Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 260, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1911 — The Problem of the New Girl [ARTICLE]

The Problem of the New Girl

11 Old did i - : ;;r . \ In iKttli of thes* CMOS as in the Ar. j nold case, the girls telo*g to Jne families, who were mors than com- j and Ab6ufr^!^ € Rldldilous? DtS P °3odMamie or Susie have^to wanted’ to, andWbat In Heaven’s name could a girl desire more? But Mamie and Susie happened not to be girls with pink tea souls. Also they were very young and foolish, and romantic, and inexperienced, and eo Mamie and Susie committed the incredible folly of running away from home, and their frantic parents are tiyfng to find them. let us hopfe that P<> harm will befall there little feminine soldiers of fortune, and that they .will go back home having learned a lesson, and that their parents will also have learned another lesson. The Moral Of It All. . 2 For the moral of the affair is this—that modern coditlons, modern education. modern modes of thought have produced a new girl. Just as they have produced a new woman, and that she has got to be dealt with on a new platform. The old, mediaeval bread-and-water, lock-her-up-in-a-room-un-til-she-eomes-to-reason methods of treatment won’t do. The new girl is a condition and not a theory that confronts her parents, and they are just as much addled and fluntrated over her, and know as little what to do with ber, as the old hen that hatched out a swam; Of course, if a girl is a little milk-and-water. pink-and-white piece of femininity who asks nothing of life hut frilly clothes and plenty of beaux, and to nibble chocolate creams, and £P to the matinee, her parents have it easy. They can keep her in a satin lined box and she will be happy and contented, and get married In due season, and her father and mother will have no problem more serious to consider than paying her bills. But there is another kind of girl, a girl who has an Intellect, a-girl who thinks, who has a bold and oourageons spirit, a girl who has taken a good education, who la, perhaps, college bred and an athlete, and who looks at life ve-y much With the eyes of a boy. This girl, when she comes home fiom school, finds nothin? adequate to her wants in the life she is asked to lead. She can’t satisfy herself with 'he vapid rounds of society. She can't absorb heiself in the hunt for a husband, for. while she means to marry If the right man come® along, marriage is pot the be all and the end alt in life for her, as it is for the Fluffy Ruffles Girl.

This girt has no occupation at home, because servants do the actual work, her mother naturally is not going •o abdicate her throne as ruler of the house for a chit of a daughter. Also the girl yearns for financial Independence. She doesn’t want to go to even the mopt indulgent of fathers tor every penny. It Is easy to sneer at this girt for her restlessness and discontent, and to . tell her that she doesn’t- know when she Is well off and that she should be thankful that she has a gpodhome to live in and parents able to support her, and this Is exactly what her father and mother do, and they accuse her of being a wicked and ungrateful girl when she persists in wanting to go out and try her own wings. If her parents were wiser they would try to look at the girl’s side of the. aue=tlon. and to realize that she Is bound to have some outlet for her enenrles. and young strength, some occupat ion for her Idle taaitds, some object upon which she- can expend her bottled-up enthusiasm. Some girls can find this in society. Some can’t . To be able to make a < areer of bridge whist you have to be born that way. and the sooner parents realize this, the sooner we shall put a ston to tragedies that darken so many homes. There is but one solution of the problem of the- unoccupied girl. And that is to occupy her. It is even more true of women than men that Satan finds work for Idle hands to do, and the only way to keep a girl out hf mischief is to keep her busy. If a girt wants to be of some use la the world and to work, her parents are not only foolish, they are criminal to refuse her the right to try her poweis, and they have only themselves to blame if. In an excess of boredom at having nothing to do, she runs off from home to find the natural liberty ■of action that she had a right to, and that has been-* denied. Perhaps she may find out that she is not the inspired genius that she thought aha was perhaps when she finds out how hard It is to earn money with her owe hands She may be glad enough to come back and let papa give it to Mf^'for^hartug^ At aay rate, this much,is certain—the little fledgling of today has got to try her wings, and It’s a wise papa and mama bind who Jet her make ber ■---