finally triumph over the extravagant and unnatural living of the present
day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display
idleness, and wild pursuit of exotic pleasures shall be lifted from the
girls now held prisoners by the tyranny of money and complex social
life.

It may be that in all these ways and scores of others, the public
conscience, working out along lines in which it finds itself best fitted
and most interested to work, will solve the problem of the handicapped
girl.

Before one can possibly help another in a permanent way he must know
what is the trouble with him, and then _what_ has _caused_ the trouble.
The greatest encouragement in our girl problem today lies in the fact
that _politics_ is looking at her and asking questions it scarcely dares
to answer; the corporation is looking at her, compelled to do so often
against its will; City Government, School Board, Board of Health are all
looking at her; women's clubs, whose individual members have never given
her a thought, are reaching out a hand to her; the Church, whose part we
shall study definitely later on, is looking more practically and
sensibly and with deeper interest than ever before; the Young Women's
Christian Associations are looking wisely and intelligently, getting
facts which speak with tremendous power and showing them to the world.
More than all this the handicapped girl is looking at herself.

It has become in these days the passionate desire of those who see the
problem with both heart and mind, and are interested not in abstract
girlhood but in the individual, living, real girl, that the public
conscience be more deeply touched and stirred until it shall feel that
by whatever means the thing is to be accomplished, the bounden duty of