The Semi-weekly leader. (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1905-1941, 1913-06-11
THE UPPER CRUST" ARRAYED...
SOCIAL EVIL IN MIND AND HEART

/ DIR. w. 7. Boiling has written
about the Social Evil in the Mem.
phis Commercial. Among other
things he says:
mot only working girls, but
women who are able to purchase
the goods that these girls are en-
ployed to SELL. are involved, and
men of every class are among the
guilty who entice women to barter
virtue for the pleasure of lust. The
assignation houses and the brothels
could tales unfold that would shock
innocent society from center to
circumference, and present ,quanti-
ties which make the question of
social evil the greatest problem
that the puriest can attempt to
lsolve.
Men shoot other men about their
wives, and women shoot other
women about their husbands, yet
these are but the manifestations in
aggravating cases, while the great
majority of lust cases never come
to the surface, and comparatively
few come out quietly in the divorce
courts, but all alike tell of the deep
and wide-reaching extent of the
social evil. 1t is all right to talk
and write about the working girls.
but my observations have convinced
me that there is Just as much room
for pure working girls to labor for
the betterment morally of the upper
crust as there is for the upper crust
to labor for the moral Improvement
of the working class, for both Of
them furnish instances of social
garment, soiled with the stain of
moral impurity, and instances of
brave. pure womanhood battling
to maintain the moral purity of
the great social body.
Six dollars week is too little to
pay young woman as wage, but
the girl who is impure on six dol.
lars would be just as impure on
ten. for the evil lies IN the mind
and heart and not, merely in the
pocketbook, and with really pure
woman money and morals are not
mixed quantities.
The woman who will consider
money as a compensation for her
surrender of her womanIy purity
simply takes the money as Judas
took the thirty pieces of silver,
while pure lust remains the cause
of her fall and. very often this
mournful tragedy is completed
under the guise of marriage, hav-
ing the phase of civil right, but
still morally wrong. with bargain
and sale the leading incentive to a
farce involving an after tragedy of
immoral cast.
After all. is not much Of our
great evil the result of our having
a double code of morals, one for
men and another for women, under
which men are encouraged to i'm
lpurity. for which women are con-
demned without hope7 The result
of this double and unjust standard
is that men take advantage Of
woman's weakness and trust and
pursue them to their downfall and
hopeless ruin, while they return to
genteel society. into which they
are received without discount,
though morally impure and delib-
crate wreckers of the purity of
womanhood. This is not only nm
Just, but amounts to putting a
premium on male impurity. while
forever banishing the female VIC
| Tins of their encouraged lust from
decent society. much Of it only So
called, for many who dwell in the
Ired light district are not more i'm
pure than many who in their cover-
led impurlty walk in social citizen
lship the white way Of social pleas
lure.
So long as We retain this unjust
double standard Of morals. SO long
| will the white slave traffic 20 or,
80 long will the working girls fall