Perth Amboy evening news., 1921-01-04
Fl HASKIN LETTER
MUNICIPAL AID TO CUPID
BY Frederic J. Haskin.

social service workers of our large
cities fear that, unless some extra
ordinary measure is taken to re-
store it, the III of true love may
receive a serious setback.
What they advocate is the estab-
lishment of municipal counting par
lors-run possibly in connection
where the youth of the nation can
do its love-making against a digni-
fed background.
The counting situation Is becom-
ing worse daily, they assert, as
housing conditions become mor
acute. With several families ccu
plying one small house or apartment
there is simply no space left for Gu
pid. From the comfortable and TO-
mantle seclusion of the dim, back
perlor, he has been thrust into the
street where he was about the same
degree of privacy as a w~hiteaproned
pancake turner in a Childs' restau-
rant window
Never before have our American
girls been so handicapped in the
highly important business of fasci-
mating prospective husbands. Never
before has it been so difficult to cor
ner and capture an eligible young
HAL. vi all iIle Olu Icildbit titCho
of the courtinig campaign have been
swept away by the housing short
age. Miss Jones, who used to at
tract so many beaux with aid of her
mothers charming little Sunday
night suppers, now has to make the
best of two feet of space in the front
hall, the dining room being rented
to another family at the rate of
500 a month. And Miss Smith,
who used to be able to wheedle a
proposal out of any man in the dim,
pink-shaded reliance of the family
parlor has now had to learn an en-
tirely new technique for doing the
same thing in a movie theatre.
No Place at Home.
1t has come to the point where,
unless a family is rich, a girl prac-
tically has to meet her boy friend
outside her home. Instead of sit
ting in the parlor with the light
turned low, they are now forced to
meet in hotel Hobbies, corner drug
stores, parks, movies anad ~cabarets,
where there are always many inter-
ruptions to the serious work in
hand. The experience of social
workers shows that Cupid does not
thrive in such conditions. Often he
is cruelty misunderstood by the po-
lice, and frequently he himself
proves unreliable. with the result
that thousands of girls are now
finding their romantic dreams end
ing in unpleasant affairs in the ju-
venile and women's courts.
One OF the leaders of the new
movement for city counting parlors
is Mary Bartelme, chief of the staff
of social workers in the Chicago
Juvenile Court.
Il have been fatching the vicissi-
tudes of city counting for twenty
years." declared Miss Barteme re-
Gently in discussing this novel pro-
ject. land l have listened to thous-
ands of girls tell their stories how
they happened to go wrong why
they met men clandestinely out
side their homes. and what they
would have done had conditios been
different. And l am firmly convinc-
ed that the housing problem is at
the bottom of most of the cases that
ecome to me.
What we need" continued the
small. gray-haired lady. who knows
so much about fallen famininity, 'is
public counting parlors. School
boards should turn their building
over to the young folks. Churches
should be open every night to help
girls entertain their friends.
"Cities are building great munic-
ipal garages to park automobiles SO
they won't clutter up the streets.
Depo rtment stores and theatres
check babies SO mothers ear be free.
So why not have a municipal court
ing parlor where a girl can park her
sweetie?"
~ 49,. T. L-1I Lr
inent club woman here in New York
whose hobby is smoothing path of
the working girl. She asserts that
under present conditions the NOV
ing picture theatres and dance halls
are the only haven for the majority
of counting couples. So many of
the young girls here in New York
come from small towns, she says,
and they do not bring their families
with them. They live in small
rooms in crowded boarding houses.
which seldom maintain parlors any
more where the boarders may en-
terrain their friends. Then only
place they can meet young men is in
the street.
You Can't Blame Geraldine.
THE other day." tbs club woman
told the reporter. "a mother came
to me very much worried because
her daughter, who is only nineteen,
had been seer SO frequently with
men in a rather notorious hotel lob
by. She never thought Geraldine
would turn GU. that way, she told
me pathetically.
Turn out what way?" said I in
dignantly. Are you asking me to
believe that Geraldine is a fool? II
so. / can't accommodate you. l
think that the child is taking the
only course open to her. You both
live in one room in a boarding house
and it is not a very attractive room
at that. Geraldine could not posi-
bly, entertain her friends there and
so she selects the most attractive
back ground available to her, which
is the hotel around the nj 1
have seen her there myself talking
nonsense to that Columbia student
| who is so mad about her."
One of the worst results of this
lack of counting facilities. according
to this woman. Is the hasty mar
riage. Young folks despairing of
having any privacy. decide to get
married and find a place they can
call their own, she says.
And everybody knows what hap
pens in too many hasty marriages"
she added. The counting parlor
would. I believe, lift a tremendous
burden from the divorce courts"
Several New York apartment
houses have recently responded to
the need for some such institution
by equipping and RELOCATING a por-
ton of their Hobbies for the social
diversions of their young tenants
One such apartment house in the
Bronx has a large reception room
for this purpose on the first floor
containing a tactful number of COSY