Is
this old work as bad as people really try to make us believe it is? If things
are as wicked as we are daily taught, then Sodom and Gomorrah have the present
age worked down to a frazzle. The pulpits and the moral reformers picture to us
a world so far gone in sin that there seems little hope for the future. Since
the outcry of the past four or five years began about the white slave traffic,
it is not safe for one’s wife, mother or daughter to start on a journey to the
neighboring republic without running the risk of being held up at the border as
a suspicious character, and not fit to be at large. And the same conditions
exist as to women coming into Canada. Before the white slave traffic was
supposed to exist, it was the proud boast of women that they could travel
anywhere in Canada and in the United States free from suspicion, and that they
were treated courteously by officials and every other man. It is not so now. A
modest woman has to be subjected to a categorical examination by officials on
both sides of the line that brings the blush of shame to her cheeks. The
officials seem to be no respecters of persons. This outrage has got be so
enormous that it is not safe for a woman to travel alone anymore. A woman came
to Hamilton recently as a demonstrator of a certain line of goods from one of
the leading houses in New York city to one of the leading houses in this city.
She was a modest woman and gave close attention to her duties. Her salary, not
being large enough to warrant her stopping at a high-priced hotel, and it is
next-to-impossible for a woman who is a stranger to get admission to a private
boarding house, she was compelled to take up her abode in one of the smaller
hotels. It was not many days before the scandal manger got in her work. The
story was sent abroad that this woman, who has only her reputation and ability
as a demonstrator to depend upon, was engaged in the white slave traffic, and
was reported to the police. The result was a detective called upon her and
warned her to leave the town forthwith, and the woman would have been driven
forth had it not been that her case was taken up by one of official influence.
This woman was endorsed by the house in New York in whose services she was
employed, and there was no reason whatever why she should have been interfered
with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is another side to this picture
of women who come and go without hindrance. Every now and then an item appears
in the city papers of colored women enticing men into alleys and robbing them
of money and valuables. No sympathy need be wasted on the salacious characters
who are led into the alleys, but it shows that women of that class come into Canada
from Buffalo and other border towns, commit robberies and get out with the
utmost freedom. Why is it that the officers on both sides of the line allow
such women to come and go at their pleasure, and yet when a decent lady
attempts to enter either country, she is subjected to the most humiliating
catechizing because the officer has suspicions that are an insult to every
virtuous woman?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the summer months, comers and
goers from either country are subjected to the vilest suspicion, no matter how
respectable the person is in appearance. A couple of years ago, an American
citizen was travelling to his home in the western states on a visit,
accompanied by his wife. The couple had passed the allotted three score and
ten, had every appearance of health and respectability and had money enough and
to spare to pay their expenses, yet the man was subjected to a most humiliating
catechizing by an immigrant officer while crossing on the ferry boat to
Detroit. It did not matter to the officer that the passenger was an American
citizen, had served in the army during the civil war, but he wanted to know why
an American citizen should live ten or twelve years in Canada, even though he
was engaged in legitimate business. While the immigration laws of both
countries are necessary to prevent undesirables from going to and fro, yet they
were never intended to bear oppressively upon respectable people who are
travelling on business or for pleasure. Canada is holding out inducements to
people in foreign lands to come over and supply the demand for labor, yet let
an American attempt to come across the river to seek employment and the law
bars him at the entrance gates. The present condition of affairs is all a
muddle, and some of these days there must come a change for the better. Not
many years ago, people could go and come at will – men with families desiring a
change of homes, and men who wanted to change their labor from one country to
another, hoping to better their conditions. What with alien labor law and white
slave traffic scares, one has to run the gauntlet in changing from one country
to the other. Women of loose morals seem to fare better in passing inspection
at the borders than do virtuous women and girls. For instance, the police in
Hamilton make a raid on undesirable houses and the police magistrate renders
the inmates to leave town or suspend business. The unfortunate inmates must
live even if they do not reform, and they are driven from one town to another.
They can always manage to escape the officers and get across the river or they
come from across the river and pollute Canadian towns. The men, who are equally
guilty, stay tight at home and keep up the work of debauching girls. From the
accounts we read in the daily papers, married men desert their homes and
families and elope with girls of very immature age. The police and detectives
could tell many stories that never find their way into print and probably it is
better that these stories should not be told to inflame the minds of other
young girls. The other day a married man deserted his family in Hamilton and
took from the home of her mother a girl not more than thirteen years old. That
child girl is ruined for life, and her poor mother’s heart is broken. The man
will probably receive a short prison sentence, and while he is living in jail
at the expense of the public, his poor wife and children may probably have to
depend upon the charity of the city.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we are to believe the reports of
good people gathered in conventions this world has gotten to be one great
salacious whirlpool into which is drawn thousands of innocent young girls every
year to supply the demand. They tell us that Hamilton is the breeding place of
vice, and that an army of victims go from here year after year to fill the
place of the other unfortunate girls who have before treaded the path of vice
and have ended miserable lives while yet in their youth. Certainly Hamilton is
not anymore moral than is any other towns of equal population. So long as
mothers allow their fallen daughters to tramp the streets night after night, to
visit dance halls and five-cent shows, to keep company with young men of bad
habits and visit with them cafes of questionable character, so long will new
recruits be found for the life that leads down to the slums. Our city council
has done a wise act in compelling the removal of high board partitions and
curtains in the cafes in this city. The police could tell strange cafes, and if
mothers were only to hear them it might awaken them to the dangers to which
their young daughters are exposed. Girls who have no homes in the city or are
far separated from parental watchfulness are still more imperiled. Small wages
for their work in stores and offices and the love of finery are other powerful
lures. In several foreign countries, young women are kept under strict
surveillance, and are never permitted to be alone with any man. In this
country, too much freedom is allowed young girls. Within the sacred precincts
of the home, the girl is measurably safe; tramp around the streets till late
hours at night with questionable companies too often ends in moral ruin. Cheap
shows and cheap performers poison the morals of young men of both sexes, and
add to these the cheap literature and stories in magazines and papers, and it
is only a wonder that the whole world to damnation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was like taking a trip back into
dreamland to attend the Grand this week to witness the resurrection of two of
the old standard English comedies – She Stoops to Conquer, written by Oliver
Goldsmith, and The Rivals by Brinsley Sheridan. It is not our purpose to
attempt any criticism or eulogy further than to say that the performing company
was all that could be desired; nothing omitted in the costumes and staging. It
is nearly sixty years ago since this old Muser saw these plays and there were
histrionic giants in those days, and the plays presented were clean and free
from the double meaning that one hears in burlesque operas and vaudevilles of
the present day. We wonder sometimes if any of those old players are still
strutting their brief on the mimic stage of life. It is fifty years ago since
we saw Mr. Nickinson and Mr. Peters on the stage in Cincinnati, and the next
day we saw Mr. Nickinson lying cold in death on the sidewalk on the corner of
Fourth and Vine streets, where he fell in an apoplectic fit resulting in
immediate death. Miss Charlotte
Nickinson (afterward Mrs. Morrison) who played the leading lady parts died
three or four years ago in Toronto, and Sunny Lee, the first walking gentleman
of the old stock company, died a few weeks ago in Kingston. What a fascination
the old plays have for the old-timers, and we wondered the other night, in
looking over the audience in the Grand, how many there present could look back
in memory to seeing the same plays in the Theatre Royal sixty years ago? Time
moves ruthlessly along, and it is only here and there that one of the old
school is left to dream of the past. Vaudeville and leg opera controls the
stage nowadays, and sometimes the performers are very smutty in their efforts
to be funny and draw the applause of the gallery gods. Evidently the people
want that class of amusement, for the theatres are crowded afternoon and night,
while such standard clean plays like She Stoops to Conquer and the Rivals
barely draw enough to pay expenses. No wonder the minds of young theatre-goers
are poisoned with immorality when it is sung and played at them in the cheap
shows that are more plentiful than clean concerts, lectures and legitimate
drama.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The forestry of Hamilton was its
beauty in the early days of the town. When Hugh B. Wilson laid out part of his
own farm into streets, he had planted rows of shade trees on the three avenues –
West, Victoria and East avenues – and today they are among the handsome streets
in the city. The designers of the light, telephone and telegraph companies make
periodic visits to every street in town and what has taken years to grow and
spread out in leafy beauty is cut and hacked by the tree butchers. Down at the
east end of Main street, the city is cutting down about two hundred forest
trees that have been growing half a century or more, and the probabilities are
that others will not be planted in their stead except some lover of trees who
owns property on the street may plant new trees. “If I had my way,” said the
governor of New York, the other day, when discussing an appropriation bill for
forestry growth in the state, “I’d make every man in the state plant a tree
every month. I have always planted trees, and when I was a boy on the farm,
every rainy day, when there was nothing else to do, was spent in the woods. My
father taught me to dig up little trees and plant them along the road. When
people pass that farm today, they exclaim of the beauty of the elms and maples.
That was practical forestry, and if the people in Canadian towns and who own
Canadian farms would follow out that plan, the timber supply of Canada would
never be exhausted.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is one to the credit of the male
sex, no matter in what station of life the boy or man belongs, when a lady
enters a crowded street car, the gallantry of the male sex prompts them to
courteously tender their seats to her. On the other hand, let the same
conditions exist as to the other sex, the woman or girl will spread out so that
she covers two seats instead of one, and if her neighbor gets up to leave the
car, she will hunch a little to get more space for herself and never thinks of
making room for a woman who may be standing in front of her. This occurs every
hour of the day on the street cars. It may be absent-mindedness or it may be
sheer hoggishness, very likely the latter, but it shows a want of consideration
and courtesy that one would naturally expect from a lady. Probably if the
attention of the dear creatures was called to this lapse of courtesy, they
might hunch up closer to each other and give the standers a chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment