The Social Emergency | Page 3

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