the whirlpool rapids of adolescent passions when dress and dance both made less violent appeal, and when sex plays were not frequent, and not open to children and youth. God help the boys and girls, who, at an age when their new tides of manhood and womanhood should be sheltered against gales of excitation, that these currents may pour their power silently into building of strong manhood and womanhood, are continually stimulated to premature sex emotionalism by vampire and harem and gorilla films of passion, and by jazz dances which even dancing masters condemn as tableaux of sex intimacies for which a marriage license, they say, should be a preliminary essential. To such dances unchaperoned young girls go unchallenged, night and day. Many of them go sleepy to school or to shop after dances that last to 2 A. M. or later, with their brain too fagged to see it is not honest to take a full day's pay for stupid half service.

Andre Tridon, famous psycho-analyst, in an attack on "fool reformers" and a defense (?) of jazz, calls it "a decent satisfying of our gorilla instincts."

On July 6, 1922, Indians of Oklahoma gathered for annual intertribal dances. These Indians are rich because of oil discovered on their lands. They came to their dance in fine autos, dressed in silk shirts and top hats, but the press reported "the daily dances were kept sacred from modern influences and no jazz tunes were permitted in this festival."

There is hope that our colleges may rise to the Indian standard in the matter of dancing in the fact that Chancellor Day, of the Syracuse University, has ordered that there shall be no more dancing at the University, neither at class hops nor fraternity parties in dormitories, chapter houses or private boarding places. "Any student disobeying or disregarding this instruction," he says, "will forfeit

the privileges of examination and the semester standing."

Is the Flapper a Joke or a Peril?

Is there anything more than childish foolishness in the "flappers"? Is it only an extension of Hallowe'en to all evenings and the days besides? Is it merely a temporary aberration that can be laid on "the War," with reasonable expectation it will pass harmlessly without effort on our part, as we get a few more years away from the War?

These same questions, in substance, were asked by the Literary Digest of college presidents, teachers of public schools and others and the replies were published on June 17 and 24, 1922, the first symposium containing expressions of alarm, the other, from the same States, and in some cases from the same institutions, expressing the general opinion that there was nothing seriously wrong with the "flappers," except their manners. It is amazing that those professors on both sides unanimously forgot their Aristotle. Not one of them remembered his fundamental rule, "Reason from facts, and first get your facts." Not one of them went for facts to police women, juvenile court judges, magdalen asylums, baby farms, or similar places. They did not even note the new invasion of gorilla lovers and Mohammedan harems in the movies, and ignored or belittled the jazz dances, and the so-called automobile "petting" in long rows of unlighted automobiles along the roads in the suburbs of every city; to all of which they should have applied the Bible logic, “Do men gather grapes or thorns"? They did not even read the young brazen faces on the street that proclaimed all life's great experiences had been already exhausted when life had scarcely begun. In the June Atlantic Magazine of the same year there was another of these "gas attacks" of poppy juice to still our reasonable fears.

Against this gas we hurl three decisive facts.

Mrs. Kate Waller Barrett, President of the Florence Crittenton Missions, said in December, 1921, at the Anniversary of the Internationl Reform Bureau of Washington, D. C., of which she is a Director, that the average entrance age at these missions for fallen women had fallen in ten years from 28 to 16. A little earlier in the same year, President Harding and Attorney General Daugherty and Secretary of Labor Davis going beyond official duty appealed to the whole country to come to the rescue of our imperilled youth. The article in which this statement occurred is of such authority and seriousness that we quote it in full. It is not from a reformer but from the New York Herald's Washington Bureau, and appeared in that paper Oct. 9, 1921, headings and all:

CHILD CRIME WAVE SWEEPS BIG CITIES

Federal Agencies Are Giving Serious Attention to Problem

HARDING TAKES HAND

Considers Plan to Use Army Training Camps for Offenders

WAYWARD GIRLS GAIN

Boy Bandits Also Are on Increase-Juvenile Courts Crowded

New York Herald Bureau, Washington, D. C., Oct. 8. Child crime is now engaging the attention of officials of the Department of Labor and other agencies of the Government, as well as the interest of sociologists, welfare workers and civic organizations throughout the United States.

More than 100 boys and girls under twenty are waiting trial on charges of burglary, banditry, automobile thefts and other crimes in Washington, Baltimore, New York and other big cities, according to data in possession of officials. Nearly a score of youths are waiting court action on charges of murder and manslaughter.

Juvenile courts in all big cities are crowded with offenders. In several cities additional judges have been assigned to juvenile courts to clean up the dockets.

Reformatories, detention homes and houses of refuge to which police send boys and girls of tender age to await court action are crowded in all sections of the country.

Attorney-General Daugherty has given the problem much consideration. In a memorandum to President Harding, Mr. Daugherty suggested the establishment of Federal camps for the training of boy offenders. The citizenship branches of the Interior and Labor Departments are also studying the problem with a view to making recommendations for reform and training of youthful lawbreakers. On the possibility of diminishing child crime throughout the country depends in great measure the nation's future standard of citizenship, officials say.

Favors Training Camps

the

Attorney-General Daugherty recommended to President that the Government convert into reformatory training camps for boy lawbreakers some of the army cantonments. He planned to train there the youthful offenders in craftsmanship of various kinds and the value of clean and upright living. This combined course of training in work and ethics would make good citizens of many boys who come into collision with the police, Mr. Daugherty believes. Under the present system of sending them to penitentiaries and so-called reformatories little. real reform is accomplished, according to the AttorneyGeneral, who believes many youths finish serving their sentences with a bitter hatred of society which transforms them into habitual criminals.

The number of girls now being picked up at night by police of the big cities is astonishing officials and welfare workers alike. Police are finding it necessary

to provide details at dance halls, restaurants and other places of nocturnal operation where officers never appeared in pre-war days. Drivers of public conveyances must be watched by police of most big cities, officials find, because boys and young girls are led by them into districts where they are in danger.

Many Boys Turn Bandits

Records of the police in New York and other Eastern cities are filled with facts concerning the arrest of boy burglars and bandits whose ages are found to be but 14 and 15 years. The number of offenders under 20 years is enormous, officials say.

The boy gang burglar is now familiar to the police of most cities. Five youths, all under 20, arrested in New York recently and convicted of robbing a home of loot worth $20,000 belonged to a gang in Atlantic City, which looted a jewelry store obtaining property valued at $10,000. The members of this gang were but 17 years old, while one, a girl, was but 16.

Gangs of boys are responsible for a large number of holdups now occurring in big cities, police say. In not a few cases, boys of 15 years have been charged with robbing factory paymasters. Automobiles and large revolvers figure heavily in the holdups by boy gangs. The ease with which boys bandits are able to obtain firearms in most cities is one cause of child crime, it is assumed.

A Federal statute regulating these sales of firearms and ammunition may be passed by Congress this winter if welfare workers, police and some Government officials have their way. Several bills of this nature are ready for introduction at the December session.

A whole year after this most extraordinary appeal ever sent out by a Government for such work for saving boys and girls as must be mostly local, it had suffered the usual fate of "everybody's business."

If any one seeks more proof that juvenile delinquency is increasing and that it is largely due to carnivals, "close