of them tends to create a
celibate community, where the chance for meeting possible mates is
practically nil. The men's organization has made, so far as we are
aware, little organized attempt to meet this problem. The women's
organization in some cities has made the attempt, but apparently with
indifferent success. The idea of a merger of the two organizations with
reasonable differentiation as well would probably meet with little
approval from their directors just now, but is worth considering as an
answer to the urgent problem of providing social contacts for young
people in large cities.

It is encouraging that thoughtful people in all walks of life are
beginning to realize the seriousness of this problem of contacts for the
young, and the necessity of finding some solution. The novelist Miss
Maria Thompson Davies of Sweetbriar Farm, Madison, Tenn., is quoted in a
recent newspaper interview as saying:

"I'm a Wellesley woman, but one reason why I'm dead against women's
colleges is because they shut girls up with women, at the most
impressionable period of the girls' lives, when they should be meeting
members of the opposite sex continually, learning to tolerate their
little weaknesses and getting ready to marry them."

"The city should make arrangements to chaperon the meetings of its young
citizens. There ought to be municipal gathering places where, under the
supervision of tactful, warm-hearted women--themselves successfully
married--girls and young men might get introduced to each other and
might get acquainted."

If it is thought that the time has not yet come for such municipal
action, there is certainly plenty of opportunity for action by the
parents, relatives and friends of young persons. The match-making
proclivities of some mothers are matters of current jest: where subtly
and wisely done they might better be taken seriously and held up as
examples worthy of imitation. Formal "full dress" social functions for
young people, where acquaintance is likely to be too perfunctory, should
be discouraged, and should give place to informal dances, beach parties,
house parties and the like, where boys and girls will have a chance to
come to know each other, and, at the proper age, to fall in love. Let
social stratification be not too rigid, yet maintained on the basis of
intrinsic worth rather than solely on financial or social position. If
parents will make it a matter of concern to give their boys and girls as