Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1927-05-27
OUR WOMEN Montana Matron
Offers Prize Winning Suggestion
on HoU to Help Her City Prosper


tana cities. They are, like Great Falls.
using every means to render themselves
attractive, n often under most discour-
aging conditions. Many of these cities
were not the result OF any plan. Start
ing from clusters OF houses about min
ing centers. they expanded gradually into
their present dimensions.
The country is flooded with so-called
sex" magazines. which manage to get by
the censor in some unexplained manner
and are said to be a strong factor in the
generalization of the young. The women
of one state-North Dakota-have taken
the matter in hand through the medium
of their clubs. and report satisfactory re-
suits. In an editorial of their club paper,
Mrs. F.. H. Waldo issues a request to the
club women that they continue their
war on these periodicals. She says:
Already in several North Dakota cities
they are being withdrawn from the news
counters. A word here and there will be
most effective in getting rid OF them. The
average news dealer finds them a nuis-
ance; by their very numbers they jeop-
ardize the sale of the better magazines:
by their titles and Illustrations they cast
reflections on their more respectable
neighbors. If dealers refuse to remove
them sterner measures may be resorted
to, but by all means ak 1t over with the
dealer first. Tact is the first essential.
~ liz ihoot Pd4t LitSc iildEdDlilto
consist of nude pictures entirely" and
for this reason mainly. Mrs. Waldo thinks
they should be condemned. Whether
familiarity with the II is likely TO
have an immoral tendency is O mooted
question. An English woman who made
the journey through Africa, unaccompa-
MED by men OF her own race, has this to
say OF her bearers, who were naked men,
that after the first day or so she never
noticed their lack of clothing. Anatole
France, in Penguin Island" makes wom-
en- seductive only after they are clothed.
1t is not the pictures in the magazines
objected to that are demoralizing and
weakening to the intellect, but the stories
which they illustrate. If the club wom-
en- of Montana are to follow the ex-
ample of their North Dakota sisters. let
them take action on grounds justified by
common sense, and not be actuated by
puritanical motives.
1t will be remembered how Ma Pettin-
gill expected to shock the ranch han
when she put on knee breeches. She was
the subject of remark for a day or SO,
and then 1t had become the old story
which loses interest. Nothing more was
thought about her unusua mode of
dress.
An Illustration in the Saturday Eve
ming Post shows the horror excited in the
Gay Nineties," or considerably earlier.
by a woman h wears riding breeches.
The men exhibit stern disapproval, while
the women turn their backs on the i'm
modest and unfeminine creature.
Something similar happened when
modern women dared to ride a cross sad
die. To be sure a side saddle should
have been i~nterdicted for it's inhumanity
to the horse, and It's danger for the rider,
but popular opinion favored it because,
so the story goes, once upon a time a
queen OF England was SO deformed. a
side saddle was adopted by her. At once
it became the fashion to follow the royal
example, and SO late as 1900 my girls
we're the subject of male derision, be-
cause they chose to ride their Shetland