But there is another side to this question. It is nonsense to suppose that any spiritual enthusiasm, no matter how powerful, will be adequate to protect the girl whose wage it is impossible to live on. I take it for granted that this economic aspect of the case is clear to everyone. It is silly, not to say criminal, for us to suppose that girls are going to starve or go without decent clothes or deprive themselves of all pleasures because they cannot pay their own way. There will be cases of heroism always. I think now of a poor little restaurant-worker friend of mine, who with $4 a week with two meals a day pays for room and clothing and yet keeps straight, though with never a penny for any kind of pleasure. All honor to her, but no credit to us that we allow such strain. Thousands of girls are living in New York, on less than a living wage, not eating enough, not having proper room or clothing and yet keeping straight. But others--and these too are doubtless in the thousands--are too normal to deprive themselves of their rights in the world. Their perfectly innocent love of pleasure becomes transmuted through gradual corrupting relationships into a life of degradation. Inextricably bound together in the life of the young girl are her impulses and her ideals. Free play for both and training for both are demanded for the flowering of her womanhood. To grow, to play, to have friends, to make love, are all normal elements that go to make up the life of the young. Not only is pleasure their right but it is a racial necessity. In the old home the family life itself was the center of all the social gatherings, or if social pleasures were to be found elsewhere it was in other affiliated homes, so that in that network of home life a sort of tribal pleasure was developed where free play to all these youthful emotions could be granted. But in the life of the great city the young girl can find little within the narrow confines of her crowded home to hold her ardent attention. In the midst of the ever-intensifying excitement with which she is surrounded she can find nothing appealing enough to attract her interest except those great congregate forms of enjoyment which center about the dance hall, the theater and the brilliant amusement resort. These commercialized pleasure places are far lighter, airier and more beautiful than any small home can be. They represent roominess, freedom, grandeur, all of which appeal to the blossoming passion of the young. There is something almost terrible in the careless way in which society both indulges and neglects the young girl. The over-stimulation of all this excitement is dangerous enough in itself but when coupled with so little that safeguards the ardor of youth it forms an appeal almost impossible of resistance. And these pleasures cannot be had for nothing. Where the girls cannot pay their cost, there are attendant circumstances which turn the natural channels of joy into debasement. The young men of