The Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1???-1928, 1914-01-18
On Morality and Parental Discipline

Professional philanthrCpist5 have
been inveighing against the idle
rich and fretting over the under
paid working girls, but they have
forgotten the middIe-class girl her
opportunities and her temptations.
Soeiologists have been calling con-
ferences to discuss such questions
as is sex morality question of
wages" What part does the low
wages play in the yiqe traffic
But nobody has watched the steady
change coming over young people
who are neither very rich nor very
poor, but who, for lack Of Parenta!
Discipline, are sailing closer and
closer to the reefs.
Who can stem this tide of immor-
ality except parents? II is not work
to be left to the public schools, phil
antropists, sociologists, statescen,
employers and the church. 1t Is
Fathers work and Mothers work.
And the main reason why the mid
die class, well-to-do American par
ent does not 10 this work is that
industrial conditions have shanged
the relations between parents and
children.
In how many homes whore you
visit, do you know childraa who
answer respectfully whcn asked
where they are going or. whore they
have been? In how many Of these
homes has the fear Of father mother
and the rod been firmly implanted
in the minds and souls of children?
Pardon the allusion to the rod
What! Spank a child! Shades OF
Montessori; Cruel Brutal. Coward
ly. Reason with him. Try moral
suasion and then let him have his
own way--and wonder why he
grows up disobedient, selfish and
disrespectful Sometimes some of us
dare to think that some OF the old
fashioned ways were best after all.
What influences are molding
your childs tastes today? Does your
daughter dance the tango, the one
step, the griszley bear?
'Of COURSE" you answer. Every
body does. They are the modem
parlor dances"
Does any father who knows the
book Of life, dare make that last
statement? Does he really believe
that these dances are either of the
parlor or tho hour2
These slow sensuous dances orig
mated not in parlors, but In
tho lowest dives of such districts as
the old Bowery Of New York, and
the Rarhery Coast of San Francisco
They were devised by social out
casts to inflame the vicious passions
of other social outcasts.
Not long ago, an experienced,
cultured man returned from a trim
round the world On the night OF
his arrival in his home town, he
dropped in on dance gwen for his
deoutante niece Suddenly he drew
his sister stately matrou, into the
quiet library and demanded harshlv
and with twitching lips how she
dared allow those children" to In
dulge in such dances
DO you know where I've seen
such dancing before" he demanded
In the danger zones Of every for
eign city where I've stopped on m,
travels"
How silly, Jim, tho matron re
Piled complaeently. Wherever the
came from, they've been molernize
and brought MP TO drawing-roor
usage
DO you think SOL" rctorted tn
traveller holly. well chen all I,
got to say is that America an
American society has changed i
ideals"
PROFESSIONALLY American idea
or American standards of moralit
have changed. You see young pc,
pie, their parents and even the
grandparents one-stepping and tai
going in the same dance hall. Ar
from the pulpit clergymen thund
denunciations of modern dancin