Of course, it is not true that all prostitution is due to ignorance, for it often involves enlightened men and women. However, there seems to be good reason for believing that large numbers of people of both sexes might be kept out of prostitution by very simple sex-instruction. Let us look for a moment at some facts concerning the relation of the ignorance of the women to their entrance into the underworld, and later consider certain reasons why many men patronize the social evil. [Sidenote: Why women enter prostitution.] With regard to the women victims of prostitution, it seems to be generally accepted that economic pressure, feeble-mindedness, bad social environment, and unguided instincts, independently or combined, are the chief causes of their downfall. However, there is a deeper reason why numerous women enter prostitution, for all of these factors commonly operate because of inadequate sexual knowledge. In short, ignorance is the fundamental cause of much prostitution on the part of women. Many a girl with starvation wages, bad social surroundings, sub-normal mentality, or even intense instincts is able to keep her womanhood because she knows the awful dangers of sexual promiscuity. For our present educational purposes, it is sufficient to point out the opinion of competent social workers that knowledge might often counteract the forces that lead women from virtue and down into prostitution. [Sidenote: Men also ignorant.] A large number of men patronize prostitution because they are ignorant in one or more of the following respects. Some of them have drifted into abnormal sexual habits when they were boys, and later into illicit relations. Some of them did not know the effect of alcoholic drinks in leading many young men to their first immoral sexual acts. Some of them have deliberately patronized prostitution because they have accepted as truth the monstrous lie that sexual activity is necessary to preserve the health of men.[5] Most of the men do not realize that prostitution offers great danger to their own health, still greater danger to the health of innocent wives and children, and a greatly shortened life for many women who are the victims of sexual slavery. Most men do not know that dark tragedies are often concealed beneath the apparent gay life of the women who are victims of sexual degradation. These are some of the things of which many young men I have known were very ignorant, and it has been no difficult task to trace a close connection between their ignorance and their vice. [Sidenote: Ignorance the chief cause.]