vices and excesses that
undermine every organism but the strongest.

Unnatural gratification, especially with the female sex, is often most
shamelessly promoted. More or less underhandedly, certain preparations
are praised, and they are recommended especially in the advertisements
of most of the papers that penetrate into the family circle as
especially devoted to its entertainment. These puffs are addressed
mainly to the better situated portion of society, seeing the prices of
the preparations are so high that a family of small means can hardly
come by them. Side by side with these shameless advertisements are found
the puffs--meant for the eyes of both sexes--of obscene pictures,
especially of whole series of photographs, of poems and prose works of
similar stripe, aimed at sexual incitation, and that call for the action
of police and District Attorneys. But these gentlemen are too busy with
the "civilization, marriage and family-destroying" Socialist movement to
be able to devote full attention to such machinations. A part of our
works of fiction labors in the same direction. The wonder would be if
sexual excesses, artificially incited, besides, failed to manifest
themselves in unhealthy and harmful ways, and to assume the proportions
of a social disease.

The idle, voluptuous life of many women in the property classes; their
refined measures of nervous stimulants; their overfeeding with a certain
kind of artificial sensation, cultivated in certain lines on the
hothouse plan, and often considered the principal topic of conversation
and sign of culture by that portion of the female sex that suffers of
hypersensitiveness and nervous excitement;--all this incites still more
the sexual senses, and naturally leads to excesses.

Among the poor, it is certain exhausting occupations, especially of a
sedentary nature, that promotes congestion of blood in the abdominal
organs, and promotes sexual excitation. One of the most dangerous
occupations in this direction is connected with the, at present, widely
spread sewing machine. This occupation works such havoc that, with ten
or twelve hours' daily work, the strongest organism is ruined within a
few years. Excessive sexual excitement is also promoted by long hours of
work in a steady high temperature, for instance, sugar refineries,
bleacheries, cloth-pressing establishments, night work by gaslight in
overcrowded rooms, especially when both sexes work together.

A successio