ed the
outstanding entertainments of the year.

How many parents take their children's amusement seriously, as they
take their own, and are concerned that these shall be, as they can be
made, free from all that is vulgar and unclean? If the well-to-do,
who might have other recreations, are given to the motion picture, is
it to be wondered at that in the poorer quarters of New York, if a
child be too small to be tortured by being kept at the side of its
parents throughout a motion picture performance, it may be checked in
its go-cart as one would check an umbrella. There is an electric
indicator on the side of the screen which flashes the check-number to
inform parents when their child is in real or fancied distress.

A writer in the _Outlook_, May 19, 1915, deals with the vulgarizing of
American children and particularly the vulgarizing and corrupting power
of the movies. He commented editorially, as I have done elsewhere, on
the extraordinary absence of parental care for the minds of children in
curious contradiction to the supersedulous care of the body: "Many
influences are at work to vulgarize American children, and little is
done by many parents to protect the mental health of their children.
Neither time nor money is spared to preserve them in vigor and strength,
to protect them from contamination. Meanwhile, those minds are the prey
of a great many influences, which, if not actually evil, are
vulgarizing. What is going on is not so much the corruption of young
people in America as their vulgarization." Parents are not less
vulgarized, but the awakening and shock come when children are grown and
are found to show the effects of what was innocent amusement, of what
proves to have been deeply corrupting and degrading to the spirit.

But it is not enough for parents to censor the theatres frequented by
their children and when they can to debar them from attendance at
disgustingly "sexy" plays. It is their business as far as they can to
cultivate in their children the love of the best in letters and in the
arts. It is not enough to call a halt to the pleasure-madness of our
children; it is needful that their recreations be guided into
wholesome and creative channels. Happily books and pictures and,
though less so, music, are accessible to all, and it remains true that
we needs must love the highest when we see or hear it. Intellectual
companionship is a primal necessity in the home contacts. Partially
because of th