The Women’s League for Good Government of Elmira, New York, made an investigation of vice conditions under the American Vigilance Association during the summer of 1913. The results of this investigation were first given to the public at a great mass meeting held in one of the theaters in October. At this meeting a summary of the investigator’s report was given by one of the clergymen of the city. The theater was taxed to its utmost capacity, and the overflow filled the largest church auditorium in the city. The great audiences listened with solemnity to the startling revelations of the report. The Committee on Public Morals was at once organized and it was immediately requested by the newly appointed police commissioners to keep a watchful eye on the cheap theaters and the “movies.” Copies of the Vice Report were sent to the newly elected city officials, and additional copies were requested by the police commissioners, into whose hands was placed the key to the Report (names of persons and places having been printed in cipher). “We have reason to believe that the Report has been helpful to the police commissioners in their efforts to enforce the laws,” say the women of Elmira. Valuable reports have issued from the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York, at the present time composed of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dr. Katharine Bement Davis, the present city commissioner of corrections and former superintendent of the Woman’s Reformatory at Bedford, Paul M. Warburg, and Starr J. Murphy. For some time this Bureau had maintained a laboratory of social hygiene at the Bedford Reformatory whence Dr. Davis formed her convictions on the causes of sexual immorality. In the first publication of this Bureau—that of Mr. Kneeland on conditions of vice in New York City—Dr. Katharine Davis has a summary of the conclusions of the Bedford laboratory. Her personal convictions she states in this way: “I say unhesitatingly that in the vast majority of cases she [the prostitute] is a victim. Prostitution as now conducted in this country and in Europe is very largely a man’s business; the women are merely tools in the hands of the stronger sex. It is a business run for profit and the profit is large. It is my belief that less than 25 per cent. of the prostitutes in this country would have fallen if they had had an equally good chance to lead a pure life. That they have been dragged into the mire in such large numbers is due to a variety of circumstances, among which are poverty, low wages, improper home conditions and lack of training, the natural desire for pretty things, etc. But while all these may be contributing causes, man is chiefly responsible.” PUBLICITY