Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?

by Helen H. Gardener

Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the sunshine in every household.

The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees, one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.

But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England and America, the leading nations on the globe.

Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority of people do not watch legislative proceedings.

To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the dangers that beset their path on every side.

Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.

A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable, less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in every relation in life.

Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its incidents.

This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very traits that ultimately lead to her failure.

Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please, compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.