The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-04-29

those who bemoan the bold, bad
ways of the modern flRpper take
heart In a few more years, she
will be enduring her share of grief
and envy as an even wilder gener-
alton flaps daringly before her out
ragged vision. Twas ever thus. His
tory shows that every age has had
its recalcitrant young people who
have rebelled against the discip-
line of their elders and caused
great anguish to the public-spirit-
ed.
Take a few samples of the loud
laments on the subject of Tapping
recently appearing in our daily
newspapers and compare them with
those written at various periods in
the past (plenty are to be found in
the archives of our libraries) and
you will at once be struck by their
uncanny similarity. Listen to this:
The girl of the period is Gre
ature who dyes her hair and paints
her face as the first articles of her
personal religion; whose sole idea
of life is plenty of fun and luxury;
and whose dress is the object of
-
possesses. The girl of the
period has done away with such
moral muffishness as consideration
for others, or regard for counsel
or rebuke. II sensible
fashion lifts a gown out of the mud,
she raises hers midway to her
knee. She talks slang as
glibly as a man, and by preference
leads the conversation to doubtful
subjects"
If it were not for the one word
midway one would scarcely
guess that this vitriolic criticism
was penned by Mrs. E. Lynn Linton,
once popular English novelist, as
early as 1858 We are SO accus-
toned to having the late war
blamed for all the giddy behavior
OF the present that it is something
of shock to discover that the
flappers of other eras were also
considered hopelessly hayward.
AS matter of fact, there has prob
ably never been a year since the
days of Adam and Eve when some
Queralous voice has not been lifted
up against the needless dissipa-
tions of youth.
Thus, some Mrs. Grundy, com
planning several decades ago on the
ton, added philosophically
But has not, in every epoch. the
race-old instinct of the female to
bedeck her body so as to attract
the male, through whom alone she
can achieve her destiny, led to
extremes, extravagances, even vul-
garities? Doubtless every savage
tribe harbors some shameless
mink who, by her daring manner
of putting on or taking off a sin
gle bead, brings down on her head
the walls of wrath of the older wom-
en-, who wonder what her mother
can be thinking Of
Bad Girls of the Eighties.
Even the prim eighties were not
sufficiently prim to satisfy many
of the good citizens of the period
According TO Mrs. John Sherwood's
Manners and Social Usages' Q8S4)
observers of society in New York
and Washington in those days
found it to be-"a record of drunk
enness, filtration. bad manners and
gossip, backbiting, divorce and
SANDER"
Far back in 1919, apparently.
conditions were Just as bad. In
this year we find Miss Emma Will
lard making an Address to the
Public, particularly the Members
of the Legislature of New York"
in which she beseeches that body
to contribute some instant means
for educating the young females of
the state "as a possible panacea
for the frivolity of the time
mot content with doing nothing
to promote their country's well
fare" she declared, like pampered
children, they revel in its prosper
ity and scatter it to the winds with
wanton profusion, and. still worse,
they emprison its source by diffus-
ing a contempt for useful labor
To court pleasure their business;
within her temple, in defiance of
the laws of God and man, they
have erected the idol of fashion.
and upon her altar they sacrifice
with shameless rites whatever is
sacred to virtue or religion
Miss Janet Richards, lecturer.
recently charged that good breed
ing" seems to be a thing of the
past, and one can only infer that
mothers no longer take the trou-
BILE to instill into their children's