It may be that some thoughtful States will require school attendance until a girl is sixteen, the age under which no girl should enter the business world as a wage earner.

It may be that the natural good sense of the true American woman will finally triumph over the extravagant and unnatural living of the present day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display idleness, and wild pursuit of exotic pleasures shall be lifted from the girls now held prisoners by the tyranny of money and complex social life.

It may be that in all these ways and scores of others, the public conscience, working out along lines in which it finds itself best fitted and most interested to work, will solve the problem of the handicapped girl.

Before one can possibly help another in a permanent way he must know what is the trouble with him, and then what has caused the trouble.  The greatest encouragement in our girl problem today lies in the fact that politics is looking at her and asking questions it scarcely dares to answer; the corporation is looking at her, compelled to do so often against its will; City Government, School Board, Board of Health are all looking at her; women’s clubs, whose individual members have never given her a thought, are reaching out a hand to her; the Church, whose part we shall study definitely later on, is looking more practically and sensibly and with deeper interest than ever before; the Young Women’s Christian Associations are looking wisely and intelligently, getting facts which speak with tremendous power and showing them to the world.  More than all this the handicapped girl is looking at herself.

It has become in these days the passionate desire of those who see the problem with both heart and mind, and are interested not in abstract girlhood but in the individual, living, real girl, that the public conscience be more deeply touched and stirred until it shall feel that by whatever means the thing is to be accomplished, the bounden duty of Church and State to give themselves to the task of solving the problem is clear.

For in the midst of every problem—­political, social, economic, religious, there stands The Handicapped Girl. God help her—­and us—­for until we have gained the wisdom to remove her handicap the whole problem will remain unsolved.  We are learning—­every year shows a gain and in this fact lies our hope.

III

THE PRIVILEGED GIRL

One finds her in all sorts of unexpected places.  Last summer I saw her in a home of wealth and luxury.  She was fifteen, the eldest of a family of four children.  Behind her was a long line of ancestry of which anyone might rightfully be proud.  Her face was pure and sweet and her eyes revealed the frankness and honest purpose of past generations.  After breakfast she played for the hymns at prayers and in a clear,