The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1917-04-09
Why Girls Go Wrong

why Girls 10 Wrong
Perhaps little inquiry into the
causes of why women go wrong,
will settle this seemingly difficult
question raised by the writer May.
One of the primitive causes, I
maintain, is the development of
the animal passion of youth by
too stimulating diet. Mothers al
low their children in swaddling
clothing to indulge In diet only
suitable for adult age. Do you
not know that condiments, animal
foods, and coffee arouse the SUM
bering fires of the young?
| These articles of diet at once
impart undue warmth to the blood,
and awaken the early desires in
your children, leading boys to
acquire the arts of the libertine,
and rendering girls susceptible to
the advances of the opposite sex.
Thus, from one parental error,
spring up on one side a host of
libertines, and on the other, scores
Of voluptuOus women who have not
the power to resist temptation, all
of whom are required by custom
to abstain from legal marriage
until they have almost past their
teens. The remedy for this evil
suggests itself.
Another cause is unhappy mar
riage. This creates thousands of
bad men and bad women. The in
dissolubility of the marriage con-
tract drives both parties to de-
spair; makes the husband the will
ing patron of the courtesan and
the wife the easy victim of the lib
ertine. Ignorant of the laws that
should govern marriage, men and
woman are rally rushing into mat
rimony whose physical, mental and
magnetic incongenialities are only
discovered to them after the
honeymoon has cooled down
their impulses, and left their rea-
soning faculties unobscured by
the infatuation. When they
awaken from their dream, they
find the civil law a reality, and
that they must content themselves
to live in their adulterous relation
one with the other or incur public
disgrace by the commission of
some crime which will entitle
them to a divorce.
Another fruitful cause is the
small compensation awarded to
female labor. In consequence of
this, few are able to earn more
then enough to supply present ne
cessities; and when hard times"
prevail, they have neither work
nor other resources for subsist-
ence.
In such conditions, a few, whose
pure souls abhor life of shame,
choose death rather than the
princely abode of the courtesan,
and end their existence by poison
ing or drowning. Many rush into
shame, for observation has taught
them the humilitating fact that
men will pay dollars for gratifica-
ton, who will bestow only pennies
in charity. Six million five hun
dred thousand dollars are annual
ly paid in the city of Chicago
alone to courtesans!
When such reward Is offered
for vice, and want and threatened
starvation held out for virtue, is
it only surprising that more do
not abandon the night lamp and
needle for the dazzling white
light and easy-cushioned tete-a-
itete of the fashionable brothel?
Hard times and the lack of en-
ployment drives unknown num-
bers into the life of shame. In
Chicago where there is 100000
women working at an average
wage of only 60 cents a day, the
margin between life and death is
SO narrow that absolute necessity
must too often be the direct cause
of 1.-The first step downward"
Imagine their distress when work
slackens, and there is no savings
to tide over the dull spell. The
periodical expansions and con-
fractions In all business as at the
present carried on, are the factor
In the causes why girls go
wrong" which indicate the i'm
possibility of eradicating 1t with
out an entire change in business
methods and the social arrange
ments.
Out Of $4,000 fallen women in
New York and Chicago, whose
cases have been infinitely exam
ined, $500 were reduced to that
state by sheer restitution! One
writer remarks that there are $50
families in Chicago who are al
most wholly supported by secret
prostitution of the mother, and
three times that number who are
partially maintained in the same