WHAT PARENTS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE SO-CALLED "SOCIAL EVIL" BEFORE SPEAKING WITH AUTHORITY TO "THE BOY."--To be qualified to speak with authority, or convincingly, to a boy upon sex hygiene, the parents must be familiar with, and well versed in the subject. The facts related in the preceding pages must be thoroughly understood. No parent can study these facts intelligently without being impressed with the importance of the subject; without realizing that it is absolutely essential that the fundamental principles of sex hygiene should be taught to the rising generation; without acknowledging the tremendous part for evil which prudery and ignorance play in the education of youth; and without being convinced that most of the evil is the product of ignorance on the part of the boy, and that parents are in a large sense to blame if they fail to impart the necessary knowledge in time. The need for enlightenment in sexual matters is a product of existing conditions. Civilization and the social environment are developing along a plane which subjects the youth to temptations that practically did not exist in the past. There is a broader and looser code of ethics. Business monopolizes the entire time of the father, and social and political unrest and misdirected ambition distracts the mother. The son or daughter has a wider latitude and a freer reign than they once had. The opportunities for promiscuous intimacies are easier, and the public conveniences and utilities lend themselves to the designs of evil-intentioned and loose-moraled women. The ease of travel, the laxity of laws, the theater, with its unchaste and indecent plays, the moving picture snows, the vaudeville resorts, whose highest priced "talent" is some voluptuous female, who has cultivated the art of draping nudity with suggestiveness and singing immoral songs, all tend to give youth a false impression of the reality of life and to make the path of the degenerate easy and profitable. The rich are growing richer, and their children are pampered and overfed and underrestrained. Time hangs heavily on their hands and their only mental effort is to devise new methods and new ways of satisfying the lust of liberty and overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,--the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of immoral impulses and indecent diseases. Parents must accept these institutions and agencies as necessary instruments of evil and adopt measures to nullify their attractiveness. Eternal vigilance is the price of success, but the quality of the vigilance must be dictated by love, not by suspicion and distrust.