New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1874-06-25
WAsHINGTON, June Is, 1874.


To the Editor qrthe Neso National Era:
fear that the Girls Reform School bill is
not attracting the attention of the profess
eddy Christian people which its importance
demands.
When reflect that but one pastor of a
church, one man only, who processes to teach
that Jesus Christ died to save sinners, seems
interested in this truly Christian plan of re-
deeming the lost, l wonder if they knew
that it is a fact that married men, fathers of
daughters in this District, pay hundreds of
dollars to women whom they have been in
strumental in corrupting, to induce them to
decoy young girls of t,celre and fourteen years
from respectable and wealthy parents and
pay them to take them to saloons, (men often
take them,) where these innocent and unsus-
pecting children are drugged with mixed
liquors, then taken into house of ill-repute
and locked into a room assigned them for
weeks, when their ruin is completed; and
did they knop that for this great wrong in
flicted by men (,cho alone frame laws to gov
ern us y there is no penalty? While they have
framed laws which compel the courts to fine
or imprison, or both, these girls grown to
womanhood, for crimes which men of mature
years hire them to commit. And did they
know that the tempters, the employers to do
evil, not only are not punished, but are
summoned to prove the guilt of the so.called
"weaker vessel" while her partner in crime,
her "natural protector" (so-called,) can sit
by and see sentence pronounced, and his
helpless victim sent to the jail or work
house, would they not wonder that the 'very
stones did not cry out" against such unjust
laws? And would honorable men wonder
why women desire to vote for their own pro.
lection
A young lady is betrayed and deserted.
A child is born, becomes a burden, and the
mother seeks to place the responsibility
where it belongs; for our lawmakers claim
the right to control the children of their
wives, though they do permit this poor girl
to own, control, support, and give it her
name.
This mother, with the blue heavens above
her, in the stiffness Of night, with no eye,
Gas she thinks but a plying Gods upon
her, deposits the little innocent upon its
fathers threshold.
Through the darkn ess vigllant police
man has seen her leave the little burden
and retires to wait and wa tch.
The child is taken in (though sent in the
morning to Catholic asylum) and the moth
er, oppressed and nearly heartbroken is in
the custody of an officer Of the law; taken
to the station-house to be ARA igned before
the courts of law for aband oning her child,
to be punished by the laws that have been
made by those who should at least protect
her as faithfully as it does her betrayer.
While such unjust and unequal laws exist,
can it longer be a wonder that there are
earnest and true women interested in the
welfare Of their sex, who desire to particle
pate in the election of the right kind of men
who would make laws for our equal protec-
ton and equal punishment with men.
Noble-minded women have ascertalned
that there are hundreds of the victims OF
unprncipled men in this District who would
gladly escape from their degradation but no
friendly hand is outstretched to save them,
and the cost to the United States is the cry.
1t will cost so much gentleman to save these
poor unfortunates, you should be careful how
you vote.
1 wonder if our heavenly Father reckons
the price of immortal souls in dollars and
cents. Jesus Christ gave his life to redeem
us from sin, and while there is no home, no
resting place for the degraded outcast. sick
of sin, shall it 60 out TO the world that the
Congress of the United States have provided
literally for a reform school and home for
their own sex, where they can have careful
culture and kind treatment, and baye moth