and an efficient political administration inaugurated in our cities, we
shall hope to witness the end of the scandalous nonenforcement of
existing laws.

(2) The abolishing of the liquor trade will take away the great
political ally of the trade in girlhood; and without the demoralizing
influence of alcohol fewer men will yield to their passions and
fewer girls be pliant thereto.

(3) The Rockefeller Commission disclosed majority of prostitutes are
almost wholly uneducated-about half of those questioned had not even
gone through the primary school, and only seven per cent had finished
the grammar-school work. Compulsory education, vigilantly enforced,
will greatly lessen the number of girls who will be willing to take
up the life of degradation, suffering, and premature death; especially
will this be the case if sex hygiene is properly taught. Approximately
a quarter of the girls studied were mentally defective; these should
have been detected in the schools and removed to the proper
institutions before they fell prey to the clever schemes of the
procurer.[Footnote: Of 647 wayward girls recently at the Bedford
Reformatory, over 300 were accounted mentally deficient.] For a
falling-off in this alarming number of mental defectives we must await
scientific eugenic laws to be discussed in chapter xxx.

(4) It is a shameful fact that thousands of girls, dependent upon their
own earnings for support, receive less than enough to enable them to
live in decent comfort, not to say with any enjoyment of life. Many,
of course, waste their earnings on needlessly fine clothes, or at the
"shows"; the American fashion of extravagant dress and the craving
for amusement are factors of importance in the ruin of young girls.