"Second: We fathers of daughters must rid ourselves of the notion that has worked such diabolical havoc of a double moral standard. There can be but one standard: that of moral equality. Instead of being so painfully anxious about the 'financial prospects' of a young man who seeks the hand of our daughter in marriage, and making that the first question, it is time that we put health first and money second: that we find out, first of all, if the young man comes to court, as the lawyers say, with clean hands. Let a father ask the young man, as his leading question, whether he is physically clean: insist that he shall go to his family physician, and if he gives him a clean bill of health, then his financial prospects can be gone into. But his physical self first. That much every father would do in the case of a horse or a dog that he bought with a view to mating. Yet he does less for his daughter--his own flesh and blood." Dr. William Osler, formerly of Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, now of the University of Oxford, in an article describing the diseases which are the greatest scourges of the human race, such as cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, consumption, pneumonia and leprosy, wrote of the group of vice diseases: "These are in one respect the worst of all we have to mention, for they are the only ones transmitted in full virulence to innocent children to fill their lives with suffering, and which involve equally innocent wives in the misery and shame." E. A. B. CHAPTER XXIII. THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH. On Monday, February 8, 1909, The Illinois Vigilance Association, an organization having for its object the suppression of traffic in women and girls, held its second annual conference against this evil. The meeting was held in the auditorium of the Young Men's Christian Association, in Chicago. Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, professor of physiology in Northwestern University Medical School, spoke on the subject that is the title of this chapter, and was followed by Judge Julian W. Mack. Their plain, chaste, truthful words gave no offense to the refined ladies and gentlemen, and young ladies and young gentlemen, who composed that large audience of nearly a thousand people. Instead of offense, appreciation and gratitude were in every heart. The addresses of these two eminent men are here reproduced word for word from the stenographer's report, not omitting the enlivening interruptions from a woman in the audience, herself a physician and much interested in this reform. CHAIRMAN BOYNTON: "The White Slave Traffic and the Public Health" is the topic of the address by Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School: