New-York tribune., 1873-04-18
FALLEN WOMEH

FALLEN WOMEH
We call attention to q new 'sociatiOn for
the aid of needy children, which, this week,
asks the help of the charitable The Society,
being Door, has yesOrted to the usual means
for raising immediate necessary funds, and Is
now holding Fair at Broadway and Twenty
thrd-st. We do not, however, indorse
this or any fair but advise the benevo-
lent rather to examine into the merits
of the Society and give their money to it, if
efficient and worthy, without any Medium of
rafHed cakes and pin-cushions. Its object is
really the reformation of fallen women, as
well as the protection of young girls in danger
of falling. Both classes are received, provided
with home for a year, instructed in all kinds
of homework, and placed in families or re-
stored to their homes.
There is a good deal of prejudice even
among the most religious people against any
effort for the reclamation of fallen women.
Good women especially are easily hardened by
one or two failures in their private attempts
to restore some poor Magdalene. Her condi-
ton, her character, her temptations, jar as no
others would do against their own. Her vice,
they are apt to say, is a vice of blood. They
refuse to bring her into their own clean,
modest, pure homes-feeling, and justly, too,
that their first duty to husband and children
| is that they shall never fail to find cleanli-
ness and purity in those homes, If nowhere
else in the world. AS for Houses Of the
| Good Shepherd or Rosine Associations, shrewd,
sensible people are inclined TO doubt the
permanent good effect of mechanical general
systems, of repression and training, upon any
class, more especially upon women whose
reason and sense of duty arc generally ex-
ceptionally small, and whose emotional nature
is excessive. While a few of these charities
! are managed with admirable human skill
| in dealing with these degraded but morbid
natures, the majority drill their patients after
the usual reformatory mode into morality
and Heaven by rules and by platoons.
| We are driven when looking at
! her to doubt whether the poor
| Magdaene, in the long row of uniformed
wretches known of all men as sO-called Peni-
tents with nothing in her present but dis
grace, shut off from her kind into future of
whitewashed walls, routine prayers, brown
gowns and needlework, b. one whit more in u
state of grace than when Haunting her tawdry
| finery on the street corners. Repentant she
| may be: but reformed2 The heart even of u
| fallen woman, like Nature, abhors vacuum; and
| too often, released from actual restraint, she
swings back to her old past with its feverish
pleasure and pain, the wages of which are
| DEATH
Plain words and facts and not sentiment
| are the only means of solving this riddle of
death. Individual cure, say the most thought
| full reformers, is the only true method. Let
pure, good woman take one of these
wretched sisters to her side, and surround her
with home influence and Christ's love, and
| her reform is sure But here are thirty thou
| sand to be cured: and where are the good
physicians 7 The police fall on one of the
dens of infamy now and then, and hale half
| q dozen poor wretches to the TOmbs over
night; to send them, it may be, to the Island
or turn them loose on tie streets in the morn
ing. The Associations pick out one here, one
| there, and effect cure. But there,
unaltered and increasing generation after
| generation in the midst of law, and churches
| and men and women who worship Him whose
| first thought on rising from the grave was
given to the Magdalene, are these CHASTITY
thousands of ruined women, such little
while ago innocent as the baby by
our own hearth, and now busted in
dragging all they can reach down to
their own depth. There, in spite of legal,
or religious force, they are; there they have
been in every large city, and in every time.
There are certain facts in human nature which
! it is idle to ignore in dealing with this ques-
| ton nationally; facts which renew themselves
from age to age. AS for this woman whom
we want to remove or amend, there is no
use of enveloping her with any mysterious
romance. She is neither the noble being,
playing part which Wilkie Collins
delights to paint her, nor the loathsome
wretch which untempted women fancy. She is
usually coarse, uneducated woman, driven
by the love Of fnery or baser passion into
crime. If rescued, sho would probably still be
coarse grained, but surely n human soul is
worth the trial. The greater problem is not,
however, how to save her. but to keep back
young girls who are pressing on to fill he
place when she has left it.
Here is the work in which, ii this Assoca-
ton performs as faithfully - 1t promises, all
good men and women shonld help it. AssO-
Citations, pulpits and press can mend tho mat
| tor but little. II all lies in ten words. Ii