Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions; Women -- Suffrage; Women's rights
By orders from headquarters every house in the district was closed,
shuttered, and pitch dark on the night of the parade. Every door was
locked, and the most complete silence reigned within. It was into a
city of silence that the procession of nearly five thousand men, women,
and young people of both sexes marched on that October midnight. In the
glare of red fire and flaming torches, to the confused blare of many
Salvation Army brass bands, the quavering of hymn tunes, including the
classic, "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night," and the constant
explosion of photographers' flashlights, the long procession stumbled
and jostled its way through streets that gave back for answer darkness
and silence.
But afterwards! The affair had been widely advertised, and it drew a
throng of spectators, not only from every quarter of the city, but from
every suburb and surrounding country town. Young men brought their
sweethearts, their sisters, to see the "show." As "Gypsy" Smith's
procession wound its noisy way out of the district, and back into the
armory, this great mob of people surged into the streets pruriently
eager to watch the awakening of the levee. It came. Lights flashed up in
almost every house. The women appeared at the windows and even in the
street. Saloon doors were flung open. The sound of pianos and
phonographs rose above the clamor of the mob. Pandemonium broke loose as
the crowds flung themselves into the saloons and other resorts. The
police had to beat people back from the doors with their clubs. A riot,
an orgy, impossible to describe, impossible to forget, ensued. Many of
those who took part in it had never been in such a district before.
This horrible scene somehow typified to my mind the whole blind,
chaotic, senseless attitude which society has preserved toward the most
baffling of all its problems. Nothing done to prevent the evil, because
no one knew what to do. After the evil was an established fact, after
the hearts of the victims were thoroughly hardened, after the last hope
of return had perished, then a "vice crusade"--led by a man!
Another scene witnessed about the same time seems to me to typify the
new attitude which society--led by women--is assuming towards its
problem. It was in the large kindergarten room of one of the oldest of
Chicago's social centers,--the Ely Bates Settlement. A group of little
Italian girls, peasant clad in the red and green colors of their native
land, swung around the room at a lively pace singing the familiar "Santa
Lucia." As the song ended the children suddenly broke into the maddest
of dances, a tarantella. Led by a graceful young girl, one of the
settlement workers, they danced with the joyous abandon of youthful
spirits untrammeled, ending the dance with a chorus of happy laughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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