Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
This Association’s vigorous legislative demands and its education of
public opinion are shown by the following proposals: A more adequate
bastardy law making it a crime and extraditable, applying to the
deserted wife as well as to the unmarried woman; a law to make even the
first offense in pandering punishable by a term in the penitentiary and
seduction a felony; an amendment of the marriage law providing for a
period of ten days or two weeks between the issuing of the marriage
license and the ceremony in order to give guardians time to act, the
girl to appear to testify in person to her own age; an amendment to the
adult delinquency law so that a wife can testify against her own husband
in case he is charged with violation of such a law. “As the law stands
at present the man can force his child to do all kinds of disreputable
things—even immoral things—and yet the testimony of the mother, anxious
to save her child, is not admitted. This law should further be amended
so that it will clearly cover all persons even if they are not parents,
if they in any way contribute to the delinquency of the child.
Unfortunately the law is not very clear on that point, and some of the
judges refuse to hold others than parents.”
The Association has made careful studies of theaters, department stores,
and wage conditions in their relations to vice, crime, illegitimacy, and
has definite proposals for remedying evil elements therein. Among these
proposals are those for the regulation of messenger and delivery service
for boys; better regulation of employment agencies, of loan sharks, of
poolrooms; dance halls; separate travelers’ aid for immigrants; liquor
regulation; and inebriate hospitals and farms.
The Woman’s Department of the National Civic Federation took up prison
reform for survey and constructive work during the year 1914 as a
uniform activity for all sections. In New York, conferences on this
subject were held last March by the Metropolitan section at which a
comprehensive legislative program of prison reform and an educational
campaign to promote it were promulgated. The delegates and visitors were
handed circulars of the Prison Association of New York stating why Sing
Sing prison must be abolished and a farm industrial prison established
in its place. A woman’s farm in place of Auburn prison was also
advocated.
PREVENTION
Other women’s associations are giving attention to the problem of
delinquency and its prevention, as these notes from _The American Club
Woman_ indicate: “The City Federation of Clubs of Dallas, Texas, so
changed the street conditions for boys that instead of two-fifths of all
juvenile arrests less than two per cent. now come from the cotton mill
district. Playgrounds largely accomplished this result. A Public Schools
Athletic League now controlled by the Board of Education has helped
also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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