The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-10-11

merely one more attempt of a dying
generation to assert its superiority
over it's livelier successors. Victorian
ladies have lately had to endure much
scornful pity from their modern grand
daughters Their waists were pinched,
they have been told, their minds mac
tive, their clothes we're clumsy and
they were physically weak (wltness
the fainting habit for lack of fresh air
and exercise. "Ah," they reply at last,
but we were better mothers.
THE argument advanced by the Eng
lish opponents to athletics for girls,
says DR.. MacCracken, lis about as
logical as urging a young man not 10
deplete his mental energies by study
ing during the year, but to keep them
intact for the great crisis OF ex-
aminations.
There can be no doubt but that
good muscular development is an adj
vantage in childbirth. A case was re-
Gently brought to my attention IN
which a woman was almost unable to
bear her child because her abdominal
muscles were undeveloped Mother
hood was the first hard work she had
ever been called upon to do, and
naturally she was unequal to it.
Proper athletic training improves
girls general health and physical con-
dition Far from injuring the next
generation, l believe that it gives her
children a superior inheritance of
! health and strength.
| If anything, our women have been
coddled too much. Athletics are moth
i ing but strong muscular exercise.
| Hockey is not as hard physical work
as doing a family wash"
| College Girls Good Mothers.
| DR.. MacCracken is supported in his
opinions by Dr. Elizabeth B. ThelberS,
resident physician at Vassar for thirty
| four years, and Miss Frances Ballen-
| tine, head of the Department of
, Physical Education, who has directed
the athletics of the college for twenty
seven years. Nothing in their exper-
fence has ever led them to believe that
athletics are injurious to women, but
then the system at Vassar takes into
! account the fact that some girls are
weaker and should therefore be less
strenuous than others. This fact, how
ever, is borne in mind in most institu-
tons providing physical training
| ''Vassar presents living proof of our
system, in the daughters and grand
daughters of physical trained women y
continues DR.. MacCracken, IF acquired
traits were hereditary, we might sup
pose that some of the girls playing on
our present teams inherited their skill
in basketball and hockey, along with
their splendid physique, from their
athletic mothers, while the sturdy
babies of recent graduates argue ire
futably that the increased range of
athletics in the last twenty years or
so continues beneficial
1T has been stated that many of the
| young women who are trained to be-
come instructors in physical education
suffer at childbirth. The type attracted
to this work, because they excel in it
have the narrow hips and pelvis that
naturally make motherhood difficult
This build is not the result of athletics
but the girls who have this inherent
characteristic can jump and run better
than girls with wider hips.
The objections of the English
school people may be based on the mis-
takes of their own system. In England
rough games and doughness in games
|, have been carried further than in
. America. Hockey. association football
, and cricket, as played by English girls
are much more strenuous than our yer
sions of hockey and basketball
: 1T is true, too, that the English
system is more apt TO put each cir
|. through the same training, regardless:
; of individual differences. Here a.
. Vassar every girl is examined by the
| doctor and the physical director wher
she enters college, and her physica
, work is prescribed according to her in
dividual needs. A normal girl, physl
cally sound, can take part with prof