The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-01-29
DoRorHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
World's Highest Paid Woman Write


this city young girl was being held
prisoner, and that they had seen her
making frantic appeals for help. In
vestigation disclosed that the girls
mothers mind had become so affected
by the many lurid stories she had read
and heard of white slavery and the
dangers to which young girls are ex-
posed in a great city that she had
locked her daughter in back room
and kept her there for over six months
in solitary confinement
Now comes another tragic story of
a New Jersey father who shot his IL
year-old daughter dead because she
had disobeyed him and had gone to
come innocent place of amusement
He also had become obsessed by the
idea that the only way to keep a girl
safe is to keep her home, right under
his eye, away from all other young
people. and prevent her from indulg
ing in any of the pleasures that be-
long to her time of life.
OF course these are exaggerated
cases showing the effect produced on
the minds of morbid people by the
many warnings that pulpit and press
have given parents to take care of
their daughters. 1t is a pity that in
order to make the general public take
ordinary precautions against any dan
ger you have to scare the few timid
individuals into Mysteries, but there
seems no way to avoid it.
1t is regrettable that some parents
should have been turned into jai1ers
TO keep many parents from letting
their daughters run wild. And it is a
terrible thing that because some sweet
faced, gray haired. motherly looking
women have been the wolf dressed
up IN grandma's cap and gown who
lured young girls to their DOOM we
nave had to teach girls to look with
suspicion upon all sweet faced, gray
haired, motherly old women, and to
| cali for the police instead of flying to
lne rescue OF such one when she ap-
peared to grow faint and asked for a
strong young arm on which to lean.
And it is sadder than sad that be-
cause a small minority of men are viii
iains we must begin to teach girl
babies in their cradles that thew must
be forever on their guard against ali
men, thereby creating an occasional
man mater in order to save the MANY
its too bad, but what would youe
tAller all, life is like the stage. You
nave TO eXaggerate every effect to get
IL over the footlights so that it will
grip the people, and make them sit M
and think, 81 op
Inc ideal is the golden mean be-
wee vweeh d ife two extremes, This is al
ways olIncuIt of realization and no.
where quite so difficult of achieve
ment as in parenthood.
u taxes almost a super-inteIlieence
! ana sense of justice to know where to
re Inc nne between proper author
ny ana domestic tyranny between
| liberty and license between Iaxness
ana espionage in dealing with ones
children. When shall one drive WITH
d ioose rein and when with a curb .
HOW Tar shall one let ones children
go? How much right have they to
oeIoe Things for themselves?
Ihese are hard questions to answer
ano they are particularly hard to an
swel when one is dealing with the
r
of mothers and grandmotber's time
VINO was cage bred and expected to
i've ana die in cage, could DO made
to stay put
She was utterly dependent on her
parents for food and raiment. She
knew nothing of the outside world and
would nave been as helpless in it as
canary bird turned out into a bliz-
za-o- therefore, it was easy to en-
force obedience from her and make
her accept her parents point of view
Nor did her parents have to worry
about the dangers that she encoun-
tered. They were as negligible as
those of lamb that is kept safe in
the fold.
But the modern girl is a different
pair of sleeves. She is economically
independent. At least millions of her
earn their own living. When she goes
forth to work in the morning she goes
to world of which her mother knows
as little as If it were on the other side
of the globe instead of just downtown
Every hour of the day she is up
against conditions, temptations, dan
gers of which her mother never even
heard. and which her mother either
ignores in her ignorance or exagger-
ates into weird bogies thru her fears.
1t is utterly ridiculous to even talk
about dealing with the new fashioned
girl on the old fashioned PLATFORM.
When a girl achieves financial indie
!, cH Ia
graduated out of the kindergarten
class and received her diploma in real
life. She is no longer a baby to be
hidden to do this and that and sent
to bed without any supper if she
doesn't obey orders.
II self-supporting girl obeys her
parents it is thru affection and re-
spec., and not because she is afraid
of them or can't get along without
them and parents are very wise if
they remember this and go very lightly
on the domestic tyranny stuff.
In former times parents consid-
cred that they had divine commits
sion from heaven to decide every act
of their children's lives, and particu-
larly of their girl children. This
theory also becomes vulnerable in the
face of the self-supporting girl 1t is
a Joke even to contend that girl is
capable of taking care of herself the
eight or ten hours day that she is
away from nome at Work, ana lSn
capable of taking care of herself dur
ing her few hours of leisure, or that
the girl who has intelligence and
Judgment enough to hold down a good
job HASN'T enough intelligence and
good judgment to pick out her friends
or to go to a place of amusement
alone with young man.
Yet there are plenty of parents who
are trying to do the best by their
daughters and yet do not realize this.
They honestly think they are remov-
ing temptation from their girls path
way when they take away the girls
pay envelope so that she will not
spend its contents on pretty clothes,
and when they refuse to let her go
out to places of amusement in the