Girls Who Go Wrong by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 22, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 16.

Girls Who Go Wrong

By Editor

We are glad to see working girls and representatives of working girls repudiating the repeated statement that a young woman's virtue depends upon her wage, and we note also that this is confirmed by those who have chosen the downward path. The latter declare that it was not low wages which led them to a life of shame. We are not pleading, let it be understood, for a starvation, meager, or insufficient wage, but we do not believe that the low wage is responsible for lives of sin. There are two great evils which, added to the natural tendencies of humanity, wreck the majority of girls who go wrong. These are the dance hall and the curse of fashion. With the dance hall come the late suppers, the excitement, the wine, and — ruin. The love of dress is fostered and fed by the ever-changing, extravagant, immodest fashions. If the curse of frequently changing fashion were removed, if, as one woman writer of ability pleads, well-dressed women in the average world should possess three suits as they formerly did — best, second-best, ordinary — women could dress well on moderate incomes. In the devil's multifarious devices for destroying souls, dress and dance hall, fashion and folly, are among the most successful. Pay better wages for well-rendered service to respectable women, but pay no bribe for decency.