The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-05-20
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.



Two pitiful little half starved. ill
clad children, their bodies covered
with bruises, their hands and faces
scared by red hot irons, have recently
been rescued from their inhuman
stepmother and their still more brutal
father, by the Society for the Proven
ton of Cruelty to Children of New
York.
Unfortunately, the law provides for
no ADEQUATE punishment for such a
crime as that committed by these two
people There should be something
with boiling oil in it done to a woman
who, under the sacred guise of moth
erhood, abuses the defenseless little
children who have been committed
into her hands. while all the tortures
of the inferno are not enough to in
f1ict on a man who either to crafty
his own anger, or melted to do so by
a woman of whom he is enamoured,
will beat and torture his own flesh
and blood-the children that he has
brought into the world and for whose
well being he is responsible.
And right here want to call at
tention to one peculiar thing. and
that is that in the great majority of
cases when a mans wife dies and he
marries a second time, he seems to
lose his sense of fatherhood towards
his first wife's children. OF course,
this is not always the case. but OBJ
serve how often the first set of chill
dren are pushed out of the home
nest; how little real affection their
father seems to show them; how
stern he is in his discipline of them;
how differently he treats them from
the petted. INDUCED second children
and how often the second children in
herit the bulk of his estate.
In a long experience in active news
paper work, 1 have come across many
many cases of the cruel stepmother
and there has not been one single
case in which 1 have not found that
the children's own father aided and
abetted the woman in her crime.
recall one particular case in which a
stepmother who admitted to having
broken a 3-year-old child of asking
for water in the night by giving her
red pepper to drink, ended her atroci-
ties against the little creature by final
~ beating her to death, and the child's
father spent the last cent he had in
defending this fiend, instead of head
ing lynching party for her benefit
Indeed the cruel stepmother would
be an impossibility except for the
fathers consent, and how any man
can turn his little helpless children
over to the mercies of any woman.
complexion she may have, or how
willoWy her figure, or what his mid
die aged infatuation for her may be.
without keeping a careful eye upon
them to see how they are treated, is
one of the mysteries that no finite
mind can fathom.
OF course, the man drugs his con-
science by saying that all women are
angels, and that all women adore chill
dren, and all women are tender and
sympathetic. and find their greatest
delight in life in doing their sacred
duty. All of which is utter nonsense
All women are not angels. Plenty
of them are devils. All women do
not love children. Plenty of them re-
gard all children. except their own,
as dirty brats with whom they have
no patience and for whom they make
no excuse, and there. are just loads
and loads of women who are nothing
but incarnate selfishness, who resent
everything and everybody who stands
in the way of their pleasures and
profits.
There could be no falser theory
then mans glib assumption that his
second wife is going to love his chill
dren and revel in being a mother to
them. She isn't. If she is a woman
of the finest and noblest type she will
give the children the best imitation
of affection that she can manufacture.
She will do her duty by them and see
to their material wants. and refrain
from estranging their father from
them.