Searchlights on Health: The Science of EugenicsJefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Philosophy
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage; Medicine, Popular; Sexual ethics
2. THOUGHTLESS YOUNG WOMEN.--In cities public balls are given every
night, and many thoughtless young women, mostly the daughters of small
tradesmen and mechanics, or clerks or laborers, are induced to attend
"just for fun." Scarcely one in a hundred of the girls attending these
balls preserve their purity. They meet the most desperate characters,
professional gamblers, criminals and the lowest debauchees. Such
an assembly and such influence cannot mean anything but ruin for an
innocent girl.
3. VILE WOMEN.--The public ball is always a resort of vile women who
picture to innocent girls the ease and luxury of a harlot's life, and
offer them all manner of temptations to abandon the paths of virtue.
The public ball is the resort of the libertine and the adulterer, and
whose object is to work the ruin of every innocent girl that may fall
into their clutches.
4. THE QUESTION.--Why does society wonder at the increase of
prostitution, when the public balls and promiscuous dancing is so
largely endorsed and encouraged?
5. WORKING GIRLS.--Thousands of innocent working girls enter
innocently and unsuspectingly into the paths which lead them to the
house of evil, or who wander the streets as miserable outcasts all
through the influence of the dance. The low theatre and dance halls
and other places of unselected gatherings are the milestones which
mark the working girl's downward path from virtue to vice, from
modesty to shame.
6. THE SALESWOMAN, the seamstress, the factory girl or any other
virtuous girl had better, far better, die than take the first step in
the path of impropriety and danger. Better, a thousand times better,
better for this life, better for the life to come, an existence of
humble, virtuous industry than a single departure from virtue, even
though it were paid with a fortune.
7. TEMPTATIONS.--There is not a young girl but what is more or less
tempted by some unprincipled wretch who may have the reputation of a
genteel society man. It behooves parents to guard carefully the morals
of their daughters, and be vigilant and cautious in permitting them
to accept the society of young men. Parents who desire to save their
daughters from a fate which is worse than death, should endeavor
by every means in their power to keep them from falling into traps
cunningly devised by some cunning lover. There are many good young
men, but not all are safe friends to an innocent, confiding young
girl.
8. PROSTITUTION.--Some girls inherit their vicious tendency; others
fall because of misplaced affections; many sin through a love of
dress, which is fostered by society and by the surroundings amidst
which they may be placed; many, very many, embrace a life of shame to
escape poverty While each of these different phases of prostitution
require a different remedy, we need better men, better women, better
laws and better protection for the young girls.
[Illustration: A RUSSIAN SPINNING GIRL.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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