The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1919-06-04

Tor meageT wages, throwing the DELI
cit upon some overburdened workers
household when they do not do WORSE
Of statistics Of Legitimate children:
of what the doctors find about the ap-
palling proportion of those in the mo-
loern community with veuaweal diseas-
es; Of the moral degradations hat
seem TO tarong wherever the old-fa-
shioned American home has disap-
peared and Something sordid and cheap
and flashy has taken its place.
She has disturbed US, that woman
to be frank about it she has scared US;
especially as we know that she knows
what she is talking and because there
are on every hand so many evidences
that she isn't overdrawing the picture.
| Occasionally the old-fashioned An
erican homa produced b1ack~sheep--
no home can be guaranteed not to
do that. But what is the imitation
home that takes its place producing
the tenement, the flat, the apart
men, call it what you will, that is a
mere place toe and sleep in between
work hours spent too often in I'M
wholesome surroundings and play
hours spent still oftener in surround
ings vastly more unwholesome /? What
is that sort of false home going To
produce in America after a generation
or two of it
We wish we could believe that the
picture that has been laid before us
IN overdraWn and untrue. ANYBODY
VINO loves America and who sees that
pictura would give ANYTHING if he
could be convinced that it isn't So
that it is somebody's illnatured and
exaggerated caricature. But wishing
il were untrue can't MAKE it un-
true. The only thing that can make
it untrue is to destroy the conditions
and fight the tendencies that create
he picture. If you really wan to know
how bad the picture is, talk with those
who have to do with hayward child
rem; talk with the doctors who cope
with venereal diseases: talk with
thise who have to do something about
the illegimate children; talk with
those who see who is on the streets
at night and where they go; talk with
those whose constantly recurring Won
der IS: "What under the sun are the
mothers and fathers thinking of these
days?"
What is to be done about it?
First, there will have to be a lot
more thinking about it than there has
been.
Second, everybody who has the ca
pacity to see and to think will have
to give his best insight and his best
thought to restoring the old-fashioned
American home and home life that we
are wandering away from.
Wages and salaries will have to be
big enough to maintain such home.
Peoule will have to learn the intelli-
gent thrift without such a home is
impossible without thrift it
wouldn't be the old-fashioned Ameri-
can home anyway. The schools will
have 20 help set up the pictura of that
old-fashioned home and teach child
rem to want it and to make it. The
churches will have to preach it. Par
ents, who have thoughtlessly abandon
ed it because there were too many az
fractions elsewhere, will have to be
jerked up with round turn and shown
what the new way is doing to their
children.
The America we have known and
loved and thought worth while living
for and dying for was founded on the
old-fashioned American home Glance
once at that America and that home.
Glance then at the America we are be-
coming and the "home" modern living
is tending to produce. And then re-
solve not to lose the American home
without struggle; for losing the Am
erican means losing the America that
was raised in it.