The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-12-04
Here's NezU
Dance Hall
Viewpoint
BY MARTHA LEE

All you who ridicule and scorn
the girls who go to public dance
halls will be very much interested
in the letter today. In the first
place, in spite of our so-called pull
ling away from conventions, there
is still certain amount of restraint,
certain 4 old fashion idea about
girls being out alone, or with other
groups of girls.
The public dance ball has been,
with money, called the root Of all
evil. 1t has been blamed for de-
linquency, for immortality, for al
most every crime you can think of.
A girl who frequentS these places
alone or in company of other girls
has suffered just as much by rep
utation as the place she goes.
PathOs or Indifference
1t has always struck me as the
last word in something other, Ito
see a girl standing around waiting
for some stag" to come over and
ask her to dance. Sometimes that
something -or-other" might be nom
challance, although it must be pretty
trying to strike an attitude of nom
chalance under conditions Of that
sort. Again, with other girls it
smight be just awfully pathetic.
Most Of the girls who go there
will say it is because of loneliness,
because they cannot meet anything
but factory workers and ditch dig
gers if they stay at home, and that
they want to meet white collar"
man, to talk with him and dance
with him.
And besides, their homes, in most
cases are what they have come to
think most unpleasant. Perhaps
there is boiled cabbage on the table
quite often, and it does make a cloud
of unpleasant odor hang about
everything. Perhaps there are five
or six very young and very dirty
children playing around, when these
girls come home from their work in
a noisy, dirty factory.
Education Fell Short
What they are looking for is re-
taxation, a change, a chance to see
glamor and lights and hear soft
music. They have been educated
to believe these things important
They have gone to school just long
| enough to become struck with the
IDEA that there are more pleasant
things in life than laboring in a
factory and cooking boiled cabbage
for a flock of hungry little kids.
They haye been educated just
short of making their own spheres
in life beautiful, regardless of the
cabbage and the crowd. And that,
after all, is what education
should do.
Here is a letter that puts things
pretty we'll. I do not say this girl
is typically the dance hall type
She thinks too much for that. But
at least she has managed to ex-
press pretty well the ideas Of her
type:
Dear Miss Lee-I am a young. rather
pretty girl of foreign parentage. I got to
finish school up to the second year high
! to work I am one of a large family,
ranging from nineteen to one year old.
The people meet. the ones associate
with are all foreigners, or poor white, un@
| educated laborers, the same as me and
my brothers and father. I started to go
to a public dance hall and my boy friend,
who worked at the same place I do, got
/ sore.
/ NJ
to marry a man different from the ones
am with all day long. so 70 the
dance hall, Of course. because I like to
dance, but mostly because 1 hope I'll meet
some nice fellow sometime This boy
friend thinks it's tough to go there. Do
you think it is and do you think am
right in doing the best I know how for
myself? TERESA.
My dear, in the first place, the
boys who go up to public dance
halls and ask strange girls to dance
with them are hardly apt to be the
ones to ask them to marry them.
1t isn't in the books that way.
Besides, even if they would, they
wouldn't be the kind of fellows you
would care to marry. Your boy
friend" has your interests at heart.
He knows, being boy, what other
fellows say about girls who do those
things. Even if he knows why you
go and that it is only for relaxation
and because you want to see laven-
der and pink lights and hear soft
music. You are pursuing crazy
thing, an impossible thing. Seek the
beauty for your life in things that
last longer than pink lights and soft
music.