 62-64;
improvements recommended, 67, 68;
bibliography, 206, 207.
Education, industrial, compulsory, recommended, 68;
public, the greatest need, 190;
summary of agencies of, 191-93;
of methods of, 193-97;
of materials of, 197-99;
of ideals of, 199-201.
_See_ Educational phases, Instruction, Teaching phases.
Educational phases of the social emergency, 21-23, 84-103;
aims of sex education, 84-86;
bodily regimen, 87, 88;
mental control, 88, 89;
first principle of instruction in reproduction, 89-92;
nature study, botany, etc., 92, 93;
pre-pubescent and pubescent instruction, 93-102;
difference between man and animals the basis of instruction, 105, 106;
first instruction, 106;
a true philosophy must lie back of instruction, 106, 107;
bibliography, 208, 209.
Ehrlich, his cure for syphilis, 38, 39.
Eight-hour day, 67.
Employment bureaus, 64.
Excursions, 76.
Exner, Dr. M.J., statement of, regarding sexual continence, 29, 30 _n._
Family, not competent to instruct in sex relations, 3.
Federal Government, report on women's wages, 55, 56.
Federal report (Woman and Child Wage-Earners), 59.
Festivals, 76, 77.
Freud, his view of sex basis, 86.
Girls, pre-pubescent and pubescent instruction to be given to, 96-98;
teaching phases for, 154-67;
stability of nervous system, 154-58;
menstruation and menstrual pain, 159-61;
clothing of, 161, 162;
in industry, 162, 163;
housing of unmarried, 163, 164;
instruction to be given on reproduction, 164-67.
Girls' high schools, 161.
Gonorrhea and the gonorrhea microbe, 33-39, 100, 146, 199.
Hall, G. Stanley, his view of sex basis, 86.
Holabird, William, 135.
Home, the, as recreation and social center, 78, 79.
Hotels, employment of girls in, 63.
Housing of unmarried girls, 163, 164.
Howell, Dr. William H., quoted on the sexual appetite, 31.
Hygiene. _See_ Social emergency, Reproduction.
Ice-cream parlors, 19.
Ideals of sex education, 199-201.
Illinois State Senate, vice investigation made by, 61.
Immorality and wages, 16, 17, 50-62.
Industrial education for women, lack of, 48.
Industrial efficiency, connected with social hygiene problems, 3, 18.
Industrial stress, its bearing upon sexual hygiene and morals, 62-64.
Infection. _See_ Venereal infection.
Instruction in sex hygiene and the physiology of reproduction, what,
when, and by whom to be given, 3, 10, 25, 42-44, 90-102, 106, 110-122,
142-49, 179-89, 191;
mistakes in, serious, 9;
list of subjects to be considered, 148, 149;
conditions to be observed in giving, 149-52;
for girls, 164-67.
_See_ Education, Educational phases, Teaching phases.
Instructors in sex relations, lack of competent, 3, 10, 11, 192.
Insurance, recommended, 67.
Intoxicating liquors and commercialized prostitution, 17.
Investigations into immorality and diseases, 196.
Kelley, Florence, quoted on department stores, 63.
Kingsley, Charles, quoted, 141.
Lectures, 7, 78, 192, 193.
Legislation and prostitution, 20, 21.
Living wage. _See_ Wages.
Love, as controller of passion, 174-78.
Marriage, age of, and age of sexual maturity, discrepancy between,
13, 27, 28.
Marriage laws, object of, 27.
Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards, report of, 54-57.
Masturbation, 130-32, 145, 198.
Materials of sex education, summary, 197-99.
Medical phases of immorality, 15, 16, 32-44;
statistics of venereal diseases in the United States, 32;
the microbes of syphilis and gonorrhea, 36-39;
infection of innocent persons, 39-41;
possibility of recovery, 41;
bibliography, 205.
Medicine, means of defense against social evils provided by, 2, 4.
Menstrual pain, 159-61.
Menstruation, 159-61.
Mental suffering among adolescents, 130, 131.
Methods of sex education, summary, 193-97.
Minimum wage, 67.
Ministers, not competent to give instruction in sex relations, 3.
Minneapolis, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Moral and religious phases of the social emergency, 23, 168-89;
bibliography, 212.
_Mother Nature and Her Helpers,_ 104, 107.
Motion-pictures, 6, 19, 72.
Muscular activity, importance of, 155-58.
Nature study, 92.
Nervous system, stability of, 154-58.
Newspapers, 79.
New York, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Noguchi, his test of the syphilis microbe, 38.
Normal schools, instruction in sex relations to begin in, 3;
sex education for teachers to be given in, 192.
Novels, 7.
Opiates, 63.
Orders, social, 77, 80.
Oregon, surveys made by the Consumers' League in, 52, 53.
Oregon Social Hygiene Society, 151, 195 _n._
Paralysis, 32, 34.
Parenthood, 180, 181.
Parents, confidence between child and, in matters of reproduction,
89-92, 110-22;
meetings for, 122-26.
_See_ Instruction.
Paresis, 32.
Parties, social, 78.
Passion, controlled by love, 174-78;
by religious fervor 176.
Patten, Prof. Simon N., quoted, 51.
Pessimism, 173.
Philadelphia, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Physical exercise, 138, 139.
_See_ Play.
Physiological phases of immorality, 13-15, 25-31;
instruction in physiology of reproduction, 25;
the sex impulse, 26-28;
belief in physiological necessity of gratification, 28-31, 33, 99,
146, 176, 198;
bibliography, 204, 205.
Physiology, study of, 93.
Picture post-cards, 19.
Play, 81-83, 87, 88.
Playgrounds, 81-83.
Pool-halls, 74.
Portland, Ore., women's wages in, 52, 53;
attendance at moving-picture shows in, 72.
Portland, Ore., Municipal Employment Bureau, 64.
Portland, Ore., Vice Commission, 57, 60.
Priests, not competent to give instruction in sex relations, 3.
Problem plays, 6.
Property, used for immoral purposes, 17.
Prostitutes, what is to be done with them, 14;
status of, 65.
_See_ Prostitution.
Prostitution, past efforts to deal with, 1, 3;
physiological factors of, 13-15, 25-31;
medical phase of, 15, 16;
economic phases of, 16-18;
commercialized, 17, 18, 195;
and recreational pursuits, 19;
legal phases of, 20, 21;
and public education, 21-23;
moral and religious aspects of, 23;
biological aspect of, 23.
_See_ Social emergency.
Psychic therapy, 160.
Public opinion, relation of, to public education and to law enforcement, 21.
Quack doctors, 7, 18, 30, 130, 145, 199.
Recreation centers, 81-88.
Recreation movement, 81-83.
Recreational phases of the social emergency, 19, 70-83;
bibliography, 207.
Regimen for boys, 87, 88, 137.
Religious aspect of the social emergency, 23, 168-89;
bibliography, 212.
Reproduction, silence hitherto in regard to, 1, 2, 5, 6;
recent change of attitude in regard to matters of, 6, 7;
dangers in this change of attitude, 7-12;
instruction in, 25, 89-102, 106, 110-22, 164-67;
the impulse toward, 26-28;
instruction in, at present lacking, 84;
aims of instruction in, 84-86;
a true philosophy must lie back of instruction in, 106, 107;
bibliography, 204.
_See_ Instruction.
Road-houses, 19, 75, 76.
St. Louis, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
St. Paul, report on women's wages in, 56, 59.
Saloons, 19, 74.
"Salvarsan," 39.
Schaudinn, his determination of the syphilis microbe, 37.
Schools, responsibility of, 70;
sex instruction should be given in, 191.
Seager, Prof. H.R., cited, 62.
Self-control, the importance of, 88, 146, 147, 174-79, 200, 201.
Seminal emissions, 131, 145, 146, 199.
Sex, matters of, connection between moral and religious matters and, 168-89;
sacredness of, 186, 187.
Sex impulse, 26-28.
Sex life of child, 108-10.
Sex relations, silence hitherto in regard to, 1, 2, 5, 6;
lack of competent instructors in, 3;
recent change of attitude in regard to matters of, 6, 7;
dangers in this change of attitude, 7-9;
mistakes in teaching of, serious, 9.
_See_ Instruction, Reproduction.
Sexual maturity, age of, and age of marriage, discrepancy between, 13, 27, 28.
Sexual necessity, belief in, 28-31, 33, 99, 146, 176, 198.
"606," 39.
Skating-rinks, 75.
Social emergency, the, what constitutes, 9;
phases of, 13-24;
physiological phases, 13-15, 25-31;
medical phases, 15, 16, 32-44;
economic phases, 16-18, 45-69;
recreational phases, 19, 70-83;
legal phases, 20, 21;
educational phases, 21-23, 84-103;
biological phases, 23;
moral and religious phases, 23, 168-89;
teaching phases: for children, 104-26;
teaching phases: for boys, 127-53;
teaching phases: for girls, 154-67.
Social hygiene, movement for, retarded by many, 11;
books on, 11.
See Social emergency, Reproduction.
Societies, of social hygiene, 12.
Society, sex life in relation to, 184-86.
Spinal diseases, 32, 34.
Stage, the, 6, 19.
Standard of chastity, double.
_See_ Double standard.
Standards of living, 50-62.
Sterility, 33, 34.
Street, the, as an attraction, 72, 73.
Sunday supplement, 79.
Swimming, 82.
Syphilis, and the syphilis microbe, 32-39, 100, 199;
infection of innocent persons, 39-41;
possibility of recovery from, 41.
Teachers of sex hygiene, instruction to be provided for,
in normal schools and colleges, 192.
Teaching phases of the social emergency, for children, 104-26;
for boys, 127-53;
for girls, 154-67;
bibliography, 211, 212.
Tramping-clubs, 82.
Traveling exhibits, 195.
Unemployment, relief of, 67.
Unions, social, 77.
Venereal diseases, in the United States, statistics of, 32;
reason for frequency of, 33;
gonorrhea and syphilis, 33-39, 100, 146, 199;
as affecting children, 34;
infection of innocent persons, 39-41;
possibility of recovery from, 41.
Venereal infection, prevalence of, 15, 32;
fear of, not sufficient motive in promoting chastity, 15;
effects of, 32-44;
in men, 32, 33;
in women, 34;
in children, 34, 35;
of innocent persons, 39-41.
_See_ Venereal diseases.
Vice commissions, 52-61.
Vice in adolescents, 131-34.
Vice investigations, 51-61.
Virility, importance of, to be taught, 142-49.
Vocational training, 16.
Wage-earners, women as, increase of numbers, 46.
_See_ Women.
Wages and vice, 16, 17, 50-62.
Wagner, Charles, quoted, 135, 136, 138.
Wasserman, his test of the syphilis microbe, 38.
"Weaker sex, the," the phrase has lost some of its significance, 49, 50.
Welfare work, 68, 69.
Woman's Auxiliary Department of the Police, 58.
Women, infection in, 34;
as wage-earners, increase of numbers, 46;
drift of, from domestic service, 47;
lack of industrial education for, 48;
loss due to emergence from seclusion, 49;
the phrase "the weaker sex" has lost some of its significance, 49, 50;
connection of wages and immorality among, 51-62;
bearing of industrial stress on morals of, 62-64;
dangers to, in seeking employment, 64;
summing up of their economic condition, 65, 66.
Zoölogy, 93.
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