CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 The American bov and the sociai evi fro 
 3 1924 021 843 283 
 
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 Library 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021843283 
 
The American Boy 
 
 and 
 
 The Social Evil 
 
 FROM A PHYSICIAN'S STANDPOINT 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT N. WILLSON, M.D. 
 
 Instructor fn Medicine and University Physician, 
 
 University of Pennsylvania 
 
 Fellow of the G)llege of Physicians of Philadelphia 
 
 THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 CHICAGO iqoK TORONTO 
 
 ^^ 
 
W7f 
 
 Copyrleht 1905 
 By ROBERT N. WILL90M 
 
What is a child? 
 A man! The world itself, and 
 All its possibilities, and hopes, and joys. 
 
 And love and hate, and victory, and sorrow! 
 All that inspires life's war:— 
 Still sleeping! 
 
THE WHEREFORE 
 
 THE following pages are published in the 
 earnest hope that they may assist in the 
 preservation of the American home circle through 
 their influence upon the boy and the young man. 
 
 Each of the four chapters was prepared for 
 those who listened to it, and with no idea that it 
 would eventually find its way into print. I have 
 now arranged them in permanent form for the 
 purpose of more widely introducing a difficult and 
 delicate subject in a plain but thoroughly clean 
 way. 
 
 For years I have felt the need, as an individual 
 and a physician, of a simple, and yet scientifically 
 accurate, presentation of the world's great blem- 
 ish, its causes, and effects, in such a form that I 
 might safely place it in the hands of the American 
 boy and girl. Each of the chapters comprising 
 this little volume has been chosen with this end 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in view. Each has been utilized, moreover, in re- 
 sponse to a desire, expressed openly and often, 
 by men and women who have the integrity of 
 American manhood deeply at heart. That ad- 
 dressed to " the boy himself " formed the basis of 
 a series of informal meetings held, at the request 
 of the Director of Public Health and Charities, 
 with the boys of various sections of the City of 
 Philadelphia during the summer of 1904. The 
 second talk was presented to the students of 
 my own University in the autumn of 1903, and 
 later in the form of a pamphlet found its way 
 among the students of many of the large Amer- 
 ican universities and colleges, as well as of the 
 government institutions at West Point and An- 
 napolis. 
 
 Many letters witnessed the approval of promi- 
 nent members, as well as of the rank and file, of 
 the American medical profession. Among others 
 was one from a former University of Pennsyl- 
 vania professor, Dr. William Osier, who wrote; 
 " I wish all the students in the country could have 
 
AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 heard it. The colleges should reprint it for dis- 
 tribution." 
 
 These encouraging testimonials assured me of 
 the sympathy of the representative members of 
 the profession in a work which has heretofore 
 been undertaken timidly and with little or no con- 
 fidence of support from any quarter, and deter- 
 mined me to accept a subsequent invitation to 
 address the students of Union Theological Sem- 
 inary, in New York City, along the same general 
 lines. The final chapters owe their origin to this 
 invitation, and appear in almost the identical form 
 of two addresses delivered in April 1905 upon the 
 Willard Parker Foundation. 
 
 In this fashion has been accomplished a duty 
 which both head and heart dictated long ago, but 
 which professional obligations might have pre- 
 vented had it not been possible to collect and 
 digest the material in just such an occasional way. 
 
 My object throughout has been to employ 
 terms and statistics that any boy or girl, man or 
 woman may understand, and which neither sex 
 need avoid on any other ground than that of 
 
 7 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 prudery. That both fathers and mothers approve 
 this course has been amply demonstrated by their 
 attitude toward the pamphlets already in their 
 possession,* most of which have eventually 
 been placed by themselves in the hands of 
 their children. The statistics seem almost in- 
 credible to many of those who have lived in the 
 quiet of a pure life. The most startling have 
 been obtained, however, from my own experience 
 in the practice of my profession, from the Census 
 of the United States, or from equally dependable 
 authority, and not a figure has been cited except 
 it has first undergone investigation and proof. 
 The few criticisms that have reached my ears, 
 (and I have sought them), have come from indi- 
 viduals who have either failed to understand the 
 motive and the necessity, or were ignorant as to 
 the facts, or from those who found it inconven- 
 ient to listen to the plainness of truth. The ma- 
 jority of these have within the past year taken 
 the trouble to tell me that they believed them- 
 selves to have been in the wrong. 
 
 * The Social Evil in University Life. 
 
 8 
 
AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 The facts belong to men and women alike, and 
 if used with good sense and judgment will work 
 a revolution in the ranks of the enemies of the 
 American home altar. If they are laid open to 
 the sunlight they can cause no possible harm, and 
 will at least accomplish good by breaking down 
 the wall of false modesty that has for many a 
 year stood between the evil and its cure. 
 
 It is with the wish that every boy and girl, and 
 every father and -mother in this wide land may 
 be reached in time to prevent the harm that is al- 
 most inevitably, but unnecessarily, in store for 
 many, that this little volume is dedicated to the 
 key to the solution of America's moral problem 
 — the American boy ! 
 
 Robert N. Willson, Jr. 
 
 1708 Locust St., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Nobility of Boyhood: The 
 
 Boy's Part in Life's Problem 13 
 
 II. Clean Living: A Problem of 
 
 School and College Days . 31 
 
 in. The Social Evil in Amf.bW**" 
 
 ERRATA. 
 On page 80, line 8, read marital for martial. 
 On page 102, line 5, read twenty for ten. 
 On page 147, line 8, read a priori for a priore. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Nobility of Boyhood: The 
 
 Boy's Part in Life's Problem 13 
 
 II. Clean Living: A Problem of 
 
 School and College Days . 31 
 
 III. "The Social Evil in America . 79 
 
 IV, The Relation of the Citizen to 
 
 the Social Evil . . . .117 
 
 II 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD:* 
 THE BOY'S PART IN 
 LIFE'S PROBLEM 
 
 I WISH that each of you might hold the magi- 
 cian's horoscope in his hands for just a few 
 minutes at some time between the ages of fifteen 
 and sixteen years. 
 
 " Why ? " do you ask ? Simply because hav- 
 ing been a boy, and being still very much of one 
 myself, I wish you and all the fellows — I like 
 the friendship of that word — could see one or 
 two buoys floating on ahead, and a lightship or 
 so in the distance, that might help you guide the 
 ship straight. 
 
 " What do I mean? " I will tell you. At fif- 
 
 * The above formed the basis of a series of informal talks to the 
 boys of Philadelphia, delivered during the summer of 1904, at the 
 request of the Department of Public Health and Charities. 
 
 13 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 teen or sixteen you, and all boys, are at the most 
 happily careless time you will ever enjoy. Your 
 father and mother see that the table is well 
 spread; your allowance may or may not be that 
 of a rich man's son, — still, large or small, it 
 comes without much trouble on your part. The 
 sun rises and sets, and the storms brew and rum- 
 ble away into the far distance, without disturb- 
 ing your balance more seriously than by the delay 
 of a game, or by postponing your schemes for the 
 matter of a few hours. 
 
 Even those of you who were bom working, as 
 it were, to whom a holiday is an event to be re- 
 membered, — even you will never again be quite 
 as free to do as you wish, or as heedless of the 
 restraint of authority. Yours is the boy's age, 
 and it will soon be behind you. This playtime 
 will soon be gone. Another year will bring col- 
 lege, or business, or responsible work of some 
 kind into the horizon. I want to catch your 
 ears for a few moments — while we are still boys. 
 
 Those of you who spend your summers in the 
 country have learned to know something about 
 
 14 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 flowers, and some of you have been told that a 
 flower, when full-grown or ripe, has a mis- 
 sion to perform before it dies. It must pro- 
 vide for others of the same kind which shall 
 come after it. You have perhaps seen the 
 pollen dust, and heard how it must be brought 
 from the stamen to a certain portion of the 
 pistil, and that a growth, as fine as cobweb, ex- 
 tends from the speck of pollen down through the 
 delicate tubes of the pistil ; and that this fertiliza- 
 tion, as it is called, gives the plant power in due 
 time to produce others of its kind. Often the 
 wind carries the pollen dust from the stamen to 
 the pistil. Often insects act in place of the wind, 
 as in the case of the milkweed, a plant that most 
 of you know almost as well as the farmer, who 
 looks on it as a great source of trouble in his fields. 
 It is everywhere ! The Jersey boy, and he of the 
 New England coast, and the boy of the West and 
 the South — all know its scaly green seed-pod. 
 Many of you have squeezed the milk from the 
 stem, which you have broken over your fingers, 
 and felt them sticky for hours after. But how 
 
 IS 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 many of you know how it comes that the milk- 
 weed keeps on growing from summer to summer? 
 And how many know how the farmer can make 
 headway against it, and keep it from spreading all 
 over his land ? It will not do to say that it just 
 happens! Each plant has hundreds, sometimes 
 more than a thousand flowers. Each flower has 
 two seed cases. Think now, how many of the 
 familiar seed-pods we would reasonably expect 
 when the plant matures. And yet there are usual- 
 ly about one half dozen in all ! 
 
 Let me tell you what takes place. The Master 
 Mind that fashions every flower, and paints every 
 color into the sky at sunset, and the pale blue of 
 the robin's egg, and the green coat of the frog, — 
 has planned a wonderful means, not only of keep- 
 ing the milkweed alive from year to year, but of 
 making it just so difficult for this to come about 
 that only a few new flowers grow out of the one 
 that you see today, instead of the thousands that 
 we would suppose. 
 
 Each blossom from the cluster of the milk- 
 weed is very tiny, and in its centre is the pistil, 
 i6 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 flat on top and five-sided. Below the pistil is 
 pointed, and at the lower end the two seed cases 
 are fastened, which, if all goes well, may form 
 ripe seed-pods. On each of the five sides of the 
 pistil is a little stigmatic spot ready to receive the 
 pollen, which must touch this before the seed 
 cases can develop. Closely arranged around the 
 pistil are five stamens, each with three wings, one 
 on each edge and one above. The ten wings on 
 the sides join at their edges, and form in this way 
 five slits. The five wings at the top cover the 
 pistil and hide it from sight. On the inner side 
 of each stamen are two little pockets which hold 
 the pollen, which is arranged in tiny masses, 
 pairs of which are linked together by tiny yokes. 
 In this manner each flower has ten pollen 
 masses yoked together in pairs. These little 
 yokes stick upward and are very useful, as you 
 will see. There is no easy way for the pollen 
 masses to reach the stigmatic spots on the pistil. 
 Even the wind cannot reach them, hidden away 
 as they are beneath the wings. But if you look 
 closely you will find among these helpless sta- 
 17 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 mens, five tiny nectar cups, full of the fluid which 
 the bees love. The bee grasps the flower with 
 her six legs, and empties one after another of the 
 nectar cups. Before she has finished, however, 
 and when she tries to fly away, she finds that her 
 hairy legs have caught in the tiny slits formed by 
 the wings around the stamens, and she keeps 
 moving and pulling and twisting to keep them 
 free. In this way her feet catch in the tiny yokes 
 which hold the pollen masses together, and as the 
 bee flies free, away comes the yoke with the pol- 
 len. As it brushes past the pistil it may fertilize 
 the stigmatic spots. Nature does not like this 
 method of inbreeding, as we say when speaking 
 of dogs or cattle, and instead the bee usually flies 
 away with the yokes hanging to her feet until 
 she lights on another flower. Then in trying to 
 empty the nectar cups of this latest flower her feet 
 move around as anxiously as before, the pollen 
 masses of the first touch the stigmatic spots of the 
 new flower, and the work of fertilization is at last 
 well done. 
 You see how many steps must be gone through 
 i8 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 before the millcweed has a chance of new life. 
 The flowers of next season are her children. I 
 could tell you the same story of the dandelion, a 
 flower in whose service over ninety different in- 
 sects have been found helping to bring the pollen 
 and the fertile spots together. But these things 
 will be interesting for you to study out for your- 
 selves the next time you see a plant or a blossom 
 in the country. 
 
 Perhaps some of you knew before I began that 
 the Master Workman has planned each flower, 
 and each plant, and each tree, and each form of 
 animal life, so that as long as it obeys His laws 
 its kind shall not die out. It is so with the milk- 
 weed, it is so with the oak, it is just as true of the 
 rose, and the lily, and the ant, and the bee, and 
 the birds, and the fishes, and of all God's crea- 
 tion. This wonderful machinery of Nature is 
 one of the most certain proofs in our possession 
 that the world did not simply grow, and keep on 
 in its Susy toil, without an Architect and without 
 a Guide. 
 
 And now you say, " If this is true of all that 
 
 19 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 God has made for man, why do you stop when 
 you have left out His most wonderful creation — 
 man himself ? " 
 
 It is a fair question, and, like most that come 
 from a boy, it makes us think. " Why ? " Be- 
 cause the birth of a baby, and its first thought, 
 the time its eye first rests for a second on the 
 mother, the earliest step of the wobbly little leg, 
 the growth into childhood, and, years after, into 
 the man; — all of this is so wonderful, and so 
 hard for you and me to understand, that I hesi- 
 tated before I dared to talk of it to you. 
 
 Some of you remember that a time came when 
 your mother was hidden away from you for a 
 little time. Then soon you heard the cry of a 
 tiny baby, and your father told you that the stork 
 had visited the home, or that the doctor had 
 brought a baby in his satchel. All you knew or 
 cared to know was that your " nose was broken " 
 for the time, and that the new baby called for a 
 great deal more attention than was its share, or 
 than you had ever required. By and by you saw 
 the little red thing, and wondered why it rolled 
 20 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 its eyes around so, and why, when it was not roll- 
 ing its eyes, it was always crying, and why it so 
 often needed to have its head tucked in close to 
 its mother's breast, — and, strangest of all, why 
 it stopped crying as soon as she put it in that un- 
 comfortable position ! 
 
 You have learned what many of these things 
 mean by this time. You know, many of you, 
 that God has planned to keep men and women on 
 this earth for a time, provided they obey the laws 
 He has made for them, and provided also — this 
 being very important — that our fathers and 
 mothers obeyed these laws before we were born. 
 We know, and we must never forget, especially 
 the boys, that like the milkweed we are part of 
 His plan, and that we must help Him carry out 
 the world's history, which He cannot make with- 
 out us. 
 
 He "could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins 
 Without Antonio." 
 
 Three things I want to tell you about our part 
 in helping this work on, and all three, remember, 
 come from the heart of one of your older boy 
 
 21 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 friends. The first is ttiis: that each one of you 
 will have a serious part to play in keeping the 
 world alive and healthy, and your work has al- 
 ready begtin. 
 
 The second : that you will be held responsible, 
 no matter what your age, for every bit of good, 
 as well as for all the unhappiness, or sorrow, or 
 uncleanliness of mind, or body, or disease, that 
 comes into the world through yourself or your 
 children, or by your influence in whatever way. 
 
 And the third : that boys and girls have already 
 in their possession a pearl of great price, a treas- 
 ure that they must not risk losing, since it is a 
 trust from the great Captain, and must be handed 
 back to Him perfect. 
 
 Just a word or two about each of these things. 
 
 First of all, What part can a boy have to play 
 in keeping God's world in healthy life? Does it 
 matter to the world whether or no one particular 
 boy lives? Do not most people think boys are 
 in the way? I believe not ! Most people do not 
 think that boys are a nuisance, though many of 
 them do indeed say so. Was Napoleon's boy- 
 
 22 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 hood worth while? Was that of Washington or 
 Lincoln? When you and they stop to consider 
 you will say that it certainly does make a vast 
 difference not only whether the boy lives, but 
 much more that they help him to live well, par- 
 ticularly while he is a boy. This is not only for 
 your own sake. 
 
 One day you will see a girl who will come to 
 mean something more to you than the hoyden 
 and tomboy of last summer who could climb the 
 mast, or pull in the sheet rope as readily as you. 
 You even honored her by calling her a "good 
 fellow." High praise this from a boy ! But this 
 girl is surely another. She may after all be the 
 same, but what a change has come over both of 
 you since then ! You both look much as before, 
 but she is a woman and you a man, and in a few 
 months' time. And soon you will be willing to 
 not only give up your bat and ball, and your boat 
 and fishing tackle, and your gun, but you will 
 even be glad to sit indoors and work over a 
 dreary problem of figures, or stand behind a coun- 
 ter, and by dint of years of effort earn the right to 
 
 23 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 call that woman your wife. And if she is the 
 right kind of a woman she will make you first 
 prove that you are the right kind of a man. 
 With the winning of your wife will begin what 
 God has planned for you, just as for the plant, 
 and the bee, and the bird, and for all men and 
 women, — that you should pass on the life that 
 He has given to you to tiny children, who will be 
 yours, and who will be like you in many ways. 
 Just as you are, so are they likely to be. All 
 things being equal, if your wife and you are 
 healthy and strong in mind and body, your chil- 
 dren have every likelihood of inheriting your 
 strength and vigor. You have been made in such 
 a way, and I need not stop to tell how the Master 
 Workman has made you differ in form from 
 woman, in order that the life which He has placed 
 in you may join with the love and life that are in 
 her. In some manner that none of us thoroughly 
 understands He brings a tiny child into the 
 world. Just as the oak must grow from the 
 acorn, and the chick from the egg, and just as 
 the pollen must reach the fertile spot in the milk- 
 24 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 weed, so God has placed in every woman the 
 earliest thought of a child, and has planned it so 
 that only when the father's life can meet hers, and 
 the two develop together, can the new tiny spirit 
 come into being. Without this power which He 
 has entrusted to you the world must have come to 
 an end long ago. Unless God had trusted your 
 father and mother to treasure the gift He put in 
 their hands, you would not be here. Certain na- 
 tions appear to be dying out at this very time be- 
 cause they are misusing this power. Some day 
 you will be called on by your Maker to show your- 
 self worthy of his confidence, and to bring to life a 
 son or a daughter who will live after you. That 
 son or daughter should be the ancestor of a long, 
 noble line. The responsibility is the most serious 
 one of your life. 
 
 You are wondering now, probably, why I 
 mentioned your accountability for the unhap- 
 piness, or sorrow, or disease that you may 
 bring into the world in this way.. Is such a thing 
 possible ? I shall have to talk plainly to you, and 
 it is because you are almost men that I talk to you 
 
 25 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 at all. You can indeed bring to yourselves not 
 only unhappiness, but sorrow also, and disease, 
 by misuse of this very beautiful privilege that has 
 been given to you. " How," do you ask ? Let 
 me say just a word again as an older boy to 
 younger ones. Has any one ever asked you to 
 do, or have you ever known them to do anything 
 which you thought at the time was neither clean 
 nor manly? Has any man or woman or boy or 
 girl ever said anything to you which made you 
 ashamed to look your father or mother in the 
 eye? Have you ever said anything to any boy 
 or girl, or have you ever allowed yourself to do 
 anything that you would be sorry to have known 
 at home or abroad ? 
 
 There are few boys and few girls that will mis- 
 understand when they are told that God has made 
 them in a particular manner so that later on He 
 can give them the wonderful gift of a child. 
 None of you will misunderstand me, though you 
 may be surprised, when I tell you as a physician 
 that more sickness and disease comes into the 
 world by misuse of this power of the body that 
 26 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 has been put in your keeping than in any other 
 way. You may not know that if you trifle with 
 it, or use it wrongly, you may not only gain some 
 serious ailment, but your child, if your wife ever 
 gives you one, will certainly sufifer in some way for 
 every harm that comes to you. You ought to be 
 told now, before it is too late,, that all of the habits 
 which boys know to be unclean and wrong not 
 only tend to weaken your body, but to destroy 
 your mind and will, and that every one of them 
 helps you to lose the moral strength which you 
 will soon need in order to resist another even more 
 serious temptation. Those of you who have been 
 thrown much with older boys and men already 
 know that many men and women, instead of 
 keeping their bodies sacred until they have found 
 a true mate in life, use them in such a way that a 
 child is often born to unmarried parents who 
 neither wish to have it known that it is their off- 
 spring, nor dare to let the world know their 
 wickedness. Such a child is cursed before it is 
 born ! Even its father and mother dare not own 
 it. This thing occurs under God's eyes, as if 
 
 27 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 they thought He could not see, or as if they did 
 not care. It happens in spite of their wish and 
 attempt to prevent it. Still oftener the man or 
 boy takes some foul disease from the woman, or 
 the woman from the man, for neither will long 
 escape mischief in their wrongdoing. All dis- 
 eases obtained in this way can be and often are 
 passed on to those whom you love, the members 
 of your families and all those around you. Only 
 recently I saw a little baby bom with the disease 
 which one of its parents had contracted before 
 marriage. The one that was to blame thought 
 that no harm could come from " just that once " ; 
 and there was then no idea of marrying. 
 
 Where do we now find ourselves? And what 
 is the reason for this state of affairs ? 
 
 A boy has perhaps heard someone say that it is 
 manly to do what he knows to b* wrong. Out 
 of fear of ridicule or shame this boy ventures to 
 imitate the wrong. There are on the street many 
 women today who spend their lives trying to lead 
 boys such as you into wickedness and mischief. 
 Such women are nearly all (I might safely say 
 28 
 
THE NOBILITY OF BOYHOOD 
 
 all) unclean and diseased, so that it is unsafe for 
 you to touch them. " Why have I told you 
 this?" Because boys are more valuable than 
 grown men. Because I have seen boys no older 
 than you, and boys who were manly in other 
 ways, yield to what they knew to be wrong, be- 
 cause a laugh urged them on. Some of these 
 boys I have helped to get well of the mischief 
 that comes from just such wrongdoing. Will 
 you let me warn you against learning that lesson 
 from bitter experience ? Your own harm is sure, 
 but it is the smallest part of the wrong. Though 
 you may not be permanently injured you may still 
 pass the disease, which has laid its grasping hands 
 on you, to someone else. This someone is likely 
 to be your wife or your child, even years after. 
 Is it not horrible to think that it may be anyone, 
 at home or abroad, and you the cause? 
 
 And last of all ! 
 
 You cannot yet know, boys, what a world of 
 
 pleasure and joy there is in looking down into a 
 
 baby face, and knowing that part of your life and 
 
 part of the mother's, and — let us say it with 
 
 29 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 bowed heads — part of God's life, is there. He 
 has given you the greatest of all masteries, that 
 which goes beyond all power of understanding, 
 that power which approaches His own, — the 
 ability and nobility to create life. Will you not 
 keep your minds and bodies clean and pure 
 against the time when He will use you and a pure 
 woman to make her and your fair names live for- 
 ever in your children. 
 
 "Not God Himself can make man's best 
 Without best men to help Him." 
 
 30 
 
II 
 
 CLEAN LIVING: A PROBLEM OF 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS * 
 
 I CONGRATULATE those of you, today, who are 
 just entering this old University! Those 
 who have already learned to call her Alma Mater 
 need no word from me to tell them of the joys 
 and responsibilities of college life. It is Secause 
 some of us older college boys have learned just 
 what you are to encounter in the four years of 
 city and university experience, that we have called 
 you together for a frank talk on matters that will 
 have a vital influence on your college and after- 
 careers. 
 
 You will have guarding over your interests, 
 and watching with a keen and kindly eye your 
 
 * A talk with the students of the University of Pennsylvania, 
 October lo, 1903. 
 
 31 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 successes and failures, one of the warmest-hearted 
 men that our Provost's chair has ever held. In 
 the midst of responsibilities that would bend the 
 shoulders of an ordinary man, you will find that 
 he has a smile and a grasp of the hand for each 
 one of you, no matter how unimportant you may 
 consider yourself to be in your particular sphere 
 of activity. He wishes you simply to assure him 
 that you are active in that sphere. I have learned 
 to know him as a man whose aim In life to-day is 
 the genuine benefit and happiness of young men 
 like you and me. 
 
 In close touch with your Provost, and equally 
 a man, you will learn to know and love one of the 
 best friends of my college days, and one who 
 learns for the first time to-day, perhaps, that his 
 influence was stronger than almost any other in 
 making my college life of whatever value to my- 
 self and others it may chance to be. If he could 
 but know how many men have left these walls 
 with the same sentiment in their breasts, he would 
 tell, you, as I now do, that he has not lived in vain. 
 I have seen Vice-Provost Smith, in the midst of 
 
 32 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 his day's work, stop as each of a numSer of 
 thoughtless students pushed his way into the of- 
 fice, and show the same warm interest in the last 
 one that sent the first away with the feeling that 
 he had talked with a friend and one whom he 
 could trust. 
 
 For myself, I can simply say that I have worked 
 among you as one of your University physicians 
 for over three years, and that I have considered 
 my work a rare privilege and a sacred trust. I 
 have learned many things of student life which 
 escaped me while a student myself; and I have 
 learned the value, during these thirteen years of 
 college associations, of the opportunity of looking 
 on many of the problems that will soon come be- 
 fore you. Perhaps they mean more to me be- 
 cause I have seen many of them both from the 
 standpoint of the student and later as your con- 
 fidential medical friend. 
 
 One of these problems involves a temptation 
 that meets every man sooner or later, will cer- 
 tainly meet you during your college days, and 
 perhaps has already stood in the path of some. I 
 ' 33 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 refer to the temptation to risk your health of 
 mind and body by illicit intercourse with women, 
 whom you would be unwilling and even horrified 
 to consider of the same order of being as your 
 mothers or your future wives. Every large city 
 swarms with such women, many of whose lives 
 are wrecked by marital infidelity before they be- 
 gin to prey upon the happiness of other homes. 
 
 Shall I tell you in another way why you are 
 gathered here to-day. Last spring a country boy 
 came to Philadelphia for the first time. He was 
 induced by friends to visit a house of ill fame. 
 He was infected by the woman with gonorrhoea, 
 and, though at the time none of the ordinary 
 symptoms appeared, in a day or so his eyes began 
 to smart. Another of his so-called friends ad- 
 vised him in all earnest to wash his eyes in his 
 own urine. He did this at once. Gonorrhceal 
 inflammation developed, probably had developed 
 before the urine made the infection sure, and to- 
 day that country boy is totally blind and for his 
 lifetime. 
 
 Your Provost and Vice-Provost have watched 
 
 34 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 with increasing interest and alarm the influence 
 upon those who have gone before you of the 
 temptations offered by university life in a great 
 city. They have asked me to talk to you to-day 
 of this matter as one of the students' physicians, 
 and therefore one who ought and I am glad to 
 say does, hold intimate and strictly confidential 
 relations with every one of you that cares to use 
 me as an adviser and friend. 
 
 In the last three years of my work among the 
 students of this University I have seen you at 
 times, and under conditions, that have led you to 
 open your hearts to me; whether always through 
 friendship or necessity it is at present unnecessary 
 to inquire. I have seen many of you at times 
 when you would have given worlds had some one 
 told you in advance of the facts which I hope to 
 make plain to you to-day. I have listened, more 
 regretfully on each occasion, to the old cry, " Why 
 did not some one tell me in time ? " until it seemed 
 impossible that another year should be allowed to 
 slip by without giving those who are coming on 
 the warning of the experience of those who have 
 
 35 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 gone before. I have seen some of you injured 
 physically, and for life, by either the lack of some 
 such frank, clear discussion of the dangers of im- 
 pure living, or by wilful disregard of advice in the 
 few instances in which it had been offered. 
 
 In my capacity as University physician, there- 
 fore, and one who holds himself ready to serve 
 you at any time, day or night, I wish to talk 
 briefly but earnestly of three of the most inevit- 
 able results of imjpure sexual life. I have said 
 that the opportunity of lowering yourselves in 
 the eyes of God and of true men will certainly be 
 presented to you within the nearest future. In a 
 large city this is unfortunately and peculiarly 
 true. Example, fear of ridicule, or curiosity may 
 be the impelling force; and if any one influence 
 has had a dastardly effect upon the lives of young 
 men, ridicule is that one. Whatever or whoever 
 you are, we are interested in you, and want you 
 to know to-day and finally that you transgress 
 the laws of pure sexual living at your peril, and 
 perhaps literally, sooner or later, at the cost of 
 your life. 
 
 36 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 It may be stated with the barest possibility of 
 error that no man who has once had sexual inter- 
 course with a woman not his wife, fails to make a 
 habit of the crime. It is equally certain that no 
 one has indulged in such excesses without soon- 
 er or later contracting some venereal disease. 
 This is so literally true that such conditions are 
 considered among medical men as inevitable at- 
 tendants upon impure intercourse with the other 
 sex. Every preventive has been tried, and all 
 have failed. On the other hand, let me say to 
 you as a physician voicing the consensus of med- 
 ical opinion, that there has never existed a man 
 who could not live a healthy, active existence, 
 throughout his whole life, in the absence of any 
 sexual intercourse whatsoever. It is a common 
 story among college students that after a certain 
 age a man requires sexual satisfaction, if he is to 
 preserve vigor of mind and body. Let me char- 
 acterize this idea as a curse that has done more 
 harm in the home-world than any other influence, 
 and one which, together with ignorance of the in- 
 evitable results in the way of venereal infection, 
 
 37 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 has made it unsafe for men and women to drink 
 out of a neighbor's glass, or for men to accept a 
 pipe or a cigar or a cigarette from the fingers of 
 a friend unless they know him through and 
 through in a way that few men are known. Na- 
 ture has provided for man's sexual necessities in 
 a way with regard to which you do not need to 
 be informed, and that provision is one that is as 
 ample as it is providential. If, in addition, a boy 
 has a wise father, who remembers his own temp- 
 tations and takes a judicious and the only fair 
 way of strengthening his son against them, by 
 opening his eyes to the danger of transgressing 
 Nature's laws, he is well equipped for growth into 
 noble and healthy manhood. Would that every 
 boy had such a father ! Too often the whole sub- 
 ject is treated in open conversation as a necessary 
 and unavoidable evil. We should look upon the 
 man or woman who trifles with the subject of 
 sexual impurity as a criminal, either by virtue of 
 ignorance or by intent, and we will even then not 
 reward them as they deserve. We have come to 
 a time when, if the young men of this and other 
 
 38 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 countries do not engage and conquer the social 
 evil, it must be accomplished by the enlightenment 
 of the pure women that still exist ; and when your 
 mothers and your future wives and your daugh- 
 ters are warned even against their sons, husbands, 
 and fathers, because they are dangers to human- 
 ity, you will begin to regret that you did not lay 
 hold on the cause in time. The trend of the law 
 is in this direction, and by the nature of things it 
 is bound to insist upon it sooner or later. Lin- 
 coln is said to have made the remark that " every 
 man who contemplated marriage should stand 
 over the doctor with a club and make him tell the 
 truth in reference to the chosen partner for life. 
 Also that the parents who would allow a girl to 
 marry a man without knowing as clearly as could 
 be known his physical as well as his moral condi- 
 tion deserved to be scalped." 
 
 Unfortunately, no one is in a position as yet to 
 know these things certainly, and no woman will 
 believe them of her lover. Yet men have married 
 women the day after lying with a common prosti- 
 tute, and days and perhaps weeks and months 
 
 39 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 after syphilis or gonorrhoea has appeared in the 
 man, who invariably has been ignorant or cow- 
 ardly enough to transmit the disease to his wife 
 rather than acknowledge his condition. Many 
 another man has struggled for months towards a 
 cure and has been pronounced well by his physi- 
 cian, only to infect his wife with his latent disease. 
 Add to this the fact that the average phy- 
 sician is unqualified to treat gonorrhoea and syph- 
 ilis successfully, and should not attempt the task, 
 and you will learn how helpless the victim of such 
 a disease is. In all this great city there is hardly 
 a hospital bed that will admit openly and as such 
 a subject of venereal disease. There is a tre- 
 mendous duty to-day upon the physician and 
 parents to learn and disseminate the truth in re- 
 gard to sexual sin, and my conscience will be 
 clearer when I have spoken to you. 
 
 Let me talk to you of three conditions, gonor- 
 rhoea, syphilis, and illegitimate fatherhood, the 
 three most frequent attendants upon harlotry, and 
 the two former of which are far more contagious 
 and widespread than tuberculosis, which is occu- 
 40 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 pying the attention of the public to-day. At the 
 end of our discussion I trust I may have proved 
 assertions which may seem to you at first harsh 
 and extreme. 
 
 GONORRHCEA. 
 
 It may be a significant fact to you that the first 
 student treated by me after my appointment as 
 students' physician and the last one seen at the 
 close of the session of 1902-3, were suffering 
 from gonorrhcea contracted during illicit inter- 
 course with a woman. Both of these were sons of 
 refined, well-to-do fathers and mothers. Both of 
 them were ignorant of the imminent danger of in- 
 fection, and both quoted the oft-heard lie, that " a 
 case of gonorrhoea is no worse than a bad cold." 
 Both men had been told this lie by other students, 
 who had themselves previously contracted and 
 suffered from the disease. One had repeated at- 
 tacks before consulting me, and was then in a 
 serious condition. One of these students is ap- 
 parently well to-day. The former will carry 
 traces of his gonorrhcea to his grave, and can 
 
 41 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 never be the father of a child. He should cer- 
 tainly never marry, both for this reason and for 
 fear of infecting his wife. 
 
 During the three intervening years between 
 these two cases, a number of students have con- 
 sulted me each month, and many with the same 
 story of ignorance of danger. All knew, no 
 doubt, but few realized the fact until too late. 
 Some few, through despair of being cured of a 
 chronic condition, had thrown precaution to the 
 winds and contracted new infection and new 
 trouble. In one instance that came under my 
 care a woman, herself a medical student at an- 
 other institution, had infected five men with gon- 
 orrhoea, and one of them either she or some other 
 had also infected with syphilis. Two of these 
 men were brothers, yet it would appear that none 
 of the five had confided in any of the rest. 
 
 It seems strange that it should not be generally 
 known by students that there is little likelihood of 
 a woman who admits of such attentions herself 
 escaping venereal infection, no matter what her 
 social status or what her precautions. It is a rule 
 42 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 borne out by medical experience that a woman 
 who encourages the advances of one man will in- 
 variably entertain others. It is also a frequent 
 experience for a number of men separately to con- 
 sult a physician and assure him that the sub- 
 ject of their attention could not possibly have in- 
 fected them, as she had never had intercourse 
 with any other man, and yet the fact appear 
 clear to the physician that she had infected each 
 and every one. It is safe to say that every har- 
 lot (I use this term advisedly, with reference 
 to her of good family connections, for there are 
 such, as well as to the common prostitute; they 
 belong in the same category) has at some time 
 been infected with gonorrhoea, and if one stops to 
 learn how difficult and rare a thing it is to thor- 
 oughly cure a woman of gonorrhoea, he will un- 
 derstand also how dangerous it is to trust himself 
 at any time in her subsequent life within her in- 
 fected presence, 
 
 A few statistics may serve as an illustration, 
 not only of the prevalence of temptation on the 
 streets of a great city, but of the ubiquity of gon- 
 
 43 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 orrhoeal disease in its many forms. It has been 
 well characterized as the most widespread of all 
 contagious diseases, with the single exception of 
 measles. It has been shown that in some of the 
 cities of Europe more than one-half of the entire 
 population, and more than three-quarters of the 
 male population, suffer from gonorrhoeal infec- 
 tion. Dr. Allen reports from one hospital dis- 
 pensary in New York City 86,000 cases of all 
 kinds treated in 1900, of which over 3,000 were 
 cases of venereal disease. In 1903 we learn from . 
 a commission appointed to study the subject that 
 there are in New York City to-day about 200,000 
 syphilitic subjects, and probably four times as 
 many (800,000) cases of gonorrhoea. To care 
 for these cases and to prevent the spread of in- 
 fection, there is one bed for every 5,000. This 
 ratio holds good for nearly all the large cities 
 of America. While all prostitutes are considered 
 gonorrhoeic subjects, it is estimated that every 
 fourth one is qualified to transmit syphilis. 
 
 In Prussia it is estimated that there are annu- 
 ally 773,000 cases of venereal disease. Still 
 
 44 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 more exact are the following figures. Out of 
 1,155 patients (mostly venereal) treated at Hot 
 Springs, Arkansas, and coming from all over the 
 United States, it was learned that 818 (70 per 
 cent.) had, at the time of examination, or had 
 had, gonorrhoea ; 337 had never contracted the in- 
 fection. Most of these patients were from the 
 so-called better classes. The ages at which the 
 gonorrhoea was contracted varied from 10 to 57 
 years, averaging 21.8 years. Three hundred and 
 - eighty-two cases were below 21 years of age and 
 58 cases were below 17 years. Of 60,000 sick 
 soldiers in our army of occupation in the Philip- 
 pines, 10,000 were cases of venereal disease; 
 nearly all of these have since come home, and 
 many remain uncured to-day. 
 
 These figures will suffice to show that gonor- 
 rhcea is so frequent a condition that it literally 
 leaves few homes unscathed, if the truth be fully 
 known. As already stated, the prostitute offers 
 a ready infection to the male urethra in its virgin 
 state, and a still more likely one to a chronically 
 inflamed mucous membrane. Probably she can 
 
 45 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 and does infect as long as she lives, and undoubt- 
 edly she does infect many men in one day. Long 
 after she is visibly cured she may be a source of 
 virulent infection. The result is that she may be 
 honest in believing herself free from danger to 
 others and become the more dangerous in the be- 
 lief of her cure. Under the most benign circum- 
 stances she is a danger, and under the worst she 
 is a scourge. Infected many times, with each 
 new occasion she becomes freshly virulent. The 
 result is that the world is to-day overrun with 
 venereal disease. Let me ask a few questions 
 that naturally arise, and in their answers endeavor 
 to emphasize the points I wish to bring home to 
 you. 
 
 WMat is gonorrhoea in the male subject? An 
 extremely infectious disease, usually involving 
 some portion or all of the urinary passage from 
 the bladder outward. Any portion of the body 
 may, however, be infected, including the eyes, the 
 skin, the nose, ears, mouth, bowel, and any or all 
 of the internal organs of the body. Its minimum 
 average duration is six weeks. It often lasts for 
 46 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 years, and unless promptly and intelligently 
 treated its effects often remain evident for life. 
 It is a disease for which eminent specialists are 
 constantly seeking some new and effective rem- 
 edy, which has not yet been found. The question 
 is still under discussion whether either syphilis or 
 gonorrhoea is certainly curable. One prominent 
 student of the subject says of the latter, " I have 
 studied and treated gonorrhoea for fifteen years, 
 and I feel to-day that I know less about that dis- 
 ease than I thought I did several years ago." 
 Another writes, " A large number of chronic gon- 
 orrhoeas, speaking generally, remain uncured. 
 Some of these may be explained by the indolence 
 and discouragement of the patient, others by want 
 of care or understanding on the part of the physi- 
 cian, others by constant reinfection, and still oth- 
 ers from no tangible cause, all gonococci having 
 'apparently' been eliminated." Still another 
 says, " The importance of gonorrhoea with that 
 of syphilis is lOO to i, not only from the stand- 
 point of the number of persons attacked, but also 
 
 47 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 from the standpoint of the gravity of the lesions 
 and their perpetuity." 
 
 Have I said enough to prove to you that gon- 
 orrhoea is " worse than a bad cold ? " 
 
 What are its possible complications and their 
 frequency? Among the most frequent of the 
 complications of gonorrhoea are stricture of the 
 urinary passages and sometimes even of the bowel, 
 inflammation and destruction of the internal gen- 
 ital apparatus (the testicles and the tubes leading 
 thereto), blindness, bladder and kidney disease, 
 abscess at any point in the body, and joint rheu- 
 matism — all frequent conditions. Less fre- 
 quent are septic blood infection (usually fatal), 
 brain disease, degeneration of the spinal cord, 
 heart disease, bone disease, peritonitis, pneu- 
 monia, and death. You may ask, " Why have 
 we not heard before of the serious features 
 of what we believed to be a temporary inflam- 
 mation?" I answer, "Because every case of 
 gonorrhoeal infection is concealed more jeal- 
 ously than a crime would be, and if serious 
 complications follow, the specific origin is de- 
 48 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 nied or withheld by Soth the victim and his 
 doctor." Last winter an officer of the Univer- 
 sity showed his interest in one of the students by 
 calling on him in the University Hospital. He 
 was told by the student and by the nurse that the 
 trouble was appendicitis, and was shocked and 
 disheartened later on when he learned that the 
 case was one of gonorrhoea. 
 
 A large percentage of cases of chronic gonor- 
 rhoea leave behind a stricture of the urethra. 
 Nearly all leave an irritable and often a diseased 
 prostate gland ; many leave an irritable or diseased 
 bladder. 
 
 Between lo and 20 per cent, of all cases of in- 
 fantile blindness are due to gonorrhoeal infection. 
 Statistics of the German Empire for 1894 showed 
 that 80 per cent, of all children born with healthy 
 eyes who became blind did so as the result of 
 transmitted gonorrhoea. In that country there 
 are 30,000 cases of blindness to-day due to gon- 
 orrhoea, and mostly transmitted from other per- 
 sons. In spite of all the latest knowledge and the 
 newest methods, approximately 600 cases of 
 4 49 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 blindness occur annually in Germany from this 
 one avoidable cause. In this country from 25 to 
 50 per cent, of the blind in institutions owe their 
 loss of sight to gonorrhoeal infection. In one 
 year in New York City 136 cases of gonorrhoeal 
 ophthalmia were reported. 
 
 Inflammation of the epididymus (the tube from 
 the testicle outward) is a very frequent compli- 
 cation, often resulting in absolute sterility, as will 
 be shown later. 
 
 Gonorrhoeal rheumatism is also a serious affec- 
 tion, usually occurring in a large joint like the hip 
 or knee, and frequently leaving a permanent dis- 
 ability. 
 
 The other complications mentioned occur with 
 varying frequency, depending upon the attention 
 paid to the condition by doctor and patient, as 
 well as upon the promptness with which the dis- 
 ease yields to treatment. While far less fre- 
 quent, they are even more serious. There is no 
 question that many cases of kidney disease owe 
 their origin to gonorrhoea, many resulting years 
 after in fatality. During each year a number of 
 
 50 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 deaths are recorded as directly due to infection by 
 the gonococcus of one of the vital organs of the 
 body. While writing this statement, I have be- 
 fore me the records of five fatal cases that have 
 come easily to my notice, three from gonorrhceal 
 peritonitis, one from gonorrhceal valvular disease 
 of the heart, and one of gonorrhceal septicaemia, 
 which will be mentioned later. 
 
 Can gonorrhoea he cured, and can the patient 
 he sure he is cured? To the first question prob- 
 ably " yes," and to the second certainly " no." 
 We have already heard doubtful statements of 
 eminent students of the disease. Neisser, one of 
 the first authorities of the world on venereal dis- 
 ease, claims that gonorrhoea can be cured. Your 
 own professors of surgery. White and Martin, 
 also claim that it can. All admit that very many 
 cases are not cured, owing to one reason and an- 
 other. Every year brings forward new instances 
 of old, supposedly cured infection relighted by 
 disease, debility, or debauch. In children, un- 
 doubtedly, the prognosis is better than in adults, 
 probably because the disease is taken in hand 
 
 51 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 earlier and more systematically; also because all 
 the tissues in the child tend towards healthy 
 growth, Frank, in Germany, has shown, how- 
 ever, that the gonococcus may remain quiescent 
 in the prostate gland for months and years. Nto 
 symptoms remain, yet the disease may be re- 
 lighted and others be infected. 
 
 I have already quoted van der Poel to the ef- 
 fect that a large number of chronic gonorrhoeas 
 remain uncured. Koppen cites many cases in 
 which all symptoms had disappeared, and yet the 
 disease remained latent. In regard to one of 
 these he says, " Not one sign was left of a previ- 
 ous gonorrhoea." Six years later there was irri- 
 tation of the urethra, and he obtained gonococci 
 from the urinary canal. In another case none of 
 the germs of gonorrhoea had ever been discovered 
 in the discharge, though the clinical picture was 
 complete. Six years later he found gonococci in 
 the urethra. He concludes his article with the 
 statement, " Gonococci can exist for years in 
 the organism, as proved by numberless cases." 
 A case is described in one of our own medical 
 
 52 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 journals, dated September, 1903, in which a man 
 infected his own eye with gonorrhoea after six 
 years, during which the disease appeared to be 
 cured. At the same time all his joints became in- 
 volved, as well as the tendon sheaths of one foot. 
 The gonococcus was obtained from the discharges 
 of the eye, proving the real nature of the infec- 
 tion. 
 
 Our answer to the question, then, must be, that 
 under favorable circumstances gonorrhoea prob- 
 ably can be cured. No case is cured until all gon- 
 ococci have disappeared from the urethra. Many 
 doctors either do not know how or do not take the 
 trouble to look for these micro-organisms. Many 
 patients never return for completion of the cure 
 after the symptoms have become tolerable. Un- 
 der the best treatment, it should be remembered, 
 success may not be attained. Only time will show 
 whether an actual and permanent cure has been 
 secured. No victim of gonorrhoea can be abso- 
 lutely sure, when the symptoms have disappeared, 
 that he is cured of his infection, or that he will not 
 infect his wife years after. 
 
 S3 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 How long after an attack can a man infect a 
 woman uiith gonorrhoea? We have already seen 
 in our answer to the preceding question that years 
 may pass by and a man may still be infectious to 
 a wife. As long as there are active symptoms, 
 transmission of the disease is likely. When these 
 have subsided the danger decreases, but never dis- 
 appears until the last gonococcus has been de- 
 stroyed. If gonococci can live six, ten, and fif- 
 teen years in the organs of the body, as they have 
 been shown to do, probably they can live longer 
 and to an almost indefinite time. The only in- 
 ference from the cases cited is that the gonor- 
 rhoeic subject must never be surprised if he finds 
 in after years that his disease has remained latent, 
 and that he has infected some innocent person. 
 The possibility is always before him. 
 
 What are the possible permanent injuries from 
 an attack of gonorrhoea? We will at present con- 
 sider only the male sex. It has already been 
 shown that fatality is occasional. The most fre- 
 quent permanent disability is a chronic gleet or 
 catarrh of the urethra, prostate gland, the bladder, 
 
 54 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 or of all three. SucH a chronic inflammation of 
 the urethra usually results in stricture of that 
 passage. Stricture causes obstruction to the flow 
 of urine, and as a consequence bladder inflamma- 
 tion often follows, and the disease often spreads 
 from there to the kidney by direct extension. 
 Gonorrhoea! rheumatism very frequently — we 
 may say nearly always — leaves a crippled joint. 
 
 By far the most serious sequela of gonorrhoea 
 is sterility, or lack of power to produce progeny. 
 The commission appointed by the American Med- 
 ical Association estimated that 42 per cent, of all 
 gonorrhoeic subjects become sterile, and that many 
 more cause sterile marriages after the first child- 
 birth because of the infection and consequent ster- 
 ility of the wife. Czerny says that " 50 per cent, 
 of all sterility is due to the husband's gonorrhoea." 
 Morrow says, " Syphilis curses the child ; gon- 
 orrhoea prevents its existence by rendering the 
 male sterile." 
 
 President Roosevelt has recently spoken of the 
 social evil, meaning the wilful sterility of the 
 wedded life. Would that he might cry out from 
 
 55 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 his Presidential chair against the dangers of vene- 
 real infection and the real cause of sterility of the 
 sons of America, 
 
 What are the results of gonorrhoea in the 
 zifomanf Fewer women, by far, are cured of 
 gonorrhoea than is the case with man. I shall 
 not speak, however, of the clinical picture in the 
 female sex. It will be sufficient to say that with 
 the woman gonorrhoea means almost certainly an 
 infection of her internal organs, and sooner or 
 later a serious operation. Pregnancy increases 
 the danger of upward and general infection. 
 Sometimes there is no serious sign of trouble un- 
 til the woman becomes pregnant. Noggerath 
 states that 50 per cent, of sterile' women owe their 
 sterility to gonorrhoea. Neisser, already quoted, 
 fixes the percentage at a higher figure. Ascher 
 found that of 227 sterile women in his care, 121 
 were sterile owing to gonorrhoea. 
 
 Sanger says that abortion occurs as frequently 
 owing to gonorrhoea as it does as the result of 
 syphilis. Noggerath cites the cases of 53 women, 
 pregnant during a gonorrhoea, of whom 19 
 
 56 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 aborted. Fruhingsholtz cites loi cases, of which 
 23 aborted and 7 went into premature labor. 
 Price, of this city, says that of 1,000 abdominal 
 operations in women 95 per cent, were the result 
 of conditions due to gonorrhoea. 
 
 The statistics of the German Empire for 1894 
 showed that 80 per cent, of the women who died 
 of uterine or ovarian disease died as the result 
 of conditions dependent upon gonorrhcea. 
 
 Have I convinced you that the disease is of 
 more significance than a " bad cold ? " If not, 
 let me add a final argument; and if you resist the 
 plea of the children, no influence on earth can save 
 you from an experience which you dearly earn. 
 
 Can gonorrhoea be transmitted to others than 
 your wife? From what I have already told you, 
 you now know that the vast number of cases of 
 gonorrhoea in the woman in married life are in- 
 stances of innocent infection on her part. We 
 have omitted until now the possibility of infecting 
 others, and by means other than by sexual inter- 
 course. First, and least important by all odds, 
 you can infect your own eyes, nose, mouth or 
 
 57 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 bowel, and probably will unless you learn the 
 virulence of the gonorrhoeal germ. Next, you 
 can infect, and usually do infect, the bedclothes, 
 towels, napkins, handkerchiefs, knives, forks, 
 your pipe, and all articles of ordinary and con- 
 stant use ; and sometimes, by means of them, your 
 wife and children, your friends — even, mayhap, 
 your mother. It is the result of nature's protect- 
 ing laws and not your care that you fail to pass 
 to all who are around you the curse that you have 
 brought upon yourself. Let me prove this to you 
 in all its hideousness of truth. Cook has reported 
 recently a case of a 4-year-old daughter of a 35- 
 year-old father, from a refined family. The 
 father contracted gonorrhoea in the usual manner, 
 and soon the little girl developed the disease. 
 There was absolutely no other traceable source 
 of the infection. Morrow cites the case of a little 
 girl into whose eye a playmate's finger had been 
 poked. The injured child suffered a typical gon- 
 orrhoeal conjunctivitis, from the discharge of 
 which the gonococci were obtained. Not long 
 ago there was an epidemic of gonorrhoea among 
 
 58 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 the children of Posen in Germany. In two weets 
 236 children contracted the disease, which was 
 finally traced to the use of the public bath. Some 
 one had infected the pool. In spite of the con- 
 stant suppression of such cases, there are many 
 such reported in the medical journals. I have 
 myself seen, in hospital work, many cases of gon- 
 orrhoea in children under 5 years, sometimes 
 transmitted by accident, sometimes by intention. 
 Only when the law imposes fine and imprison- 
 ment upon him who knowingly infects another 
 person will this crime be blotted out; it may be 
 that a sterner penalty still might be effective (as 
 already suggested), and meted out at the hand of 
 the surgeon's knife. 
 
 Innocent infection of children occurs usually 
 among those who sleep in bed with their parents 
 or use the same towels or table linen. Night- 
 clothes, bed linen, towels, sponges, underclothing, 
 soap, the water closet, if once infected, may re- 
 tain the germs for weeks and months, and the ori- 
 gin of the infection may, sad to say, never be dis- 
 covered. On the Scandinavian Peninsula every 
 
 59 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 case of venereal infection is reported to the au- 
 thorities, as it will be some day here. There will 
 then be fewer cases of venereal disease and fewer 
 innocent victims. I believe, moreover, that in 
 this procedure lies the remedy for marital infidel- 
 ity and for sexual sin in all its forms. 
 
 There is another serious phase to the gonor- 
 rhoea of children. When once infected they also 
 transmit the disease, and oftentimes in the same 
 manner as their fathers, and with equal avidity. 
 Wolbarst, in New York City, cites 22 cases oc- 
 curring in his work during two years, in children 
 between 18 months and 12 years of age. The 
 usual mode of infection was attempted sexual in- 
 tercourse. On investigation he found that it was 
 by no means an unusual occurrence in this district 
 for children not yet in puberty to indulge in sex- 
 ual intercourse. He saw three cases of boys, 4, 
 ID, and 12 years respectively, infected by girls 
 between 10 and 12 years. Many other cases 
 were due to the child sljeeping with parents, 
 brothers, sisters, who had gonorrhoea. Cotton 
 calls attention to a " string of little girls coming 
 60 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 to my clinic suffering from gonorrhoea. A week 
 later," he says, " my assistant brought a boy of 
 ID years who had been infecting these little girls." 
 Last year I saw more than one student of this 
 University who would not return home for his 
 holiday when he heard that he must be careful 
 not to infect himself or his family. I shall never 
 forget the expression of one who said, " God ! 
 You don't mean that I might give this to my 
 mother ! " 
 
 Boys, forget yourselves ! If you owe anything 
 to that mother, sister, perhaps some day a wife, 
 your children, your friends, servants, even the 
 laundry-woman, do not risk this disease! 
 
 Just a word as to the Mortality of gonorrhoea! 
 This is occasional, though by no means as high 
 as that of syphilis. Only last year there came to 
 my notice the case of a young man, dying from a 
 diffuse abscess and pyaemia (blood-poisoning) of 
 unknown cause. His life was pledged to a lovely 
 girl, who nursed him on the edge of his grave. 
 Both were of our nation's best blood. Cultures 
 from the pus of his abscess and from his blood 
 6i 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 showed colonies of the gonococcus, and a history 
 of an almost forgotten attack of gonorrhoea was 
 obtained. It is almost too horrible to think of 
 the crime of the future had he lived to marry the 
 woman who was nursing him in an ignorance of 
 the cause of their double sorrow as complete as 
 his own. 
 
 Such a tragedy is being enacted certainly many 
 times every year in this wide world, and bids fair 
 to become an even more frequent occurrence. I 
 have mentioned four other deaths to you. The 
 aggregate of deaths from the sequelae and com- 
 plications of gonorrhoea would amount to no 
 small total, and must soon attract the attention of 
 those who have heretofore looked on it as a pass- 
 ing ailment. Have I made plain to you that as 
 the result of one rash act — 
 
 Your wife may be a lifelong victim; may be 
 deprived of the power of conception; may lose 
 her life by an operation or by infection? 
 
 Your child may lose its chance of birth ; may, 
 if born, be deprived of sight or hearing; may, if 
 
 62 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 a male, suffer consequences equal to your own; 
 if a female, suffer like the mother? 
 
 Yourself may never be cured ; may infect those 
 who are dearest to you; may lose your own life 
 and waste those of others? 
 
 Let us now for a brief moment consider syph- 
 ilis. 
 
 SYPHILIS. 
 
 Probably far less need be said about this dis- 
 ease, as its name is known to most of you, and 
 few speak of it lightly. When you learn that 
 many of those who surround you in your daily 
 life are virulent with this disease, and that change- 
 ling children are born into our best families as 
 the result of it, and that prostitution is likely to 
 fix the unyielding grasp of syphilis upon you, the 
 knowledge may act as a persuasive to keep you 
 true to your ideals. 
 
 What is syphilis? It is an infectious disease 
 of the whole system, usually making itself first 
 known by means of what is called a chancre, or 
 initial sore. This is followed usually by a gen- 
 eral skin eruption, swelling of the glands, falling 
 
 63 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 of the hair on all parts of the body, and later on 
 by serious disease of the blood-vessels and in- 
 ternal organs. It is usually contracted during 
 sexual intercourse, in the case of men usually in 
 prostitution, in the case of women very frequently 
 in an innocent manner and in wedlock. It in- 
 volves a course of treatment of at least three years, 
 and sometimes resists all treatment. It is found 
 in the highest and lowest classes of society. 
 
 How prevalent is the disease? Fournier states 
 that one-seventh of the population of Paris is 
 syphilitic, while in Russia whole towns have been 
 decimated by the disease. The victims in the lat- 
 ter country are mainly women and children, and 
 many cases are due to the kissing of sacred im- 
 ages and to the embraces of syphilitic acquaint- 
 ances. In certain of the European countries 25 
 per cent, of the population of some of the villages 
 is syphilitic, in most instances due to innocent in- 
 fection, prostitution being almost unknown. China 
 and Japan are overrun with syphilis. It has been 
 estimated ("Dictionary of Statistics," Mulhall) 
 from the cases in the military hospitals in Europe 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 that between 7 and 43 per cent, of the entire sol- 
 diery is infected ; the average national percentage 
 was found to be 14 per cent. The report of the 
 American Dermatological Society finds that 11.5 
 per cent, of all skin diseases are syphilitic. And 
 in our own country again. Out of 1,485 cases 
 (mostly venereal) treated and questioned at Hot 
 Springs, Arkansas, in 1901, 831 had had syphilis. 
 Gihon estimates that there are 2,000,000 cases of 
 the disease constantly in the United States. 
 
 Sanger has shown that nearly one-half of all 
 the prostitutes in New York City freely admit 
 that they have had syphilis, and half of these give 
 birth to syphilitic children. And as a gloomy 
 shroud for all these figures. Morrow finds that 70 
 per cent, of the syphilis in the women of New 
 York City is the result of conjugal infidelity. 
 
 Ccm syphilis be cured? This is a far more 
 difficult question to answer than that with regard 
 to gonorrhoea. My personal belief is that it usu- 
 ally can, if well treated and in time. A cure, 
 under the most favorable circumstances, requires 
 at least three years of constant medication. Many 
 
 5 65 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 cases require a longer time. Some prominent 
 syphilologists declare that the disease is incur- 
 able. Certain cases are absolutely incurable. 
 Among these may be cited one reported recently 
 by Schamberg, which was under treatment with- 
 out success for eight years; also two malignant 
 cases reported by Fournier in 1899. The general 
 prognosis of syphilis is probably a good one. The 
 constant danger that the treatment has not been 
 sufRciently radical or thorough always threatens, 
 however, and is well expressed by Osier when he 
 speaks of "the extraordinary frequency of the 
 cerebral and other complications in persons who 
 have had the disease, and who may even have un- 
 dergone thorough treatment." Howard has re- 
 ported a case seemingly cured and relighted, after 
 a year of quiescence, by influenza. Many other 
 cases appear to be free from symptoms for a time 
 and then die of insanity, softening of the brain, 
 locomotor ataxia, or some other nervous disease. 
 'How long after infection can the disease be 
 transmitted to others? During the entire period 
 of what are called the primary and secondary 
 66 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 stages. The latter, if the disease has been thor- 
 oughly and conscientiously treated, is usually con- 
 fined to the first few years following the infec- 
 tion. Only in exceedingly rare instances has in- 
 fection taken place after the fifth or sixth year. 
 Such cases do, however, occur. Sack reported 
 last year the case of a man on whose person ap- 
 peared an ulcer (gummatous) ten years after the 
 original attack, and infected his young wife, who 
 displayed typical symptoms of a new syphilitic 
 infection. Six months later she also had a 
 miscarriage. Herscher reports a case of conta- 
 gion from a husband who unquestionably con- 
 tracted the disease thirteen years previously. 
 Kopelinski has reported two cases of inherited 
 syphilis infecting previously healthy individuals, 
 and (an almost unheard-of thing) in both in- 
 stances a grandmother. 
 
 What are the effects of syphilitic infection upon 
 the man? Perhaps the most serious is the fact 
 that he becomes at once a, source of danger to his 
 family, friends, and society in general. This be- 
 gets the next most serious influence, which is the 
 
 67 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 mental condition. Fournier cites i8 cases of sui- 
 cide in young syphilitics. We have already 
 sketched the course of the disease itself, and need 
 not repeat the symptoms here. Probably the 
 most serious physical damage is done the blood- 
 vessels and kidneys. Many a case of apoplexy 
 and aneurism is directly due to syphilitic change 
 in the arteries of the brain or elsewhere. Many 
 cases of insanity are also due to this disease. At 
 present there is an attempt to prove what many 
 authorities believe to be true, that locomotor 
 ataxia is purely and simply a syphilitic picture. 
 Many cases of syphilis become and remain com- 
 pletely bald, with no eyebrows and no facial hair. 
 Some few severe cases lose all the bony features 
 of the face, the nose and roof of the mouth under- 
 going complete necrosis (bone gangrene). Many 
 have a persistent skin eruption. Those who in- 
 herit syphilis are usually marked for life and die 
 at an early age. Tuberculosis frequently accom- 
 panies or follows syphilis, like the driver of a 
 hearse. 
 
 What are tUe effects of syphilis upon the 
 68 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 womcm? The physical effects are the same as 
 those in the man. If she bears children during 
 the course of the disease, they are likely to be 
 syphilitic and otherwise defective. Still more 
 likely will they be still-born or abortion take 
 place. There is no other cause of abortion that 
 compares with the vicious influence of this disease. 
 
 A syphilitic woman is likely to infect many 
 more persons than a man. If a prostitute, she 
 probably infects most of those with whom she has 
 intercourse. Even in every-day life, a syphilitic 
 woman is a source of great danger. Kissing is 
 the most prolific source of transmission next to 
 sexual congress, and especially in this country, 
 where men confine their embraces to their inti- 
 mates only and to the female sex, unless it be in 
 the case of children. A woman's embraces are 
 much more promiscuous, and she proves much the 
 more active in spreading the disease. 
 
 What are the effects of syphilis upon the off- 
 spring f These are two, and both are serious in 
 the extreme. First, a tremendous percentage of 
 the children born of syphilitic parentage are de- 
 69 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 ficient mentally and physically. Secondly, be- 
 tween 20 and 40 per cent, of all conceptions by a 
 syphilitic woman result in either abortion, still- 
 birth, or premature labor. Even if bom with a 
 competent mind, the child who has inherited syph- 
 ilis is cursed as Job was not. It is likely to die 
 before it reaches puberty, and is generally marked 
 so as to be an object of pity throughout its life, 
 to itself as well as to those who know the cause. 
 How can syphilis he transmitted? By contact 
 with a syphilitic sore during the primary and 
 secondary stages of the disease, also with the 
 blood, with the saliva, or any fluid that may carry 
 with it the discharges from a mucous patch or 
 other syphilitic lesion, etc., etc. Usually the in- 
 fection is transmitted during sexual intercourse, 
 though extragenital and innocent infections are 
 now recognized to be very frequent, as by means 
 of knives, forks, spoons, drinking glasses, pipes, 
 cigars, etc., etc. Kissing, as has already been 
 stated, is one of the most frequent methods of 
 contagion. There is danger in any abraded sur- 
 face upon the body when in company with a syph- 
 70 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 illtic in the infectious stages of the disease. A 
 mother may infect a baby, a baby may infect a 
 nurse, the father may infect the whole family. 
 Weitlander has reported within the last three 
 weeks two instances of infection of entire fam- 
 ilies, in each case by a small child, known to be 
 syphilitic, who was taken in to board. The in- 
 fection undoubtedly took place by means of 
 spoons, dishes, etc. If any warning given at this 
 time will take root in the minds of those who are 
 unfortunate enough to have contracted the disease 
 innocently, and to have extragenital sores upon 
 their body, it must be this, that such cases are the 
 most dangerous to mankind. The very irony of 
 this fact makes it the more pitiful, and the crime 
 of the original infection the greater. I do not 
 think I need emphasize the burden of the cry of 
 the infected one, who would warn each one of 
 you from the possibility of becoming a danger to 
 your family, your doctor, and all around you. 
 
 What is the mortdity of syphilis? In Eng- 
 land, in the period 1880-90, 1,742 males over 
 five years of age died from the disease. Whole 
 
 71 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 towns have been decimated in Russia. Last year 
 in Philadelphia there were 37 deaths registered 
 as due directly to syphilis. If we add the many 
 deaths due to apoplexy directly dependent upon 
 syphilitic arteries, or to other more obscure syph- 
 ilitic conditions, the total would in all likelihood 
 be an appalling one. It is sufficient to say that 
 there is a decided mortality as the direct result of 
 the disease and its complications that cannot be 
 overlooked. The secondary mortality has re- 
 cently been brought home in a most impressive 
 way by Fournier, a French physician, already 
 quoted, who has collected 18 cases of suicide di- 
 rectly or indirectly dependent upon the knowledge 
 of the patient that he had syphilis. 
 
 ILLEGITIMATE FATHERHOOD. 
 
 There is only one condition more serious than 
 those of which we have been speaking, to which 
 the man subjects himself who trifles with his 
 power of reproducing the image of his Maker. 
 This is the risk that he runs of impregnating the 
 woman with whom he has sexual intercourse. 
 72 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 Except in the rarest instances, she knows her dan- 
 ger, and endeavors to provide for it. I trust it is 
 true that few men realize until it is too late, how 
 often the precautions of their mistresses fail. 
 Probably no woman exists, of normal develop- 
 ment, who, having made a practice of illicit 
 sexual intercourse, has failed to conceive, 
 and to be delivered of the product of concep- 
 tion. Usually the delivering is premature (un- 
 der the direction, I believe, of a merciful 
 Creator) and the life of the fetus dies out 
 with its birth. Often, however, a child is 
 born into the world, whose father and mother 
 will not, and dare not, own it,- and who look upon 
 its life as a cloud upon their future, and a menace 
 against their reputation (fair now only in name) 
 to be dissipated not even when the grave closes 
 over them. The illegitimate may still trace its 
 inheritance to the dead parent who refused, when 
 alive, to acknowledge his title of fatherhood. 
 
 If the mother conceives, the father is responsi- 
 ble for the life, whether the child is born to live, 
 or whether it dies in the womb. If murder can 
 
 73' 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 be forgotten, and if it rests lightly on the soul of 
 any man, he who fathers an illegitimate child has 
 this one recourse. Even the law holds the crime 
 to be murder after the child is viable. The moral 
 law, which upholds the only true standard of 
 right, declares murder to begin when the living 
 product of conception is destroyed. Here, then, 
 is a danger compared with which gonorrhoea and 
 syphilis are trifling peccadilloes, and in the knowl- 
 edge of which the human race should hide its face 
 in shame. In Europe and in America whole in- 
 stitutions are populated by children, without 
 father or mother, the harvest of crime. Do you 
 dare to swell the number of that army of children, 
 who will one day claim their unworthy parents 
 before a higher Tribunal than public opinion or 
 human law ? 
 
 Let us now gather together the lines of our 
 talk. I have told you many of the consequences 
 of gonorrhceal disease. I have purposely said 
 much less of syphilis. Other venereal infections 
 I have entirely passed by. I have told you that 
 
 f4 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 prostitution means possible criminal fatherhood. 
 May I now fairly ask you for your decision in 
 regard to certain questions which I put to you 
 earlier in the day? Is prostitution worth while? 
 Is it safe? Do you dare to run the risk? Have 
 I said enough to sufficiently warn without render- 
 ing you callous through overtalking? If so, I 
 shall welcome the day when your Provost asked 
 me to work among you as students' physician. 
 
 There are those who make light of the social 
 crime, and you now know why I shudder when I 
 hear them trifle about a subject of the gravity of 
 which they know nothing. I have recently read 
 a book by one of the prominent literary women of 
 the day, as full of vile insinuation, and as wicked 
 in its flagrant discussion of man's and woman's 
 infidelity, as if she had never heard of a wrecked 
 home or life. The story itself was of a social 
 crime, and was read with avidity by the unthink- 
 ing public. Perhaps you have all read it. 
 
 This very summer there appeared a book 
 which I found on my library table, loaned by a 
 " friend " to my wife. Its central figures were 
 
 75 - 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 separated by the crime of the age and, though 
 lovers indeed, could not marry. There were 
 three other marriages prominently introduced 
 into the story, and two of these were blighted by 
 infidelity of one or the other party, I read this 
 book because the author — this time a man — 
 had written others of surpassing beauty and bril- 
 liancy of thought and theme. If such books in- 
 fluence others as they do me, their authors must 
 shoulder many a responsibility for a mental and 
 moral downward plunge, and only after an effort 
 a struggle upward. God forgive any one, I say, 
 who dares urge a man, and, above all, a young 
 unmarried man, to trifle with the purity of sexual 
 relations as these writers have presumed to do ! 
 
 And now one last word to a body of men that 
 will one day take part in the destiny of this coun- 
 try. I have carefully avoided telling you that 
 you owe the sterling purity of mind, soul, and 
 body to your God and Maker. I trust that some 
 one else may do this in the near future and in this 
 same old chapel, whose benches already hold the 
 sons of fathers who have gone before. I would 
 76 
 
CLEAN LIVING 
 
 not have you forget the fact that God has made 
 for your use a body that is more wonderful and 
 delicate in its mechanism than any invention of 
 human genius, and that in your power of raising 
 up children after you who may do Him honor He 
 has given you control of a mystery that no sci- 
 entist has been permitted to unfold. Use this gift 
 nobly and well, and in order to do this thing, 
 guard your purity of thought and action as jeal- 
 ously as you would on the day that you bind 
 yourself, for life and death, to the wife whom 
 God gives you in the place of your mother. You 
 owe to her and to your children a perfect moral 
 and physical legacy ! 
 
 77 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 IN AMERICA.* 
 
 IT IS with a sense of high honor that I speak to 
 you as a fellow student of the Seventh Com- 
 mandment in its direct relationship to you and me 
 as consulting physicians in the welfare of the soul 
 and body. It is peculiarly fitting that the com- 
 mand " Thou shalt not commit adultery " should 
 excite an absorbing interest in your calling and 
 mine, because if we had done and were doing our 
 full duty its law would not in Christian America 
 have so far lost its significance and meaning. 
 Its almost unrestrained violation at the present 
 day lays the Christian pastor and the Christian 
 physician open to the charge that certain depart- 
 
 • Address to the students of Union Theological Seminary, April 
 7, 1905. 
 
 79 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 ments indispensable to our life's business have 
 been seriously and conspicuously neglected, while 
 our effort has elsewhere often been correspond- 
 ingly misspent. Its vital principle is involved in 
 all forms of illicit sexual indulgence in the single 
 as well as the married state, in libertinism and in 
 the divorce. Indeed, the young man should hold 
 the years preparatory to ^^rtM life as sacred 
 and responsible as those which follow, and as 
 already the property of not only himself, but of 
 his future life-partner. 
 
 If the whole tale were told the physician must 
 shoulder no small share of the moral responsi- 
 bility for the prevalence of libertinism in Amer- 
 ica, whether we mean by this term that form 
 permitted and sanctioned in high life by the di- 
 vorce court, or, among both high and lowly, the 
 crime of the brothel. The physician at least has 
 a thorough knowledge of the consequences of 
 both forms of immorality as shown in retrograde 
 and degenerate processes in the human economy. 
 From such a mother-influence and environment 
 sprang the famous family of Jukes in New York 
 80 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 City, one vicious couple with 1,200 direct de- 
 scendants or offspring, all traced, of whom 300 
 died in infancy, 300 were paupers, 7 murderers, 
 50 prostitutes, 60 thieves, 130 general criminals, 
 400 early physical wrecks, and many imbecile or 
 insane. 
 
 It hardly required the training of a physician 
 to recognize the pathologic process involving the 
 mind of the public when one of your distinguished 
 fellow citizens dared to write in a current maga- 
 zine (the " Arena " of February last) the follow- 
 ing: "To deny (divorced) persons the right of 
 remarriage is but an indirect attempt at legaliz- 
 ing compulsory sex-suppression." He failed to 
 inform you that it is even more true, in most in- 
 stances, that to allow remarriage after divorce, 
 whatever the cause, is a very direct attempt at 
 legalizing adultery in one of its most insidious 
 forms; though he betrays himself in his conclu- 
 sion, " So then let us unite to defend the liberty 
 of all who live natural and happy lives, through 
 easy divorce and the right of remarriage." 
 
 He might better have been open in saying " let 
 s 81 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 us defend the license of all who take upon them- 
 selves the marriage vow with a mental reserva- 
 tion, and the intent at some convenient time to 
 disregard the solemn simplicity of its imperative 
 command." 
 
 But let us return to the physician. Hereto- 
 fore his misguided sense of the fitness of things 
 has obscured his moral vision and blunted the 
 sting of his conscience to such a degree that his 
 tongue has failed to perform its duty, and even 
 to-day would appear too palsied to tell its tale 
 bravely and well. If a thorough reckoning could 
 be had of the physical suffering and distress in 
 this country, and of the lives blighted, and of the 
 homes broken, all of which might have been 
 saved had American medical men done their sim- 
 ple duty in telling the world all they knew, you 
 would say to me that physicians had hardly earned 
 the right to confer with the minister of the Gos- 
 pel as to the enforcement of the Divine Com- 
 mandment. The Puritan Fathers landed with a 
 clean bill of moral health, beside which our own 
 makes a discreditable showing. These facts are 
 82 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 regretfully acknowledged by thousands of physi- 
 cians, who to-day are endeavoring with feverish 
 haste to undo the wrong which their timidity and 
 false sense of propriety have perpetrated. Are 
 they, however, alone in this fault of omission? 
 Our sense of shame is hardly the less when we 
 remember that the clergy have also encouraged 
 the people to sell their birthright of virtue, to- 
 gether with the sanctity of home ideals, by them- 
 selves permitting and performing the rite of re- 
 marriage of libertines separated by the morally 
 irresponsible law. If it be known in advance 
 that no clergyman could be found on God's earth 
 who would sanction the divorce by assisting the 
 man or woman who had once violated the mar- 
 riage vow to mock the Supreme Judge by a re- 
 assumption of the same vow with another hus- 
 band or wife, at least one form of the leprosy 
 of the twentieth century must die of inanition. 
 It is idle to say, as some do, that the civil law 
 would replace the clergyman. Civil authority 
 has little weight with the dying man, and, gen- 
 erally speaking, would have just as little influence 
 
 83 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in the long run over the masses of the people who 
 marry and are given in marriage. Man may 
 scoff and trifle with the ordinary business of food- 
 getting, and even jest aloud at the thought of a 
 Supreme Deity; but in his heart he knows that 
 there is a God, and consequently insists that the 
 ceremonies of marriage and death are serious and 
 divine affairs, not to be relegated to the magis- 
 trate and the mayor. 
 
 Thus the physician through failure to inform, 
 and the clergyman, partly through ignorance of 
 the scientific facts (his misfortune and again the 
 physician's fault) resulting in a harmful use of 
 the marriage ceremony, must bear together the 
 yoke of responsibility for the social evil as it 
 exists to-day. Theirs is the burden, and the load 
 will continue pressing until their shoulders are 
 applied in copartnership, and with a realization 
 that they possess an ample, though slumbering 
 power. 
 
 It is my purpose to lay before you the condi- 
 tions as they exist in our country at the present 
 moment, and subsequently to discuss the possi- 
 
 84 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 bility and means of cure. With a view to pre- 
 senting as compactly as possible a subject which, 
 if exhaustively treated, would not find space in 
 volumes or in days of time, I shall consider 
 briefly three main features of the social evil : — 
 
 (i) Its prevalence in its various forms; (2) 
 Its effect upon the individual and upon society at 
 large; and (3) The attempts of the past to con- 
 trol and to eradicate this world-wide disease. 
 
 PREVALENCE OF THE SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 I shall retain the term, social evil, in order that 
 what I have to say may be devoid of offense even 
 to that portion of the public whose approval, at 
 best half-willing, might be lost owing to sensibil- 
 ities which prove stronger than conviction and 
 conscience. Adultery, none the less, is the only 
 term which completely characterizes the principle 
 involved in the act of the libertine, married or 
 single. Among the leisure classes it usually 
 announces itself in the divorce courts, those 
 market places and incubators of private immoral- 
 ity. It has recently been estimated that of every 
 
 85 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 9,900 marriages celebrated in this country about 
 500 (482) eventuate in divorce. You need not 
 be told that the majority of these divorced indi- 
 viduals again marry, and not a few are divorced 
 or separated a second time. With a considerable 
 number the possibility of a divorce probably de- 
 cides the rupture of a home circle, which might 
 otherwise remain intact, and often become re- 
 spectable, and perhaps affectionate and co-opera- 
 tive. During the last month there came to my 
 notice a woman who had been unhappy in three 
 matrimonial ventures, had been divorced from 
 each of her helpmeets, remarried by clergymen, 
 and who, when she attracted my attention, was 
 marrying for the fourth time. It is not an in- 
 frequent occurrence for divorced men to marry 
 divorced women without a scruple of conscience 
 as to right or propriety. On "the other hand, I 
 must confess that I know of at least one instance 
 in which the circumstances seemed to justify the 
 strange confusion of fidelity to and disregard of 
 the marriage vow. The exception, as usual, 
 proves the rule. Just a week ago the news- 
 86 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 papers published in black headlines the account of 
 a prominent woman of one of our Eastern cities 
 who obtained a divorce from her husband on the 
 ground of desertion, and was remarried four 
 hours later. In such an instance the object of 
 the divorce was not separation, nor the right of 
 woman to be free, but of prompt remarriage into 
 an at least questionable state. 
 
 The onlooker is tempted to propound the Sad- 
 ducee's question, " Whose wife of them is she ? " 
 Certainly not of the latter, rather than of the for- 
 mer husband, on the mere ground that the law 
 has declared the marital obligation at an end. In 
 the great majority of instances children have by 
 their birth set a seal upon the first union. Of 
 the 25,535 divorces granted in 1886, 65.8 per 
 cent, were on petition of the wife, and in only 
 14.6 per cent, is the positive statement made that 
 no children were born to the couple ; while in 43 
 per cent, only is there no mention of the child in 
 the legal proceedings, the presumption being that 
 in more than the remaining 57 per cent, children 
 had been born and had survived the divorce. An 
 
 87 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 average of at least 2.07 children were born to 
 each couple. What, I ask, must be the name of 
 the act which confirms the second marriage of 
 such a mother or father while the child's other 
 parent still lives? Even the children notice and 
 ponder over these happenings, and gain from 
 them their first coating of moral callous, leading 
 in a straight line to the conclusion that sexual 
 purity is a commodity of doubtful existence and 
 still more doubtful value. 
 
 As a proof that children observe and later con- 
 tribute to the record of social evil, bears witness 
 the flippant way in which those who have lately 
 discarded the breast and bottle talk of "father and 
 mother being separated," or "divorced," before 
 they fully understand the meaning of the term. 
 Such children marry, often before they have en- 
 tered upon full womanhood or manhood, with an 
 inborn light regard for the solemnity of the mar- 
 riage rite that ensures an early swelling of the 
 divorce records in the City Hall. 
 
 During the entire period 1877 to 1886 there 
 were in the United States 444 divorces for every 
 88 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 10,000 marriages, as against 152 in Germany, 
 127 in France, and 19 in England. Thus there 
 were in the United States alone during 1867 to 
 1886 8,330,000 marriages and 328,716 divorces 
 granted, as against 258,332 in all of Europe. Of 
 these 328,716 divorces, 67,686, or over 20 per 
 cent., were obtained on the ground of adultery. 
 The census of 1890 records 120,496 divorced 
 persons in the United States. I have already 
 quoted statistics to the effect that the divorce ratio 
 has now risen to 482 per 9,900 marriages. Of 
 the divorced individuals only the great minority 
 fail to join themselves to and cohabit with other 
 individuals, their former consorts making a no 
 less indecent haste along the same highway. 
 
 It is but a step from the boudoir of the divorcee 
 to the house of prostitution ; too often just around 
 the corner. To be sure, the chandeliers and the 
 transom of the one are not brilliant with crimson 
 coloring like those of the latter. There must 
 be tasteful and refined obscurity in the immorality 
 of educated people, whatever its nature. The 
 fact is evident that the marriage vow is debauched 
 89 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 and violated, though this furnishes no warrant 
 for foregoing any of the regulations of wealth, 
 position, aristocracy, and lineage. We will re- 
 turn at a later point to discuss this phase of the 
 problem. For the moment let us proceed nat- 
 urally in our study of the question. 
 
 There are at present in Philadelphia between 
 2,000 and 3,000 public prostitutes. New York 
 City acknowledges between 40,000 and 50,000 
 abandoned women; and Chicago, although accu- 
 rate figures are unobtainable, would appear to be 
 afflicted with a larger army than either of the 
 other cities. As a matter of fact, Chicago to-day, 
 if we can draw an inference from the few figures 
 at our command, supports as many prostitutes as 
 Philadelphia and New York together. Even as 
 far back as 1884 this central metropolis harbored, 
 according to the police estimate, 302 houses of 
 ill fame, with 1,097 regular inmates. During 
 the World's Fair this number was doubled, if not 
 trebled ; and since that time Chicago has remained 
 a vast cauldron of vice between the east and the 
 center of the country. The prostitutes by their 
 90 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 very existence, as well as openly on the street, in- 
 vite boys and men from fourteen years upward 
 to senility, and claim a large number as lasting 
 patrons. Some few of these young and old male 
 children learn an early lesson, and benefit by a 
 severe experience. Many contract the habit-dis- 
 ease of sexual dissipation, of which they are never 
 rid. I have found it necessary to come in contact 
 with and see the inside of a considerable number 
 of houses of ill fame, some decked with both hu- 
 man and inanimate furniture intended only for 
 the rich, others of the meanest description. In 
 one I found a young girl of twenty who told me 
 her real name, and both the name and her sorry 
 tale proved her to be the daughter of a cultivated 
 home circle of which I know more than one mem- 
 ber. Even so close to the fireside does the temp- 
 ter creep. 
 
 In the center of the residence portion, and in 
 the very block in which I lived until recently, 
 stood a house built for and occupied by the mis- 
 tress of one of the prominent politicians of your 
 sister city. Every man, woman, and child with- 
 
 91 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in many squares knew there "was something 
 wrong " with the woman who came and went 
 through its doors. A near relative now occupies 
 a house which was formerly altered and made 
 attractive for still another Cleopatra by another 
 municipal Mark Antony. 
 
 Fortunately the vice of a city is centered, as a 
 rule, in a given locality, and as long as it is un- 
 molested it keeps within its boundaries with con- 
 siderable consistency. This is the state of afifairs 
 in your city and mine to such an extent that one 
 may say a boy and girl must look for moral 
 trouble in order to have it come their way. And 
 yet we have seen that this is not invariably and 
 strictly true. A gentleman of my acquaintance 
 told me recently that he had found it necessary to 
 take measures to prevent his son of sixteen years 
 from indulging in sexual intercourse with a mar- 
 ried woman who lived in the house opposite, and 
 a friend of the family. His attention was called 
 to the matter by the frequent visits of the boy to 
 a home in which there were no juvenile attrac- 
 tions. The country boy, on the other hand, has 
 92 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 at home few temptations and still fewer possibili- 
 ties of mischief. Hence vice and resulting dis- 
 ease are much rarer in the rural districts than in 
 the cities. The country boy needs, above all, 
 safeguarding when in the city. Once let such in- 
 nocent boys or girls have the length of the holiday 
 rope, and unless their natural ignorance and curi- 
 osity are protected in advance or educated out of 
 existence, in just the matters which you and I are 
 discussing, they furnish the readiest and most easi- 
 ly yielding supply for the ever greedy demand of 
 prostitution. One unfortunate phase of univer- 
 sity and business life in a city is that it introduces 
 these boys and young men, and too often young 
 girls, to temptations and vicious conditions, and 
 to unscrupulous companions, at a time when they 
 are green as the grass on which they have been 
 reared. Many go astray through ignorance, pure 
 and simple. We have found this so true in my 
 own University that we are taking the pains to 
 warn the incoming class of each year with regard 
 to the dangers of illicit sexual intercourse from 
 the medical standpoint. The large universities 
 
 93 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 are most seriously exposed. The smaller country 
 colleges still retain at least the inestimable advan- 
 tage of pure air for breathing purposes, and pure 
 moral surroundings within which their students 
 may expand mentally and manfully. 
 
 Even the preparatory school does not escape. 
 Indeed, I question whether, in the light of that 
 which I have seen, as well as from what I have 
 learned since undertaking this study during the 
 last few years, I would dare advise parents to 
 send a young boy to one of the large boarding 
 preparatory schools. One of my earliest patients, 
 now a grown man, and intensely interested in the 
 wish to prevent young boys from making his own 
 mistake, has told me that he first entered a house 
 of ill fame with a number of other boys when he 
 was fifteen years of age, and a member of a junior 
 class in a school nearer your city than it is to 
 mine. He carried from the house, as did a num- 
 ber of his boy friends, a severe venereal infection. 
 Other boys from the same school have recently 
 told me that the practice has not died out, and 
 
 94 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 that even younger boys are at times led into 
 worse than mischief. 
 
 Another boy, now also a man, and formerly 
 a member of one of our large Philadelphia 
 schools, a short time ago told me much the same 
 tale, giving me free permission to carry it to the 
 head master providing I used no names. This I 
 did £S)out a year ago, and received the following 
 reply : — 
 
 My Bear Sir: — 
 
 I have your letter of the 3rd inst. There is much that I 
 might say in a personal interview virhich I cannot write. 
 While I acknowledge, of course, the fact of the presence 
 of that young man (who was formerly a student here) in 
 your office, I have grave doubts in regard to the truth of 
 the assertion he makes about others, because, being in a 
 bad place himself, he is biased. To take such statements 
 for what ought to be the results of careful investigation 
 is to do wrong. ... A long experience as head of a 
 school has convinced me that the assertions of boys and 
 young men as regards the institution which they attend may 
 point the way to an investigation, but are unsafe to accept 
 as results of such an investigation, . . . When I was 
 
 at College as a student the college numbered 60 
 
 men. I was there four years. I knew every boy in the 
 place and knew him well. There was but one on whom 
 
 95 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 even a suspicion of such a thing could rest. . . . You 
 seem to lose sight of the innocent, and there are plenty 
 of them, I assure you. As a proof of it in my own case, I 
 can say that no case has ever come within my knowledge. 
 As a boy I was in ten different schools, boarding and day. 
 That is, I have been associated with boys So years. I, of 
 course, acknowledge the force of your facts, but I cannot 
 from my own experience substantiate your inferences and 
 the statements that have been made to you. ^ 
 
 I remain etc, etc. 
 
 I laid his letter before his former pupil, who 
 
 was equally astonished with me at the simplicity 
 
 and unwillingness to listen of this friend and stu- 
 
 ■ dent of boys of 50 years' standing. His former 
 
 charge said to me, " You may tell him that while 
 
 I was in class at least ten of my classmates 
 
 had had illicit intercourse with women, and some 
 of us had gotten into trouble." 
 
 I wrote again, proposing to him to invite the 
 parents of his boys to a brief meeting at which 
 I should lay before them the details in my pos- 
 session, asking them to decide whether the eyes 
 of their boys should be opened regarding the cer- 
 tain consequences of their folly. I received the 
 96 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 following ingenuous but evidently heartfelt re- 
 ply:— 
 
 My Dear Friend: — 
 
 I have yours of the 1st inst. I thank you for writing me 
 and also for sending me the pamphlet. I should not want 
 for a moment to question the wisdom of approaching such 
 a subject with college students, but I cannot feel that it 
 would be right to enter upon it with my boys. Practically 
 all my boys spend their time not at school in their own 
 homes, under the care of parents who love them. I cannot 
 see my way clear to get between them and their boys. In 
 the matter of etc., etc. With great regard, I am 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 The above, I regret to say, pictures fairly well 
 the attitude of about one-quarter of the male pub- 
 lic, one of mortified, injured unbelief. A full 
 half of the remainder not only does not disap- 
 prove of what is going on of mischief in thisold 
 world, but often takes part in the proceeding. 
 This portion of our people has prevented and is 
 preventing moral progress by lowering the aver- 
 age tension of conscience and desire for better- 
 ment throughout the country at large. The re- 
 maining quarter represents the small circle of 
 7 97 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 earnest fathers, physicians, and ministers of the 
 Gospel who know the facts and are acting upon 
 them. Possibly you ask the reason why boys 
 cannot even now be thoroughly guarded against 
 evil knowledge and against temptation. 
 
 Figures and statistics speak more plainly than 
 argument. We have already noted the total of 
 80,000 to 100,000 prostitutes in the cities of 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago; Paris 
 alone is estimated by her public officers to sup- 
 port 100,000; Berlin estimates her army at 40,- 
 000 to 50,000. We need say nothing whatso- 
 ever of the rest of the world, even of London with 
 her 31,800 and upwards, to show the ease with 
 which the young boy and man comes into con- 
 tact with temptation. Of these prostitutes nearly 
 one-half are not yet twenty years of age. Child- 
 vice is anything but a myth. Probably no large 
 city is free from the agents of the houses of pros- 
 titution, on the watch for the young girls who fill 
 the rapidly decimating ranks of the army of sor- 
 row. The Massachusetts Commission (Bureau 
 of Statistics of Labor) has shown that the major- 
 98 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 ity of these girls come directly from their homes. 
 Contrary to the usual belief, comparatively few 
 are actually married prior to prostitution. It was 
 found that the following figures represented 
 roughly the percentage of married women among 
 those engaged in prostitution in the large cities. 
 
 New Yoric . ., 25. % (Sanger) 
 
 [Boston 7-65% 
 
 Chicago .....25.6 % 
 
 Cincinnati , 20.1 % 
 
 Louisville 26.6 % 
 
 New Orleans ,. . 2.4 %" 
 
 Philadelphia 3.0 % 
 
 San Francisco ... 25.08% 
 
 Of 3,866 prostitutes questioned, 1,236 (31.9%) 
 had had no previous occupation, while 1,155 
 (29.8%) were engaged in housework, hotel serv- 
 ice, table work, and cooking. Only 126 were 
 saleswomen, and only 52 actresses, ballet girls, 
 etc. Sanger reaches similar conclusions, and pub- 
 lishes like figures. Of this prostitute assembly 
 from 40,000 to 50,000 die annually in the United 
 
 99 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 States, the average life being five or six years at 
 their trade. No one year shows a marked de- 
 crease over the one preceding, the vacant ranks 
 being at once filled by young and often previously 
 innocent girls. The negro race furnishes no small 
 number of the prostitutes in the large cities, many 
 of these finding their patrons almost, if not quite, 
 exclusively among white men. I well remember 
 the remark of a fellow-student of my college 
 days, now a physician, to the effect that he " found 
 no pleasure in the society of a white woman." 
 The observer needs merely to scan the constantly 
 increasing army of mulattos and octoroons on our 
 city thoroughfares to realize the extent to which 
 the intercommunication of the races is progress- 
 ing. There is also no doubt in my mind that this 
 is one of the most fundamental explanations of 
 the insubordinate and assertive effrontery of 
 many of the northern negroes. The only doubt 
 that remains in my mind is as to whether the 
 term effrontery is justified under the circum- 
 stances. 
 Little wonder then that our boys learn early to 
 
 100 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 understand the pleasures and too often the conse- 
 quences of sexual sin. Usually the sin is sought 
 by the sinner, but in the face of these figures there 
 should be no one with the temerity to say that evil 
 is far to seek, and that an early warning is not 
 required to save the average American boy. It 
 will many a time require more than the pastor's 
 example and personal plea, and the warning and 
 afifectionate assurance of the family physician that 
 if a man honors his mind and body, both body 
 and mind will honor him. It will need the intelli- 
 gent instruction of both the mother and father, 
 and the home influence ; and God pity the boy who 
 has neither. I shall have more to say of the thor- 
 oughness of the saturation of this country with 
 the social evil when I meet you again. A word 
 now regarding the 
 
 RESULTS OF THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA. 
 
 First, with reference to the individual. I would 
 place the responsibility for the gradual disappear- 
 ance of the American home circle, one of our 
 prized institutions, equally at the door of those 
 
 lOI 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 who are guilty of marital infidelity and at that of 
 the average remarried divorcee and his half-sister 
 and brother, the male and female prostitute. 
 When we record 325,000 and upward of Ameri- 
 can homes disrupted during ten years in the di- 
 vorce court, and 70,000 and odd of these openly 
 laid at the threshold of adultery, we have said 
 enough to stir the most slothful to activity, if only 
 the public knew what is most vital to its perma- 
 nence and character. What a wilfully slow and 
 ignorant thing the public is ! Three hundred thou- 
 sand loyal new Christian homes scattered here and 
 there throughout the land would exert an influ- 
 ence at once so masterful and far-reaching as to 
 win it for clean living. Three hundred thousand 
 divorces mean that the morals of the community 
 are on a gallop down hill. And yet I believe that 
 by raising their hands the physicians and clergy- 
 men of America can, in a great measure, stem this 
 tide. 
 
 In home breaking you have heard my most seri- 
 ous charge, for with its passing goes also the 
 American pride in the family name that serves as 
 102 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 the last restraint against wrongdoing. There is 
 still another form of home breaking of which few 
 of you will hear until your work leads you among 
 the common people, the factory and the laboring 
 population. It is also the result of and a form of 
 the social evil. One of your fellow-citizens pic- 
 tures it in a letter from the Educational Alliance. 
 " We are called upon every evening by deserted 
 wives," and "a noticeable element common to 
 most of these cases is that the women are about 
 to become mothers." Many bigamy cases result, 
 the woman living with the first man who offers 
 immediate support, with or without the form of 
 marriage. Do you wonder at her decision ? What 
 would you be likely to do in her place? 
 
 Only second in importance is the widespread 
 ser ies of v e nere aF diseases, polymorphous, and 
 transmitted not only by sexual intercourse, but, in 
 the event that an innocent person is infected, with 
 equal rapidity if not with equal frequency, by all 
 the graces of affection, by the kiss, the embrace, 
 from mother to son, from daughter to father, and 
 the circle around. New York is estimated as to- 
 103 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 day harboring 225,000 persons infected with syph- 
 ilis, and about 800,000 suffering from gonorrhoea 
 in the acute and chronic forms. Not one of these 
 persons can fail to infect some other who contin- 
 ues the endless chain. Sturgis estimated that 
 there are annually 50,000 new cases of syphilitic 
 infection in New York City, each of which at once 
 becomes a new focus for the spread of the disease. 
 The greatest danger is to wives and mothers, and 
 thence to all with whom they come in contact. 
 Occasionally a physician will be heard venturing 
 the assertion that his experience does not bear out 
 these statements, and that the danger is greatly 
 overdrawn. He is convinced only by the statisti- 
 cal record of cases observed in great cities like 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. 
 
 I have as yet made no reference to the wide- 
 spread distribution of venereal diseases among the 
 prostitute class. It is sufficient to say that no 
 prostitute can ply her or his trade long without 
 suffering venereal infection, and that most, if not 
 all, carry these diseases in a chronic form, which 
 renders them practically incurable, and perma- 
 104 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 nently a source of danger to those with whom they 
 associate. Nearly a half of several thousand ques- 
 tioned openly acknowledged infection. Statistics 
 show that as a result of cohabitation with these 
 women over 50 per cent, of all young men in this 
 country are infected with some form of venereal 
 disease before their thirtieth year. Nor do Amer- 
 ican wives fail to suffer as the result of this har- 
 vest. Morrow states that there is more venereal 
 infection among virtuous wives than among pro- 
 fessional prostitutes in this country; a statement 
 which, while extreme, at least shows the serious 
 attitude of mind with which the condition of af- 
 fairs is regarded by those who make it their spe- 
 cial study. He also submits the following figures : 
 Allow that 8 per cent, of the 16,000,000 married 
 women in this country are infected by gonorrhoea 
 (instead of the 80 per cent, estimated by Noegge- 
 rath in writing of venereal disease among the 
 wives of New York City) ; thisj he says, " would 
 give over one and a quarter million (women) in- 
 fected from gonorrhoea alone " in the United 
 States of America. This estimate is at least with- 
 
 105 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in the limits of probability, and is undoubtedly far 
 too low. 
 
 The report of the Committee of Seven of New 
 York City showed that 30 per cent, of all in- 
 stances of venereal infection seen in private prac- 
 tice! among women are due to the husband's gon- 
 orrhoea; while Fournier proved that 25 per cent, 
 of all syphilitic women seen in private practice 
 were similar so-called " innocent " infections, and 
 that of the married women infected with syphilis 
 75 per cent, of all cases originated with the hus- 
 band. Every instance of such infection, of 
 course, represents one or more examples of pre- 
 vious illicit intercourse, or, more politely speak- 
 ing, the social evil. 
 
 The ultimate result is octopus-like in its influ- 
 ence. Statistics show that 50 per cent, of all mar- 
 ried women infected with gonorrhoea, namely, 50 
 per cent, of at least 1,250,000 women in this coun- 
 try (calculating still from the almost ridiculously 
 small 8 per cent.) are sterile. If some one would 
 inform President Roosevelt of this fact, he would 
 perhaps allow American mothers a breathing in- 
 106 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 terval before reassuring them as to the horror 
 of wilful sterility, when physically capable of 
 bearing children. Neither the President, nor 
 the wife, and ofttimes not even the family physi- 
 cian, suspects the presence of a latent infection. 
 Too often the physician knows it certainly 
 and protects the husband by a judicious 
 but manifestly unfair silence. It is high time the 
 President turned his strenuous gaze in intelli- 
 gent pity upon those mothers who cannot beget 
 children because of the 50 per cent, of our young 
 men who contract venereal disease before they 
 have arrived at a marriageable age. However 
 great the justification for his observation when 
 first made, there must have been many such among 
 the audiences which he has chided for their sup- 
 posed selfish desire for a small and select family 
 circle. 
 
 In France, where such statistics are recorded, 
 we find that 20-25,000 children die annually of 
 hereditary syphilis. A far greater number never 
 live to die. In America, where venereal diseases 
 are not even discussed by the laity for false mod- 
 107 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 esty's sake, it would seem at least advisable to give 
 heed to the fact that 25 per cent, of all the blind- 
 ness in the world is being caused by one venereal 
 disease, gonorrhoea, and many more cases by its 
 congener, syphilis. We not only make no public 
 record of these matters, but our journals refuse to 
 publish the facts, because they are too bald. 
 
 And finally, for I have already given you more 
 than enough food for reflection during the short 
 period before we continue this discussion, just a 
 word regarding the 
 
 ATTEMPTS OF THE PAST TO CONTROL AND ERADI- 
 CATE THE SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 In Europe, as well as in America, nearly every 
 known method has been made the object of ex- 
 periment, from moral suasion down to deliberate 
 licensing of the prostitute class, individually and 
 collectively, in houses of legalized ill repute. In 
 Vienna I have seen the cards issued to these wom- 
 en, licensing them to ply their trade, and sup- 
 posedly guaranteeing them at the time of issuing 
 the card to be free from venereal disease. 
 108 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 In France and Germany hundreds are exam- 
 ined at intervals by officially appointed physicians, 
 who, as far as it is possible, scrutinize these un- 
 fortunate beings in the hope of preventing a por- 
 tion of the harm they may do to humanity in re- 
 sponse to humanity's own lustful invitation. St. 
 Louis, in our own country, has tried the same 
 measure. The general verdict may be epitomized 
 in the comment of Lecour, the Prefect of Paris, 
 who finds that " prostitution is increasing in Paris 
 in spite of the strictest regulation." In nearly all 
 _theEuropean_coujitries the regulation~laws are 
 being or have been repealed as not only worthless 
 tut \iisadvantageous to the cause. Registration 
 died a stormy death in St. Louis four years after 
 it was adopted. 
 
 In certain cities the world over, arid in this 
 country, the first notable example abroad being 
 Rome, the attempt was instituted to confine the 
 prostitute class within one section or locality. 
 This has also invariably failed. It has so far par- 
 tially succeeded only in those instances in which 
 the isolation and localization has been sponta- 
 109 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 neous ; never when enforced by law, because such 
 enforcement is beyond human power. 
 
 Rarely, and I am glad to say only rarely in re- 
 cent years, has the effort been systematically 
 made to punish the female unfortunate; for in 
 the long run she is an unfortunate, and often ab- 
 hors her mode of living and the sin of it all. She 
 suffers as certainly as she injures, and in a few 
 short years meets her inevitable doom, death from 
 disease. She is then with her Maker, who knows 
 her better and has more pity for her than you or I. 
 The skirts of Almighty Justice are spotlessly 
 clean, and cover a benevolence that is incompre- 
 hensible to those who are most severe in their pro- 
 fessed integrity and have yet allowed themselves 
 to carry on or condone this abomination since the 
 world began. 
 
 The attempts of the past, we may conclude, 
 have one and all proved signal failures. This the 
 figures and facts which I have cited conclusively 
 show. The outlook from many standpoints is 
 indeed a dark one from the very nature of things. 
 The right of suffrage rests within the hand of the 
 no 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 male member of society. Up to date he has failed 
 to provide for the correction of the male sinner, 
 and is likely to if the solution of the problem be 
 left altogether to him. It must also be noted that 
 as usual that portion of the world which is work- 
 ing at all, is starting from the wrong end of things 
 and is attempting to cure a canker the nature and 
 cause of which it does not yet understand. It does 
 not yet realize that strict virtue has not attained 
 par value. You will also find physicians, and even 
 so-called specialists in venereal disease, who will 
 admit the accuracy of all the figures I have laid 
 before you, and yet ridicule the possibility and 
 advisability of an attempt at betterment or cure. 
 A certain few in their crass ignorance even deny 
 the facts. These few, moreover, are virulent, and 
 have rendered difficult the most hopeful of all the 
 methods in our reach, the only one that has not 
 had a thorough trying out, viz. : the education of 
 our women and children in the laws of physiol- 
 ogy, of health, and of their free-bom physical and 
 moral rights, and the right to demand them. As 
 
 III 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 a matter of fact we must confess that we are only 
 beginning to succeed in a battle centuries old. 
 
 What will you and I conclude in this serious 
 matter ? Is the social evil incurable at the present 
 time? I think we must answer " yes, under exist- 
 ing circumstances, and as long as it enjoys the 
 sleek, contented, participating inactivity of the 
 people ! " Is there any prospect of its disappear- 
 ance in our children's time ? Probably not, owing 
 largely to the indifference or positively bad influ- 
 ence of many fathers and mothers, and of much 
 of the literature of the day. Another most potent 
 influence in rendering the existence of the prosti- 
 tute possible, and often profitable, is the certainty 
 that there will be sufficient patronage for them all 
 for at least a sufficient period for the extinction of 
 our present youngest generation. Many of the 
 latter have inherited from their parents an almost 
 uncontrollable lustful desire. There is a likeli- 
 r hood, however, that your children and mine can 
 ij be individually protected and educated in the 
 I knowledge of good and evil, if you and I person- 
 ally see to it, and that the social crime can be lim- 
 
 112 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 ited to the lowest and to the openly libertine por- 
 tion of the so-called higher classes. 
 
 Is there indeed ground for the hope that our 
 children's children will see the day in which mar- 
 riage shall have become an altogether sacred in- 
 stitution, a day in which adultery shall be unhesi- 
 tatingly called by the name stamped upon it by 
 the Supreme Judge, and a day in which men and 
 women as well as boys and girls shall set a watch 
 upon their towers to guard and keep them pure 
 against the final reckoning? 
 
 To this question I answer affirmatively without 
 reserve. Vice is indeed a disease-habit, not a 
 mere custom grown into, and easily, or even with 
 difficulty, discarded. It can be uprooted trunk 
 and branch years hence if the starvation process 
 be begun now. Only that which is nourished can 
 live. In its worst light we must look upon im- 
 morality as a human sore, involving moral fibres 
 which have long been on the verge of malignancy; 
 but which can yet be stimulated into healthy 
 growth. In its best illumination it may be seen 
 in the far distance as a plague, conquered by in- 
 
 8 113 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 telligent prevention begun to-day and continued 
 forever. Prevention implies the ethical training 
 of American mothers and fathers, and, through 
 them, of the present and of the coming American 
 infancy. The Hand that wrote upon the tables of 
 stone "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" is 
 able and inevitably must enforce the command. 
 Only the thoughtless and the hopeless dare con- 
 clude that immorality can find justification and 
 permanence in the eternal plan. Somewhere and 
 somewhen you and I will be held strictly account- 
 able not only for all the wrong we have done, but 
 for all we have failed to prevent, our accountabil- 
 ity being measured by the breadth of our vision, 
 and by the talent in our keeping. I cannot con- 
 ceive of an All-wise Justice that will sanction or 
 condone a compromise with this evil, or a lack of 
 hopefulness as to the final result. Time flies 
 swiftly. What is impossible to-day will be inex- 
 plicably easy to-morrow. Your influence and mine 
 have their value in God's sight, if not in that of 
 our fellows. Morality and pure living have few 
 champions whose loyalty can stand the final test. 
 114 
 
THE SOCIAL EVIL IN AMERICA 
 
 The church itself is full of slothfulness, insincer- 
 ity, and covered sin. The public standard of 
 morals, when all the returns are in, is low. Your 
 standard and mine have been too low ; otherwise 
 we would not have come together tonight. The 
 demand for the disappearance of this scourge has 
 neither become active nor general, and will not 
 until there is a deeper intelligence and awakening. 
 But from behind all the discouragement of the 
 task, and beneath and throughout all the weari- 
 ness of the struggle that is before you and me, if 
 we engage in the battle for the preservation of the 
 home circle and a clean America, beams forth with 
 a brilliancy and a certainty that are as constantly 
 and newly refreshing as the promise is old, the 
 legend 
 
 " He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor 
 sleep!" 
 
 You and I are not working alone. I never hear 
 a man or woman venture the assertion that the 
 social evil is a necessary institution, and impossible 
 of remedy (and I have heard clergymen, even, 
 
 "5 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 make this claim), without hearing, as it were, in 
 the distance the prophet calling, " Is the Lord's 
 Hand waxed short ? " " Shall the clay say to him 
 that fashioneth it. What makest thou? or thy 
 work, He hath no hands ? " 
 
 " God needs best men to help Him," but in the 
 finality of things, if the efforts of best men fail, 
 there are still the Everlasting Arms which will 
 gather the harvest of good and bad, and enfold 
 all that is worthy of nobility and of the crown of 
 life. The embrace will repay every effort and 
 every energy spent in keeping one child or ten 
 thousand thousand children pure and true. 
 
 ii6 
 
IV 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE 
 CITIZEN TO THE 
 SOCIAL EVIL.* 
 
 tttTTTHAT is Truth?' said jesting Pilate; 
 V V and would not stay for an answer." 
 
 When Bacon quoted these words, he must have 
 been looking forward in his mind's eye to some 
 such condition of affairs as exists in the America 
 of the twentieth century, and to her indifference 
 to the social evil in her midst Again by this 
 term let me include not only the avocation of the 
 scarlet woman, but just as certainly the lust and 
 looseness of morals, home and public, that dot 
 here and there almost every walk in life. 
 
 The answer to Pilate's jest rings painfully clear 
 
 * Address to the students of Union Theological Seminary, April 
 14, 1905. 
 
 117 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in the ears of the American citizen, and yet he 
 waves it by. The public is in fact a gigantic Pon- 
 tius Pilate, asking with the same semi-seriousness, 
 " What is truth ? " and closing both ears and eyes, 
 and turning its back to the answer. It has not 
 wanted social purity or it would have had it long 
 since. 
 
 Bacon also said that " Clear and round dealing 
 is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of 
 falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, 
 which may make the metal work the better, but it 
 embaseth it." America has traduced her own na- 
 ture in postponing clear and round dealing in this 
 matter of public morals and in closing her ears to 
 the cry that is going up within and around her 
 borders. That I have exaggerated in no particu- 
 lar the extent to which her robes have been soiled, 
 you will admit upon the simple basis of the facts 
 laid before you at our previous meeting. That 
 we can still square our moral account is, however, 
 equally true, and I wish with this as our object, to 
 discuss our position as individual citizens with 
 
 ii8 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 relation to both legalized and criminal sexual im- 
 morality. 
 
 A vital question must again be propounded and 
 answered at the outset : Is the social evil in any 
 respect a necessary institution? Of course the 
 only possible advantage would be that of physical 
 need. From the physical standpoint, however, it 
 certainly is not necessary. There is at the present 
 time no reason for doubt as to the attitude of the 
 medical profession upon this point. If there is any 
 principle that has been thoroughly established by 
 the consensus of medical opinion it is that neither 
 man nor woman has been fashioned in such 
 a way by the Creator as to render it impossible or 
 even deleterious to the general welfare to remain 
 continent, in the strictest natural meaning of the 
 word, throughout an entire life. The married 
 state undoubtedly realizes the highest and most 
 complete fulfilment of physical and moral happi- 
 ness, and yet in the face of centuries of contrary 
 teaching the twentieth century physician must in 
 all honesty tell you that no man nor woman has 
 ever been physically or morally benefited by illicit 
 119 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 indulgence. Thousands who have permitted 
 themselves to enter upon the practice — which, 
 when once begun, medical history tells you, is at 
 once a habit-disease — have ruined physical 
 health and mentality, and at the same time 
 brought disease and suffering upon those around 
 them. 
 
 With the boy, the natural question is, Is it 
 right? Is it worth while? Do I dare to run the 
 risk for curiosity's sake, or to escape ridicule? 
 With the grown man the desire for novelty has 
 degenerated into a search for sexual pleasure, and 
 the wrong done to his true self and to the partner 
 of his excesses fades dimly away behind the too 
 often deliberate misapprehension that he is re- 
 sponding to one of Nature's imperative demands. 
 One of your fellow-townsmen, to whom I referred 
 at the time of my previous meeting with you, in- 
 timates in his closing paragraph that enforced 
 chastity will result in disease, which, he says, " is 
 the usual vengeance of outraged nature." Either 
 ignorance or a wicked carelessness of the truth 
 inspires every such statement. I feel that the 
 1 20 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 young man who reads it, and decides for the sale 
 of his and another's soul as against a virtuous 
 life, may with some semblance of justice twine a 
 wreath of reproaches around the author's brow, 
 and lay heavily upon him the responsibility for a 
 new wave of wrongdoing in this land of ours, 
 into which every year pours enough of the old 
 world's dregs to satisfy our worst cravings. 
 
 The morally loose woman acts upon much the 
 same motive. The only distinction that I would 
 draw between the mental attitude of the two sexes 
 in respect to sexual sin is that in the woman it is, 
 with probably a few exceptions, the expression of 
 a deliberate badness, with " the devil may care " 
 as the inscription upon her insignia; while with 
 the man the fault usually follows and is screened 
 by the attempted excuse of physical necessity, be- 
 lieved in not a whit, but undoubtedly exerting a 
 soporific effect upon the conscience and power of 
 self-control. Neither sex honestly and within the 
 inmost soul has ever thought that the transgres- 
 sion was right or justifiable in the sight of the 
 Supreme Judge. In the eyes of the people this 
 
 121 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 has always been and will be "the unpardonable 
 sin " just so long as it applies to someone other 
 than oneself. Unpardonable it is indeed when 
 weighed in the balance of our own frail virtues 
 and consciences, but thank God there is still rea- 
 son for both man and woman to rise with faces 
 turned upward toward better things, even if, the 
 fall has been as low as man's limit of forgiveness. 
 We gravitate then inevitably to the query, Is 
 the social evil either necessary or expedient from 
 the standpoint of public polity ? Would society at 
 large be better or worse in the home and on the 
 highway if all forms of illicit sexual indulgence 
 could be done away with? Certainly not expe- 
 dient, if we base our decision upon the direct re- 
 sults upon society. In your city and mine there 
 seems to be little or no reason for doubt that many 
 members of the police force have been rendered 
 morally and financially corrupt as the result (i) 
 of the determination on the part of loose women 
 to ply their trade; (2) of the constant, though 
 none too strong pressure of public opinion which 
 renders the business of the prostitute intermittent- 
 122 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 ly. precarious 'for appearance' sake'; and (3) of 
 the deliberate shielding (for the sake of money 
 return) of wrongdoers by those who ought to 
 conserve, not destroy, the public morals. In cer- 
 tain cities not only have houses of prostitution 
 been freely used as centers of false registration of 
 voters, usually fictitious, so that city rulers have 
 been chosen and elected outright with the aid of 
 just such a libidinous majority, but the houses of 
 policemen have sometimes served this purpose. 
 There seems also to be no doubt that at certain 
 elections in Philadelphia thousands of illegal 
 votes were cast, of which no small number were 
 registered from these allied dwellings of the 
 open enemies and of the guardians of the law. 
 
 One more step, now limiting the influence of 
 the social evil to the home circle and to the indi- 
 vidual. Shroeder has claimed that chastity tends 
 toward disease. When I read his statement I 
 wondered how he arrived at his conclusion, and 
 whether it could possibly be an honest one. The 
 medical authority upon whose dictum he bases 
 his assertion, who himself had left wife and home 
 123 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 to enjoy the embraces of a paramour, even he 
 never dared to claim that iUicit sexual Intercourse 
 either prevented disease or debility in any form, 
 or the converse, that the practice had ever proved 
 anything but deleterious to the physical health of 
 mankind. How does Shroeder's statement of 
 pathology due to virtuous living measure along- 
 side that which finds its immediate origin in sex- 
 ual sin? According to the census of 1900 there 
 were voluntarily reported during the census year 
 1,591 deaths in the United States from venereal 
 disease, 934 males and 657 females, a proportion 
 compared with the mortality from all causes of 
 1.6 per 1,000. This total (1,591 deaths) repre- 
 sents only a fraction of the entire number if we 
 include the unreported mortality from direct se- 
 quelae of venereal disease, such as the inevitable 
 changes in the blood vessels, the heart, and the 
 kidneys, apoplexy, locomotor ataxia, and kindred 
 diseases of the nervous system. 
 
 Not even the average physician realizes how 
 frequent and wide-spread the instances of ex- 
 tragenital, usually innocent, infection have come 
 124 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 to be. Among 9,058 cases gathered from medi- 
 cal literature* of extragenital syphilis alone, 1,810 
 cases presented the initial sore upon the lip, 1,148 
 upon the breast, 734 inside the mouth, 432 on the 
 finger and hand, 372 about the eye, 307 on the ton- 
 sil, and many elsewhere on the surface of the body. 
 The foregoing are, of course, only a small number 
 compared with those which' remain unrecognized, 
 undiscovered, or unreported by the observer. 
 The highest death rate among the reported cases 
 occurred among the children under 15 years of 
 age. Some of these were instances of innocent in- 
 fection, many of hereditary syphilis, and a certain 
 number resulted from deliberate sexual intercourse 
 between children, usually of the tenement house 
 classes. There are many instances on record of 
 child vice, small armies of little boys being in- 
 fected by a tiny girl, who when detected in her 
 mischief has boasted of the number of conquests 
 she had made. In more than a few instances a 
 small boy has been a similar offender. This cra- 
 dle immorality brings us very close to the center 
 
 • Bulkeley, 1905. 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 of the American home, and we glance instinctively 
 at the table upon which the large Bible once had 
 its place. Is it still there, or has the novel claimed 
 a better right to recognition? And is the novel 
 clean, or does it help on the cause of unrestrained 
 immorality ? 
 
 In 1880 there were 1,577,000 births in the 
 United States, of which fifty-five out of every one 
 thousand were illegitimate. During 1900 there 
 were 2,049,132 births recorded in this country, 
 representing of course only an incomplete total 
 and a mere working basis for computation. Of 
 these it is estimated that about 70 in every 1,000 
 were illegitimate ofifspring. In England at the 
 same time it was estimated that of every 1,000 
 births 54 were illegitimate; in France, 74; in 
 Germany, 87; and in Austria, 135. 
 
 Bertillon's statistics show that on an average 
 100 prostitutes will give birth to about 60 children 
 during their lifetime, thus accounting for the com- 
 paratively small number of illegitimates as com- 
 pared with the total number born. To be sure the 
 total is large enough to be a warning of some 
 126 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 value to both men and women who are intelligent 
 enough to weigh the consequences of illegitimate 
 paternity and maternity. Within sight of my 
 summer home is a large building devoted to the 
 care of foundling children, the harvest of the so- 
 cial evil, and of marital infidelity. 
 
 But there is another phase of the problem which 
 must appeal to every thinking man and woman. 
 There were in the United States in 1900 7,833,492 
 boys between 10 and 20 years of age, and 6,948,- 
 123 young men between 20 and 30 years. On 
 these 14,000,000 boys and young men you will 
 naturally concede must rest at some future time 
 not only the political future of the nation, but its 
 physical and moral health, and its freedom from 
 or contamination with venereal disease. I have 
 previously mentioned to you the fact based on 
 careful statistics that over 50 per cent, of all 
 young men in this country are infected with some 
 form of venereal disease before they reach the age 
 of 30. Thus 50 per cent, of nearly seven million 
 (6,948,123) young men were undoubtedly, either 
 at that time victims of venereal disease, or were 
 127 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 supposedly and sometimes actually cured of pre- 
 vious venereal infection. Of the remaining eight 
 million (7,833,492) between 10 and 20 years, 
 over 50 per cent, have now been or will have been 
 infected before the year 1920 arrives. From 15 
 to 20 per cent, of the entire number of these 
 males are infected before their twenty-first year; 
 50 to 60 per cent, before their twenty-fifth year; 
 and about 75 per cent, before their thirtieth year. 
 As against these figures there were in this coun- 
 try 7,802,831 females between 10 and 20 years, 
 and 6,916,334 between 20 and 30, alive in 1900. 
 Of these very many were and are doomed to in- 
 fection by the 7,000,000 and odd young men 
 whom medical experience marks as certain to car- 
 ry venereal disease. These figures also point di- 
 rectly at the heart of the difficulty. The boy, I 
 thoroughly believe, should be the object of your 
 main attack, or shall I say of your most persever- 
 ing, fearless, affectionate education. If you err 
 at all it will be in telling him too little. If you 
 tell him more than he need know you will be sur- 
 prised at the manliness with which he will handle 
 128 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 his individual problem, unless you have armed 
 him too late. The difficulty is to determine when 
 to open his eyes. I believe your duty as clergy- 
 men and ours as medical men is to awaken the 
 fathers and mothers, and to urge them, especially 
 the former, to a realization of their duty in pre- 
 venting evil to their children. Compared with the 
 mother the average father is a moral coward. The 
 work is rightfully his, yet the mother must do it, 
 and as usual does it better than he. I know of 
 more than one mother who has gathered her boys 
 around her, some almost full grown, and read to 
 them the plain figures and facts with reference to 
 illicit intercourse and venereal disease which were 
 presented to the students of my University in 
 1903. If you will attend to this phase of the con- 
 test the parents will themselves win for you the 
 boy and the girl, the future man and woman. If 
 the parents send them to you, you now have the 
 knowledge that will help you in the most difficult 
 of all tasks, that of preparing a pure boy or girl 
 for contact with the evil in the world in such a 
 manner that no harm will ensue. It can be done, 
 9 129 
 
THE AMERICAN BOYi 
 
 and is being done every day by a few earnest 
 fathers and mothers ; and if it is not done eventu- 
 ally throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land the responsibility will justly fall upon you 
 and me. Here lies your work and mine, and a 
 mountain-load it appears at the start. If you can 
 preach these figures loudly and clearly enough 
 you will make deaf America hear. Once let the 
 public realize the full significance of such statis- 
 tics and red heat will become white, and no offi- 
 cial who is willing to wink at a single instance of 
 individual or municipal sin will find a square inch 
 cool enough to rest upon, or a municipality which 
 will tolerate even a hurried and uncomfortable 
 sitting. 
 
 Crittenton estimated some years ago that there 
 were at the minimum 300,000 prostitutes in the 
 continental United States alone, of whom 50,000 
 died annually, their places being filled by acces- 
 sions from abroad and from the formerly inno- 
 cent classes at home. Mr. Richard Wells esti- 
 mates that Philadelphia harbors 2,000 of these 
 unfortunate beings, a figure which I believe to be 
 130 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 considerably below the actual number, even if we 
 limit our count to those who ply their trade as 
 public vendors of immorality. My work among 
 the students of a large university has brought to 
 my attention also a considerable number of sup- 
 posedly and apparently respectable young women 
 and girls, who for pleasure's sake and regardless 
 of the risk, indulge in sexual intercourse with 
 equally respectable young men, without thought 
 of financial gain. Occasionally this occurs as the 
 result of a promise of subsequent marriage; but 
 far more frequently in the instances that have 
 come to my personal notice the motive has been 
 impatience at sexual restraint, and an impulsive, 
 heedless act which, when once safely undertaken, 
 has paved the way to a practice which always 
 ends in catastrophe. The women in these in- 
 stances reach the physician in one of two condi- 
 tions, pregnancy or venereal disease, and nearly 
 always the latter is experienced with or without 
 the former. The clergyman learns of the case in 
 one of two ways; either through some kindly 
 sheltering influence, such as the Woman's Direc- 
 
 131 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 tory in my own city, or in some instances through 
 an open confidence in her pastor by an erring girl 
 who knows not which way to turn in her distress. 
 Many also are the so-called shop girls, who re- 
 ceive from three to five dollars per week, from 
 which they must clothe and support themselves, 
 and often contribute to the home fund. A little 
 unusual pressure upon such a girl, with the cer- 
 tainty that for a brief time at least she can earn 
 from two to ten times the amount of her weekly 
 wage by a life which under different circumstances 
 she would abhor, and she may yield to seeming 
 or real necessity, as it appears to her at the time. 
 Once she has given away or sold her honor, the 
 great motive for restraint, an unsullied virtue, is 
 gone. These girls are not public prostitutes; 
 some few of them, indeed, never accept a 
 penny of ill-gotten gain. But when they do under 
 circumstances of true need, I have more real sym- 
 pathy for them than for the diamond-bedecked 
 lady who discards one husband in the morning 
 and is the bride of another before night. 
 Another of the most serious consequences with 
 132 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 which you arid I will have to deal is that of ille- 
 gitimate father- and motherhood. From the 
 standpoint of all three — ■ father, mother, and 
 child — the world looks down for a moment with 
 a frown; from the sorry faces of the latter two 
 its curse is never allowed to pass away. Unfor- 
 tunately for him and for the people at large, the 
 man, sooner or later, resumes his place in society, 
 and his error is lost sight of as time flies. 
 
 In 1880 there were 1,577,000 births in this 
 country, of which 86,735 were illegitimate, or 55 
 per 1,000 births. In 1896 in England and Ger- 
 many the proportion was respectively 42 and 91 
 per 1,000 births, I have already quoted the sta- 
 tistics in the United States for 1890, in which it 
 appears that 70 of every 1,000 births, or 143,430 
 in all, were illegitimate. Many of these births 
 resulted from the first lapse from moral integrity 
 on the part of the woman. Probably in no in- 
 stance in which a young woman has been willingly 
 tempted or unwillingly violated has the man been 
 a new offender. And yet the woman suffers the 
 punishment and the man goes scot free ! 
 
 133 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 No figures can compute the mental anguish en- 
 dured before these girls give up the fight for vir- 
 tue, and before they acknowledge themselves 
 members of the army of prostitution. Can you 
 imagine yourself more helpless as a physician or 
 a pastor than when a refined woman, or even a 
 simple uneducated servant girl comes to you with 
 the news that she is to mother a child, and that 
 the father has either left her to her fate, or is mor- 
 ally too low to be held responsible? The public 
 suggests, " Make him marry the woman and sup- 
 port the child." The woman replies, " Where is 
 he, that I may marry him ? " or, just as frequent- 
 ly, cannot bear to look on his face. The physician 
 is called upon to destroy the child, and Christian 
 fathers and mothers beg that it may be done to 
 save a daughter in distress. He declines to com- 
 mit murder and at once loses his influence with 
 all three, who eventually find some one to commit 
 the crime at the risk of his fair name, and, as you 
 and I believe, of his soul. 
 
 I have merely sketched for you one such case. 
 Very often the termination of it all is the depart- 
 
 134 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 ure from home of the girl, and an entrance into 
 a brief immoral life, the unhappiness of which 
 has nowhere been pictured so graphically as in 
 Samuel Johnson's portrayal of Misella, the pros- 
 titute. I saw in my office not long since the 
 daughter of a Presbyterian elder, pregnant by a 
 young man, both members of the church, and the 
 man a former Sunday School teacher. Both de- 
 sired, even demanded, a criminal operation to save 
 her reputation and his; and when I refused they 
 went elsewhere to find some charlatan who would 
 comply with what they believed, under the cir- 
 cumstances, to be the only procedure worthy of 
 their consideration. There is only one way in 
 which such a girl can be reclaimed. If her par- 
 ents or some outside motherly influence will 
 bravely and loyally shield her during this time, so 
 that the chill blast of public opinion may be alto- 
 gether avoided or ignored by those who love the 
 sorry, bent figure of the unwilling mother, she 
 may be won into a love for her child and into a 
 life of which she may still be not ashamed. Un- 
 der any other circumstances the girl is doomed. 
 
 135 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 For every one that is saved dozens slip away 
 along the easy incline as soon as need or inclina- 
 tion urges in this direction. Only the other day I 
 heard a noble woman say that, after many years 
 of work among fallen women, she did not feel 
 sure that she had done much real and permanent 
 good, so regularly had they returned to the ways 
 from which they had been supposedly reclaimed. 
 Still another worker has found that not 3 per cent, 
 of the prostitutes are permanently reclaimed. On 
 the other hand, Dr. Abbey and her co-workers 
 have lost but 3 per cent, of all the young women 
 (not prostitutes) who have been reached during 
 their first illegitimate pregnancy. This is one of 
 the most fruitful phases of the prevention which 
 John Locke claimed was "better than cure, and 
 far cheaper." I have myself talked with a number 
 of acknowledged prostitutes from the simple view- 
 point of their physical condition and have invari- 
 ably received the reply, " What can I do ? Go 
 back to three dollars a week?" 
 
 This need of, and this ready method of, money- 
 getting is not only the problem we must at once 
 136 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 face, but it is one of the most active causes of the 
 trouble, and an influence which lies constantly in 
 wait for the young man and woman of to-day, 
 especially when Providence has permitted the 
 woman to be nurtured in the lap of a municipality. 
 A word now regarding the male offender. You 
 will find him in every walk of life, in the shop, in 
 the factory, in the teacher's chair, in the Sabbath 
 School, and occasionally in the pulpit, as the news- 
 papers have forced us to observe. The man with 
 the most open countenance, as well as he with a 
 sinister expression; the senile subject, who may, 
 like Thomas Parr, be sued for adultery at ii8 
 years of age, or the boy of six or seven ; all have 
 like passions and many indulge them, ofttimes to 
 their own disadvantage and discomfiture. Still 
 more often results the sorrow of their companion 
 in crime. I have gradually become convinced that 
 the tendency in the boy and girl is at first in the 
 direction of purity of thought and action. Sooner 
 or later some bird of evil omen in the guise of an 
 unprincipled nurse or an unscrupulous companion 
 plants the seed that results in sorrow and suffer- 
 
 137 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 ing. I have already stated my belief that board- 
 ing schools in many cases exert a vicious influ- 
 ence over both boys and girls at a most impres- 
 sionable time. I have heard more young men 
 ascribe their first departure from virtuous living 
 to boarding school influences than to any other 
 single cause. Current literature and the stage 
 alike encourage a flippancy in dealing with vice, 
 and a callous, indifferent attitude toward its pres- 
 ence and prevalence. One seldom reads a popular 
 novel without meeting very early in the story with 
 one or more instances of moral obliquity. The 
 most popular play circles round some broken 
 home, and twines as intimately with infidelity and 
 divorce as the vine and the tree. The social evil 
 is already so well established in our midst that we 
 smile at the man or woman as warmly and inti- 
 mately after the moral lapse as before. We buy 
 tickets in order to give our children the opportu- 
 nity to hear at a tender age the innate nastiness 
 and immorality of an artificial and overdone so- 
 ciety upon the stage. The conversation of men 
 and women of our day is such as to cause wonder 
 
 138 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 with regard to the type of offspring to be ex- 
 pected from such fathers and mothers. 
 
 And yet this old world, I doubt not, is better 
 than it has ever been. It is to me a brave sign 
 that we are noting these things, I think we are 
 wrong in believing them new. Conditions are 
 probably far more favorable to their rank growth 
 than heretofore, and at this moment the weeds 
 are simply pushing their heads above the wall. 
 Such occurrences must become offensive before 
 you and I begin to take our reckoning. We must 
 realize that in your city, as in mine, men, women, 
 and children are crowded together in a sinful- 
 manner that engenders crime, and renders it 
 rather the natural than an abnormal thing. Ken- 
 naday, in writing of the "one hundred lodging 
 houses " of New York City, states that they are 
 licensed to contain 16,470 beds; and, adding the 
 small hotels, over 20,000 beds. He mentions one 
 house in Greenwich street in which three families 
 with seven children make their home, the only en- 
 trance to which is " through a dirty saloon, most- 
 ly occupied by farmers and truck-gardeners, all 
 
 139 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY, 
 
 grown men." We can hardly expect a child to 
 grow clean and pure of mind and body in the 
 midst of tobacco smoke, alcohol, foul language, 
 and an immoral and obscene humanity. And yet 
 even this class is not a hopeless one. I have said 
 before, and I repeat here, that, if the physician 
 and clergyman clasp hands and act with intelli- 
 gent and affectionate sympathy for a portion of 
 humanity which has fallen exceedingly low in the 
 moral scale, both the young man and the young 
 woman can be finally won. The mother and the 
 father are the only possible medium, and child- 
 hood almost the only available time. 
 
 One other class of influences I would mention 
 before discussing the ways and means of controll- 
 ing this widespread disease: There seems to be 
 no doubt that tobacco and alcohol are two factors 
 creating and lending strong encouragement to im- 
 moral tendencies in both man- and womankind. 
 Probably no one will ever know how many men 
 have found the way to illicit intercourse made 
 possible by alcoholic intoxication, meaning by this 
 not drunkenness, but the ordinary effect of alco- 
 140 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 hoi upon the moral as well as the physical sense. 
 To a lesser degree the same assertion can be made 
 regarding tobacco. Probably there are not ten 
 habitues of the houses of prostitution in this land 
 who do not smoke or drink, or both. I have heard 
 more than one young man state that as long as 
 he avoided these two drugs he had no difficulty 
 in controlling other passions. Even though I 
 myself was reared in a cloud of tobacco smoke, 
 I must say with all candor that the clergyman and 
 the physician appear to m6 to have less right than 
 any other human being to injure and depress the 
 powers loaned to them by the Almighty by the 
 use of stimulants and narcotics in even the small- 
 est quantities. If these drugs cause harm to 
 others, and if influence is an indispensable feature 
 of our daily lives, as we know it to be, then you 
 and I cannot explain away our responsibility if 
 we openly or secretly submit ourselves to these 
 allies of immorality. I again speak strictly as a 
 physician, not as an enthusiast in the crusade 
 against tobacco and alcohol as such. 
 
 141 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 WHAT PRACTICAL METHODS CAN BE USED AGAINST 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL? 
 
 History says none! Are there indeed no avail- 
 able methods? History has been mistaken prior 
 to this, and in spite of her negative, history's echo 
 rings out " Yes ! " 
 
 The past has failed and failed ingloriously. 
 Europe has tried every method that has been sug- 
 gested. Registration, licensing, segregation, 
 have failed in France, Austria, and Germany. All 
 of these countries, like America, are overrun with 
 prostitution and venereal disease. In France 
 75 per cent, of the adult males are supposed 
 to have syphilis. In the United States, 
 many of these measures have been insti- 
 tuted, and we still support upward of 300,- 
 000 prostitutes and a corresponding prevalence 
 of venereal disease. In spite of this record 
 of ignominious failure the suggestion has been 
 made that these same measures be established in 
 Philadelphia in the near future. A few weeks 
 ago, when my city began to agitate against its 
 142 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 crime centre, a body of ladies in Washington 
 wrote an indignant letter protesting against the 
 new influx of prostitutes in their municipality, 
 just as they had accomplished a reform. Thus 
 hemmed in by former failure and by the ignorance 
 and apathy of the public, also by the participation 
 in the evil by that very public, the contest must be 
 fought uphill, and with the covert, sometimes the 
 open, opposition of every class of society. Do 
 you ask what the echo means, and how success 
 can be accomplished? I answer, How do you 
 cure a child of any bad habit? By telling him 
 not to repeat it? Certainly not, if you wish to 
 have your lesson learned. You explain what that 
 habit will lead to ; a burn if the fire is played with, 
 a fall if the stairs are not avoided ; and you repeat 
 and persist in the education of the mind to asso- 
 ciate cause and result. The public is composed of 
 grown children, who will never lose their childish 
 way of thinking ; indeed all they lose is the child's 
 honesty of purpose and their own former open- 
 ness and honesty of method in sinning. Amongst 
 other object lessons you have somewhat over 50,- 
 
 143 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 ooo totally blind persons to point your argfument, 
 from ID to 20 per cent, of whom were doomed 
 to darkness owing to venereal disease, usually of 
 the male parent. In one recent year 136 new 
 cases of gonorrhceal ophthalmia were reported in 
 the city of New York. There are also the thou- 
 sands of unhappy homes, the hundreds of other- 
 wise unnecessary surgical operations upon your 
 mothers and sisters, and the dead children who 
 might have lived, and the changelings born who 
 might better have died. These facts will form 
 subject matter enough when you approach the 
 parent. Now begin on the child through the lat- 
 ter, and let him understand, and let the young girl 
 understand, all that their ages will warrant, of 
 the meaning and purpose of the sexual portion of 
 their make-up. Gather the young men together 
 once a year at least and let some physician whom 
 they respect inform them of the dangers of tri- 
 fling with a God-given talent. Teach each young 
 woman to demand in her husband the same clean, 
 open record that she lays before him, and let her 
 know how comparatively few of the men of to-day 
 144 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 can bring to her an unsullied honor. Tell her that 
 she holds the key to the problem, and that if she 
 wishes the men of her acquaintance to be morally 
 and physically clean, to insist that they shall be 
 pure individually, and in their particular relation 
 to her; not that ' mankind ' shall be pure, a favor- 
 ite demand of the woman's club, and one forgot- 
 ten when the proposal of marriage is made. Wy- 
 oming has given woman the full right of suffrage 
 for thirty years, and has recorded more marriages 
 and fewer divorces than any other State in the 
 Union. This fact implies that there is at once 
 less adultery where the woman is in charge with 
 her eyes open and with authority to command. Let 
 her know that to marry a man of loose, especially 
 of drinking, habits, means for herself the like- 
 lihood of venereal disease, perhaps an operation, 
 and not infrequently, death; that it often results 
 in a miscarriage or the birth of a dead child, or 
 still worse, in the delivery of one that can never 
 be healthy; and that her unhappiness is the cer- 
 tain reminder of her husband's sin and her own 
 blind folly. Tell her also that 50 per cent, of the 
 
 145 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 young men of this country are infected before they 
 marry, and you not only arm her against infection, 
 but you prevent the disease in the future man. 
 The woman will not retire until she has won her 
 fight, because she alone is honest in the presenta- 
 tion of the subject, having nothing to hide and 
 no conscience to soothe. Only the man is play- 
 ing the role of the hypocrite, and only the wife 
 has a record that will enable her to apprehend 
 him in it. It will not require more than a few 
 generations before men will learn that they must 
 offer themselves to their prospective wives as 
 clean, morally and physically, as the women come 
 to them. There is no law of justice or equity that 
 provides for male indulgence and for female chas- 
 tity. There need be no appeal to the courts to 
 provide for. a certificate of health on the part of 
 the man and woman who contract in marriage. 
 Tell the woman in advance how often the abdo- 
 men is opened as the result of a husband's former 
 indiscretion, and she will marry only that man 
 who is above suspicion in all his habits and ten- 
 dencies, and who neither fears nor hesitates 
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RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 to prove the fact. You then have your battle 
 half won. The physician can strengthen your at- 
 tack by corroborating every statement you have 
 made. He can and soon will co-operate with his 
 patient in demanding as a matter of easily estab- 
 lished right and custom the proof of her lover's 
 physical integrity, as far as it can be determined. 
 Among certain classes man has a priore woman's 
 indisputable guarantee that she is physically clean, 
 owing, if to nothing else, to the restrictions 
 thrown around her by society. If he doubts, let 
 him ask for the same proof, and the woman will 
 either cast him off altogether in her indignation, 
 or furnish medical evidence to match his own. I 
 doubt if the woman will be the one to hold back 
 when this remedy for the social evil is proposed. 
 Once teach her the need, moreover, and the de- 
 mand will be made and insisted upon. Lincoln 
 was right when he asserted that this is the duty 
 of the father and mother. They have refused to 
 assume the obligation, and the woman should now 
 act for herself. Let us now turn to the man. 
 There is little or no hope, I confidently believe, 
 
 147 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 in legislation, or in restriction of any kind, which 
 punishes the female offender and permits the male 
 to go free. If the law is invoked let it be with a 
 view to making every case of venereal disease re- 
 portable and isolable, as in the case of measles, 
 scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and other less danger- 
 ous diseases. Moreover, let us now raise the em- 
 bargo which we have placed upon the house of 
 ill fame and the prostitute, and let us apprehend 
 every man who is seen entering such a building, 
 or encouraging advances from women on the 
 street. Destroy the patronage and the revenue of 
 these foci of evil and you sap their vitality for- 
 ever, and in a much surer manner than by appre- 
 hending the object of man's deliberate search. 
 You cannot deprive him of his ability to sin ex- 
 cept by apprehending his person, not that of the 
 woman whom he desires. If necessary seize both 
 and establish a like penalty for the unfortunate 
 woman and the criminal male. If the public 
 really intends that this means shall prove success- 
 ful it will defy failure. One organization in Phil- 
 adelphia (The Christian League) claims to have 
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RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 extinguished, not scattered, a whole district of 
 crime. But their work is not half done, for the 
 men have all gone free. They state that " more 
 than 3,000 complaints concerning disorderly 
 houses, street walking and solicitation, obscene 
 pictures, literature, entertainments and advertise- 
 ments, speak-easies, gambling dens, fortune tell- 
 ing, robbery, abuse of children, etc., etc., have 
 been received by us, and the great majority re- 
 moved or abated." In the same report they state 
 that there is now " no such circus of evil in this 
 city (Philadelphia) to attract the boys." 
 
 These friends of ours have partly succeeded, 
 but in one respect they accomplished the opposite 
 of their intention. That crime center has settled 
 elsewhere as surely as it was driven from its orig- 
 inal site. Either in this city or in some other more 
 favorably inclined, that colony (or many new 
 ones) still lives its old life, and exerts its old in- 
 fluence on the men whom their families allow to 
 slip away. The only real change is a multiplica- 
 tion into as many colonies as there were individ- 
 uals before. 
 
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THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 Arid what have they done with the men and 
 Koys whom. they found guilty? Not a word of 
 rebuke or of punishment has been meted out to 
 them for their share in the mischief unless in the 
 form of some well deserved bodily ailment; and 
 even in such an event the worst punishment is 
 likely to fall upon their innocent families and 
 upon those with whom they come in daily con- 
 tact. America prides herself in her women, and 
 in the courteous bearing of her sons toward the 
 feminine sex. Woman, we are fond of saying, is 
 in this country granted the first place in our affec- 
 tions and honor. Is this not partly a myth, may 
 I ask, when in many sections of the same country 
 her virtue is bartered as an article of immoral 
 commerce, and when the sale is discovered she 
 alone is imprisoned or fined, while the man goes 
 quietly home to his mother, wife, or children, 
 perhaps all three, until a more convenient day? 
 
 Your mistake and mine will in all likelihood 
 consist in extending our line of attack too far, and 
 in attempting to concentrate on more than one 
 objective. .We have had a valuable lesson in the 
 
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RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 Japanese war demonstrating the value of a clear- 
 ly defined purpose, and of hammering at it above 
 and below the ground until success is won. There 
 is more at stake now than a city, even more than 
 a nation's independence. America's honor is in 
 the balance, has been for many a year, and more 
 awfully true is the fact that the fluctuation, of that 
 balance depends largely upon you and me. I be- 
 lieve that we can educate our boys and girls in 
 such a way as to protect them from evil until they 
 are men and women. Then by organized effort, 
 from Maine to California, invoke fhe law to pun- 
 ish the men and make public their crime, and you 
 will have gone far toward righting the burning 
 wrong which has bid fair to end in a conflagra- 
 tion. There will be no further need for Coventry 
 Patmore to quaintly sing — 
 
 Who is the happy husband? He 
 Who, scanning his unwedded life, 
 Thanks Heaven with a conscience free 
 'Twas faithful to his future wife. 
 
 And now a practical word of advice which you 
 may never hear unless given by me at this time. 
 
 151 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 The laity have learned to look upon the attack 
 which clergymen make at intervals upon questions 
 of moral ethics as occasional necessary ebullitions, 
 brief, fitful geyser-spoutings, which when once 
 emitted subside and leave a lazy quiet, and the 
 same conditions, behind. Especially those \yho 
 are themselves offending against the laws of order 
 and propriety delight in saying that " the clergy- 
 man loses his head when he enters the lists for 
 social reform." Perhaps there has been some 
 foundation for the charge. If so, it has been due 
 to ignorance on his part regarding the amount 
 and efficiency of the ammunition and ordnance at 
 his command. There is every reason for him to 
 plan intelligently and confidently for the winning 
 of the young boy and the future citizen, and, 
 through him, for the purity of the American pop- 
 ulace. The feeling that the clergyman's zeal will 
 soon burn itself out should never be justified in 
 this important crisis, and it is with the most genu- 
 ine invitation that you shall take the lead in the 
 task of educating our fathers, and mothers, and 
 boys, and girls, that a physician is now address- 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 ing you. If the laity expect you to sermonize 
 against the evil of the home and of the street, and 
 then gradually retire from view and hearing, it is 
 because they have seen this very thing occur from 
 time immemorial. The task cannot be accom- 
 plished from the pulpit alone. The little must not 
 be sacrificed in the attempt to gain much. Line 
 upon line must be the order of the day. The 
 enemy knov^ that we are busy in many other in- 
 terests. They have no other absorbing zeal. With 
 them it is a matter of twenty-four hours out of 
 the twenty-four, as against a half-hour spent 
 weekly in the pulpit over reform. The thorough- 
 ness of the methods of the wayward outlasts and 
 outvies the sudden brief outburst of virtue. Do 
 not waste your time on the white slave traffic as 
 reported by the newspapers. The prostitutes will 
 laugh at you when you ask them if they are forci- 
 bly detained or compelled to live a life of shame. 
 Instead, see that your own children are kept pure. 
 See also that there is someone at the docks of the 
 great immigrant steamship lines to guard from 
 approach the young girls who are newly in this 
 
 153 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 land, and see that they are cared for if they find, 
 as is not infrequently the case, that they have 
 been imported to fill the decimating ranks of 
 prostitution. They need never reach such a life 
 if you are there to greet them. Then there will 
 be no white slave traffic. Even now it exists only 
 in this first measure, and no woman need remain 
 in a low resort longer than she deems advisable. 
 On the other hand, you now know that there are 
 thousands of deliberate prostitutes who would not 
 and cannot (speaking from the standpoint of phy- 
 sical bondage) discard their natures. There are 
 thousands more who can hardly earn a livelihood, 
 humanly speaking, without the earnings of im- 
 morality, which fall so easily for a brief moment 
 from pleasure's cornucopia. 
 
 Again let me advise you to make no such mis- 
 take as was made by the ministers in my city 
 when all denominations met and prayed aloud 
 over what they deemed a corrupt administration, 
 and especially over our now honored mayor. 
 
 What is needed is an earnest petition sent 
 up from the secret closet ; then organization, per- 
 
 154 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 sistent and relentless, through the breadth of 
 our land, until the men, not the women, are 
 driven from the streets and the houses. The 
 women will then follow into the daylight for 
 pure food and air. I believe that God must 
 often turn His face aside in pity at our meth- 
 ods of working. Certainly it must be so 
 when our desire for the removal of evil burns 
 brightly for a day, and slumbers for a decade. He 
 must look upon our purpose as shallow, and con- 
 sider that our faith has run high and dry upon 
 the rocks of difficulty, instead of venturing boldly 
 forth upon the boundless ocean of Divine Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 Political influence is often around, in and be- 
 hind immorality, and immorality has formed one 
 of the means of support of political activity. But 
 it need not be so one day longer than the serious 
 portion of our people require to decree that a 
 change shall, not should, come. There is a suffi- 
 cient army of church members even, loyal and 
 constant enough in other matters, to decide this 
 battle in due time as it should be decided; but 
 
 155 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 such disorganization of forces and such incom- 
 patibility of ideas and judgment have prevailed 
 that an amalgamation of interests has been alto- 
 gether impossible. As well bring match and gun- 
 powder together and expect an absence of reac- 
 tion as to expect political influences of the type 
 that obtains in many of our American centres, to 
 co-operate with the disinterested portion of the 
 community in the suppression of the social evil. 
 Our first object must be, therefore, education in 
 the cause and effect of this long standing blight 
 upon the healthy growth of our young man- and 
 womanhood, since it would appear to be the only 
 solution of a heretofore unsolved and very ab- 
 struse problem. We have tried and failed in the 
 century-old method of rendering the crime too 
 difficult to perform. Both the principle arid the 
 manner of execution were bad, and the failure 
 should point the way to a more rational line of 
 treatment. Convince the 14,000,000 boys and 
 young men in the United States that prostitution 
 and the divorce are kindred evils conspiring cheek 
 and jowl to undermine the home life and purity 
 
 156 
 
RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 of the American citizen, and you will win an in- 
 vincible army for a vital cause. The women will 
 assist you in winning the men, and should the 
 latter refuse (which they will not do) Joan of Arc 
 will succeed alone where the Generals have failed. 
 Mark every man who cries aloud that the social 
 evil is inevitable as one whose moral tension is at 
 a low ebb. 
 
 My closing suggestion to the non-medical pub- 
 lic, of which the clergyman and pastor must ever 
 be the leader, is the following very homely illus- 
 tration. You have learned quite recently that the 
 best method of cure of tuberculosis is found neith- 
 er in medicine, nor in open air, nor in overfeeding, 
 nor in whiskey, once thought to be a specific for 
 the disease. It consists in educating the body, 
 and especially its weakened portions, gradually to 
 withstand and conquer disease, by the judicious 
 use of all natural methods and means. Thus we 
 train nature's forces to successfully prosecute 
 a work which has previously failed. In the same 
 manner we have around, and in, and part of us, a 
 
 157 
 
THE AMERICAN BOY 
 
 diseased, but still young body politic, not the least 
 of whose ailments is the social evil. The same 
 method of attack is necessary and the same will 
 succeed. Free open-air exposure of the wrong 
 with its consequences to man, woman, and child, 
 begun early, and earnestly taught by mother, 
 father, physician, and pastor, will nourish the 
 oncoming generation out of a dwarfed and de- 
 formed semi-morality, into a full and healthy man- 
 hood and womanhood, with shoulders thrown 
 back and chest expanded with the sense of honest, 
 round dealing by all mankind. It not only will 
 be accomplished, but some of us will assist in the 
 doing. Dr. Judson toiled at his post for six years 
 before he won his first convert. At the end of 
 the third year he was asked what evidence he saw 
 of final success. " As much," he answered, " as 
 that there is a God who will fulfil all His prom- 
 ises." 
 
 Dr. Judson had Both grit arid enthusiasm, and 
 the necessary, unconquerable faith. I like to turn 
 in the midst of a long, discouraging, but possible 
 task — and all right tasks are possible — to the 
 
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RELATION TO THE SOCIAL EVIL 
 
 inspiring thought of one who died just as he be- 
 gan to accompHsh : 
 
 " This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream ; 
 
 There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; 
 
 And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged 
 
 A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords 
 
 Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner 
 
 Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. 
 
 A craven hung along the battle's edge. 
 
 And thought, " Had I a sword of keener steel — 
 
 That bliie blade that the king's son bears — but this 
 
 Blunt thing—! " He snapt and flung it from his hand, 
 
 And lowering crept away, and left the field. 
 
 Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead. 
 
 And weaponless, he saw the broken sword. 
 
 Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand. 
 
 And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout. 
 
 Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down. 
 
 And saved a great cause that heroic day." 
 
 159