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Newspaper Page Text
.VHOSE IS THE BLAME? Two little girls, hardly in their teens, but put to work for low wages in the tedium of a cheap shop in Philadelphia, had a half holiday the other day. The neighbors say they were good girls but flighty- and wouldn't you be flighty, too, if you had to stand all day and toil in a hot, stuffy room at an age when children ought to be at play? As they came out of their workplace for the week-end rest, an auto mobile with two young men sped' by a vision of ease and luxury to the tired kids with feet aching from overstrain. That auto seemed like poetry, ro mance; its occupants like fairy princes. As it passed the girls looked up and smiled, the innocent smile of youth for one of the fancies that youth has. The auto swerved, turned and drew near; a honeyed voice invited the tired shop girls to enter for a pleasant ride home. It would have tempted wiser folk. They entered, just for a ride home. And here the cunning of the men appeared. They took the girls, home and at each home told the mother that the other mother had consented to let her daughter go with the other daughter's friends for a longer ride into the country. So to the country the two couples weht, each mother sup posing that the other mother knew the young men and all was well; and each daughter thinking that, since mother sanctioned, it must be all right. What need to tell the sequel you have already guessed? A sequel of shame and bitter tears, of mothers almost insane-, of virgin innocence de spoiled, of the public at last knowing aljt ' The law is on its way to punish those young men, one of them mar ried. The law, however, does little, can do little, to prevent such sacrifices at most it can do little while greed throws on the streets from stuffy work shops thousands of underpaid, overtired, joy-starved little wpmen to yearn in unprotected innocence for cankerous pleasures seductively dangled be fore them by human hyenas. I Whose is the blame? -o- DIARY OF FATHER TIME The modern conditions of morality, white slavery, politics in big cities, love of luxury, the unbounded wealth of some and the dire poverty of many, remind me of the conditions that pre vailed In Rome about 150 B. C. The riches that poured to that na tion permitted Rome to carry out a series of magnificent public improve ments. Italy was welded, together by numerous military roads, so finely built that they remain to this day. The Tiber was spanned by excellent bridges of stone, the city was sew ered and the streets paved. Of the two new aqueducts, the Marcian, built B. C. 144, cost more than $10,- oop.ooo. Thus gorgeous benefits accrued to Rome through her far-reaching con quests; but it cannot be doubted that even greater evils resulted. The brilliant culture waff crimsoned with impurity. The -rugged" virtues of, Rome were corrupted the strength collapsed before flabby degeneracy; marriage was openly scoffed at, and even the old Roman faith lost its hold upon the.peaple. The political system of Rome grew to be as rotten as that of the worst governed city of modern'times. Brib ery was open and the slave' trade was intended to meet the demands of the rich planters for all purposes. The doom of the mightiest city the world ever knew was plainly written. J .44 '-- - . -i JiaoaiaiMai