Why Girls Leave Home

Convinced that modern girls are tidy bodies who wash out their stockings every night if possible, detectives of New York City's Missing Persons Bureau always take a second look when they pass a girl with soiled and sagging hose. The odds are that she is a runaway, homeless in the big city. Last year the Missing Persons Bureau, which does the biggest job of its sort, located all but 25 of the 2,059 local missing girls reported to it. Most of them turned up at employment and charity agencies, but an appreciable few went home in response to the Bureau's famed daily five minutes of missing persons alarms over "New York City's Own Station," WNYC, kindly father of this sort of broadcasting.

The voice that calls off these radio alarms day by day in reassuring and sometimes lyric New Yorkese is usually that of ruddy, greying Captain John George Stein, head of the bureau, 36 years a policeman and the No. 1 expert in his field. One day last week expert Captain Stein took a few minutes extra over WNYC to list his findings on why girls leave home.

The reasons: 1) dislike for school; 2) unhappy home conditions; 3) evil associates, encountered in dance halls, skating rinks, "cellar" clubs; 4) delusions of persecution; 5) illusions fostered by cheap novels, movies, fan magazines; 6) clashing of new and old world customs in families of foreign parentage; 7) misplaced confidence, usually in trifling men; 8) parental objection to marriage; 9) incorrigibility.

"In conclusion," was Captain Stein's radio clincher, "might I add that sex plays a minor role."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.