PREFACE


This volume is the outgrowth of an extension course conducted by Reed
College in Portland, Oregon, in 1913. The course was offered to teachers
and to workers in various other fields of social service as an outline of
the main problems of social hygiene and morals and as a guide to further
study. An edition of forty-five hundred copies of the syllabus of the
course was soon exhausted, and there appeared to be a sufficient demand
for the publication of some of the lectures.

The chapters are the various lectures, condensed by the editor, but
otherwise substantially as given, with the exception of chapters I, II,
and XII, which are here presented for the first time. In the original
course, Reed College fortunately had the services of Calvin S. White,
M.D., and L.R. Alderman, officers of the Oregon Social Hygiene Society.
Their addresses have been omitted, because they were prepared rather to
meet local conditions and the needs of the course than for the general
public. For the same reason the greater part of the addresses of William
House, M.D., and of the editor have been omitted.

_The Social Emergency_ does not purport to be a comprehensive or
systematic treatment of the problems of sex hygiene and morals; it
presents merely the views of a number of persons on certain phases of the
subject. Although no writer is responsible for the ideas of any other
writer, yet nearly all the writers have read and approved all the
chapters. Furthermore, the editor has had the aid of other competent