ncil that the "White Slave" traffic and the whole
subject of the moral degradation of women was a social phenomenon too
long neglected by women.

These women declared with refreshing candor that it was about time that
the social evil was dealt with intelligently, and if it was to be dealt
with intelligently women must do the work. The fussy old gentlemen with
white side whiskers and silk-stocking reformers and the other well
meaning amateurs, who are engaged in "stamping out" the evil, deserve to
be set aside. In their places the women propose to install social
experts who shall deal scientifically with the problem.

The double standard of morals, accepted in fact if not in principle, in
every community, and so rigidly applied that good women are actually
forbidden to have any knowledge of their fallen sisters, was for the
first time repudiated by a body of organized women. The arguments on
which the double standard of morals is based was, for the first time,
seriously scrutinized by women of intelligence and social importance.
The desirability of the descent of property in legal paternal line
seemed to these women a good enough reason for applying a rigid standard
of morals to women. But they found reasons infinitely greater why the
same rigid standard should be applied to men.

The International Council of Women and women's organizations in every
country number among their members and delegates women physicians, and
through these physicians they have been able to consider the social evil
from an altogether new point of view. Certain very ugly facts, which
touch the home and which intimately concern motherhood and the welfare
of children, were brought forth--facts concerning infantile blindness,
almost one-third of which is caused by excesses on the part of the
fathers; facts concerning certain forms of ill health in married women,
and the increase of sterility due to the spread of specific diseases
among men. The horrible results to innocent women and children of these
maladies, and their frightful prevalence,--seventy-five per cent of city
men, according to reliable authority, being affected,--aroused in the
women a sentiment of indignation and revolt. The International Council
of Women put itself on record as protesting against the responsibility
laid upon women, the unassisted task of preserving the purity of the
race.

In the United States, women's clubs, women's societies, women's medical
associations, specia