The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1892-05-31
woman's Inhumanity to Woman.

and is Independent in Its 0aeus on ol
local questions.
Woman's Inhumanity to Woman.
Mrs. Williamson of the State Char
tiles Aid Society should have been in
Elizabeth on Saturday night at the
picnic where the police attempted to
enforce the ordinance forbidding girls
of fifteen and under from attending
such festivities. There was a shock
ing scene. When the police appeared,
some girls made a panic stricken rush
for the fences. They struggled under
and wei them, while the crowd be-
came excited and alternately cheered
and chivvied them. The incident is
described as being a disgrace to
decency and an outrage on woman
hood.
But this was not the worst. Two
bluecoated brutes seized a we'll
dressed, pretty girl and started to
drag her to the lookup, just as they
might a common girl of the streets.
The victim became hysterical with
fear and shame. The bluecoated
brutes-representing the Women's
Christian Association, if you please
pulled and hauled her. She screamed
and struggled in their grasp, Her
clothing became torn and disar-
ranged; her hair dishevelled. A
thousand ~people-men. ONE and
children-watched the scene.
AT first curiosity prevailed, that
hideous longing to see a oma in
torture which has always character
lied vulgar crowds from the days of
the Roman Circus. But, thank heaven,
there is something in our modern
civilization. Ideas of right gradually
regained the mastery, and before long
the men were shouting for ropes to
hang the b~luecoated brutes who we're
doing the work of the Women's
Christian Association. The brutes
became alarmed. Their vile lives
were in danger. They let the girl go,
and sulkily beat a retreat before the
righteous anger of the outraged
throng. W
Then the girl was taken away by
some women-not members, probably,
of the Women's Christian Association
who quieted her frantic excitement,
restored her attire to q state of
decency, and sent her. to her
home, whittier she went with
a blight on her young life
the blight. of the policeman's
grasp, the whitening shame of public
exposure in a. scene of public punish
ment, not unlike in character and de-
gree that which used to be inflicted at
the whipping post and pillory, only
in this case it was inflicted not by
judicial decree but by the will of the
Women's Christian Association and
two ruflianly policemen.
Shame on such Parkhurstian
methods of reformation. Shame OH
the wolnen who devised them the
men who gave them the sanction of
law and on the men-no, the brutes
who shanefully strove to put them
into execution. Let us hope the
Elizabeth Common Council will now
hasten to undo the wrong it has done,
and that we will have no more talk in
other communities of again putting
on our statute books enactments from
the hideous codes of the dark ages.
"a FELLOW feeling makes us Won
drous kind" says Byron. An exem-
plification of the fact was witnessed
at Ellis Island on Saturday. A Jer-
sey City man who had improvised
a floating bar in a rowboat was
caught selling beer and whiskey to
immigrants at the back of the station.
he was hauled up, of course, but
when Colonel Toffey and Major An
derson found that he was a truly good
Republican from New Jersey, and
that he charged twenty-five cents for
whiskey and at the rate of twenty
cents a glass for beer, giving a THIN
bleful for ten cents, they said to him,
60 away and don't come back
again" But two poor employees who
drank some of the vile stuff he was
peddling were instantly dismissed.
They had no right to spend their
money outside of the regular restau-
rant, it is true, but they might have
received the same l~eniency that was
shown the dispenser of illegal liquids.
The Elizabeth Journal says that
Mayor Wanser is making 1t extreme
N hot for Democratic officeholders. !"
tn the people Of this city it rather
looms as in Mayor Wanser were en-
gag4d in the more cooling process of
thruSting icicles down his own back.
Whether they will save him from
political modification or not remains
to be ssen.
ALL the lead works in the country
are now combined under one corpora
ton called the National Lead Com
pany of New Jersey. That must be
the heaviest trust in existence.
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