boys being sixteen to eighteen years and of the girls fourteen to
sixteen years. Liquor was sold in 240 halls, 190 had saloons opening
into them, in 178 immoral dancing went on unhindered. The worst halls
had the least dancing and the longest intermissions. Everything was
conducted so as to increase the sale of liquor, and between the hours of
one and three A.M. the toughest element from the saloons, which close
at one o'clock, poured into the halls to complete the debauch and to
make full use of the special liquor license which is good until the
later hour.[5]

The quest of fun and social adventure can be traced also through other
commercialized channels, in public poolrooms where minors waste time and
money--gamble, smoke, tell unclean stories and plan mischief; in great
amusement parks where the boy and girl on pleasure bent meet as
strangers to each other and without social sponsor, where the deluded
girl not only accepts but often invites a generosity which will tend to
compromise if not break down the morality of both; on excursion boats
which, if neglected, tend to become floating palaces of shame; and in
many ways that lead from the inadequate home to sorrow and disaster.

It is to be doubted whether the average pastor or parent has an adequate
conception of the tremendous odds against which the moral forces contend
for the conservation of the city's childhood and youth, and whether we
have as yet begun to solve the problems that arise from the city's
sinister treatment of the home. Public parks, field-houses, libraries,
and social settlements graciously mitigate the evil, but are far from
curing it.

To turn to the public schools with the expectation that they can
immediately, or at length, make good the injury done the home by