Community Versus Individual Morality

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 26, 1914

Community Versus Individual Morality

WHILE at the present time much is being done toward civic improvements, community betterment, etc., it is to be regretted that many subtle influences are being allowed to come in to undermine individual morality. Speaking of this the Boulder County (Colorado) Herald of January 28 sensibly remarks:—

While it is freely argued on many sides that individual morality is deteriorating, there can be no question that morality in the community sense is steadily advancing. The practically unanimous action of Congress this week, for instance, in adopting a law framed for the purpose of wiping out the segregated vice district in the capital of the nation would have been quite impossible even so recently as a decade ago. Today it goes through the channels of both houses, and is transmitted to the President for his validating signature with scarcely a ripple of publicity.

Similar action by city officials throughout the country marks the slow retreat of vice before the advancing social conscience; yet, strangely enough, there are incidents of another kind that make the serious minded wonder if this apparent social improvement is not being paid for by a most disastrous retrogression among individuals. It is only a few weeks, for example, since a weekly paper of wide circulation warned its New York readers that many young women of gentle families are being led astray by the glamour which surrounds the new animal dances.

The tango has come to our shores tinged with a certain morbidity which is more dangerous to the rank and file of society than any segregated district could be; for it reaches, not the men alone, but the women of the rising generation, and robs them of the charm of innocence that should be there. Girls who would not be permitted to stir from the protecting influence of the home at night are flocking to "tango teas," we are told by the New York weekly, where, with curtains drawn to shut out the light of day, and the incandescents aglow to give a false atmosphere, dancing and drinking proceed hand in hand to an alarming degree.

It will be of small value to drive out crude, gross vice if we substitute in its place the "artistic" degeneracy of Europe.