The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1913-03-23
MANY NEW FEATURES IN THE
DOWNFALL OF WOMEN ARE
BROUGHT OUT.
WILSON SEEN
the Executive Takes Under Consider
alton the Request to Call National
CONFERENCE.-The on Bachelors Suq-
gested, as we'll as Whipping Post for
All White Stavers.

Washington, March 22.-The whip
ping post for whte-slave traffickers
and seducers of women, a tax upon
bachelorhood, more careful training
of children and abolition of joy rides
and ragtime dancing were advocated as
remedies for the social evil at hearing
here today conducted by the Illinois
senatorial vice commission which came
to Washington primarily to interest
President Wilson in a nation wide vice
crusade.
The commission secured the promise
OF President Wilson to consider their
request for him to call a conference OF
governors and representatives of vice
commissions from various states to
study the social problem, the confer
ence to be held in Washington as soon
as practicable. Congressman Robert
Hill of Illinois agreed on request of the
committee to introduce in congress a
bill creating a commission to look into
vice conditions in the District of Col
umbia.
At the hearing, attended by many
prominent women and men interested
in social welfare work, the law wage
question as a cause of girls going
wrong was discussed, several of the
witnesses decrying the idea, insisting
that lack of education and resisting
force had much more to do with the
downfall of women. Men, too, We're
blamed as principally responsible for
the degradation of GIRLS
Witnesses who declared that low
wages were not responsible for social
vice admitted, however, on being ques-
toned by Lieutenant Governor O'Hara,
head of the commission, that higher
wages for working girls would better
equip them to resist evil, and all rec
commended that a minimum wage law
for girls would be Of great benefit.
Tho Minimum Wage.
Eight dollars week as a minimum
wage for women was the generally
accepted sum estimated by the wit
nesses Mrs. Harvey w. Wiley wife of
the former chief of the bureau of
chemistry being one who mentioned
that sum as minimum as a wage
for girls.
Mrs. Wiley advocated sex hygiene as
one of the basic remedies for the So
cial evil, urged women police for cities
and enfrachisement of women
"Give us the franchise" she said,
land we will raise the age of consent
50 that 12-year- old girls cannot have
their bodies given away"
Mrs. Wiley and other witnesses also
declared that employers of under paid
girls and women had not the moral
right to give money to charities out of
the earnings of their enterprises un-
til they had increased the wages of
their employees.
DIR. w. c. Woodward, health officer
of the District of Columbia, urged the
encouragement of early marriage among
young men as one of the remedies for
the social evil and he placed the re-
sponsibility for the downfall of 80
per cent of women directly at the door
of men rather than in the counting
room of the department stores or fac
tory. He approved a suggestion by
Senator Bean of Illinois of law i'm
posing a tax upon bachelors between
the ages of "a and AZ, saying all men
over 32 years should pay an annual
tax of $780, DR.. Woodward presented
some astonishing statistics, among
them that so per cent of the men, as
shown in his list of patients, and that IL
per cent were afflicted with loathsome
diseases.
"Unlawful places" said DR.. Wood
ward. "are the morasses from which
these diseases come. State education
is the best means for eradicating these
places"
DR.. Woodward gave statistics show
ing that 10 per cent of all the recorded
births in the District OF Columbia last
year were illegitimate, the mothers
being between 13 and 20 years of age
dn the majority of cases.
Robert Barrett, speaking for hi!
mother, Kate Waller Barrett, head O.
the Florence Crittenton home for girl
throughout the country. took vigorous
issue with the commission on the mat
ter of low wages as cause of vice
as did also Mrs. Adolph Kahn o
Washington.
Mr.. Barrett said that the Florenc
Crittenton homes had cared for NOR
than 10000 wayward girls Throughout
the country and information from
these girls showed that low wage
were the least of the causes Of i'm
morality.
I'VE believe it Is not right or fai
to say that a low wage is the rea
reason for vice." Mr.. Barrett sale
There are more society girls. girl
from good homes, with fathers able
provide for them amply. who have fall
en into vice and come to be inmate
of the Florence Crittenton homes tha
wage earning girls Very few VIII