The national and state governments have also cooperated in the enactment of laws prohibiting the adulteration of foods and foodstuffs and in enforcing better sanitation. As a result of such measures, state and local, together with the help of greatly improved hospital practice, the infant mortality in several of the large cities has been reduced more than fifty per cent in the past decade. Inspired by the splendid pioneer work of the National Playground Association, the cities and towns have recently made very rapid progress in the establishment of playgrounds and recreative centers for old and young. Many millions of dollars have already been expended for such purposes. Now the country districts are adopting the same means of social improvement. The primary system of selecting candidates for political office is proving to be a most potent agency for the general uplift. By means of it, better men are being inducted into office. Better still, the old corrupt practice of the ward politician, so deleterious to the character of youth, is losing its once powerful influence on government. The so-called social evil, so damaging to the health and morals of thousands of our best young men and young women, is now under fair promise of improvement. The remarkable survey of the Chicago Vice Commission and the work of the other well-planned organizations looking to the solution of the same general problem have proved most effective in revealing the true conditions and of awakening the public conscience. All of these activities in the interest of putting down the sex evils point very clearly one moral to all conscientious parents; namely, that the best and most certain method of inculcating lessons of purity in the case of the young is through preventive measures, and through the practice of purity during the years of growth. Open and frank discussion of the sex problems as they arise normally out of the experiences of the child, admonitions and prohibitions in regard to impure associates, the insistence upon a single, and not a double, standard of purity for the two sexes--these are some of the specific duties of parents.