independently or combined,
are the chief causes of their downfall. However, there is a deeper
reason why numerous women enter prostitution, for all of these factors
commonly operate because of inadequate sexual knowledge. In short,
ignorance is the fundamental cause of much prostitution on the part of
women. Many a girl with starvation wages, bad social surroundings,
sub-normal mentality, or even intense instincts is able to keep her
womanhood because she knows the awful dangers of sexual promiscuity.
For our present educational purposes, it is sufficient to point out the
opinion of competent social workers that knowledge might often
counteract the forces that lead women from virtue and down into
prostitution.

[Sidenote: Men also ignorant.]

A large number of men patronize prostitution because they are ignorant
in one or more of the following respects. Some of them have drifted
into abnormal sexual habits when they were boys, and later into illicit
relations. Some of them did not know the effect of alcoholic drinks in
leading many young men to their first immoral sexual acts. Some of them
have deliberately patronized prostitution because they have accepted as
truth the monstrous lie that sexual activity is necessary to preserve
the health of men.[5] Most of the men do not realize that prostitution
offers great danger to their own health, still greater danger to the
health of innocent wives and children, and a greatly shortened life for
many women who are the victims of sexual slavery. Most men do not know
that dark tragedies are often concealed beneath the apparent gay life
of the women who are victims of sexual degradation. These are some of
the things of which many young men I have known were very ignorant, and
it has been no difficult task to trace a close connection between their
ignorance and their vice.

[Sidenote: Ignorance the chief cause.]

Looking at the social evil from any point of view, it seems to me that
ignorance, dense ignorance, is largely responsible for the existence of
that darkest blot on our boasted civilization--the social-sexual evil.
No matter how we look at the established facts regarding prostitution,
they all point to the need of sexual instruction for the protection of
the youth of both sexes. The Chicago Vice Commission concluded that
"the lack of information, education and training with reference to the
function and control of the sexual instinct, and the consequences of
its abuse