What eight million women want by Rheta Childe Dorr
page 135 of 206 (65%)
page 135 of 206 (65%)
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myself, sitting home and twirling my fingers?"
If you suggest reading, she will reply: "You can't be reading all the time." In other words, there is no intellectual impulse, but instead an instinct for action. The crowded tenement, the city slum, an oppressive system of ill-paid labor, these are evils which a gradually developing social conscience must one day eliminate. Their tenure will not be disturbed to-day, to-morrow, or next day. Their evil influence can be offset, in some measure, by a recognition on the part of the community of a debt,--a debt to youth. The joy of life, inherent in every young creature, including the young human creature, seeks expression in play, in merriment, and will not be denied. The oldest, the most persistent, the most attractive, the most satisfying expression of the joy of life is the dance. Other forms of recreation come in for brief periods, but their vogue is always transitory. The roller skating craze, for example, waxed, waned, and disappeared. Moving pictures and the nickelodeon have had their day, and are now passing. The charm, the passion, the lure of the dance remains perennial. It never wholly disappears. It always returns. In New York City alone there are three hundred saloon dance halls. Three hundred dens of evil where every night in the year gallons of liquid damnation are forced down the throats of unwilling drinkers! Where the bodies and souls of thousands of girls are annually destroyed, because the young are irresistibly drawn toward joy, and because we, all |
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