thousand dollars; in the clutches of a procurer, she may become worth
twenty-six thousand dollars. As a prostitute, she "earns more than four
times as much as she is worth as a factor in the social and industrial
economy, where brains, intelligence, virtue and womanly charm should bring
a premium." In an average lifetime, to be sure, the wages of one woman in
industry are greater than the earnings in the short life of one
prostitute; but from the viewpoint of the man who pockets most of the
earnings, it is more profitable to kill off a dozen women than to keep one
at decent work through an average lifetime. This economic condition is
revealed to the cast-out woman after a few years, on the brink of the
grave; but at the outset of her brief career, she sees the immediate gain,
not the ultimate ruin.

There are other economic factors which will aid all movements for social
hygiene when they are more clearly perceived by those engaged in reputable
business: first, the loss to honest industry due to the reduced efficiency
of sexual perverts, of the diseased, and of those who, through their
ignorance, have been kept in worry by "leading specialists"; and, in the
second place, the inevitable reduction in the profits of legitimate
business due to the excessive profits of illegitimate business.

The recreational pursuits of young people are other factors of immediate
concern to those who would see the problems of social hygiene in their
entirety. Adolescent boys and girls spend most of their leisure time
either in wholesome physical activity conducive to normal sex life or in
various forms of amusement fraught with danger. In seeking innocent
recreation, young people can hardly escape contact with amusements
cunningly devised to excite sex impulses and at the same time to lower
respect for woman. The bill-boards and the picture post-cards, the
penny-in-the-slot machines and the motion pictures, the exhibits of quack