The daily sentinel., 1908-05-08
The GIRL In TIGHTS
TABOOED In ST. PAUL
Ladies' Club Have Put the Ban on
Many F'riyiilou's and Suggestive
Thing-No more ''Woman
With "a Past" Plays.
Especial to The Sentinel J


st. Paul, Mimi, May S.-The toe
dancer, the dimpled girl radiant in
pink tights. the stunning Juno in the
living picture. the modest artists
model, the merry widows. the beauty
chorus in diaphanous robes or the
daintiest of frills and fleshings, the
too sweet chorus girls with their
exotic charms, radiant glances, and
Iddiculously short petticoats, accord
ing to the last edict of the club wo-
men of st. Paul, are now IA thing of
the past, as in the future they will
not he allowed to show themselves,
or their ingenuity, in the theatrical
programs of the future.
Problem plays. psychological So
ciety studies, a la Bernard Shaw:
dramas lacking in moral tone, and
productions of such neurotic traves-
ties as Sappho: and women with
past" as depicted by Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, are to be ostracised, and
their production made impossible in
st. Paul. The movement in this city
in favor of a drama pointing
moral and adorning tale" commenc-
ed a few months ago when a united
meeting of ministers was held pro-
testing against the performances of
Miss Nethersole and their voluptuous
kisses. The movement failed at the
time to stop the plays because one
minister dissented and gave an opin
ion that they were not opposed to
truth, and We're literary and artistic.
In sympathy with movement,
general in the United States, the st.
Paul women representing twenty-five
clubs, affiliated with the Fourth dis
trict of the Minnesota Federation of
Wnn1nn'G TltthC 1apidnl tn mt
on the tightest of tight dramatic
lids, in connection with what they
consider improper productions at all
places of amusement, and at the close
of the theatrical season st. Paul is
called upon to bid long farewell to
the daring eXtravaganzas with which
the patrons of the various theaters
and vaudeville houses have been so
long entertained in the past.
There is to be a general overhaul
ing of the penny parlors, where
school children are invited to make
themselves familiar with the friv-
olities of high life as it is supposed
to exist in Paris and New York. and
where stories of domestic infelicity
and infidelity are treated with levity.
1t is claimed that the ten cent shows,
so popular in the city. are Turing high
school girls from the paths of virtue,
and that Immediately school is over
they resort to these places to meet
acquaintances and form attachments
1t is proposed to place these ten cent
establishments under the watchful
supervision of the inspector of
schools. This officer will give them
an academic tone, and see that moth
ing is given except such entertain
ments as are right and proper for
school girls to see and that good
order is maintained.
The president of the st. Paul Wo-
mems clubs is Mrs. Russell r. Dorr.
She is an able woman, and the clubs
have met with extraordinary success
in the reform work they have under
taken under her leadership. After
a nine months campaign at the state
capitol they secured the separation
of the male and female departments
of the state reformatory. Last fall
a crusade was commenced in favor
of enforcing the law in connection
with the sale of cigarettes and i'm
proper literature to minors. When
this campaign opened it was impos-
sible to walk a block without seeing
boy of seven or eight putting
cigarette with all the assurance of a
man of so. The habit was spreading
to young girls who were given Gig
arettes by boys attending schools.
Pictures of a disgusting kind. put
into circulation by undesirable
saloonkeepers, were finding their
way into the hands of boys and girls
But owing to the energetic crusade
prosecuted by the club women at st.
Paul those evils have disappeared.
and a moral and physical improve
ment has taken place in the lives of
the young people of the city. 1t is
now proposed to reform the older
ones on the same moral lines.