The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-17
Dorothy Dlr Says
Why Girls Leave Home.
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer


so dilatorily and half-heartedly prose-
cuted the search when she was first
reported missing, of pretty little Ruth
Cruger, the high school girl, who
went forth from her fathers house to
have her skates sharpened, and who
| was never heard of again until her
mangled body was found buried in the
cellar of the shop to which she had
gone.
hold no brief for the police.
Doubtless they deserve all the blame
that is being visited upon their heads
in this particular case Doubtless,
also it is better that the whole energy
| of the force should be expended in
tracing down thousand runaway
| girls who have merely eloped with
| their sweethearts than that one alb
I Quoted girl should remain unavenged.
| Nevertheless, anyone who has ever
+, had any practical experience in trac-
| ing down the stories of the hundreds
| of girls who are yearly reported miss
| ing in every great city, can at least
| understand the cynical apathy OF the
| police in the matter. For in over
ninety per cent of the cases the girls
| are not the victims of foul play but
| of their own folly. They have not been
| stolen They have gone of their own
4 accord, And the last thing on earth
| they want is to be found and re-
turned to the bosom of the families
| they have fled.
| The prodigal son who, careless OF
| the anxiety and misery he caused his
! parents, ran away from home in order
| to SOW his wild oats where he pleased,
| is a figure as old as human society.
The prodiga1 daughter, who likewise
| wishes to be free from home re-
| straints in order to follow the desires
/ of her eyes and who treadS in her
! brothers footsteps, is new conner in
our midst, but she is here in daily in
! creasing numbers and she is one of
| the great moral problems of our day.
/ The question of why girls leave
/ home, however, is one that is not so
much up to the police as it is to par
: ents, for it is far more important to
| keep a girl from going than it is to
| discover her after she has left home.
The time to prevent a tragedy is be-
| fore it happens.
! Generally speaking, the reason that
girls leave home is because they either
have grinding tyrants or purblind
| idiots for parents. This is true even
| when the compelling cause of the
| girls going is a man.
When a girl elopes with the sort
OF man to whom she could not be
| decently married in orthodox fashion
| 1T is more often than not her parents
| fault. Sometimes the father and
mother have taken a high handed at
titude in the matter that any girl of
| spirit would resent They have an
tagonized her until she wrecked her
life in blind anger that made her un-
able to see the man as he really was
sometimes they have been the sort of
/ parents that never let a girl have a
| beau in peace and comfort at home
so that she meets the kind of men she
! should not have known outside of her
| home.
Never are they the parents who are
! sympathetic. and helpful, and tender.
and to whom a girl can open her heart
1 ana tell her secrets. Girls with that
kind of fathers and mothers never
| run away with their chauffeurs, or
| their grooms. or married men with
whom they propose to defy conyen-
TONS
Girls leave home because their par
ents are grasping and tyrannical In
the recent white slave investigation
one or the men who most successfully
trafficked in the souls and bodies of
young girls said that the easiest girl
! in the world to lure into the life was
the working girl whose parents made
her turn over her pay envelope to
them,
Take a young girl who works from
early dawn to night, who tolls to ex-
| haustion every day. and who gets
nothing out of her labor but the few
cents her mother gives her for spend
ing money, who never has ar.y pretty
clothes because her mother doesn't
believe in wasting money on finery.
who never has the price OF a theatre
ticket because her mother thinks ii
sinful to spend money on amusements;
ten TINS girl youH put her in the way
of making money that she will have
for her own, and that she can spend
as she pleases, and ninety-nine times
out of a hundred you have got her.
said the evil philosopher
Possibly he is right At cny RATE II
is sadly significant that of the girls
who leave home "a large, ira jority be-
long to foreign families IN which the
parents hold to the old theory that a
childs and especially a girl child's
earnings belong to the parents, and
that girl should have no liberty OF
action. while the girl has become
Americanized and wants, at least, the
privilege of handling what she has
worked so hard for, and some freedom
to enjoy her youth.
Girls leave home often beeause
they are smothered and suffocated BY
too much family life. Last winter a
young girl of good family, mysterious
J ly left beautiful and luxurious home
and for weeks and weeks the police OF
, the whole country searched in vair
, for her. Her frantic parents were sure
she had been kidnapped by white
slavers. They knew she never would
have gone away of her own volitior
because, as they tearfu " declared
never since the day of her birth had
, she even been out from under theil
!, eyes, or permitted to go to school. OF
visit little friend. or see a boy, OIL
do anything. without her mother OF
, father as a chaperon.
Eventually the girl was found
, working as maid in a family, and
by way of excuse for her escapade
she said that she was SO tired of be-
ing watched. and never having any
{ liberty, that she couldn'tSstand it any
longer and ran away to get a little
freedom. And she wept when she WAS
discovered and had to go back home
Girls leave home because theil
homes are places of discord and strife
instead of being abodes of happiness
and cheerfulness, They leave home
> because they are cursed with mother,
who nag and fret at them all the time
or they have fathers who are grouchS
and are surly and who make home 8
: place to be avoided and fled from. il
possible