Iron County record. [volume] (Cedar City, Utah) 1893-1982, 1913-07-04

review, which says:
"They say" "Have you heard?" Two
wee phrases Five short words! But they
have done more damage than all The rest of
the dictionary rolled together They have
wrecked homes and broken hearts. They
have ruined promising careers and thrown
business firms into bankruptcy. They have
disrupted churches and plunged old friends
into bitter legal fights. The have driven men
to drink and women to insanity. They have
robbed innocent children of their parents and
sent young girls, broken-hearted and unwed-
ded to their graves. They have turned merely
foolish girls into wicked ones and they have
sent innocent men to prison. And they be-
long particularly to the vocabulary of women.
They are peculiarly the weapons of the So
called gentler sex.
Marshal Briggs arrested Jim Jones for
beating his wife" remarks a man to the
circle of loungers in the post office. And it
is so. Jim Jones is tried and fined in open
court. This is not gossip. 1t is plain,
brutal statement of fact.
"Have you heard that Mrs Blank has
left her husband?" inquiries Mrs. Meddlesome
at the sewing circle. "They do say he treats
home from prayer meeting my Mary heard
her carrying on fearfuly. and this morning
saw her, bag in hand, hurrying for the 7:40
train. They say she's gone back to her folks.
And so Tom Blank, silent, perhaps even
surly, but adored by his understanding wife,
acquires reputation for cruelty, when in
reality Mrs. Blank was carrying on" over a
telegram announcing the death of favorite
sister. In her grief, she had forgotten to
announce to her curious neighbors that she
was going home to the funerall
Had the meddlesome and imaginative
mother of Mary the ,eavesdropper, been pin
ned down to to facts. she must have admitted
that no one had really heard of Mrs. Blanks
leaving her husband. and that no one had
said that he treated his wife lily. The
entire story was built on the imagination and
sensational tastes of a gossip-monger. Inno-
cent, if surly, Mr. Blank wonders why his
neighbors look at him so coldly in his hour of
loneliness. When Mrs. Blank returns, she must
add TO the burden of her grief that of denying
an ugly story about her home life.
All this does no mean that men are
devoid of curiousity or malice, only that they
have a more direct and safer way of justify
ing both They go after facts. Men do gos-
sip. but they repeat what they know. Women
take a chance on repeating the little they
have seen, plus the much they have heard
and color the result with thick application
of imagination. Men rarely use the phrase,
"They say" Rather it is, Brown told me. -
And then Brown is held responsible for the
rumor or the statement. Men may be curious
about the doings of their neighbors or what
goes on in the offices and stores Of his COM
petitors but they also have wholesome re-
spect for scandel and libel laws, and simple
and practical way of demanding facts con-
corning current stories
The story which is built on facts, or the
bit of gossip which is cruel but true will
not work an injustice nor injure the limo.
cent But the tale prefaced by the little
phrase, "They saw" is reasonably sure to
drag some guitless party through the mire of
scandel and suffering"
The above statement is in general CORE
statement OF conditions as they acturay ext
10 far as they relate to the position Of men al
women with respect to gossiping taken as
whole the country over, but here in Cedar CT
We have few men who would take a rating
high as most any woman when it comes to sta
ng as facts something which is absolutely untru
They have marked disregard for scand
md libel laws and come Uarv noor OF tirnos