The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1920-02-12
WHY $4,000 CIRLSA
YEAR QUIT Home
MAJORITY OF THEM HEAD FOX
NEW YORK CITY BUT NOT ALL
OF THEM ARE RUNAWAYS
IBy Herbert Corey, in the Baltimore
American1

Statisticians fill filing cabinets with
data on the reaction time Of every
thing from loves first kiss to the ell
feet of the appearance of Chief Hooch,
the wellknown control, at two-dol-
lar seance. Nothing is sacred from
the thermometer and the test tube.
Stake a professor to a good-looklng
widow and stop-watch and he would
register the elapsed time between
Mendelssohn's last note and the hrst
thought of second husband. And
that would be a shade swifter than
the passage of light.
l.. Which is preliminary to stating
that the problem which has for some
years vexed our salt-rising dramatists
why Girls Leave Home"-has been
solved. It is now known precisely, ac-
curately and scientifically just why
girls leave home. No one knows how
manv girls leave home in the United
States each year, but an average OF
sixty-odd thousand is under the truth,
according to the records of the Travel
ers' Aid Society. Perhaps 1OO,OOo
would be nearer the figure. A great
MANY of the youngsters have been
met and protected and often helped
by the society.
Persons who say that women can
not keep secrets are hereby rebuked,
not to say rebuffed. In the New York
office of this society is a cabinet with
complete. records of 250.000 cases
cross-sections of 250,000 life stories.
Some of them are humorous and some
sordid and some unbearably tragic.
But no one knows just what they are
except the woman who has the case
in charge. She has never told word.
Thesecrets of the 25O,O0O poor little
kids are safe in her hands.
Girls leave home in every state and
city, of course. But the records show
that the three states in which leaving
home amounts almost to passion are
Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New
Jersey. They leave their New York
homes now and then, and their Ono
homes, and their homes in Minnesota.
But they leave home in these latter
states singly or in couples, whereas
4 in the banner trio they leave-one
might almost say in company 'front.'
Most of the girls who leave home
in Pennsylvania are daughter of for
eipnborn families. The girls have be-
come Americanized. They like to wear
pretty clothes and put up their hair
in s25 permanent waves and buy near
silk stockings for street wear. The
old folks still think along Buda Pesth
and Riga lines. It isn't their fault
mind you; it is the fault of the Amer
lea they came to in such high hopes.
But there you are. They haven't
changed.
They are contented in the same sort
of house that would content them in
Poland OF Czecho-Slovakia. The girls
learn to be shamed of their parents
and their homes. They want to change
their names and live in clean houses,
on well-kept streets. AS the first step
they 90 away from home. The studies
made by the Travellers Aid Society
show they usually nick father for a
bankroll. Father has never trusted
American banks. He has preferred to
keep the family fortune buried under
the hearthstone or tucked in teapot.
1t is easy for the runaway to trim it
for hundred dollars or so.
Most of them of course, head for
New YORK. This town has been so well
advertised that every one with an am
bition starts this way. Often the am
bition is gratifed, too, which is fresh
bait for more comers. The girls from
Connecticut who leave home are in
large majority millhands. They were
put at work too early by their parents.
They feel, sullenly, dumbly, that they
have been cheated out of part of
the heritage of youth. Often a part
of their weekly wage is shifted into
the family exchequer. They hear a
good deal about duty.
So they run away. They are pretty
self-eonfdent, anyhow. They know
they have been making good at hard
work, and they are prepared to go on
working hard and expect to go on
making good. They are bit more
citified than the Pennsylvania output
The latter come for the most part
from the mining and steel towns, but
the Connecticut runaways have lived