Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-03-03
The Suppression of vice.

EDITORS HERALD-Several months ago
number of women of Los Angeles
united under the leadership of Mrs. c. E.
Spencer for the purpose of suppressing
vice in our city. Mass meetings were
called and well attended, and a great
general interestsin the furtherance of the
good work was manifested.
Owing to various circumstances. ag-
gressive work was not Immediately
begun, and the interest gradually less
ened, until now, OF nearly one hundred
and fifty ladies who are enrolled upon
the Woman's Committee, only eighteen
or twenty attend the regular meetings on
Sunday afternoons at 2 o'clock at the
Fort Street M. E. Church.
The ladies Of the movement most
earnestly desire to make it a success,
and hope to produce decided changes in
the moral tone of the city. They intend
soon to open home for fallen women,
and are striving to reach out in other
directions, educational, philanthropic
and legislative. The educational work
is for the purpose of teaching all, but
especially the mothers and young
women, the best ways of preventing vice.
Legislative work will be necessary to get
good laws, both municipal and State, for
the restriction and suppression of vice.
The committee also hope to establish
homes for those women who are daily
exposed to thousands of temptations,
from poverty and from the lack of the
right kind of social enjoyment. Among
the much needed establishments is q
free, or practically free, employment
office, which might become self-sustain-
ing also respectable, clean, and neat
coffee, lunch and reading room, where
clerks, type writers and other Office and
day workers can go to eat the lunch they
have brought with them, and find re-
spectacle society and good, pure reading
matter, and where they can, if desired,
obtain cup of tea, coffee, etc., and a
substantial lunch, for the lowest sum
consistent with the self-sustainance of
the establishment.
Other institutions having for their OBJ
ject the healthful, pleasant and ennob-
ling occupations of the leisure time of
young women who earn their own living,
it is hoped will follow as the progress OF
the work permits.
| AT present, of course, everything must
be begun on small scale, and many of
the desirable things the Woman's Com
mittee hops to do are far in the future.
But active work has been begun, and it
ss necessary for the success of the enter
prise that all men and women having
the good of the growing youth of both
sexes at heart, shall contribute what they
can in the shape of earnest, determined,
continuous, and united effort to fight the
hydra-headed monster, vice, which holds
possession of so much of our city.
Surely work of such magnitude, and
which concerns so nearly the welfare of
every individual, needs the active Co
operation of all, and can not be left to,
or well accomplished by, twenty or
} twenty-five, no matter how earnest, per-
sons, all OF whom have many other and
imperative duties to attend to. ALI are
interested, and this interest needs to be
manifested by earnest thought on the
part OF all as to the best ways and means
of obtaining desired ends, by active
work, and, where possible, by pecuniary
aid.
J BY order Of the Committee.