the very first performance,
however, they became frightened by the conduct of the girls who preceded
them on the program and by the hilarity of the audience. They managed to
escape from the dressing-room, where they were waiting their turn, and
on the street appealed to the first policeman, who brought them to the
Juvenile Protective Association. They were detained for several days as
witnesses against the theatrical agency, entering into the legal
prosecution with that characteristic British spirit which is ever ready
to protest against an imposition, before they left the city with a
travelling company, each on a weekly salary of twenty dollars.

The methods pursued on excursion boats are similar to those of the dance
halls, in that decent girls are induced to drink quantities of liquor to
which they are unaccustomed. On the high seas, liquor is sold usually in
original packages, which enormously increases the amount consumed. It is
not unusual to see a boy and girl drinking between them an entire bottle
of whiskey. Some of these excursion boats carry five thousand people and
in the easy breakdown of propriety which holiday-making often implies,
and the absence of police, to which city young people are unaccustomed,
the utmost freedom and license is often indulged in. Thus the lake
excursions, one of the most delightful possibilities for recreation in
Chicago, through lack of proper policing and through the sale of liquor,
are made a menace to thousands of young people to whom they should be a
great resource.

When a philanthropic association, with a knowledge of the commercial
exploitation of youth's natural response to gay surroundings, attempts
to substitute innocent recreation, it finds the undertaking most
difficult. In Chicago the Juvenile Protective Association, after a
thorough investigation of public dance halls, amusement parks, five-cent
theatres, and excursion boats, is insisting upon more vigorous
enforcement of the existing legislation, and is also urging further
legal regulation; Kansas City has instituted a Department of Public
Welfare with power to regulate places of amusement; a New York committee
has established model dance halls; Milwaukee is urging the appointment
of commissions on public recreation, while New York and Columbus have
already created them.

Perhaps nothing in actual operation is more valuable than the small
parks of Chicago in which the large halls are used every evening for
danc