The Social Emergency

The Social Emergency, by
Various

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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
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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: