consequences showed no abatement. The policy of silence, after many
generations of trial, proved a failure.

The past few years have seen a sudden change. Subjects formerly tabooed
are now thrust before the public. The plain-spoken publications of social
hygiene societies are distributed by hundreds of thousands. Public
exhibits, setting forth the horrors of venereal diseases, are sent from
place to place. Motion-picture films portray white slavers, prostitutes,
and restricted districts, and show exactly how an innocent girl may be
seduced, betrayed, and sold. The stage finds it profitable to offer
problem plays concerned with illicit love, with prostitution, and even
with the results of venereal contagion. Newspapers that formerly made only
brief references to corespondents, houses of bad repute, statutory
offenses, and serious charges, now fill columns with detailed accounts of
divorce trials, traffic in women, earnings of prostitutes, and raids on
houses. Novels that might have been condemned and suppressed a few decades
ago are now listed among "the best sellers." Lectures on sex hygiene and
morals are given widely, over four hundred such lectures having been given
under the auspices of a single society. Fake doctors, while obeying the
letter of new laws, are bolder than ever in some directions and use the
alarm caused by the production of _Damaged Goods_, for example, as a means
of snaring new victims. Generations of silence, enforced by the powerful
influence of social custom, have been suddenly followed by a campaign of
pitiless publicity, sanctioned by eminent men and women, and carried
forward by the agencies of public education that daily reach the largest
number of human beings--namely, the press, the motion picture, and the
stage.

This far-reaching change in the customs of society is fraught with
immediate dangers, because we do not know whether the mere knowledge of