The Social Emergency Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals began as a 1913 course offered to teachers and to workers in various other fields of social service. It is an outline of the main problems of social hygiene and morals. An authority in the field of sexual hygiene and morals wrote each chapter. The Preface concludes by summing up the philosophy of the book as follows, "If there is one dominant truth in this volume, it is that any plan for meeting the social emergency that would relax the control of moral and spiritual law over sex impulses is antagonistic, not only to physical health, but as well to the highest development of personality and to the progressive evolution of human society."