For a girl of Leonora’s type the impress of the right environment, the guidance of the right hand, means everything.  To discover such girls, to open the way for the working of new friendships, which shall furnish new leadership for them, is a fine task and a great pleasure for the lovers of girlhood.

But so impossible is the task of attempting, through the individual, to touch the great mass of girls who are easily led, that one can work effectually only through the individual effort plus the law.  It must be made “to go hard” with those who, for selfish ends and financial profit, plan to take advantage of the weak will and trusting, unsuspecting mind of the girl who is easily led.

Most of the girls in their teens, who are walking in evil ways, are there because they have followed friends and companions.  There are girls who have blazed the way to paths of evil for themselves, but they are comparatively few.  Any court, or school for delinquent girls, which contains a sympathetic man or woman to whom the whole truth may be poured out, will testify that somebody led the way.  When allowance is made for the tendency to lay the blame upon other shoulders, the facts bear out the testimony that there has been a leader.  The girls who by nature are weak of will, and have had no training which could tend to strengthen or develop that will, must be protected, and that protection must be furnished by the community.  It may be furnished by putting the welfare teacher into the school; by making the street on which so many girls find companionship as safe as possible; by driving professional leaders of the unsuspecting and easily led from all places of recreation and amusement; by helping parents, especially those parents, who, themselves born across the sea are attempting to bring up daughters in the new land, to see and understand the dangers; and by making it a real crime to lead the easily led astray.

But this is not enough.  Perhaps the greatest steps toward the safe-guarding of the easily led were taken when the carefully supervised public playground and the school gardens were started and the women police were sent out into the streets of cities.

A strong, wise, sane woman who is neither a prude nor a crank can do more toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those interested in great city problems have yet dreamed.  The day will come when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an opportunity to strengthen her against temptation.