Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/190



However that may be, Lindsey finds the sex-problem big enough to alarm him; and he says his observations are borne out by men who know in other cities.

In brief, it is another case of parental ignorance and Anglo-Saxon prudery. Parents do not like to tell their children the essential, natural facts of sex; they think their children too inno- cent. The result is that their children learn them at school or at play from other people’s children, “bad” boys and “forward” girls, who impart all this knowledge in the very vilest form. And the Judge, probing into the doings of boys and girls brought before him for other things, dis- covered that these lessons had taken a practical turn; that in certain schools, where the thing got started, it had spread to include, in one case fif- teen, in another nearly all the little girls in the school. What did he do about it ?

First, he got the truth. Girls lie more readily and more obstinately than boys, but he per- suaded them to tell all about it. And this he accomplished by affecting no horror of the sub- ject. He treated it naturally. He didn t take the course the world would have taken, and especially the women’s world — he didn t make the poor little girl feel that she was lost forever and ever. As with boys, he called it all a mistake, and a