The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-08-02
CARNA[|TY in SONG
DANCE AND DRESS
The Low and Obscene Character Of
Modern Music and Dress Is One of
the Greatest Disgraces of Our Amer
lean Civilization.
(From The Literary Digest.)

AAASA
servers are either puzzled or critical
about the backward tendency they
note in social morals, as indicated in
the kind of song, dress, and dance
now most popular. Where formerly,
we are. told, songs pleasant and
otto, or humorous, we're heard in the
parlor, concert hall, or theater, now
we have in a tyranny of ''ragtime" an
offensive and gross prostitution of all
sentiments that customarily form the
basis of the popular song. AS long
ago as May "a, it was recorded in
these pages that plan had been sug-
gested for the censorship of such
songs, but, although no such censor
ship has been legally effected, the pri-
vate censorship of the press, secular
and religious, is continuous. Likewise
there is abundance of structure on
what is being gradually fixed in the
mind of the reading public as the i'm
modesty of woman's dress, and the
peril of the new dances whose pecu-
liar steps are more or less loosely rec
ognized by such names as the Tango,
the Turkey Trot, and half dozen
more. Against persent day songs, a
writer in the New York Musical OBJ
server presents his argument in the
guise of a picture, saying:
rs it not pitiful to look upon a lit
tie girl, perhaps seven or eight years
old, swapping her fingers, swaying
from side to side, and Justify singing
as if her very heart were in every
note. 'Ev'rybody's doin' it, dom it.
She hears her big sister sing it; her
big sister hears it at a show and
her beau buys it for her. Glance at
the sheet music displayed on the piano
in the front parlor' of nearly every
home in the country. Do you see any
songs like Annie Laurie Ben Bolt,
or The Last Rose of Summer No;
you see The DEVILS Ball. The Dippy
Rag The Balloon Baby Dance and
The Tango Twist each one with a
title page picturing contortioned dane
ers partly clothed, and the printed
words. The reigning success of the
day. And the worst of it all is that
these songs appeal not only to the
low and vicious minded, but the great
majority of our church-going, pious
minded people pay out their money tc
attend theaters in order to hear anC
applaud them"
Such songs should be "banished,
according to the Congregational AID
vance (Chicago), while the Chicago
Daily News, citing statement By
George Hamlin, the tenor, that goot
songs are produced in a country where
the people know and understand gooC
poetry, shows a way out:
"The average American song ii
drivel, if not something worse. Thi
could not be true if it were not 70
the fact that both composers and tn,
purchasing public will consent to &C
cept drivel. The young people of thi
country should be familiarized witt
good poetry. If better songs are t.
be the by-product of deeper culture
hasten the day."
Yet deeper culture" or sense O
the artistic, are not generally brough
forward in support of the indecorun
of women's dress of the moment Fo
example, a writer in the Wesleyan
Methodist Syracuse, N. W has thi
to say on the subject:
IF girls had faint idea of the dis
gushing sight they presented, or coul
hear some of the unmanly, dissolut
remarks made about them as the
: pass along the streets clad in trans
parent waists, or one of those shor
outlandish, tight-gripping, hobbl
skirts, they would feel so ashame
that if they had spark of virtue LEI
in them they would go to their room
or get out of sight somewhere til
they had a sensible dress to put OF
How can they expect people to dis
tinguish them from the low and col
rupt if they dress exactly like them ?
To impress his readers, as he say!
with the fact that he is not talking O
his own unsupported opinion, the wri
er in The Wesleyan Methodist quote
Catholic priest of New York Cit
as having declared that
Never in history were the mode
so abhorrently indecent as they ar
today. One may make the closes
study of costumes through the print
and drawings and sculptures of fiv
thousand years and find nothing t
equal the shameless styles worn III
abashed in the crowded streets an
summer resorts by hundreds of thol
sands of apparently respectable girls.
Many more religious papers are on
spoken in condemnation of "the mod
of today as, for instance, the KaI
sas City Catholic Register, which say
There is no artistic excuse for som
, of the costumes to be seen in publ
places" and Classics certain ga
, ments as designed to compel instar
attention to their indecency;;" Will
of the secular press, the New Yor
Times. commenting on a dispatch froI
, its Paris correspondent that women
dress models this summer are "th
most audacious since the Directoire
is at a loss for an explanation:
:. "The Directoire audacity is unde
standable. France had been having
, debauch in the name of freedom, r
, ligion had been nearly obliterate'
) morals were at low ebb, and th
social condition was exactly expresse
in the dress of the women. But tia