The Rock Island daily Argus. [volume] (Rock Island, Ill.) 1872-1873, 1873-06-06
Pallau Woman

We call attention to a new Association
for the MD OF needy children, which this
week, asks the help Of the charitable. The
Society, being poor, has resorted TO the
usual means for raising immediate neces-
sary funds, and Is now holding Fair at
Broadway and Twenty third-st We do
not, however, indorse this or any fair, but
advise the benevolent rather 10 examine
into the merits OF the Society and give
their money b it, If efficient and worthy,
without any medium of ratified cakes and
pin.cushions Its object is really the re-
formation Of fallen women, as well as the
protection Of young girls in danger of fall
ing Both classes are received, provided
with home for a year, instructed in all
kinds Of homework, and placed in families
or restored 10 their homes.
There is a good deal of prejudice even
among the most religious people against
any effort for the reclamation Of fallen wo-
men. Good women especially are easily
hardened by one or two failures in their
private attempts to restore some poor
Magdalene. Her condition, her character,
her temptations, jar as no others would do
against their own Her vice, they are apt
70 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 20 husband and children
Is that they shall never fail to find cleanli.
ness aud purity in those homes If no.
where else in the world As for Houses
OF the Good Shepherd or Rosine Associa.
tons, shrewd sensible people are inclined
TO doubt the permanent good effect of
mechanical general systems, of repres-
sion and training, upon any class more
especially upon women whose reason
and sense OF duty are generally exeep
tiOnally small and whose emotional nature
Is excessive. While few of these char
ties are managed with an admirable human
skill in dealing with these degraded but
morbid natures, the majority drill their pa
tients after the usual reformatory mode In
10 morality and Heaven by rules and pla.
tOons. We are. driven when looking at her
to doubt whether the poor Magdalene, in
the long row of uniformed wretches known
Of all men as so called penitents, with moth
ing in her present but disgrace, shut of
from her kind into afutnre Of whitewashed
walls, routine prayers, brown gowns and
needle work, be one whit more in a state
OF grace than when Haunting her tawdry
finery on the street corners. Repentant
she may be; but reformed? The heart
even of fallen woman, like Nature, alb.
hors vacuum aud too often. released
from actual restraint, she swings back "a
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
thoughtful reformers, is the only true
method Let a pure, good woman take one
Of these wretched sisters TO her side, and
surround her with home influence and
Christi love. and her reform is sure. But
here are thirty thousand 10 be cured and
where are the good physicians The 20.
Ice fall ON one Of the dens of iniamy now
and then, and take half a dozen poor
wrstehes 10 the TOmbs over night, to send
them, it may be, to the Island or turn
Them Them loose on the streets in the morning.
ne Association pick out one here, one
mere aud effect cure. But there, unal-
uereu aud Increasing generation after gen
GRAFTON IN the midst Of law, and churches
ana men aud women who Worship Him
whose hrst Thought on rising from
the grave was given 10 the Magda-
lene, are these CHASTITY thousands
OF ruined women, such little
while ago innocent as the baby by our own
hearth, and now busted in dragging mi
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 arr