The Waco evening news. [volume] (Waco, Tex.) 1891-1894, 1894-04-06

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Charles Duke in England, a woman
of the most estimabl character and
very great ability was willing to
marry him. She believed in him in
spite of the terrible testimony
against him. Many men from whom
their wives have obtained divorces
on the statutory grounds OF this
state, where the divorce law is so
strict, have not for that reason been
prevented from marrying thereafter
and elsewhere good and pure wo.
men. A woman 80 divorced is al.
most invariably shut out from sub
sequent matrimony wherever her in
fidelity in known. No man wants
her for a wife. Matrimonial union
with her involves disgrace for him
in the eyes of both men and women.
He is tattooed socially.
The Social Purity League of this
city, at its annual meeting last Mon.
day night, dema nded that this social
punishment should be visited with
equal severity and certainty on men
and women. 1t contended that in
morals and religion the standard of
purity is the same for both, and that
impurity is no less an offanse
against society in a man than in
woman; that it is as morally de.
structive in the one as in the other.
Yet the sentiment of society, from
the days of the o d Testament until
now, has been different, and at pres
ent the difference is largely, if not
chiefly, due to women. Women
continue to put the standard higher
for women than for men, and not
many of them .fad fault with the
law when it d,soriminstes between
the ,wo by making the woman often.
der punishable where the man is al
lowed to escape.
This difference is defended on
physiological grounds; but the So
cial Purity League is right in de.
nying that it is defensibla under the
laws and principles of Christianity.
The moral offense is the same in
both men and women, except that
where pure girl Is led astray by
man, it is far worse in him than in
her. The league, therefore, needs
first to educate WON en- to apply to
men the same standard of purity as
they apply to themselves. AS it is
now, great part of them excuse in
,non AS a pecoaoillo, an onense iur
which they condemn and ostracise
women pltilessly. Men whose ir-
regular and depraved relations with
women are matter of notoriety,
marry the spotless daughters of par
ents cognizant of the facts. That
is so indisputable and so frequent
that young men are thereby en-
Outraged In dissolute courses before
marriage.
The Social Purity League is en-
deavoring to overcome this evil by
specific legislation; but that is not
the way to provide an effectual
remedy for it. The law cannot in
culcate and enforce moral principles.
1t cannot change the public senti-
ment, and more particularly the
sentiment and the practice of wo.
men which create this difference Of
moral standard of which we have
spoken. The change must be effect.
ed by cultivating in both men and
women higher and truer senti.
ment, 80 that each shall hold the
other accountable to the same moral
law. 1t is a matter in the regua-
ton of which women can make
themselves all.powerful, if they
} will. As a beginning, w. G. P.
Breckenridge ought, as the Boston
Rescue League demands, to be re-
tired by the condemnation of wo
men to ga private life of obscurity
and oblivion" Such a fate he de
serves all the more because of his
! religious hypocricy and his unmanly
attempt to throw on his youthful
!. paramour the whole burden of thei
I common sim. Y. Sun.
{ The blood is the sonrca of health