The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1911-09-08
(BroOklyn Times.)

brooklyn Times.)
The papers of late have contained
the details of nauseating interviews
with trio of free love advocates, who
are setting at defiance conventional
marriage, and inflicting their maudlin
infidelities upon the public in inter
views whose shamelessness they have
neither the brains nor the morals to
recognize. Their pratings about the
economic status of women, the endow-
ment of motherhood by the state, trial
marriages and the searching for soul
mates show how easily human beings
lapse into animalism when they lose
their self-respect and cast off the
bonds of the morality which we'll or
dered people have accepted as the
standard of human conduct and rela-
tons. There is no law which prevents
people from making fools of themsel-
yes, and these degenerates, who have
lost any sense of shame they once had
and exploit in the public press their
indecencies are so bold in the expo
sure OF the lewdness of their foul
minds that they excite the nauseating
disgust which the sight of drunken
brawl creates in the public streets.
The spectator Is too clean-minded to
be amused and looks for the police to
call for the garbage cart and relieve
the eyes and nostrils of the public
Nothing is more apparent than the
tolerations by the public of indecen-
cies which one would have had short
shift. Half-naked women dance upon
the stage, before audiences composed
of young men and women and they are
drawing cards. Songs are sung whose
only claim to attention is their going
far over the border line of decency by
women who are without voice, or art,
whose only anxiety is as to how far
they can go and escape the police.
Marriage is spoken of as a joke, and
the most fragrant violations of the
marriage vow are applauded by wom
en- who are counted as members of
good society.
The divorce colony of Reno Is in
continuous picnic, and specifications
are in the hands of the bidders for
hotels in rival towns that are compel
ing for the patronage. 1t is said that
divorces follow marriage in the ratio
of one in IL. while in dramatic circles
the frequency with which divorces &C.
cur has ceased to excite remark. The
recent statistics of Germany indicate
an appalling number of divorces, so
that the condition which prevails with
us is not our own peculiar shame. In
the countries where divorce is not rec
ognized the conditions which exist are
notorious and intolerable, patent to
every observer, breaking down the
safeguards of the family and destroy
ing the relations which in an era of
purer morals existed between the sex
es. 1t is probable that the divorce
statistics have been exaggerated; it is
at least certain that the great mass
of people esteem the sanctity of mar
rage, that the purity of the home has
not been lowered and the great major
ity Of the people are clean-minded and
|right-minded
And the most alarming symptom of
the times is not in the widespread
violation of the decencies of the sexes
by the many. but the tolerated exploit
tation of the degeneracies of few
blatant. shameless creatures, who have
not the decency to even hide their an
imalism The Puritans branded their
Idegenerates and bound them in the
stocks and pillory, treated them as
pariahs and made them social out
casts. We simply cross the street to
avoid contact with the shameless ones,