The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-09-16
GIVE LITTLE GIRLS
A CHANCE FOR LIFE.

a RECENT physical examination
"a of the public school children in
one of the most crowded tenement
house sections of New York city
showed that nearly half of them
were defective in one way or another.
A large percentage of them exhibited
what is called nasal breathing
is, when they inhaled and exhaled air
it was with a kissing noise, showing
the nose and lung passages to be OBJ
structed. Many had ophthalmic eyes,
shortness of vision, astigmatism or
crossed sight. Another considerable
proportion were more or less deaf, still
others deformed.
This sorrowful start in life among
the children of poverty is owing large
ly to two causes-defective nutrition
and lack of pure air and sunlight. The
poor little tenement girls were especial
ly subject to ailment, for on them falls
earliest and hardest the burden of life.
Greatly indeed are the poor little wo-
men to be pitied, robbed as they are
of childhood's first right-full physical
development.
Doubtless the idea will be new to
many women, but the girl children of
the we'll to do have in many instances
scarcely a better chance for life than
the tenement house daughters, yet such
is the fact. Many a mother who scorns
to let her little girls play with a poor
child is actually herself depriving these
darlings of what they need more than
anything else in life-sunlight and free,
robust exercise in the open air.
About o'clock of an afternoon in
summer and autumn days people pass
ing through the residential portions of
any city or large town in this country
will see on front steps rows of pale,
small girls dressed to kill' In white
raiment with tight shoes, elaborate
sashes and long, troublesome hair. In
nine cases out of ten when these poor
little victims of a false civilization were
permitted to join the melancholy, mo-
tionless front step brigade the last
word each heard from her mother was
a severe warning against doing any
thing that would spoil her clothes. The
hapless, starched up puppets are posit-
ed there as much to show off their
clothes as for anything else, merely to
crafty their mistaken mothers vanity.
They. have been kept in dark rooms
all day because they were not dressed
up" When late in the daylight hours
they are let out of confinement they
are not allowed a child's natural free
dom of motion just because, again,
they are dressed up The full,
healthfuI physical development of a
! glorious human being is sacrificed to
the demonish Inoloch of clothes.
A city fiat is no place in which to
bring up children to begin. Neither is
a city house of any kind. unless it has
a back yard, where the mother of the
future may skip rope, play ball, bean
bag, tag and all merry, romping games.
that, too, wearing as few garments as
possible and those substantial and of
durable color, allowing absolutely free
movement of muscles. The small over
all trousers which sensible mothers
now permit their young daughters as
well as sons to. wear are wholly to be
commended The best results will be
attained if in suitable weather the lit
tie one can go barefoot or wear only
sandals, without stockings. Moreover,
very little girls should have their hair