Ottumwa weekly courier. (Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa) 1872-1899, 1878-07-17
A SERMON TO WOMEN.
Based on Recent Tragedies IN Neu
York and Philadelphia-The Doavn-
Dard Tendency Of Social Life
american Mothers Responsible.
From the New York Tribune.

4
One night not long ago, this young
girl in haunt Of vice in Philadel-
phia, accidentally, while at supper,
put her foot on parlor match, which
set fire to her clothing. Another girl
| who ran to her rescue, shared her
fate their dresses were of thin mate
rial and blazed owe, their heads while
they fled shrieking to the street and
there burned slowly to death. The
men, their companions stood by and
offered no help. The significant part
of this horrible story is that both wo-
men were young, attractive, of good
birth aud social position, both edu-
Gated Zone graduate of Vassar col
lege); both had left homes of comfort
and ease, husbands and children, vol
unfairly, to take up this mode OF life,
which in their case could boast of no
attractive gliding. The house in
which they met their terrible fate was
one of the lowest of its class; the men
whom they chose as friends, belonged
to q wretched negro minstrel show
degraded, cowardly brutes, who
stood of in safety, watching them
die. Only two or three DAYS ago the
police records of our own city told
an even more pitiable tale. A father
found his daughter in an infamous
place and strove by legal means to
take her out. She defied him, the
courts sustained her, and she went
out gayly from the courtroom with
her vile companions, giggling at the
discontinue of the broken-hearte
father and brother, who stood with
heads bowed with shame as they
passed by.
The most frightful fact in our social
life faces us in these stories. 1t is
that there are women in this lowest
deep that are not driven there by
want or cruelty, nor led there by
betrayed affection; women who have
been gently reared, educated, below
ed. whose natures are SO tainted that
they choose to 60 out, like the prodi-
gal Of old, from the home God gave
them, to feed with the swine. How
many such are hidden in these dens
God only knows; how many remain
in their Originsl position, the records
of our divorce courts, the foul gossip
with which so-called fashionable soci-
ETY. reeks, not only in this country,
but in England, give us an appalling
hint. It is useless to ignore this fact.
Neither the pulpit or the press, if it
means to help at all in the bet.ering
of our social life, ought to ignore the
fact that certain portion of Ameri-
can and English society is rapidly bo.
coming as licentious rs that of Par
is.
Who is to blame for it? Not hu-
man nature. Women and men are
born as pure as they were genera.
ton ago. Not Christ's religion. His
hand is as strong to save the Magda-
len in the streets of New York as in
Jerusalem. 1t is the mothers who
are to blame. Mothers in fashiona-
BILE society, in the cities, and in that
society which feebly apes the fashion
in towns and villages and farm places
from Maine to Oregon, who set be-
fore their daughters, from their birth,
dress and show and style as the sole
gods they are to follow. We venture
to say that "Style," the most vulgar
of words and things, has done as
much to corrupt the women of Amer
ica as liquor has. Not only was it
the cause of our financial downfall,
but modesty, honesty, decency, are
sacrificed to 1t. Fashion now pub
fishes the rules for "first communion
dresses" and sets forth the pipings
and coiffure in which an innocent
girl may approach her God, There
is nothing so holy that it is not made
subservient to it. 1t is not the veal
thy mother alone that vitiates her
| child's mind by this worship of folly,
but the mechanics wife, the poor
seamstress, whose aim is to "push her
daughter on in society," to give her
stylish dresses instead of modest
heart, clean mind and God fear
ing soul. The moral training which
such mothers neglect is supplied by
hot-pressed sensational, juvenile lit
erature and the reports of foul scan
dals in the daily newspapers. Listen
to the precocious gossip Of the faunt-
ing, overdressed school girls who pa
rade the streets on holiday, and the
tragedies in Philadelphia and New
York, which we have mentioned, will
not seem strange sequal to such
training.
| 1t is but TO certain portion of our
society that these truths apply, and
that the smallest. The great obscure
mass of American women are honor
able, chaste and modest. In the ma
! jority of our homes there are com.
mon sense and piety enough to give
tawdry display its proper place in
life, and TO curb and direct the appe.
tites which God has given to men and
women. 1t rests with mothers tC
make the majority larger or smal ler