fact, excepting the feeble-minded prostitutes, the
general rule is that those who are mothers have only one child and that
one the result of the first sexual errors. It is a safe general
conclusion that ignorance of sexual laws is responsible for the great
majority of cases of illegitimacy.

Edith Livingston Smith, of Boston, in an article on "Unmarried Mothers"
in _Harper's Weekly_ for September 6, 1913, expressed views of the
causes of illegitimacy that many a social worker will indorse heartily:

"I see shop girls and waitresses, factory girls and maids, chorus
girls, stenographers, and governesses, each with a different
story, each with the same terror of the consequences of their
folly. 'I never knew,' they tell me, 'I never knew there were such
temptations.'...

"Let us go back to the question of sex-education of the public.
Silence has been the policy in the past. We have taught our
children biology and natural history, we have taught them
physiology, carefully ignoring the organs of reproduction; we
have warned the young to make use of their senses and their
brains, but we have refused to recognize the very force that
guides all these instincts, the vital power of sex. Yet, in the
face of this stupidity, acknowledging the call of the age, girls
are sent out into the industrial world, where they fight shoulder
to shoulder with men. Here they find potential worth of their
individualities; here they meet with the same--no
greater--temptation than their brothers, but with no knowledge to
guide them, no traditions to give them poise, no ameliorating
factor of social tenderness or tolerance when inexperience fails
to temper their emotions and their femininity....

"A girl's protection must come from without, a boy's from within.
Every boy who reaches the age of adolescence knows his nature. It
asserts itself. His sex instincts are dominant, aggressive. He is
man, the father of the race, and the laws of procreation are to
him an open book. A girl stays innocent until she is awakened. It
is the kiss, the touch, the senses stirred, that make her, in the
glory of her womanhood or in her shame, acknowledge her sex.

"The very frailty of such a girl, her dependence upon her
intuitions and emotions, the triumph of feeling over intellect,
place her in greater danger than her brothers, even were their