low as $500, and in only a few instances as high as $750.[24] If
wage-earning men attempt to support families on these incomes, it means
that they are not able to provide adequately for their wives and children.
If they do not attempt to do so, it means, taking men as they are, an
increase in the army of men who support prostitution. Professor H.R.
Seager has said that prostitution in aid of wages is the greatest disgrace
of our civilization.[25] An accompanying disgrace lies in the fact that
economic conditions and other factors prevent the average male wage-earner
in so large a section of our country from fulfilling his desire for
marriage and a home of the sort that makes for health and happiness.

Besides the low wages of women and men, other economic facts have their
bearing upon sexual hygiene and morals. These facts may be grouped under
the head of industrial stress and strain which is moral as well as
physical. The underpaid factory or store girl is subject to constant
fatigue. In the rush season in department stores, girls often depend upon
opiates for dulling the nervous strain. No trade is free from its special
physical strain. There are, moreover, many morally dangerous trades. Work
as chambermaids in hotels is conspicuously perilous for girls. The Chicago
Juvenile Protective Association says, "The majority of girls who work in
hotels go wrong sooner or later." The modern department stores, which
employ the majority of young working-girls, offer temptations. Mrs.
Florence Kelley refers to work in these stores as "the most dangerous to
morals and health, of all occupations into which children can go."[26] Of
course, it may be said that a "good girl" will not go wrong. It may also
be said that a good social order will not place even good girls daily
under conditions that are liable to bring about a physical or moral
breakdown. Closer analysis of human character reveals the fact that
physical and moral health are more closely associated than we have
hitherto believed them to be.