That is a pretty good indication of the state of mind in which the managers find the people. This next week is considered the poorest week in the dramatic season, and after due consideration the managers have decided that the only thing that will draw is a white slave photo play.

I think it was on Tuesday that the first manager called me on the 'phone and told me of his find—a “moral purpose" photo play dealing with the white slave traffic. He must have gathered that I was not particularly delighted, for he added "This is the real Rockefeller stuff," and proceeded to expatiate upon it. Now I do not know whether he was stirring me up to protest or endorse. Managers often pray for objection and interference. Today another manager called me up and announced that he was going to have a white slave photo play. I told him I had heard about the offering. He said, “No, not that one; they are going to have that awful 'Traffic in Souls.' I wouldn't have such stuff in my house. My film is a new one really a fine thing, fit for anyone to see. It's got the real Rockefeller material."

So I spent two afternoons this week in going to these photo plays in Manhattan, which I had hoped to ignore. I cannot say that it was a particularly delightful experience. This afternoon at the Park Theatre I just wished that I could get at the minds of the audience. The women were all down in front, the men grouped in the rear. The women were down in front, perhaps, because they came early to get good seats, or perhaps the men felt ashamed to take front seats. In an attempt to get some idea of the reaction of the audience to these films-there had been no applause I watched the faces and listened for comments as the spectators filed out. The first man was the regular burlesque, thick-lipped type. Pulling a cigar out of his pocket, he remarked with a leer at his companion, "Great stuff, eh?" That was his reaction.

The next man who commented was the shrewd sort of chap that weighs things. His remark was: "The one down the street is better; it's more suggestive." That was the educational reaction of this particular photo play upon him.

The next person that commented was a woman- -she had a naturally red nose and unnaturally red cheeks, and her reaction was expressed this way: "If that isn't the biggest lemon I ever got

for a quarter." Evidently she expected something she had failed to receive.

On thinking over those comments I did not see that they proved the educational advantage of these films. And yet, I honestly believe that these comments suggest what people seek in sex plays and what most of them find. In all my experience in attending such plays I have never seen an audience which, so far as I could observe, carried away an influence which might result in good. Most of them went to be entertained; they found what entertainment they could, and ignored the rest.

But the particular task which the chairman assigned me was to summarize. I shall find it rather difficult not only because of the very diverse views which have been expressed but because I came late and did not hear the first two speakers. I was much interested in what Mrs. Israels said-delighted to hear her commend "Ourselves." But I cannot help wondering why this play about women, written by a woman and for women, failed to attract the commendation and support of the gentler sex. The wicked man in the picture was such a rotter it was impossible to accept him as a fair specimen of male humanity, but the play was thoroughly sincere, and you could feel, as Mrs. Israels pointed out, the tremendous truth and terribleness of it all. I was there with a foreigner who had seen a great many American plays, and he thought it was the best native product he had ever seen. And apart from its lop-sidedly feminine point of view it was certainly an admirable piece of work.

But what Mrs. Israels objects to in that play is that it does not point any solution. Now, as one of tonight's speakers said, the drama holds the mirror up to nature, and in nature we have problems, not solutions. The world has been seeking a solution, particularly of the sex problem, for centuries, and yet we are as far away from one today as we ever were. How can the drama provide a solution which does not exist, unless it provides a false one? The playwrights usually settle their problems in any old way. If they make the ending a tragedy, they have said, “The wages of sin is death,” but this does not present a solution of any sex problem. If the ending is a happy one that is even more dangerous for such endings are usually brought about in a manner that is not consistent with the facts. If the characters really acted out their lives the ending would be unhappy, but of course

the author is always tempted to provide some happy ending, and goes to astounding lengths to do it. They certainly do queer things in those last acts.

So we see that a play cannot point out a solution. It can barely suggest one. I picked up a book on sex education the other day written by a German doctor. And when I learned the number of things I do not know about this subject, I threw up my hands in horror at the thought of my presumption in talking about it in public.

Dr. Harris' definition of the different kinds of plays which are to be approved or condemned recalled to me something which Dr. Hugh Cabot of Boston said about "Damaged Goods," in commending its production. He endorsed this play because in his opinion:

1

It is scientifically accurate

2

It avoids the current exaggerations of the subject

3

It is free from any attempt to get dramatic effect by illegitimate means

If we could have sex plays that would fill these three qualifications, then the drama might be an effective factor in sex education. Experience indicates that nearly all sex plays fail to meet these conditions.

The physician is the person to judge of the psychological and physiological effects of the stimuli given by sex plays. I wish that tonight we had had a physician here to tell us of the sex stimulus which is given to the audience at such a performance as that of "The Lure." The slight occasional benefit which occasional individuals may receive through being warned of a danger is a hundred times offset by the evil stimuli offered to the great mass. And is it not true in the teaching of all things that we may learn something that leaves us permanently worse? I like to quote in that connection the words of Pope:

Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

THE AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION

AN EXPERIMENT IN PREVENTIVE MEDICINE AND
"CURATIVE" MORALS

WILLIAM F. SNOW, M.D.

Executive Secretary, American Social Hygiene Association

To call an incorporated social betterment organization an "experiment” is perhaps misleading, and yet all the social agencies whose names have become well known are the outgrowth of practical experiments in promoting the purposes for which they were organized. Dr. Charles W. Eliot has said it is "of the utmost importance that the processes adopted for diffusing sound knowledge about the normal and the morbid sex relations, the dangers of licentiousness, safe mating with a view of healthy progeny, the prevention of the reproduction of defectives, the destruction of commerce in vice, and the prevention of venereal contagions should all be carried on plainly but delicately, without exaggeration or morbid suggestion, without interference with parental rights or religious convictions, and in general in a pure, high-minded, disinterested way. The pioneering part of this work must be done by voluntary associations, as is usual in social reforms; but it should be the constant aim of these private organizations to enlist gradually the public authorities in this vast undertaking, and to transfer to the public treasury as fast as possible the support of all those parts of the work which experience proves to be of sure and permanent public advantage. The pioneering in regard to both research and practical measures will probably continue for many years to be the work of voluntary associations.”

The American Social Hygiene Association is an experiment, in that it represents the organized efforts of a comparatively small number of earnest people to give effect to the work outlined in these words of Dr. Eliot. They are not discouraged by the fact that as yet no tested methods of wisely applying this knowledge exist. It is part of their experiment to study, through this Association, all educational, legal and administrative methods proposed; to carefully test the efficacy of those methods which are being tried; and to encourage other volunteer organizations and

such public departments as health, education, correction, police, and charity, to introduce into their work those approved methods which may be adaptable. The Census Bureau reports ninety millions of people in the United States. In some degree the social hygiene problem touches the lives of every one of this number. Obviously, the National Association in this field must devote its resources and energies to blazing the trail, enlisting the active coöperation, and correlating the activities of all available national, state and local forces, rather than attempting to directly reach the people with the information to be disseminated.

Two questions are frequently asked, "What is this information to be disseminated?" and "Just what are social hygiene societies trying to accomplish?" As yet, complete answers have not been worked out. In this fact, we have another reason for designating The American Social Hygiene Association as an experiment. Those of you who have studied biology know the fascination of beginning either with animals or plants and studying one type after another until one reaches that puzzling borderland of animallike plants and plant-like animals. Students of the social hygiene movement have had a similar experience. Some have approached the work as a purely medical problem; others as a purely moral and religious one; both have reached common ground, and are gradually realizing that it is only a matter of classification as to whether they are dealing with a preventive-medicine or a moral problem. For purposes of discussion of this evening's program, I shall approach this common ground from the preventivemedicine point of view.

The conquest of yellow fever, which is a mosquito-borne disease, has made preventive medicine a household phrase. The brilliant campaign against the soil-borne hookworm disease and the educational awakening which is following it are demonstrating the fact that the eliminating of disease is perhaps the least of the great benefits that may come from the application of preventive medical knowledge. Similarly, success in minimizing the sexborne venereal diseases, important as this is to the lives and prosperity of the people, is less important to the progress of the race than the improvement in moral standards which must accompany this success.

Some forty years ago, the epoch-making researches of Pasteur and Koch, and their contemporary investigators in the field of