The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-12-10
DIRE EFFECT FOR SUFFICIENT
CAUSE,

Ihe coroners say that more than five thous-
and dead babies are annually found in this
city thrown into the streets, into the rivers,
and into out-of-the-way places.-[N. Y. Sun.
Less than four lines, but what tale
of woe, shame, desperation, and sin
they unfold. Five thousand little waits
yearly thrown upon the shores of time,
only to be abandoned by reckless
fathers, and destroyed by desperate
mothers, ere yet the bud of life had be-
gun TO blow. The feeble birth-wail
smOthered by the feebler death-cry before
their unwelcome existence was well be-
gun. An occasional paragraph in a news
paper claims for moment the Mortified
attention of the public as the revolving
fact is stated; an occasional lecture on
unwilling maternity is read by moral
lists; that is all. The great wheel goes
steadily round and round as before, its
track marked by slaughtered innocents.
This wholesale murder, that reddens the
hands and hardens the hearts of hu-
manity, is the direct result of the thrice
accursed distinction made by society
between the sins of men and women;
and these sins, so far as women are con-
cerned, are nine times out of ten the di-
rect result of their pecuniary depend
ence upon man. How many of these
mothers upon whom society places its
ban-young, despairing, destitute-have
been driven by gaunt famine and his
grim attendant, cold, to sell themselves
for bread, and at the last, inspired with
a faint hope to save themselves from
public Obloquy, have destroyed the
tiny witnesses against them.
That giving girls chance to be self
sustaining, an equal opportunity with
boys to earn honest bread, and for their
labor giving honest wages, thereby
rendering them independent in Pc
cuniary matters, would lessen an hund-
red fold the evils of prostitution, no one
will deny. That giving them work to
do that shall keep gaunt famine at bay,
at the same time occupying their
thoughts and rendering them seIf-reli-
ant, will enable them more successfully
to resist the snares spread by the
tempter for the feet of the helpless and
unwary, all will admit. That the estab-
lishment of an equal code of morals for
men and women, by raising the stand
ard for men, not lowering that for
women, would have a salutary tendency
toward diminishing crime, the fruit of
which is wholesale murder, is certain.
Until these radical wrongs to which |
women are subjected by the common
usage of society be understood and rem
edied, the slaughter will go on and on,
while gentle pity and tender mercy will |
veil their eyes and weep; and charity,
even though heaven-born, will be pow
erless to conceal with her broad mantle
these erring ones who, bowed beneath
the double burden of their own and 9TH
ers' sins, desperately seek permanent
refuge in suicide, or strive to retain
temporary respectability by murder.
When women shall be free, no longer
the sport and prey of racking pecuniary
needs which, because of their sex, their
labor will not supply, this great wrong
will begin to right itself. In the mean
time, women, sisters, 1t has been said
with a show Of truth aud Justice that
none are so merciless to these errinp
ones as those Of their own sex whose
lines have fallen to them in pleasant
places, let us cultivate charity for those
who have stumbled by the way.
" Dare We condemn the ills that others doq
Dare we condemn?
Their strength is small, their trials are not |
few,
The tide Of wrong is dificult to stem,
And il 10 us more clearly than TO them
Is given the knowledge OF the good and true.
More do they need our help and pity too.
Dare we condemn ~
Orders have been received at the navy