The Social Emergency | Page 6

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