Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1914-03-20
MIDDLE CLASS GIRL
IN AS MUCH DANGER
AS POORER SISTERS
Editorial Article Emphasizes Import
ance Of Education in the Homo.
Not Schools, Societies
or Churches.
Editorial in Pictorial Review.

Professional philanthropists have
been inveighing against the idle rich
and fretting over the underpaid work.
fisg girls. but they la forgotten the
temptations. Sociologists have been
calling conferences to discuss such
questions as: "Is sex morality a ques-
tion of wages?" What part does the
low wage play in the vice traffic?" Bat
nobody has watched the steady change
coming over young people who are
neither rich nor very poor. but who,
for lack of parental discipline, are
sailing closer and closer to the reefs.
Who can stem this tide of immortality
except parents? 1t is not work to be
LETT to the public schools, p-hilantropists.
PSYCHOLOGISTS. statesmen, employers and
the church. 1t is fathers work and
mothers work. And the main reason
why the middle class. w~ell-to-do Amer
lean parent does not do this work is
that industrial conditions have changed
the relations between parents and chill
aren.
In how many homes where you visit,
90 you know children who answer re-
xpecfully when asked where they are
going or where they have been? In
row many of these homes has the fear
q father, mother and the rod been
1rmly implanted in the minds and
sslls Of children?
Pardon the allusion to the rod. What,
Spank a child! Shades of Montessori!
Cruel! Brutal! Cowardly!
Reason with him. Thy moral
ssasion and then let him have his own
way-and wonder why he grows up
d'sobedlent, selfish, disrespectful.
Sonetlmes some of us dare to think
that some Of the old fashioned ways
were best after all.
What influences are molding your
chlld's tastes today? Does your daugh-
ter dance the tango, the one-step, the
grizzly bear?
of course" you answer. Everybody
does. They are the modern parlor
dances"
Does any father who knows the boo.-
e life dare make that last statement?
Does he really believe that these dances
are either of the parlor or the hour?
Lnese slow, %sensuous dances
originated not in parlors, but in the
old Bowery of New York, and the Bar
berry coas of San Francisco. They
were devised by social outcasts to in
name the vicious passions of other put
casts.
Not long ago an experienced, Gull
.ureo mar returned from a trip round
the world. On the night Of his ar
rival in his home town, he dropped in
on a dance given for his debutante
niece. Suddenly he drew his sister. a
stately matron, into the quiet library
ana demanded harshly and with
uWHchlng lips how she dared allow
those children" to indulge in such
dances.
D you know wher I've seen such
dancing BEFORE" he demanded. IN The
danger n of every foreign city
where I've stopped on my travels"
How silly. jim" the matron replied
complaceutly. Wherever they came
from fhoVVa hoon Vondarp3.-1 z-I
brought up to drawing room sage"
DO you think so?" retorted the
traveller holly: well, then all I've go
to say is that America and American
society has changed its IDEALS"
Unquestionably, American ideals or
American standards OF morality have
changed. You see~young people, their
parents n even their grandparents
o~oe-stepping and tangoing in the same
dance hall. And from the pulpit clergy
men thunder denunciations Of modern
dancing while no less q parsonage than