Socialism Her Rival

Wife Seeks Separation From Husband Who Liked Russia’s Free Love

Socialism caused Joseph Weil, Brooklyn public school teacher, to neglect his wife and five children and to threaten removal to Russia, “where life and love are free,” according to charges of his wife, Anna, whom Supreme Court Justice Callaghan today awarded $20 weekly pending trial of her suit for separation.
Weil, his wife alleges, in 1919 began to pay attentions to an unnamed young woman. His threat to go to Russia followed her protests. He is charged with saying that his wife and children could look to a capitalistic government for support. Weil denied the charges.

[New York Evening Post, March 28, 1924, p.2]

"the vulgar display of wealth"

"Parental Neglect"

In these two words District Attorney Charles J. Dodd, who prosecuted the four young murders recently sentenced to the electric chair, summed up one of the chief causes of the problem Brooklyn faces today—the problem of the boy on the streets [ . . .]

“A very large share of the blame rests upon the shoulders of parents and it cannot be shifted. They do not exact from their children that obedience to parental authority which is the first vision of government. The restraining influence is absent in too many homes. There is a tendency on the part of many parents to choose the line of least resistance, the easiest way, so they let the children drift and shift for themselves. Then, when a serious situation arises, they try to shift the burden to the shoulders of the State by having the children committed to an institution. The best institution is not a substitute for the home influence and cannot be.

“If parents will not accept the responsibility which is their plain duty, I do not know how they can be made to realize that responsibility so long as they are within the law. Many parents have succumbed to the allurements of the world—moving picture shows, dances and other amusements which take them away from the home—and the children suffer during their absence. [ . . . ]

”When I was a boy the young folk used to go to church morning and evening and it seems to me there was less crime then. Now there is not so much church-going as there used to be and that is not a good sign. People prefer to listen to a sermon on the radio to going to church.

“One thing that which contributes toward crime is the vulgar display of wealth flaunted in the eyes of the young—jewelry and the motorcars. Many crimes have resulted from the desire of young men to acquire for themselves some of the wealth they see in the possession of others; to have cars of their own for example. This display of wealth is a constant temptation to weak-minded youth.” [ . . . ]

[Edward V. Riis, “Parental Neglect . . .” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 23, 1924.]

Women in Plot to Banish Busts

French Writer on Feminine Matters Declares Whole Aim in Present Fashions is to Conceal Female Form and Make Women Look Like Boys.

By Alfred M. Murray
Staff Correspondent of The World
Special Cable to The World

Paris, May 14.—The aim of present day fashion is to conceal the feminine form, according to Marcel Prevost, France’s foremost writer on women psychology, who says that certain prominent Paris dressmaker ought to be hanged “for having boasted in a newspaper of his invention of bandages for the purpose of gradually suppressing the bust.”

Prevost writes bitterly of the craze which has seized women for abandoning their fight for social and political equality with men and, on the other hand, showing a frenzied desire to be nothing more than women in instinct while doing their utmost to abolish in their appearance all indications of sex. Talking of to-day’s case in dress, Prevost says:

“This inoffensive looking sheath has for its object concealment of the feminine form—not through prudery, but in order to prevent the body inclosed within it from being distinguished at first glance from that of a boy of the same age garbed in the same manner. What a fine invention for our modern couturiers to be proud of: As nature opposes obstacles to this identification, they further lower the waist belt beneath said obstacles—if necessary even to the knees.

“As for the bust, it must be dissimulated as much as possible. But unfortunately for their purpose, something is left of it notwithstanding all their zeal. And so this garconification (an allusion to Victor Marguerite’s book, “The Batchelor Girl”) is not completed by bobbing the hair.”

Prevost declares that “the French woman now loves to be a mere plaything, an object of luxury, and has no wish to share men’s prerogatives or authority that result from labor.” He concludes: "After five years of peace, the moral damages caused by the war are not repaired."

[“Women in Plot to Banish Busts, Marcel Prevost Bitterly Wails,” The World, May 15, 1924, p.1.]

"Little and Skinny"

“Little and Skinny” Is Way 10-Year-Old Dancer Likes Them

(Special to the Eagle)
Sea Cliff, L.I., March 18—There is a dancing class for children here which has become a very popular one, both with the boys as well as the girls. Little youngsters up to 10 years or so are learning social dancing and one bright boy was recently asked by his mother as to why he always seemed to pick the same little girl for a partner. It was suggested to him that possibly it might be more pleasant for him to select different partners for each dance to which the boy in question—a typical, jolly, whole-souled embryo citizen—replied:

“She’s little and skinny and I can drag her around easily.”

Doubtless the “slenderizing vogue” is unheard of so far as the little chap is concerned, but he apparently gave his unqualified approval with a frankness that his elders would hesitate to employ.

[Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 18, 1924, L.I., p.2.]

In Prison, Out of Fashion

If bobbed hair is objectionable (and not an unarguable matter of taste) there is one way to put it out of fashion. Make it compulsory in prisons for women.

[Wall Street Journal, May 24, 1922.]

Flappers and Efficiency

     The modern girl with bobbed hair has at least one valiant defender in the person of a local manufacturer who employs a good deal of feminine help.  “Bobbed-haired girls,” he explains, “comb their tresses at their desks and are at work again in a few minutes.  Long locks mean a trip to the dressing room, several minutes fussing with the hair, and usually a long conversation with long-haired co-workers.  This means a daily loss of time that figures probably an hour.  Besides, the long-haired girls are more likely to be late mornings—it takes them longer to fix up.
     “That is why I hire only bobbed-haired stenographers.”

[“The Wall Street Journal Straws,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1923.]

Tabloid Glimpses of City Life

“I don’t like that man,” said the young stenographer.  “I was talking to him the other night at Mary’s party and I said to something about getting up early every morning and going down town.   He raised his eyebrows, sort of surprised and interested and asked me: ‘oh, do you work?’  Well, you can believe I shut him up.  ‘I go to business,’ I told him.  The very idea—him trying to make me out a working girl.”

[New York Herald, February 10, 1924, Books-Magazine section 9, p.5]

Wives of Tomorrow

By Frances McDonald

Possible Delinquents

     In certain cities the police have a list of girls filed as “possible delinquents”—not because those girls have as yet actually committed any crime—but because they have been seen repeatedly at dance halls.  This system seemed to me at first, a bit unfair.
     “Why do you call them ‘possible delinquents?’” I asked the Chief.
     “Because that just describes them.  They are girls who are looking for trouble—and will probably find it.  They are girls who have good homes, and the best of training—perhaps too much training—but in any case they are deceiving their parents, and deliberately seeking an unsuitable environment—and one where they are thrown with undesirables of both sexes.—The next step is the delinquent stage.  A quarrel at home—or a jam of some kind at some dance.  We see it all the time.  We have police women you know who do nothing but make friends around dance halls.  They can come pretty near to furnishing a fair description of each of these girls and her name and address.  Just as soon as they notice that such a girl has formed the acquaintance of any of the men we are watching, that fact is recorded, so the little enterprising miss who persuades her girl friend to accompany her to a dance hall need not think that she is unobserved.  Her progress is closely watched and carefully noted—all for her own protection.”  And the Chief’s jaw snapped.
     Protection—yes—and the girl who goes to a public dance hall surely needs protection.  But isn’t it rather a pity that she cannot know these things.  And is it really fair to assume that because she goes she is the type that becomes eventually delinquent?  I put that up to a woman attorney, who loves girls and has frequently defended girls whose own recklessness has brought them into court.
     “Not as unfair as you might think.  The girl who takes chances usually ends in court.  We still have girls who get into autos with men they have never seen before.  They have read of the fate of other girls who have done the same thing—but still they take the chance—and meet just the same fate—if not on the first occasion that they try it then on the next.  Then it is the police, and the police court.  The same is true of the girl who sneaks out at night to go to some dance hall.  She may not be crooked—but is she really straight?  And she is the sort of material that criminals find easy prey.  She usually is stubborn—yet weak.  Stubborn in having her own way—yet weak where any question of principle is involved.
     “And she really is the type of girl who eventually gets into trouble of some sort or another—so the police are not far off when they meet the situation by filing her as a ‘possible delinquent’—for that is just about what she is.”
     And that’s that.  And yet to-night hundreds of girls will slip out, probably for the first time and because some other girl has urged it, and join the list of possible delinquents.  Do these girls ever stop to think that they are possible wives?  Do they forget that they re the wives of to-morrow?  Isn’t that to-morrow deserving of a little thought—to-day?
     If you are a girl with a problem too big for you—write Frances McDonald.

[Brooklyn Citizen, December 12, 1923.]

Flapper Mothers Blamed For Vagaries of Young

‘Vamps’ of 51 and 61 Must Re-establish Morals. . .

Special Dispatch to the Tribune

[Rev. Dr. Edward J Gratz, speaking before the eighty-eighth annual New Jersey Methodist Episcopal Conference in Atlantic City:]

     “Let the flappers of forty-one, fifty-one and sixty-one re-establish the family altars,” he asserted.  “There is a perfect barrage of abuse against young people for the clothes they wear, the things they say and the deeds they do.
     “During the war a girl was called patriotic if she danced with a man she did not know.  She was applauded if a kiss accompanied the sale of a Liberty bond.  Do you wonder that she is not as demure as before the war?”

[New York Tribune, March 6, 1924, p.1]

French Girl of To-day Prefers Auto to Babies

Perfectly Upright and Essentially Practical, Description by Marcel Prevost

By the Associated Press

PARIS.
     The after-the-war French girl has been analyzed mentally by Marcel Prevost, who is universally accepted in France as a specialist in the psychology of his countrywoman.  In an article headed “Modern Marriage and Love” the Academician describes the typical girl of to-day as a perfectly upright and essentially practical person.  She takes no stock in general ideas, which she calls “guff.”  She is far from being a feminist, and has not the slightest desire to take up drudgery.
    Men’s occupations seem to her “mainly the direction and management of the civilized world, giving men a position manifestly inferior to women’s, who enjoy the world as thus directed and managed.
     M. Prevost notes that feminism is generally on the decrease, and that women rarely take up men’s callings because they like them, but only through necessity. [. . .]
M. Prevost sums up the modern French girl as not very romantic, nor very intellectual, but very keen for money, risking an old age of childless solitude rather than do without an automobile.

[New York Tribune, March 2, 1924, p.10]

Voice of the People: BEWARE THE BOBS

     Brooklyn:  The bobbed-haired situation over here has become funny., if not ridiculous.  Every other man one encounters has a police whistle ready to blow at the sight of a bob and our poor flappers are now classed as gunwomen and highway robbers.  The toughest man in Brooklyn is not half so feared right now as the girl with shorn locks, especially if one or both hands happen to be beneath her coat.     UNEASY CITIZEN

[Voice of the People,” New York Daily News, March 8, 1924, p.11]

Girl Bandit Ubiquitous

     Perhaps the most interesting, at all events the most spectacular crook of modern times is the girl bandit who appears here, there and everywhere.  She circulates around Brooklyn at her own sweet will, cheerfully pointing a revolver at whoever she believes is in charge of available loot, with a pleasant, “hold up your hands.”  Always she is accompanied by a male comrade to whom she gives orders and who is apparently “tied to her apron strings,” as the old saying is.  Sometimes she holds up a room full of men and women at a time.  “Don’t touch the ladies,” she says.  “Treat them gently, But if these men make a move let them have it.”

     She is nothing if not aggressive.  She writes notes guying the police, daring them to interfere with her operations and declaring that she will continue her ambitious and lucrative career of robbery without regard to their feelings.  Wednesday night she held up and robbed a drug store just opposite the armory of the Thirteenth Coast Artillery, where 150 police reserves were drilling.  This was less than an hour after 500 police reserves had been sent out by the police captains with special instructions to find and arrest her.

     But perhaps there is more than one girl bandit.  There may be a number of them.  Women’s rights to a career in banditry cannot be gainsaid—at least until the girl bandit or bandits are run down or caught.  Perhaps, again the so-called girl bandit is not a girl at all but a man who has assumed this disguise.  The victims may be too badly frightened to tell whether the voice is soprano or basso, or whether the bandit has French heels or not.  Usually there is no mention of a bonnet or cap or the lack of one.  But she has bobbed hair and looks like a girl.  Somehow it takes away all the romance to be robbed by a pleasant-voiced, bobbed hair girl and then find out afterward that the robber is only a prosaic male masquerading to fool the police.

     At all events, the police have been completely fooled.  If the whole police force cannot run down the bandits male or female, who operate in this borough, it is certain that something is lacking and it behooves Commissioner Enright to find out the reason for the inefficiency of the force.

[Brooklyn Citizen, March 8, 1924, p.4]

Good Looks and Bobbed Hair Unlucky Charms in Brooklyn

Police Stock of Useless Information Increased by Unsolicited Census of Clipped Ones, While Girl Bandit Makes Embattled “Cops” Look Foolish

     “There’s a good-looking, bob-haired girl living in our apartment house she’s got a fur coat, and I saw her come in late last night.  I think she’s the bandit.”
     Brooklyn Police Headquarters is struggling through a pile of correspondence as deep as screen star’s mash notes, each letter of which contains something similar to the quotation above.  There isn’t a clipped girl in the borough with the slightest claim to pulchritude who is safe from neighborly surveillance if she stays out after 9 o’clock at night.  Detectives are spending their days and nights checking up the bob-haired census that is being furnished by those communications.
     But they can’t spot the girl.
     Indignation in headquarters is immeasurable.  The policemen and detectives have stooped to begging their spies and “squeals” for help.  That is something no policeman enjoys, but it becomes especially distasteful when the humiliation of official dignity is wasted.  Such is the case with the attractive bit of femininity who has operated for three months without even a close scrape, who has kept her promise to return and rob a store a second time, who has written unseemly missives attacking in the most frank fashion the quality of Brooklyn’s police force.
     Every available spy has been grilled, pleaded with and wept over.  Not one of them knows who the bob-haired bandit can be.  The police are convinced that she is without criminal record; that she does not associate with criminals other than the six-footer who chaperones her; that she is of gentle behavior and respectable family except when the spirit of banditry gets into her blood at night.
     The order to shoot on sight still holds good.  The police reserves who ordinarily wait around the station house each night from 8 to 12 now get into civilian clothes and distribute themselves in stores, waiting to shoot.  In some drug stores they hide behind the prescription counter though which a hole has been bored for observation and gunfire.  Detectives from the Manhattan school have been added to the force.
     Always though, the police are wary.  She is a “two-gun gal,” and not to be trifled with.

[New York Tribune, March 8, 1924]     

The Bob-Haired Raider

     The “bob-haired bandit squad” playing hide and seek in Brooklyn with a too enterprising young woman seems likely to have a permanent vocation, unless bobbed hair should go out of fashion.  For two months Mr. Enright’s men have pursued the will-of-the-wisp.  They have, indeed, collected an example or two of the species, but no sooner do they think they have tagged the real culprit then “Hands up!” and she helps herself to the contents of another till.

     Police Headquarters would doubtless like her to be a myth, a newspaper invention, but the sustained reality of her operations is annoying.  While 150 police reserves are drilling in the 13th Regiment Armory she holds up a drug store across the street.  That is simply her latest exploit.  The neighborhood seems to attract rather than repel her.

     The bob-haired bandit may be a syndicate.  She has appeared in Philadelphia and Chicago.  Her shorn locks are now brunet and now blond.  There may be a dozen or a score of her, some of them male masqueraders.  Her saucy notes to the guardians of the peace do not bear the unmistakable marks of an individual style.  The original bob-haired bandit could not expect to keep her novelty to herself.  Her piquant invention was not patented.  While she appeared at first an entertaining criminal variant, the joke is beginning to lose flavor, Brooklyn might brag of the distinction of possessing only one bob-haired gun girl.  A regiment of the breed is too much,  the most advanced feminist must admit.

[New York Tribune, March 7, 1924, editorial page.]

"An Expanse of Flesh Colored Stocking"

Man, Disguised as Woman, Fools Cop Until Hat Falls Off; Then Arrest Follows

((Special to The Eagle.)

     Long Island City, L.I., March 6—Patrolman Stewart Donnelly was nervous. He fingered his club and studied it intently. He almost refused to glance across the aisle of the Steinway ave. trolley car in Long Island City in which he was riding. But he did glance once in a while at an expanse of flesh colored-stocking and at its neatly dressed, heavily veiled owner. Patrolman Donnelly admitted that in court yesterday to Magistrate Harry Miller. But what made the patrolman’s jaw drop and beads of perspiration stand out on his brow was when he dared another sly glance he saw the young lady hastily retrieving her hat and veil which had rolled into the center of the aisle, and the young lady’s head was decidedly scarce of hair.
     Patrolman Donnelly was nervous and he fingered his club in a different manner.
     “Was it or was it not?” he thought.
     Thinking of bob-haired bandits and rewards and medals, the patrolman followed the object of his now intense stare out of the trolley car, and as soon as he had set both feet on the street, snatched the hat from the young lady’s head. A gruff voice called out.
     “Hey, what’s the idea?”
     When Joseph Angelo of 33 North Washington ave. Astoria, was arraigned in Long Island City court yesterday he admitted that he was the person who had interested the patrolman in many ways. He offered the explanation that he was off on the way to a masquerade ball, when the man next to him stood up quickly and knocked his hat off.
     “Until then, I was making a grand success of being a woman, eh, officer?”
     The officer blushed as the magistrate suspended the sentence.

[Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 6, 1924, L.I. section, p. 1]

"Bob-Haired Boys" Deluged With Love Notes

Telegrams and Pictures of Male Admirers Found in Wilson’s Room.

     That Clarence Wilson the slim young elevator boy, and Fred Martino, the high school boy, arrested as bob-haired bandit suspects played havoc with the hearts of numerous admirers of the sterner sex with their feminine disguise is evidenced by the fact that in Wilson’s room were found an endearing letter, telegrams of appointments and even pictures of the devoted admirer.

     A man named Farrell evidently believed  that the rouged and powdered wench who flitted about in [. . .] and silken lingerie, etc., was a woman, for he wrote the most passionate prostestations of affection and enclosed in one letter, two small photographs now in the hands of police.  A third and larger photograph of the same man adorned the mantel shelf in young Wilson’s rooms and the police are therefore inclined to believe to some degree the statement of the youths that they dressed up in girl’s clothes merely to have some fun with men.

     Farrell’s longest communication, which was mailed in Mineola, deplores the fact that he and Wilson had quarreled and pleaded that he has not been the same man since.  “Anything I can do in my power to make up again,” the letter reads, according to the police, “I shall do.  Why not meet me at the Jamaica station as you used to do and I shall give you anything your heart desires.  Love from Mr. Farrell.”

     Besides the above were several telegrams of an earlier date calling for appointments.

     In addition to the above, young Martino said that a Mr. Stanley of 58th st., who thought he was a girl, made him a present of $40 to buy a gown for a forthcoming masque ball

     The boys were discharged this morning in the Gates Avenue Court, there being no special evidence against them that they were concerned in a hold-up.

     Wearing male attire yesterday when he was arraigned in Special Sessions for sentence, Raymond Stanley, 20, of 100 Bowery, who was arrested last Friday while wearing a stunning gown, picture hat, high-heeled shoes, flesh color stockings, etc., on a charge of stealing two dresses from a store, was sent to the penitentiary for an indeterminate term.

["“Bob-Haired” Boys Deluged With Love Notes, Police Find," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 6, 1924, p.14.]

Tides of Selfishness?

Big Increase In Demand For Bibles Shows Trend Against Materialism

[. . .]
Almost a quarter of the twentieth century has now progressed and still there is no unanimity among savants as to whether it is to be an era of the spiritual, the triumph of the soul, of morals, of benevolent civilization, or whether it is to be an epoch of materialism, an age swept by the tides of selfishness, revenge and hatred.

In the high ardors of the war self-appointed prophets predicted that a new and brighter world would emerge; that the soldiers would be the advance guard of a new spiritual order, crusaders leading to a higher plane. After the war they were not so sure that this new renaissance of the spirit had come, and some of the same prophets thought they saw the engulfing tides of materialism sweeping away all the spiritual victories of war, carrying the world into a dark age, in which the war-torn twentieth century was to be the darkest and most materialistic.

But the lathes that turned out shells and war materials had hardly stopped before the power belts that propelled them slipped, figuratively, over to the shafts of printing presses which turned out not only depreciated currencies, but also copies of the Holy Bible in unprecedented numbers for the fulfillment of the demand of a world sorely afflicted by the tragedies of war. It is the usual remark that the presses were used alone for the printing of more and more currency—and the fact that the Holy Bible, the Book of Ages, was being bought by the millions has escaped the notice of those who stood close to the stone walls of materialism and, eyes down, looked only at the mortar-seamed stones that appeared to hedge the future of mankind.

Every student knows that the first book printed by Gutenberg was the Holy Bible. The printing of that first Bible, called the Mazarin Bible, on movable block type took about five years, from 1450-1455, but the science of printing has advanced so far since that time that the American Bible Society has placed an order for 3,000,000 of the Bible, which are to be turned out on a rotary press at the rate of 10,000 an hour, and are to be sold in the Latin American and other countries for the sum of one penny.
[. . .]
[New York Times, January 1, 1923, p.XX1]

"The Capital of Morons"

     Before us lies the editorial column of the Shenandoah Valley News, a small paper published in Waynesboro-Basie Va.  “The New Yorker” is the caption of the column, which is devoted in its entirety to comment on this city and its people.
     We should like to quote all of it, but a tabloid newspaper has its space limitations.  There are portions, however, that you simply may not miss.  Read the following extracts:

     The most provincial minded person in the world is the typical New Yorker.  . . .  He believes the sun rises just over the East River and sets behind the Palisades. . . .
     The typical New Yorker was actually amazed at the advent of Prohibition.  Now he comforts himself with the belief that it was “a put-up job.” . . .
     When pressed to it, the New Yorker will never admit his ignorance of anything.  If he actually doesn’t know he assumes that you don’t either, and then proceeds to tell you impromptu.  . . . .
     To tell the New Yorker anything is impossible.  Perhaps that is why he so ignorant.  Even Greenwich Village is sophisticated to the last degree, hardened in its own imbecility.  Humor . . . is totally lacking. . . . The typical New Yorker never laughs.  To him it is a confession of credulance.  
     New York is the capital of flappers, the home of a girlhood robbed of everything but an empty sophistication.  . . .
     New York is unquestionably the cleanest city in the world—morally; but it is mentally inhibited and spiritually depraved.  It is the capital of morons.  . . .
     Have we overdrawn our picture?  Perhaps we have—they say familiarity breeds contempt.  At any rate we are glad to be in Virginia.  We are glad to be in the noblest finest and most human set of people we have ever set eyes upon.

     And there, as Robert E. Lee said to U.S. Grant as he handed over his sword, you are.  And here, as Grant replied in handing it back, you are.
     The Virginia outburst carries a feminine note.  Corroborating that we find listed among those who control the paper’s destinies, “City Editor, Dorothy Brand.”
     One wonders what crass and cruel New York City editor changed Dorothy’s fond familiarity to caustic contempt; or what Sunday editor failed to appreciate her humor because he was so shy on “credulance.”
     What is a typical New Yorker?  He differs basically not a whit from the typical Iowans, Vermonters, Texans, Oregonians, Missourians, Virginians, or other members of the so-called human race.  He has the same ambitions, hopes, fears, loves, hates; some of him is bad, some good; some boneheaded, some brilliant, the same as other humans.
     New York City “the capital of morons”?  Well, to complete the editorial cycle we must return to the introductory sentence:

     “Before us lies the editorial column of the Shenandoah Valley News . . .”

[New York Daily News, October 11, 1923, editorial page]

   

Degrees of Dumbness

PH.D. –(Phenomenally Dumb.)
Telephone operators—Admirers of banana songs— . . . Mulish husbands—Sentimental wives—Trolley-car conductors—Automobilists who drive in front of moving trains—Patrons of fortune-tellers.

D.D.—(Decidedly Dumb.)
Movie stars—Bathers who wear diamonds into the water—Graduates of fashionable finishing schools . . . audible readers of movie captions . . . –Men who believe everything a woman says—Women who believe everything a man says.

M.D.—(Moderately Dumb.)
Scenario writers—Plumbers—Vaudeville actors—Café waitresses—Hummers of tunes at musical plays . . . Cake eaters.

LL.D.—(Lacking Literal Dumbness.)
Prohibition officers—Sheiks—Professional ballroom dancers—Lounge lizards—Jazz hounds—Absent minded dinner partners—Professional beauties—Movie audiences.

[Harvey Peake, “Degrees of Dumbness,” Life, December 13, 1923, p.4.]:

"An army of hard-drinking, cigarette-puffing, licentious Amazons"

The Flapper Again.

The South is getting excited over the flapper again.
   We thought the flapper went out of style months ago.
   But the Rev. Charles J. Smith, president of Roanoke College, is all wrought up over the fact that the girls of his college—
   Drink.
   Dance.
   Smoke.
   Wear scanty evening clothes.
   And sit in limousines during intermissions.
   In fact the Rev. Dr. Smith says:--
   "The world has never known the turning loose of such an army of hard-drinking, cigarette puffing, licentious Amazons as walk our streets and invade our campuses today.”
   It sounds pretty bad, yet he admits that his college numbers among its students girls from the best families of Virginia, and it is a church school.
   It looks as if the modern girl has gone to the dogs again.
   But has she?
   Let’s give her a chance to show what she can do when her college days are over.
   What are the flappers of tow and three years ago doing now?
   They may still be smoking a bit and wearing their hair short, but    they are also serving quite capably in a variety of roles.
   They are teaching school.
   They are studying law or medicine.
   They are in business, helping run the affairs of factories or real estate firms or brokers or banks.
   They are artists.
   They are journalists.
   They are chemists.
   They are secretaries
   They are interior decorators.
   They are home makers.
   And some of them are even mothers.
   They are the modern girls, the flappers of a few years ago.
   And they make it very hard to get excited over the new crop of flappers that Virginia is producing.

[New York Evening Telegram, January 14, 1924, p.9]

The One Who Guzzles Gin . . .

Fay King Thinks Smoking Bad For Girls, But Drinking Worse
















To see some of these sisters who are so self-satisfied with their ultra-sophistication, dragging away on their cigarettes, damning every dame who doesn’t smoke or bob her hair, it makes me smile!

Bobbed hair is as old as the Egyptians, and sweet gentle, little old ladies have smoked pipes in Ireland and other parts of the world for ages!

Personally, I have always thought that the dame who smokes a cigarette is a lot safer than the one who guzzles gin, because while smoking may be a bad habit at least it doesn’t knock you unconscious and make you an easy victim for villains!

[Fay King, "Fay King Thinks . . .," Daily Mirror, Tuesday July 22, 1924.]

Modern Flapper Defended

Rev. Almer Pennewell, pastor of the Covenant Church, Evanston Illinois:

"Flapperism is not a disease, but a diversion," he said. "Bobbed hair, short skirts and knickerbockers are not signs of sin, but a declaration of independence. The girls are a jolly lot, and they will give us the finest generation of women the world has ever known.

"We are passing from the man age into the age of culture, the woman's age. That is why the flapper exists today. The new age will not be one ruled by women but one in which their influence will be felt. Girls in the past have been pretty little birds in the cages of husky beasts of burden."

["Minister Defends Flapper,"New York Times, May 23, 1922.]

Tonal Hootch

"Minstrels First Exponents of Jazz, Says John Sousa"

[There has been “a lot of loose talk about jazz,” said Lieut. Comdr. John Philip Sousa, the “march king.” Jazz can be good or bad, it comes out of the minstrel tradition: “jazzbo,” “jazz it up” meant “pepping up” according to the leader of the famous “Estimable Eighty.” The word came out of the vaudeville stage just before the war, but since then jazz has entered a dark period according to Souza:]

“It entered the cocaine or ‘dope’ period; it became a factor in that line of activity which Joseph Hergesheimer in his recent novel of ‘Cytherea,’ calls ‘the rising tide of gin and orange juice.’

May I describe ‘jazz,’ in that connection, as ‘tonal hootch’?

Or, perhaps, as the substitute for real music beloved of apes, morons, half wits, ga-ga boys, koo-koo girls, deficients, cake-eaters, professional pacifists, goofs, saps and persons who should be put away for mental loitering on the highway of life?

“Thus, a good racy Americanism is made vile by association with the lower orders of what is sometimes called life. But we have jazz of the symphony hall as well as jazz of the night dive.”

[“Minstrels First Exponents of Jazz, Says John Sousa,” Washington Post, March 2, 1924 p.4.]

Negro Waitresses Tabooed . . .

Harvard Dismisses All her Negro Waitresses

Special Dispatch to the Tribune
BOSTON, March 1,—Negro waitresses are tabooed at Harvard.  Just why nobody seems to know, but the three crews that have been working in the freshman dining halls have been given their tickets of leave.
     White waitresses, some of them comparatively young, and one or two with bobbed hair, have taken their places.  They caused “discontent” is one explanation of the reason for dismissing the negro waitresses.
     But it is also said that the suggestion came from the woman’s visiting committee, whose membership reached the conclusion that the “risk” entailed in having white waitresses was no more detrimental than the “discontent” caused by the presence of the negro girls.

[New York Tribune, March 2, 1924, p.1]

The Bootlegger

"He wears a gray plaid suit and his hair parted on the left; across his chest dangles a heavy gold watch chain. His shoes are tan and heavy, and in his striped silk tie blazes a sparkling horse-shoe. Almost any day he may be seen lunching in some well-known restaurant.

On his card are inscribed his name and telephone number, but not his address. He can get you anything if you only give him time.

He is constantly shifting his office, but will invariably advise you of its change of location. His collars are soft and striped.

In the left breast pocket of his waistcoat he carries several large cigars, one of which he is more than likely to offer you.

He owns three town houses, one house in the country, and two high-powered cars. Moreover, he is an absolute teetotaler and contributes generously to the Prohibition campaign.”

[Life, January 10, 1924, p.13]

"Freedom's Voice"

“The Sons and Daughters of Reform were gathered to celebrate the ratification of the Eighty-third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which established Federal censorship of everything.

“Books, moving pictures, plays, newspapers, magazines, public speeches—every possible means of disseminating ideas or information in future were to be submitted to the censors before release. Violators of the new law were denied the right of trial by jury.

“Halls everywhere were equipped with radio receiving instruments so that the jubilant crusaders for the right might hear the words of their leaders and prophets being broadcasted from Washington as chief feature of the simultaneous celebration of their latest triumph."

The celebration was interrupted by pirate broadcast from “Station X, the unknown quantity,” “broadcasting from a point deep in the Canadian woods.”

Goal: “That ribald laughter and deep-throated guffawing may not perish from the United States”

Means: Broadcasting readings from Boccaccio’s “Decameron”, “selected tales from Rablais” “Barroom Favorites of Ante-Prohibition Days.”

“Our programs occasionally will feature songs sung by quartettes whose members will have been plied with liquor.”

Announcing that Station X would begin broadcasting in a few minutes,
“the nation-wide meetings adjourned forthwith.” [to go hear Station X & Decameron]

[James K. McGuinness, “Freedom’s Voice,” Life, January 31, 1924, p.25.]