The prophylactic value of education, which has been applied to the prevention of almost all communicable diseases, would surely also be seen in this dreadful disease, this cancer of the body politic, meretricious venery, this plague of prostitution which poisons the very sources of the family and of the state. But for the prevailing ignorance of the girls, regarding the dangers and pitfalls that beset their lives’ pathway, one million girls would not have been led into a life of shame in this country.[BT] These unfortunate girls do not all come from the slums of the great cities, as the economic determinists would like to make us believe, but many come from refined country homes.[BU] Most of these devotees of meretricious venery have become so through the fundamental vice of laziness and defective mentality. It is sentimentality pure and simple always to speak of betrayed innocence or dire poverty.[BV] A vicious disposition, love of pleasure, and the gratification of the erotic desires,[BW] are, as a rule, responsible for the majority of girls embracing the profession of prostitution. But the most serious among the factors which work together to bring many a girl to ruin, is ignorance and the lack of proper instruction. If the girl knew that the career of the venal woman lasts scarcely five to ten years,[BX] and that it is a large sewer, a garbage dump and a crematory, she would surely not be so easily led to embrace this vile profession. If the girl knew these facts, it is inconceivable that even the mentally defective girl would prefer this short life of silks and satins and then annihilation to a respectable life, even of poverty. The girl, therefore, must be warned against the allurements of meretricious venery. She must be told that the average duration of the career of the venal woman is very short, and that embracing this profession is almost tantamount to committing suicide. Before the girl has made the fatal step, she has to be shown the great slavery and misery prostitution brings upon those who embrace it as a profession, and that the career of the prostitute lasts no longer than five to ten years in the average. Then come ruin and the morgue. But the young girls are started in life entirely ignorant of all the dangers about them, and the result is the vast army of unfortunates. In this way venereal diseases persist, sexual crimes abound, degeneracy remains and countless victims, year after year, pay the penalty of ignorance. The best prophylaxis of impurity is the avoidance of intoxicating beverages, chance acquaintances, vanity and pleasure-seeking. The girl’s attention has to be called to the danger lying in the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors. A girl has only to taste a drop of liquor in a strange man’s company, and her chastity is in the greatest danger to desert her for good. It will not take very long before this girl will indulge in the excessive use of alcohol, which dulls the moral sense of men and women.[BY]