en 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.