The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1916-04-27
CHARGES ADUTY NEGLECTED
When Church Members Are Allowed to
Stray to Low Resorts for Dance
They Want, Says the Church
Fails in Civic Duty

''The church has not done us uuGy
TO the community in which it has it's
being and it will not do its full duty
until it provides dancing places in its
parlors,U said Mrs. Louise B. Esch, this
morning.
Mrs Esch is a sister-in-law of Con-
gresham Esch and of Mrs. Theo. R.
Faville of this city, whose guest she
was over Easter. She is also social
inter- director of the Eleanor home,
No 6, in Chicago.
''I have little patience with those
churches that are so blind to opportu-
nifty that they will close their doors to
those who want to dance and who
surely are going to dance, and drive
them from the church to the cheap and
harmful dance hall and to that in
which the keeper Of the adjoining sa-
loon is the chaperon.
Those churches are like the ostrich
that hides it's head in the sand and then
believes none can see any better than
it. The young people of those self
same churches are attending dances un-
der perfectly legitimate conditions in
many instances with the full consent
of their parents, and yet are placed in
the embarrassing condition of either
giving up their membership in an or
ganization their inclination and tradi-
tions hold them to, or else of playing
the hypocrite by allowing themselves
to be known as members and then
breaking the rules that one is supposed
to subscribe to to become a member.
Dance Regeneration.
CT know from my social center work
and experiences in the Eleanor club
that dancing is one of the greatest re-
generators for physical and mental vi
tality.
Workers who follow sedentary oc-
cupation that makes strenuous demands
upon the body need two things when
their hours of relaxation come. They
need lively physical exercise and they
need congenial social companionship in
clean and wholesome surroundings.
"'This they get in the community and
social centers where dancing prevails
which thank heaven, are growing more
and more common in the schools and in
churches.
In our community dances in the Ell
eanor homes the visitors come at an
early hour and they go home at ten
o clock. They have had the stimulus
OF physical exercise and pleasant
wholesome social intercourse and vet
not to an extent where it is drain
upon their strength or detracts from
their work of the next day."
Works Among Jews.
The social center in which Mrs Esch
works is in Russian Jewish commu-
nifty in Chicago and she says the eager
ness with which these people seek edu-
cation and the joy with which they
learn music, literature and other arts
are an inspiration and an incentive to
the workers. She says they have 70
pupils in the music classes, practically
all of the 1000 enrolled on the books
Of the center are in the English
classes and many others in various
other branches such as painting, en-
broidery, basketry, lace making and
the like. But she considers that in no
one direction is more actual good done
than in the dancing classes and the
dances where the drab existence of the
toilers, living in congested, unbeautiful
districts, undergoing constant hardship
and privation, is relieved by this little
roseate glimmer.
Romance in Club.
She told the romantic story of the
establishment of the Eleanor clubs
which have cousins in many of the large
cities of the United States. AS she
tells it, it was the vision of Miss Ina
Robertson of Oregon which created the
clubs
Miss Robertson was student from
Oregon in the University of Chicago
along in the late nineties. She found
from experience how hard it was for a
girl to get suitable living at a reason
ab.o price in Chicago without being in
danger of bad social Influences
While there she fell in love with a
fellow student, Mr.. Law. He became
i'll and when he died at the end of a
long illness, he willed all of his very
considerable property to her, as trustee,
to materlallze her desire to establish a
girls home along lines they had dis
cussed together.
In his memory, Miss Robertson
adopted his name, Claw" as her mid
die name and was thenceforth known
as Ina Law Robertson until her death
FIVE weeks ago.
Eleanor Means Light.
Mr.. Law had a beloved elder sister,