The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-11-15
DANGERS TO WHICH
GIRLS ARE EXPOSED.

It is a national popularity, says Do
rothy Dix in the New Orleans Plea
yune, that no other people in the world
make such a fetish of their daughters
as we do and no other people do so
little to safeguard them. We rear
them; we do not suffer the wind to
blow harshly upon them, and then we
chuck them out into life to live or die,
with broken hearts or without, as
chance may desire.
No better example could be given of
this than is found in the criminally
loose way in which girls are permitted
to make acquaintance and form their
own visiting list of people with whom
their parents are totally unacquainted
Our darling Maud meets Tom, Dick and
Harry at a party, or on the golf link,
or is introduced to Adolphus or Au-
gustus on the street car by some other
girl just as poor a judge of character,
as ignorant and as undiscriminating as
she is herself. The man who met the
man, who saw the man, who knew the
man who broke the bank at Monte
Carlo does not present fewer or ha-
zier credentials as a passport to our
home. Nevertheless, in accord with
the ethics of our beautifully democratic
society, Tom, Dick and Harry, and exc
Adolphus and Augustus, happening to
pass the house and being pleased with
Maud's beaux yeax, drop in for a call,
and, before anybody knows it, like the
Vaneerings, they are established as her
Oldest friends.
Apparently nobody stops to inquire
who Tom, Dick and Harry are, what
sort of family they come from, what
they are doing, or what sort of moral
character they possess. Sometimes
Maud's mother has a, speaking ac-
quaintance with her daughters beaux,
sometimes she has not. AS for Maud's
father, he doesn't know them by sight;
and as for investigating the character
of young Smith. or young Jones, or
young Brown, who are camping on his
door step and, perhaps, holding his
daughters hand, he would never dream
of putting himself to so much trouble.
Yet in other matters, Maud's father is
neither blindly trusting nor wildly reck-
less. If he were going to hire $10-a-
week clerk he would look into the APP
plicant's references, ascertain whether
he played the races or was addicted
to drink; and if he were going TO trust
him with his. cash drawer, instead of
his daughter, he would require him to
with his daughters welfare that he
takes chances, and as a matter of
fact, the attitude of the general faith
er who gets Duns or Bradstreet's re-
port on his clerks, and takes his
daughters visitors on trust, can only
be compared to the prudence of a man
who would lock up a stock of iron pots
and kettles in his f1reproof safe and
leave his government bonds out on the
sidewalk.
When a strange man appears on the
scene, or opens up a Voluminous cor
respondence with Maud, he is suff-
GENTLY explained if Maud says she met
him at Mrs. Flightlies, or was intro
duced to him by Cholly Addlepate, yet
on no other subject would Maud's par
ents take the opinion of woman
VIGOROUSLY silly and impulsive, or OF
a man whose judgment they despise
and whose discretion they doubted. So
It happens that hundreds of girls all
about us are receiving visits, and going
TO parties, and writing letters to men
of whom their fathers and mothers
know absolutely nothing, and it is to
the standing glory of the manhood of
our country that so little harm comes
of these uncensored acquaintance, and
that American men protect American
girls better than their own parents do.
But If parents are recklessly careless
in letting men visit their daughters
that they do not know, they are Grim
final in letting men come to their houses
that they do know and who, for any
reason, they are unwilling to let their
daughters marry. All of us have seen
young lives wrecked. and young hearts
bruised and broken, times without
number by this parental stupidity.
Fathers and mothers may set 1t down
as an unalterable fact that youth is
t7 Nd hat hAi
own children are going to follow the
primrose path, just like every other
lad and maiden. When young Grigsby
takes to spending seven evenings
week at their house, and he and Maud
develop an ability to talk to each other
from o'clock until midnight without
yawning, they are not discussing the
political outlook. or the state of the
market, or the chances of Peary dis
covering the north pole. They have
gotten down to business and to the one
question of which no human being ever
hears enough-the old, old question:
DO you love me?"
No father or mother has right
to let any young man visit at their
house that they would not be willing
10 see their daughter marry.
If American fathers were indiffer-
ent to their daughters. if they regard
ed them as an incum brance of which
they wish to rid themselves as soon
as possible by marrying them off, or
even if they were unaware that mar
rage make or mars the happiness
of life. one could the more easily un-
derstand this position on this sub
ject. Such, however, is far enough
from being the case His daughter is
the idol of the American fathers heart,
the one flower of his hard-worked
struggling life the being for whom he
tolls and sacrifices, and to secure whose
happiness he would die. yet for all that
he is absolutely and criminally care
less about taking the commonest pre-
caution to secure her a good husband
Some fine day Maud appears before
him and announces that she is going
TO marry Adolphus Gustavus, whom she
has met in New York, or San Fran
cisco, or kalamazoo, and who, she as
sures her father. is the most adorable
and delightful of his sex, and that she
is sure he is eligible because he has
a black mustache and dances two
step divinely Maud is a dear, and her
father worships her, but he would not
trust her judgment to pick out setter
puppy, while as for allowing her to buy
5000 piece of real estate, or invest in