ABSTRACT
The education of the average young man has given him only the most unreal protection against the temptations of the city. Schoolboys are subjected to many lures from without just at the moment when they are filled with an inner tumult which utterly bewilders them and concerning which no one has instructed them save in terms of empty precept and unintelligible warning. The girls working in department stores have been in the public schools on an average of eight years, while even the factory girls, have yet averaged six and two-tenths years of education at the public expense, before they enter industrial life. The puritanical history of American cities assumes that these gaieties are forbidden, and that the streets are sober and decorous for conscientious young men and women who need no external protection. Unquestionably the average American child has received a more expensive education than has yet been accorded to the child of any other nation.
