Sadie, Edna, thousands of girls like them, girls of whom almost
identical stories might be told, help to swell the long procession of
prodigals every succeeding year. They joined that procession ignorantly
because they thirsted for pleasure. Their days were without interest,
their minds were unfurnished with any resources. At fourteen most of
them left public school. Reading and writing are about as much
intellectual accomplishments as the school gives them, and the work
waiting for them in factory, mill, or department store is rarely of a
character to increase their intelligence.

Ask a girl, "Why do you go to the dance hall? Why don't you stay home
evenings?" Nine times in ten her answer will be: "What should I do with
myself, sitting home and twirling my fingers?"

If you suggest reading, she will reply: "You can't be reading all the
time." In other words, there is no intellectual impulse, but instead an
instinct for action.

The crowded tenement, the city slum, an oppressive system of ill-paid
labor, these are evils which a gradually developing social conscience
must one day eliminate. Their tenure will not be disturbed to-day,
to-morrow, or next day. Their evil influence can be offset, in some
measure, by a recognition on the part of the community of a debt,--a
debt to youth.

The joy of life, inherent in every young creature, including the young
human creature, seeks expression in play, in merriment, and will not be
denied.

The oldest, the most persistent, the most attractive, the most
satisfying expression of the joy of life is the dance. Other forms of
recreation come in for brief periods, but their vogue is always
transitory. The roller skating craze, for example, waxed, waned, and
disappeared. Moving pictures and the nickelodeon have had their day, and
are now passing. The charm, the passion, the lure of the dance remains
perennial. It never wholly disappears. It always returns.

In New York City alone there are three hundred saloon dance halls. Three
hundred dens of evil where every night in the year gallons of liquid
damnation are forced down the throats of unwilling drinkers! Where
the bodies and souls of thousands of girls are annually destroyed,
because the young are irresistibly drawn toward joy, and because we, all
of us, good people, busy people, indifferent people, unseeing people,
have permitted joy to become commercialized, have turned it into a
commodity to be used for money profit by the