ng in evil ways, are
there because they have followed friends and companions. There are girls
who have blazed the way to paths of evil for themselves, but they are
comparatively few. Any court, or school for delinquent girls, which
contains a sympathetic man or woman to whom the whole truth may be
poured out, will testify that _somebody_ led the way. When allowance is
made for the tendency to lay the blame upon other shoulders, the facts
bear out the testimony that there has been a _leader_. The girls who by
nature are weak of will, and have had no training which could tend to
strengthen or develop that will, must be protected, and that protection
must be furnished by the community. It may be furnished by putting the
welfare teacher into the school; by making the street on which so many
girls find companionship as safe as possible; by driving professional
leaders of the unsuspecting and easily led from all places of recreation
and amusement; by helping parents, especially those parents, who,
themselves born across the sea are attempting to bring up daughters in
the new land, to see and understand the dangers; and by making it a real
crime to lead the easily led astray.

But this is not enough. Perhaps the greatest steps toward the
safe-guarding of the easily led were taken when the carefully supervised
public playground and the school gardens were started and the women
police were sent out into the streets of cities.

A strong, wise, sane woman who is neither a prude nor a crank can do
more toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those
interested in great city problems have yet dreamed. The day will come
when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the
weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an
opportunity to strengthen her against temptation.

I shall never forget my visit that Sunday afternoon to a detention
school for delinquent girls. Over in the corner of the room where the
afternoon service was to be held was the piano, the orchestra, made up
of members of the school, was gathering. There was a cornetist, two or
three violins followed, then a banjo and guitar. The service that day
was to be a great event, for the wonderful woman in charge of that
school who had done away with the cells, taken down the great spiked
iron fence and planted flowers in its stead had persuaded board,
committee and municipality to permit her to follow out the one