The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-08-23
Dorothy Dir Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
It's Up to the Mothers.

It's Up to the Mothers.
The most startling revelations made
in the recent New York vice investi-
cation was not of the depravity of
man but of the ease with which girls
yield to temptation. Dozens of the
poor, pitiful creatures about whom
| the law was vainly trying to stretch
protecting arm, told the stories of
| their downfall, and these stories were
almost without exception incredibly
naive and simple.
There was nothing &c the villain
still pursued in these tragic tales. No
revelation of a deep. dark, designing
| plot of which a hapless girl was the
victim. No Micla vellian subtlety
weaving a net of silken thr IDS so
| tightly about her that she was caught
| unawares in its soft unbreakable
meshes. No plausible Satan holding
before her the glittering baubles of
the riches of the world that she was
to buy with her soul.
No. BY these girls own confessions
| the only temptations yer offered
them were cheap and sordid in the
| extreme-an automobile ride.
drink, or a dinner, or a. xcursion to
some nearby pleasure resort-and the
| stories to which they lent a too will
| ing ear were so palpably false on their
faces that it did not seem possible that
year-old child.
/ This is bitter illustration of the
| truth that we cannot reiterate too
often. that the only power that can
really protect girl is home influence,
and the only individual who can safe
guard her is her mother. In the last
| analysis the whole question comes
| back to the way the girl was brought
up, and the ideals that were instilled
| into her in her very cradle.
cl, IL
| thru the very pit unscathed with not
| so much as the smell of fire hanging
to her garments. But if her home in
/ fluence were bad aid if she had a
mother who taught her loose ideals
| of conduct, not all the laws and all
the statutes ever compiled can pro-
tect her, nor all the police keep her
safe, tho you set a plainclothes man
on every street to guard her.
1t is a good thing for the law to
do all it can to protect girls 1t is a
good thing to run down and merciless-
| ly punish white slavers and Washers
and all their evil crew, but in the cid
the girl must save herself, and she
cannot do that unless her mother has
put in her hand the sword with which
she must fight her battle against
! temptation.
/ The law cannot go with the girl into
| every ramification of her daily life.
A policeman cannot be forever at her
o.
| mothers cannot be continually at her
| daughters side as a chaperon. and so,
at last. it is the girl herself who stands
or falls, who keeps herself clean and
/ white. or who stumbles i to the mud.
And every girl is what her mother
has made her. If the mother has
bred into her daughter strong, up
right principles, if she has taught her
from the tine she could understand
anything to speak the truth, to live
l. 1.
her life. if she has taught the girl
self CNlntrol and DIRTY and modesty
THAT shrinks from everything course
and vulgar with an actual physical
disgust. why, that girl is as safe from
temptation anywhere in the world as
she would be in a convent.
/ She has got the magic in her own
soul that not only gives her the
4 strength to resist temptation, but that
actually turns temptation away from
her and moves it out of her pathway.
The purity of pure. high minded girl
is a visible aura about her that even
the dullest and most british man sees
and respects.
But if a girl has been cursed with
a mother who brings her up with no
standard of righteousn ess. who incul-
Gates in her no ideals of virtue or
honor. who teaches her. directly or in
directly. that the chief object of a
womans life is to get what finery she
can and go to what places of amuse-
ment she can, and that it doesn't mat
ter how one gets things; if such a
girl is raised up to be the prey of her
emotions and her appetites. who can
wonder that she is the victim of the
first temptation that comes her way ?
Or what wisdom could frame a law to
protect her?
The girl with the vicious or weak
mother goes as inevitably wrong as
the girl with the good, strong mother
goes inevitably right. and SO it's up to
the mothers far more than it is to the
police to protect the girls
The importance of mothers giving
their daughters the kind of training
that will fit them for the battle of life
needs to be insisted on more right now
|, than ever before, because war has
changed the whole universe for wom-
ton of girls will be forced out into
the world to work.
Girls are going into occupations and
situations that women have never
filed before. Girls, whose parents ex-
, pected to keep them sheltered in the
home. are being thrust suddenly out
into the maelstrom of business, where
they must stand or fall. sink or swim,
according to the strength that is in
them.
The mothers cannot follow their
girls into this strange new life, but
they can prepare their daughters for
it by aching them three things
j. The first is that there is no armor
. that protects a girl like modesty. The
. majority of men with whom a girl
. comes in contact begin their acquaint-
, anceship by testing out her moral
principles. They tell her off colored
4