PART I

_The Girl_




I

THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL


She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social
state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has
supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of
opportunity, the girl has her rights--the right to work, the right to
play, the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the
right to marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall
choose. And in a sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our
country gives to her some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the
world. But as one learns to know her, little by little the stupendous
fact is impressed upon him that girlhood has been and is being denied
_its rights_.

_It is the right of every girl_ to be born into a community where the
sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to
enter upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But