ple to the necessity for radical treatment, only a doctrinaire
would object to them. Like all intelligent charities they are still a
necessary evil. But nothing must be staked upon them, so let us turn at
once to the constructive suggestions: The Commission proposes that the
county establish a "Permanent Committee on Child Protection." It makes no
attempt to say what that protection shall be, but I think it is only fair
to let the wish father the thought, and regard this as an effort to give
children a better start in life. The separation of delinquent from
semi-delinquent girls is a somewhat similar attempt to guard the weak.
Another is the recommendation to the city and the nation that it should
protect arriving immigrants, and if necessary escort them to their homes.
This surely is a constructive plan which might well be enlarged from mere
protection to positive hospitality. How great a part the desolating
loneliness of a city plays in seductions the individual histories in the
report show. Municipal dance halls are a splendid proposal. Freed from a
cold and over-chaperoned respectability they compete with the devil.
There, at least, is one method of sexual expression which may have
positively beneficent results. A municipal lodging house for women is
something of a substitute for the wretched rented room. A little
suggestion to the police that they send home children found on the
streets after nine o'clock has varied possibilities. But there is the
seed of an invention in it which might convert the police from mere
agents of repression to kindly helpers in the mazes of a city. The
educational proposals are all constructive: the teaching of sex hygiene
is guardedly recommended for consideration. That is entirely justified,
for no one can quarrel with a set of men for leaving a question open.
That girls from fourteen to sixteen should receive vocational training in
continuation schools; that social centers should be established in the
public schools and that the grounds should be open for children--all of
these are clearly additions to the positive resource of the community. So
is the suggestion that church buildings be used for recreation. The call
for greater parental responsibility is, I fear, a rather empty platitude,
for it is not re-enforced with anything but an ancient fervor.

How much of this really seeks to create a fine expression of the sexual
impulse? How many of these recommendations see sex as an instinct