Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1911 — TALLS OF COTHAM [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALLS OF COTHAM

Bad Influence of Cheap Candy Shops

NEW YORK.—Meeting halls, candy shops, cheap theaters, moving picture shows, dance halls and academies, and even street gangs, In their relation to child life in New York was one of the subjects set forth graphically by the Child Welfare Exhibit, given at the Seventy-first Regiment armory. In this section there is one saloon for every 294 persons, with no playground Tot the child. Other exhibits were the dangers of child life in playing upon the streets, analysis of street dirt, and the interfering powers of different city departments in keeping the streets clean and properly paved, accidents on the street and street crime, showing not only the moral danger of the street, but the unhappy fact that the chief activities the healthy boy can and should engage* in are banned by law if practiced on the street, and subject the child, if he express his normal tendencies, to the risk of a debasing contact with the criminal law. The candy shop and its effects on the young ranks in importance in the work of this committee. In many congested districts the candy shops and stands far outnumber the saloons. In

the exhibit a model of a typical candy shop, with its post cards, dime novels and soda water, as well as its candy, was shown. Samples of candy have been purchased and analyzed by the health department. The development of the moving picture show as a form of social entertainment was also a part of the exhibit There are 250 of these shows in Manhattan, which reach two million people weekly, and at least a halfmil lion children. Their undesirable features have been taken up by the committee and suggestions made as to their Low priced theaters, the vaudeville, burlesque and melodrama and the cheap music hall have been made a special study because of the number of children unde* sixteen that attend them; even the high priced theaters have been investigated. A very exhaustive study has been made of the dance places, chiefly in Manhattan. Dancing academies in Manhattan, the committee says, are teaching annually some one hundred thousand persons to dance, and of these 45 per cent, are under sixteen and 90 per cent, under twenty-one. Thus practically the entire population between fourteen and twenty of the clerical and working classes is taught annually. These figures become doubly significant when It Is known that about half of the dancing academies are rated as undesirable places for young women.