The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1913-03-13
LYING men CAUSE
women TO GO
WRONG
COMMITTEE RECEIVES LETTERS
FROM FALLEN WOMEN WHO
SAY WAGES NOT CAUSE.
MOCK AT INVESTIGATORS WORK
''You're All a Bunch of Hypocrites,
Afraid to look the thing in the face
and Afraid to Learn the Truth" Bit
ter Cry From the Underworld.
MOCK AT INVESTIGATORS WORK

Chicago, March 13-Reformers and
unreformed-the state senates vice in
vestigation committee and the women
for whose moral downfall the commits
sion is trying to determine the cause
differed on the relation between low
wages and low morality. Letters re-
ceived by the committee from women
of the underworld Knocked at the work
which the legislators are doing.
One of these letters signed "R. E.
L." reads:
"To the Commission: Girls don't
go wrong because they are hungry or
because they need clothes. They go
wrong because they are tempted by
lies and overpowered by the evil in
men.
"They listen to the fair and pretty
things that men tell them and they
fall because they think they can trust
themselves and trust the tempters. 1t
is not the employers. I was a good
girl and I worked in a store.
81 didn't get much money, but that
didn't matter. l lived on IS a week
and would be living like that now
but I met men. They seemed to con-
slider me their prey and all the time it
was fight, fight. They wanted to be
nice to me, they said, and to take me
to the theatre and treat me fair-and
give me a chance to enjoy life.
'T didn't know men were bad-all
bad-where a girl is concerned.
thought all girl had to do to remain
good was to be truthful with herself.
God pity women who think that and
who keep their trust in men until It is
too late.
Every day it was some one else
always smiling at me-always trying
to give me fair chance to be happy.
In the street they followed me. These
could avoid-but the friends who
hung around!
"This is the big, big secret of the
thing that makes a good girl bad. If
they had let me be-if they had only
let me be-only let me live as wanted
to, I wouldn't have had to stink into
the room when your commission was
trying to solve things and wouldn't
have had to sit in corner with my
veil down afraid to look good woman
in the face"
Another cry from the underworld
echoed the words of this letter. 1t
was more bitter, though, and 1t read,
in part:
you're looking for the things that
made such women as I. Low wages!
Dance halls! Hunger! Cold They
all helped a bit, but they didn't turn
the trick themselves. You're all
bunch of hypocrites afraid to look the
thing in the face, and afraid to learn
the truth.
az don't know any girls who sold
themselves for money to buy bread or
clothes But do know lots Of us who
hit the road for hell because lot of
blackguards kept bounding them with
their rotten attentions
"God help the men and not us. We
are all right when we start All we
need is to be left alone. There are
hundreds and hundreds of kids and
sports who hang around State street
and wait like wolves for the tired girls
to leave the stores.
''Why don't you make the men be
good? All the wages in the world
won't help us. Make the men good
and the girls will be good.
Nov they haven't got chance and
they never will have as long as the law
smiles at one and spits on another"
This letter was signed with the ini-
tials IL. NJ"
While these comments on the situa-
ton continued to pour in the civic
consciousness awakened by the COM
mission bestirred itself in the launch
ing of committees and private inyesti-
eating forces.
In some stores numbers of girls ap-
preached their employers I'd demand
larger salaries. All were ass 4red (1st