The Disappearance of Girls
One of the alarming things in our cities is the constant reports which come to the police of the disappearance of girls. A San Francisco paper remarks: “The disappearance of young girls is becoming altogether too common in this city.” The real trouble lies in the home training, as one paper truly observes. Girls are allowed to go out with chance acquaintances or with young men of questionable reputation, to all sorts of places of recreation and amusement; and we need not wonder at what follows. The Oakland Tribune truly remarks: “What is a familiar sight to the man about town is undreamed of by the good people sleeping soundly in their beds, thinking no evil will come to their boys and girls walking abroad and braving the pitfalls of the dark. If parents would keep themselves better informed as to where their daughters go and with whom they associate, they would have to seek the police for information of their missing daughters, with less frequency than they do now. More than half the time the disappearance is only the culmination of downfall. The mischief has been already done, and this is its logical sequence, if not its necessary consequence. But will parents heed? Or are their own morals too much relaxed?”