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THE GIRL AND HER RELIGION
BY MARGARET SLATTERY
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY LUTHER H. CARY
_Fifth Printing_
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON
[Illustration: WHILE PACKING HER TRUNK SHE DREAMED OF COLLEGE.]
FOREWORD
TO THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK
It is not a technical book, it does not attempt philosophy. It does not
contain the solution of all girl problems. It is not a great book, it is
simple and concrete. It is a record of some things about which the girls
I have known have compelled me to think. I have but one request to make
of those who read it--that they also _think_--not of the book, not of
the author, but of the _girls_--for _action_ is born of thought.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE GIRL
I THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL 3
II THE HANDICAPPED GIRL 9
III THE PRIVILEGED GIRL 19
IV THE GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED 30
V THE GIRL WHO IS MISUNDERSTOOD 41
VI THE INDIFFERENT GIRL 55
VII THE GIRL WHO WORSHIPS
THE TWIN IDOLS 68
VIII THE GIRL WHO DRIFTS 82
IX THE GIRL WITH HIGH IDEALS 96
X THE AVERAGE GIRL 107
HER RELIGION
XI THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE 117
XII IN THE HANDS OF A TRIAD 130
XIII THOU SHALT NOT 141
XIV THOU SHALT 152
XV A MATTER OF CULTIVATION 162
XVI A PLEA AND A PROMISE 183
XVII A PERSON NOT A FACT 195
XVIII THE GLORY OF THE CLIMAX 206
ILLUSTRATIONS
While packing her trunk she dreamed of
college _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Unconscious of her handicaps she
anticipates keenly life in the new world 12
She was full of ambition and willing to
work 22
She worships Pleasure and Fashion 68
Her heart is filled with a deep desire to
serve 154
The future promises nothing and she has
lost hope 198
PART I
_The Girl_
I
THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL
She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social
state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has
supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of
opportunity, the girl has her rights--the right to work, the right to
play, the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the
right to marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall
choose. And in a sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our
country gives to her some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the
world. But as one learns to know her, little by little the stupendous
fact is impressed upon him that girlhood has been and is being denied
_its rights_.
_It is the right of every girl_ to be born into a community where the
sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to
enter upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But
hundreds of girls every year open their baby eyes in dark inner rooms
where the dim gas light steals what oxygen there may chance to be in the
heavy air, take their first steps in foul alleys, find their first toys
in garbage cans and gutters. They have been denied their rights at the
start. In a Christian land, they grow weak, anemic, yield to the white
specter and in a few years pass out of the unfair world to which they
came, or remain to fight out a miserable existence against terrific
odds. They make up an army of girls who have been denied their rights.
And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in
compensation for that which she has been denied?
_It is the right of every girl_ to be born under conditions which will
make possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and
development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every
morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold
after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of the
same with a piece of stale cake or a cookie to help out. Nature calls
aloud for nourishment and there is no answer. The girl enters her
teens, finds a "job," goes to work, hungry the long year through,
fighting to win out over the cold in winter, and to endure the scorching
days of summer. And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to
her in compensation for what she has been denied?
_It is the right of every girl_ to receive, through the educational work
of the community, training which shall fit her for clean, honest and
efficient living. Yet every year sees hundreds of girls turned out into
the world wholly unequipped for life, their special talents
undiscovered, their energies undirected, their purposes unformed, their
ambitions unawakened.
_It is the right of every girl_ to be shielded from the moral danger and
physical strain of labor for her daily bread, at least until she shall
reach the age of sixteen. Yet every year sees a long procession of girls
from eight to sixteen entering into the economic struggle who cannot
claim their rights.
_It is the right of every girl_ to have a good time, to play under
conditions that are morally safe, and to enjoy amusements that leave no
stain. Hundreds of girls live in communities where this is absolutely
impossible. What has religion to offer to a girl denied an education
which will fit her for the life she must live, compelled to enter into a
fierce struggle for daily bread while still a child, surrounded by every
sort of cheap, exotic amusement behind which temptation lurks? Has it
anything to offer in compensation, if it permits conditions to go on
unchanged?
_It is the right of every girl_ to enjoy companionship and friends.
Thousands of girls toil through the day in shops, factories, offices and
kitchens and at night sit friendless and alone until the loneliness
becomes unendurable and they seek companionship of the unfit and the
refuge of the street. Has religion anything to do with lonely girlhood?
_It is the right of every girl_ to receive such instruction regarding
her own physical life and development as shall serve to protect her from
the pitfalls laid for the thoughtless and ignorant, and shall fit her to
understand, and when the time comes accept the privileges and
responsibilities of motherhood. Every year sees thousands of girls enter
the teens whose only knowledge of self and motherhood is gained through
the half truths revealed by companions, the suggestions of patent
medicine and kindred advertisements, or the falsehoods of those who seek
to corrupt. What has a girl's religion to do with these simple
undeniable facts?
_It is the right of every girl_ to receive the protection of wise
parental authority. The guidance of parents who earnestly, wisely and
with the highest motives require obedience from those too young to
choose for themselves is the right of every girl. Yet thousands of girls
every year are left to decide life's most important questions, while
parents, weak, indifferent or careless sleep until it is too late. Has
religion anything to offer to girls whose parents have laid down their
task and neglected their duty?
_It is the right of every girl_ to receive such moral and religious
instruction as shall develop and strengthen her higher nature, fortify
her against temptation and lead her in the spirit of the Author of the
Golden Rule into service for her fellows. Yet thousands of girls are
without definite moral and religious instruction and unconscious of the
fact that it is their right, and thousands more receive moral and
religious training in haphazard fashion and from sources inadequate to
the task.
When the community awakens to the necessity for sanitary conditions in
the environment of every girl and honestly seeks the solution of the
problems of economic injustice; when the educational system seeks to
prepare its girls for the life they must live; when laws for the
regulation of labor for girls are made in the interest of the girl
herself; when the community makes it possible for its girls to play in
safety and makes provision for friendless and lonely girlhood; when
mothers instruct their daughters in the most important facts of life,
parents exercise protective authority and the church provides adequate
assistance in the task of moral and religious instruction, then, and not
till then, will the girl receive her rights.
And the girl's religion? The girl is naturally religious. Without
religion no girl comes into her own. Whenever and wherever religion
concerns itself with the rights of a girl it becomes a girl's religion
to which she can pledge body, mind and soul. For the coming of that
religion the world of girlhood eagerly waits.
II
THE HANDICAPPED GIRL
They were both handicapped, as a careful observer could tell at a
glance. One stood behind the counter, the other in front of it examining
the toys she was about to purchase for a Christmas box for some young
cousins in the country. She had not been able to find just what she
wanted and was impatient in voice and manner as she explained to the
girl on the other side of the counter what she had hoped to find. She
was extravagantly gowned in a fashion not at all in good taste for
morning shopping, but she was pretty and her fair complexion, her
shining hair, soft and well cared for, the beautiful fur thrown back
over her shoulders fascinated the other girl and filled her heart with
envy. She was pale and anemic, her hair was dark and there was barely
enough of it to "do up" even when helped out by the puffs she had bought
from the counter on the opposite side. The weather had been bitterly
cold and she was suffering from sore throat and headache. She had turned
up the collar of her thin coat but it had failed to protect her and she
was thinking of that as she looked at the fur. She was worn out by the
strain of the Christmas season, had slept late, and then rushed to the
store with only a cup of coffee to help her do the work of the morning.
She did not care much whether the girl before her found the toys she
wanted or not. Toys seemed such a small part of life and Christmas
aroused in her all sorts of conflicting emotions. It was winter and life
looked very hard, as it can look to a girl of fourteen upon whom poverty
had laid a heavy hand and whose life has been robbed by the sins and
misfortunes of others, who has been handicapped from the beginning.
The girl before the counter finally decided upon the toys, ordered them
sent to her home and looking scornfully at the cheap jewelry and tawdry
ornaments passed out of the store. She was thinking what a nuisance
cousins were, how ridiculous it was in her father to insist each year
upon her remembering his poor relations at Christmas, just when she
needed all her allowance for herself, and planning to tell him that next
year she did not intend to do it. She was in a most unhappy mood because
she had been denied permission to attend a house-party and she could not
bear to be denied anything. She was handicapped by the heavy hand of
money, newly acquired by her father and by the atmosphere of pride,
vanity and social ambition which surrounded her.
All day through the busy streets of the shopping district they
passed--the city's handicapped girls. Some were held back from the best
that life can give by poverty, which like a great yawning chasm lies
between the girl and all her natural desires and ambitions, some held
back from the joy of simple, natural living by the forced, artificial
social system of which they are a part, some pitiful specimens of
physical and mental handicap and some who showed the strain of the
handicap of sin, mingled in that Christmas crowd.
Through the open door of great sea-port cities there have poured during
the years past steady streams of handicapped girls. They are poor, they
are plunged into a life whose manners and customs they cannot grasp,
they are handicapped by a language they do not understand and by great
expectations seldom destined to be fulfilled.
According to our government statistics during nineteen hundred twelve,
ninety three thousand, two hundred sixty-one (93,261) girls from fifteen
to twenty-one years of age came to us from across the sea and in three
years an army of two hundred forty-six thousand, five hundred fifty-four
(246,554) became a part of the girl problem our country must meet. It is
hard to picture in concrete fashion how great this host of girlhood is.
Sometimes when one looks into the faces of a thousand college girls at
Wellesley, Vassar, or Smith and realizes that in a single year more than
ninety three times as many girls from fifteen to twenty-one came to test
the opportunities of a new land, the significance of the figure becomes
a little more clear to him. When he realizes that in three years enough
young girls land in this country to found a city the size of Rochester
or St. Paul, when he tries to imagine this army of girls marching six
abreast through city streets for hours and hours until the thousands
upon thousands, representing scores of tongues and nations, have passed,
some conception of the great task facing any organization attempting to
direct that army of unprepared, unequipped and largely unprotected
girlhood comes to him.
[Illustration: UNCONSCIOUS OF HER HANDICAPS SHE ANTICIPATES KEENLY LIFE
IN THE NEW WORLD]
Where will they be in another year--those ninety-three thousand and more
who came to us in nineteen hundred twelve? What an array of factories
and kitchens, what rows of dingy tenements, the moving picture film
could reveal to us if it followed these handicapped girls! It does not
follow them--they come in over the blue waters of the bay, look with
shining eyes at Liberty with her promise of fulfilment of all the
heart's desires, they sit in the long rows of benches at Ellis Island,
pass through the gate and are gone, the majority to be lost in the mass
that struggles for a mere livelihood--just the chance to keep on living.
What if some summer morning, or in the dim twilight of a bitter winter
day, a miracle should be wrought and the handicapped should be lifted so
that girlhood might be free to work out the realization of its dreams!
Many have prayed for such a miracle, some have hoped for it--but it
will not come. There will be no miracle suddenly wrought for men to gaze
upon in wonder and after a time forget. The release of the handicapped
can come only through man's God-inspired effort on behalf of his brother
man. In removing his brother's handicap he will remove his own and both
shall be free to live. But it cannot be done in a moment. Effort is
slow. It cannot be done by any organization, or church, or creed or
individual. It must be done by the public conscience. Educating the
public conscience is a long process and America is in the midst of that
process now. There are two qualifications without which the educator of
the public conscience cannot succeed--one is patience, the other
persistence. All educators of the public sense of right, like Jane
Addams, have had these two characteristics in marked degree, and all
churches, creeds and organizations which have had local success in
removing local handicaps have shown the ability to wait and the power to
persevere despite every opposition.
How the public conscience will act in directing the work of removing the
conditions which so sadly handicap girlhood today we cannot say. It may
be that vocational schools built and maintained by the State, not by
charity, will be one strong hand laid upon the inefficiency and
ignorance that handicap. It may be that the Welfare teacher whose salary
and rank shall equal that of the teacher of Greek, Ancient History or
arithmetic will be another hand laid upon the shoulder of the girl
limited by the lack of friendship and protection. It may be that houses
maintained as a business proposition and paying honest returns, built in
such a way that girls obliged to work away from home may be decently
housed and have a fair chance for health, will be another strong hand
reached out to release her from the things that handicap. It may be that
a minimum wage, safety devices, laws wiping out sweat-shop methods, will
reduce the number of handicapped girls.
Wise cities may establish special schools for the immigrant girl where
she shall learn something of the language while being taught the making
of beds, simple cooking and the common kitchen tasks, then to be
recommended with some equipment to the homes greatly in need of her.
Even if she should choose later to go into shop or store, the State will
have gone a long way toward removing the great handicap by having taught
her to understand the language of the new land, to care for a room, cook
simple food and keep clean.
It may be that some thoughtful States will require school attendance
until a girl is sixteen, the age under which no girl should enter the
business world as a wage earner.
It may be that the natural good sense of the true American woman will
finally triumph over the extravagant and unnatural living of the present
day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display
idleness, and wild pursuit of exotic pleasures shall be lifted from the
girls now held prisoners by the tyranny of money and complex social
life.
It may be that in all these ways and scores of others, the public
conscience, working out along lines in which it finds itself best fitted
and most interested to work, will solve the problem of the handicapped
girl.
Before one can possibly help another in a permanent way he must know
what is the trouble with him, and then _what_ has _caused_ the trouble.
The greatest encouragement in our girl problem today lies in the fact
that _politics_ is looking at her and asking questions it scarcely dares
to answer; the corporation is looking at her, compelled to do so often
against its will; City Government, School Board, Board of Health are all
looking at her; women's clubs, whose individual members have never given
her a thought, are reaching out a hand to her; the Church, whose part we
shall study definitely later on, is looking more practically and
sensibly and with deeper interest than ever before; the Young Women's
Christian Associations are looking wisely and intelligently, getting
facts which speak with tremendous power and showing them to the world.
More than all this the handicapped girl is looking at herself.
It has become in these days the passionate desire of those who see the
problem with both heart and mind, and are interested not in abstract
girlhood but in the individual, living, real girl, that the public
conscience be more deeply touched and stirred until it shall feel that
by whatever means the thing is to be accomplished, the bounden duty of
Church and State to give themselves to the task of solving the problem
is clear.
For in the midst of every problem--political, social, economic,
religious, there stands _The Handicapped Girl._ God help her--and
us--for until we have gained the wisdom to remove her handicap the whole
problem will remain unsolved. We are learning--every year shows a gain
and in this fact lies our hope.
III
THE PRIVILEGED GIRL
One finds her in all sorts of unexpected places. Last summer I saw her
in a home of wealth and luxury. She was fifteen, the eldest of a family
of four children. Behind her was a long line of ancestry of which anyone
might rightfully be proud. Her face was pure and sweet and her eyes
revealed the frankness and honest purpose of past generations. After
breakfast she played for the hymns at prayers and in a clear, true,
soprano led the singing. A twelve-year-old brother had selected the part
of the Bible to be read and the eight-year-old sister had chosen the
hymns. The father's prayer was simple and sincere and some of its
sentences were remembered for many a day. After prayers the girl
attended to the flowers. This was her work for the summer. I saw her
gather from their lovely garden dainty blossoms and sprays of green,
making them with unusual skill into bouquets for the Flower Mission in
the city. Then three small baskets were filled with pansies. These went
to three old ladies in the factory section of the village. She told me
they were "the sweetest old ladies" and "dear friends" of hers. She
seemed to take real delight in making the baskets beautiful. I saw her
later in the day galloping off through the woods on her horse, her face
glowing with health and happiness. In the afternoon she spent an hour on
German which she said was her "hopeless study," but I found her reading
German folk lore with ease. She was familiar with the best things in
literature, was intensely interested in art and revealed unusual
knowledge without any evidence of precociousness. She was just a normal,
healthy, natural girl, well-born, well-bred, a girl with every
advantage. When I said good-night to her in her lovely room and thought
of her protected, sheltered life, I wondered how she might be helped to
know into what pleasant places her lot had fallen and how she might come
to understand and do in later years her full duty toward the other
fifteen-year-old girl who that day made paper boxes, feathers, flowers
or shirtwaists, toiled in the laundries or the cotton factory, or walked
with heavy heart from place to place searching for work. They are
dependent upon one another, these two. They do not know it now, but if
each is to be her best, they must know.
How to lead her daughter to value and help this _other girl_, that sweet
mother told me as we talked in the library that night she felt was her
great problem. "We women are responsible for so much," she said, "and
our daughters will be responsible for still more. We must help them
estimate things at their right value." With that thought and spirit in
her mother's heart the girl I had watched all day with such pleasure
seemed doubly privileged.
Last September I saw another privileged girl. She showed me her trunk
packed for college. Every member of the family was interested in it,
perhaps most of all her father who had put into the bank that first
dollar on the day that she was born with the faith that what should be
added to it might one day mean college. Behind her was a long line of
honest ancestry, simple people who had worked hard and managed to "get
along." She was the first on either side of the family to "go to
college." No one in the family, even the most distant relative, failed
to feel the importance of the event. "Tom's Dorothy goes to college this
week--think of it," a great aunt, in a little unpainted, low-roofed
farmhouse far away in the hills, told all her friends at church.
Great ambition, hopes and dreams were packed into that trunk and the day
when she should graduate and come back to teach in the high school
seemed near. Jack and Bessie and Newton were in her plans for using the
money she should earn when those four short years were over.
[Illustration: SHE WAS FULL OF AMBITION AND WILLING TO WORK]
Looking at her sweet, fresh face so full of happiness one knew her to be
a privileged girl. All through high school she had had her purpose
clear, her studies were a pleasure, her simple good times were enjoyed
to the full and life, every moment of it, was worth the living. When I
saw her lock the trunk and excitedly instruct the expressman as to just
how it must be carried, I had a sudden vision of the thousands of girls,
with happy faces filled with anticipation of all that is wrapped up in
that one word, _college_. A great army of privileged girls, they are.
One cannot help wishing that he might feel sure that when they leave
those college halls it might be with a deep appreciation and real
sympathetic understanding of the other girls who have turned their eyes
with longing toward four years more of study and fun, but whose feet
were obliged to walk in other pathways. They are so dependent upon one
another, these girls who can go to college and the other girls who
cannot go. They do not know it now but neither girl can ever come to her
best until the privileged girl sees and understands.
One of the most interesting of the privileged girls I met one morning
going to work. It was her third month in the office. "One of the finest
in the city. There's a chance to work up, and me for the top," she told
me, her face beaming. Her father had come across the sea from Sweden
when a boy. Long generations of honest folk were behind him and he made
good in the new land. He saved a good share of the wages he made in the
bicycle shop, studied with a correspondence school and assumed more and
more responsible positions with higher wages. At last he was able to
build a house for his young family, at the end of the car line where the
children had room to play and the cow and chickens kept the boys busy
and taught them to work. Olga was the eldest and it was a proud night
for the family when she graduated from grammar school. Going home on the
trolley her father determined that she should have the desire of her
heart and go for two years to business college. There was great
rejoicing on the part of the family when he made his decision known and
Olga hardly slept that night. When the two years were over the principal
of the school had said such fine things of her work that Olga had
blushed to hear them. More than that, he offered her the best position
open to his students. He was a little astonished the next morning when
Olga's father came down to ask in his careful English regarding the
character of the men in the office where his daughter was to work. To
Olga's great joy he was able to satisfy the father to whom the matter
was of enough importance to make him put on his best clothes and take
half a day off, in order to make sure that all was right.
It was a great day when Olga came home with her yellow envelope and laid
the money on the table. Not a cent would her father take. "No, Olga," he
said, "the money is yours. You shall keep the account of it and show it
to your father. You shall buy the new bed for your room and the chairs.
Your mother wants the house made pretty. Perhaps you will help. That
will be very good. But the money is yours." No one seeing the girl's
face as she related her father's words could doubt the appreciation in
her heart. Her girl friends had "paid their board" and she had expected
to do the same. That night she refurnished the house in her dreams and
the memory of that dream room of her mother's, with paper on the wall
and rugs on the floor, helped her save her money until the dream came
true.
Olga is indeed a privileged girl. She has parents wise enough to have
given her the best equipment possible for the work she wanted to do. She
has her own money and may dress as well as any girl in the office. She
has an object for saving what she can and knows the joy of helping to
make home beautiful. The suburban church is the center of many of her
pleasures, for it is alive and the young people in it know how to enjoy
themselves. She is loved and sheltered in a real home. She can live a
normal, useful, happy life with opportunity for promotion in her work
and an object for her ambition. She has health, sane pleasures and good
friends. Any such girl is indeed _privileged_.
When one sees her going happily to work he is forced to think of the
other girl, her homeless boarding place, chance friends, pitiful
economies and few pleasures; the girl who has forgotten what it means to
be sheltered and protected, if she ever knew, to whom love is a myth or
a dream.
Perhaps one of the happiest of the privileged girls was the one who took
me to her room on a beautiful June day to show me her cedar chest, her
gowns and the gifts already beginning to come. _The_ day was near. The
young man whom she was to marry was honest and fine, in business with
his father and hoping to make the firm a greater success than ever, as
the years should pass. The girl was just twenty-one. After high school,
a mother who was not strong needed her help and she had made that home a
center of enjoyment for three years. Surrounded by the loving
appreciation of parents and brothers, her life was filled with
happiness. Now in a few days she would go across the street to the house
built for her and furnished simply and well, with the articles which he
and she had chosen on the long shopping tours during the months past.
She was in every sense a privileged girl.
The _other girl_ saw her married. She was looking forward to her own
wedding day but it seemed farther away than ever. She had no hope for a
house built for her, but she knew where there was a flat for rental
which she had mentally furnished many times that month. But they could
not afford it. They had added and subtracted and gone over the figures
again and again but it was of no use. He was manly and fine, he had hope
and ambition, but the clerkship was only fifteen dollars a week and he
had tried in vain for another position. Fifteen dollars a week would not
do in their city. Butter, eggs, coal, ice, milk and meat stood in the
way. So they were waiting and there were tears in her eyes at the
wedding of the privileged girl.
That day was a hard one for another girl. She read of the wedding--the
decorations, the gifts, the congratulations of friends--then putting
down the paper forced back the tears and went out to finish the shirt
waist she was making, for it must be ready to wear to the office in the
morning. That evening he would come, she knew, to tell her again that it
was not fair, that her family would get along some way and that he had
been patient for a long time. She knew that he must continue to wait,
for her mother was doing her utmost, Wilbur could earn only a little and
the other two children were too young to leave school. It was three
years since her father's death. The young man had said then that he
could wait _ten_ years. She had begged him to take his release but he
refused. Of late he had been very insistent. She knew she must stand by
her mother and help her through. If he could not see it that way there
was but one thing to do. She found it hard even to think the words that
she must say and she thought of the privileged girl with longing in her
soul. But the privileged girl did not know. If she had, her sympathy and
understanding would have helped.
One rejoices as he remembers the thousands of pure, sweet, wholesome
girls who have been privileged to enjoy the results of a long ancestry
unstained by weakness and sin, the results of training, guidance and
protection, the opportunity for healthful, normal living, for pleasures
and the satisfaction of human friendship and love. Our country looks
today with increasing hopefulness to these privileged girls for the
solution of many of the problems of the other girl. Our country looks to
them for another generation of privileged girls even stronger and wiser
than they.
One of the greatest of the problems with which our country is concerned
today, the solution of which involves every phase of social, religious
and economic life, is the providing of ways and means by which the
unprivileged girl may, in large numbers, be promoted into the privileged
class.
IV
THE GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED
She is a chameleon sort of girl but she is not rare. So often she is
sweet and lovable. Almost without exception she is obliging, a jolly
companion, fearless and frank. One often finds her a girl of talent and
natural ability. She is the very opposite of the indifferent girl for
she responds to everything. The girl she will finally become depends
upon the companions whose lead she follows. Her safety lies in the
establishment of the habit of going in the right way. She is the girl
who most needs care and guardianship. So much depends upon her choice of
friends that parents and teachers must be wise for her.
A little ten-year-old, in whom all her teachers were interested because
of her versatility and quick response to every interest, moved into a
new neighborhood. Some weeks later because of her ability to learn
rapidly she was put into a higher grade. Her new home and new
classmates in a short time entirely changed the character of her
environment. Before long the girl herself began to show the result of
the change. She had always been too much interested in her studies to
waste time or disobey the school rules. Following the leadership of some
of the newly made friends she entered into all the little conspiracies
of a group of girls and boys who made things hard for the teacher, a
rather weak disciplinarian. One day, the girl hitherto perfectly honest,
told a lie to get out of the trouble into which the following of the new
leaders had brought her. It troubled her conscience and she cried on the
way home from school, but her companions laughed at her, told her she
was "all right," and had stood by them splendidly. They made her feel
heroic and she dried her eyes and stifled her desire to tell her mother.
Before the year was over the child had entirely changed. Her studies
suffered, she seemed to lose her ambition, her naturalness and
spontaneity vanished. Her mother began to discover increasing
untruthfulness. One day, toward the close of the school year, the child
asked to wear her best dress to school, saying there was to be an
entertainment. There was no entertainment. Instead there was a party at
the home of one of the girls of whom her mother disapproved. The party
began later than they had planned and it was nearly six before the child
reached home. She found her mother greatly troubled and said quite
glibly that she had stayed after school to help the teacher. Next day
the mother called at the school to remonstrate with the teacher for
keeping the child so often and so late to "help" her. Then the whole
truth came out and the mother was dismayed. She felt that the matter was
so serious that she must remove her daughter at once from her companions
and before school opened in the fall the family had moved back to their
former neighborhood and the parents were permitted to send the little
girl to another school where new associates were carefully chosen.
Before she left that grammar school she had recovered her frank, sweet
spirit, her interest in her studies returned, and surrounded by a group
of fine boys and girls she went through the high school with the love
and respect of teachers and companions.
This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger,
are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly
transformed by association with evil companions whose strong personality
and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills into the wrong
pathway.
Parents and teachers cannot be too careful of the companions of a girl
of vacillating, easy-going, versatile temperament, for they may ruin or
make her.
When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had been her
home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet suburb,
where the children attending the high school were from homes of real
culture and refinement, she was disconsolate. Voices, language, games,
manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street,
perplexed her. She seemed lost in her new environment. She had never
been a leader but had followed with all her heart. Her playground had
been the street. She had enjoyed boisterous good times, had patronized
moving pictures of every sort, had entered into the mischief of "the
crowd" always close to the leader. In a pathetic letter to one of her
chums she said that at the very first opportunity she should run away
and be with them all again. She characterized the beautiful suburb with
its neatly kept lawns and pretty homes as "a dead old hole" from which
she could not wait to escape. Still, her aunt's home, the new wardrobe
containing the lovely dresses, becoming hats and coats, for which she
had always longed, tempted her to remain. One day, early in October, her
classmates made the discovery that she could sing. She had quite a
remarkable voice for a girl of her age. The teacher of music became her
interested friend and found she could play unusually well, though mostly
"by ear." The leader among the girls who "adored" any one who could sing
adopted Leonora as her special friend. The new wardrobe added greatly to
her attractiveness, and her aunt's social position opened many doors for
her. Her new friend's mother was pleased with her daughter's choice of a
companion despite the lack of good breeding and lapses in English.
Leonora became the obedient and devoted follower of the new girl friend
and the influence of the music teacher was indeed remarkable. Almost as
by magic Leonora dropped the coarse slang, loud talking and shouting of
her companions, who in the city had been termed "wild" and adopted the
ways of the new leader. At the end of two years it would have been quite
impossible to recognize in the pretty, interesting, well-mannered girl
of sixteen, who sang so sweetly, the uncultured, ill-mannered, slangy
girl of fourteen.
Leonora was so easily led that it was not a difficult task or a great
accomplishment to have so transformed her. If she remains until she is
eighteen or twenty in her present environment, the chances are that the
good friend, _Habit_, will have determined the way that she shall go. If
she should now drop back into the old street, the old companionship, the
place which until her father's death he had tried with her help to make
a home, the chances are the old voice and manner, the old slang and old
interests would return.
For a girl of Leonora's type the impress of the right environment, the
guidance of the right hand, means everything. To discover such girls,
to open the way for the working of new friendships, which shall furnish
new leadership for them, is a fine task and a great pleasure for the
lovers of girlhood.
But so impossible is the task of attempting, through the individual, to
touch the great mass of girls who are easily led, that one can work
effectually only through the individual effort plus the _law_. It must
be made "to go hard" with those who, for selfish ends and financial
profit, plan to take advantage of the weak will and trusting,
unsuspecting mind of the girl who is easily led.
Most of the girls in their teens, who are walking in evil ways, are
there because they have followed friends and companions. There are girls
who have blazed the way to paths of evil for themselves, but they are
comparatively few. Any court, or school for delinquent girls, which
contains a sympathetic man or woman to whom the whole truth may be
poured out, will testify that _somebody_ led the way. When allowance is
made for the tendency to lay the blame upon other shoulders, the facts
bear out the testimony that there has been a _leader_. The girls who by
nature are weak of will, and have had no training which could tend to
strengthen or develop that will, must be protected, and that protection
must be furnished by the community. It may be furnished by putting the
welfare teacher into the school; by making the street on which so many
girls find companionship as safe as possible; by driving professional
leaders of the unsuspecting and easily led from all places of recreation
and amusement; by helping parents, especially those parents, who,
themselves born across the sea are attempting to bring up daughters in
the new land, to see and understand the dangers; and by making it a real
crime to lead the easily led astray.
But this is not enough. Perhaps the greatest steps toward the
safe-guarding of the easily led were taken when the carefully supervised
public playground and the school gardens were started and the women
police were sent out into the streets of cities.
A strong, wise, sane woman who is neither a prude nor a crank can do
more toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those
interested in great city problems have yet dreamed. The day will come
when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the
weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an
opportunity to strengthen her against temptation.
I shall never forget my visit that Sunday afternoon to a detention
school for delinquent girls. Over in the corner of the room where the
afternoon service was to be held was the piano, the orchestra, made up
of members of the school, was gathering. There was a cornetist, two or
three violins followed, then a banjo and guitar. The service that day
was to be a great event, for the wonderful woman in charge of that
school who had done away with the cells, taken down the great spiked
iron fence and planted flowers in its stead had persuaded board,
committee and municipality to permit her to follow out the one great
desire of her heart. The girls were to wear on Sundays and other dress
occasions white Peter Thompson suits, big bows of ribbon in their hair
and shining, well-fitted shoes.
Soon _she_ entered the room. One could hardly take her eyes from that
sweet, sympathetic, calm, face. A glance told one she might trust her
with her soul's secrets without fear and might tell her _anything_ and
she would understand. After her came the girls and quietly, with an
attractive self-consciousness because of their new glory raiment, they
took their seats. Who could fail to forgive them if they fingered
lovingly the great soft silk Peter Thompson ties and patted the bows on
their hair. Some of them seemed scarcely more than children though some
were in their later teens. No one of the group present that afternoon
will ever forget how they sang, nor how they listened with eager
responsive faces. No one can tell what new hopes and ambitions were born
as they sat in their new finery, some of them for the first time in
their lives becomingly dressed.
After the service they filed out, put on their long checked aprons and
got supper. We saw the beds in the wards where all the new comers must
sleep, then the smaller rooms with six and four beds, the still smaller
with two and the honor rooms which a girl might occupy alone and might
arrange as she chose. There were flowers in all the single rooms and
pictures on the walls.
It almost seemed as we walked along the edge of the drive over the walk
the girls had laid, that we were leaving a boarding school where girls
were being taught household economics and the arts and crafts.
The woman who had wrought the miracle which had been wrought in that
school stood at the end of the drive as we left and in response to the
exclamation, "It seems impossible that these girls could ever have been
guilty of the deeds the records show!" she answered, "These girls are
not vicious. It is after all a question of leadership and they followed
the wrong leaders." She paused a moment, looked back at the buildings,
and then said softly, "God pity the girl who is easily led." And in our
hearts we echoed her prayer.
V
THE GIRL WHO IS MISUNDERSTOOD
Every girl in the world I suppose has sometime in her life felt that she
was misunderstood, that every one looked at her through the wrong
glasses, that no one saw her good qualities or appreciated her abilities
and that all with whom she had to do interpreted her at her worst. The
cry of a girl's heart for someone who understands is the cry of
humanity. No one can perfectly understand another, therefore only God
can be just. And so in a sense all girls are misunderstood. But there
are special types of girls who suffer more from being misunderstood by
their families, neighbors, friends, and by strangers than do others.
There is the self-conscious girl. Shy and made awkward by her shyness,
unable to forget that she has hands and feet, painfully aware that she
must walk while others watch her, that she is expected to say something
and those who listen will criticize, she suffers intensely. The great
onrush of self overwhelms her, she stammers, blushes, fingers and eyes
help to reveal her suffering and as soon as possible she beats a
retreat. How intense her sufferings are only those who know by
experience can say. The shy and self-conscious girl will always be
misunderstood. People may be very sorry for her but they do not
understand her. She needs a friend who has passed through the
self-conscious stage to sympathize with and help her, or some girl quick
to see her good qualities who can show confidence in her and smooth over
the awkward places for her, until she becomes convinced that she is like
other girls and that she can do as they do.
I shall never forget the change which her first year in college made in
a girl friend of mine. In the high school she was exceedingly shy. Her
recitations were accompanied by so much suffering that they were painful
to witness. Her written tests revealed an unusual mind, keen and active.
She won the prize for the best essay in a county contest. She was asked
to read it to the school and though she begged to be excused, her
teacher insisted. She slept little and ate little during the days before
it must be read and on the morning when the school assembled to hear it
looked pale and wan. It was with very evident effort that she walked to
the front of the platform. Her lips opened but no voice came. Her sister
thought she was going to faint but she pulled herself together and was
able to read in a thin scared voice which could not be heard three seats
away. But those who heard and those who read marveled at the thoughts
which the girl had written in a clear and original fashion. Still when
she left for college she was a misunderstood and unappreciated girl in
her own home and among her neighbors.
It seemed as if she could not endure the thought of a roommate but
necessity offered no alternative. She reached the room first and
arranged all her belongings in her accustomed careful and orderly way.
She sat by the window lonely and miserable, trying to read, when the
roommate came. She was a rosy-cheeked, laughing, vivacious girl who
greeted her as if she had always known her and did not seem to notice
that she received monosyllabic replies. Before an hour had passed the
shy, self-conscious girl was down on her knees helping her new friend
unpack her trunk and talking to her more naturally than she had ever
talked with anyone before.
The new roommate was a very wise girl, a little older than most girls
entering college. She knew that the girl with whom she must live was shy
the moment she caught sight of her and felt the dread with which she had
waited her coming. From the time she was fourteen until she left for
college she had helped her father make strangers in his church and
congregation feel "at home." She knew just how.
During the first trying days every one greeted the shy girl cordially
and then gave their attention to the wide-awake, interesting roommate.
But the roommate always included her. "How was it, Clara? I don't just
remember what was said," she would say, suddenly turning to the girl who
blushed but answered and found she could, to her great surprise. Under
the warmth of her roommate's confidence in her and pride in her
scholarship and the ease with which she conquered the most difficult
subjects she learned to forget herself. A great longing to help the
girls who found things hard came to her and they gladly accepted her
help and loved her for her sympathy. The months wrought a marvelous
change and though she found it difficult in the presence of the critical
family to talk naturally at first, still the things she had to tell
proved so interesting that they forgot to criticize and she forgot
herself while they listened. At the High School Seniors' banquet she
spoke for her college and her brother declared it the best speech made.
She is a graduate now and all traces of the old awkwardness have left
her. She is reserved but easy, simple and gracious in meeting those whom
her work calls her to meet and her eye and her heart alike are open for
the self-conscious girl wherever she meets her. If she were to try all
her life, she tells me, she could never express her gratitude for what
that roommate did for her.
What was it that happened to her? She forgot herself. People had told
her to do that before but she couldn't, for she felt that they were
watching to see her make the attempt. They called attention to her
shyness, her roommate ignored it. They bade her take part in
conversation and join with others in what they were doing; her roommate
gave her a part in the conversation and made a place for her in all that
they were doing. Her family and school friends said by their manner and
sometimes in words, "The poor girl is so shy, what a pity it is." The
roommate expressed calm confidence in her and in manner and words said,
"You have no idea how fine she is and how well worth knowing."