What eight million women want

by Rheta Childe Dorr

In Chicago, as in other cities, no procession or parade is allowed to march without permission from police headquarters. To the sorrow of all those who believed that reform had really begun, Chief of Police Steward issued a permit to "Gypsy" Smith. It is probable that the chief feared the effect of a refusal. To lift up the fallen has ever been one of the functions of religious bodies. Before issuing the permit, it is said that he used all his powers of persuasion against the parade.

By orders from headquarters every house in the district was closed, shuttered, and pitch dark on the night of the parade. Every door was locked, and the most complete silence reigned within. It was into a city of silence that the procession of nearly five thousand men, women, and young people of both sexes marched on that October midnight. In the glare of red fire and flaming torches, to the confused blare of many Salvation Army brass bands, the quavering of hymn tunes, including the classic, "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night," and the constant explosion of photographers' flashlights, the long procession stumbled and jostled its way through streets that gave back for answer darkness and silence.

But afterwards! The affair had been widely advertised, and it drew a throng of spectators, not only from every quarter of the city, but from every suburb and surrounding country town. Young men brought their sweethearts, their sisters, to see the "show." As "Gypsy" Smith's procession wound its noisy way out of the district, and back into the armory, this great mob of people surged into the streets pruriently eager to watch the awakening of the levee. It came. Lights flashed up in almost every house. The women appeared at the windows and even in the street. Saloon doors were flung open. The sound of pianos and phonographs rose above the clamor of the mob. Pandemonium broke loose as the crowds flung themselves into the saloons and other resorts. The police had to beat people back from the doors with their clubs. A riot, an orgy, impossible to describe, impossible to forget, ensued. Many of those who took part in it had never been in such a district before.

This horrible scene somehow typified to my mind the whole blind, chaotic, senseless attitude which society has preserved toward the most baffling of all its problems. Nothing done to prevent the evil, because no one knew what to do. After the evil was an established fact, after the hearts of the victims were thoroughly hardened, after the last hope of return had perished, then a "vice crusade"—led by a man!

Another scene witnessed about the same time seems to me to typify the new attitude which society—led by women—is assuming towards its problem. It was in the large kindergarten room of one of the oldest of Chicago's social centers,—the Ely Bates Settlement. A group of little Italian girls, peasant clad in the red and green colors of their native land, swung around the room at a lively pace singing the familiar "Santa Lucia." As the song ended the children suddenly broke into the maddest of dances, a tarantella. Led by a graceful young girl, one of the settlement workers, they danced with the joyous abandon of youthful spirits untrammeled, ending the dance with a chorus of happy laughter.

This was only one group of many hundreds in every quarter of Chicago,—in schools, settlements, kindergartens, and other centers,—who were rehearsing for the third of the annual play festivals given out of doors each year in Chicago. The festivals are held in the most spacious of the seventeen wonderful public gardens and playgrounds established of late throughout the city. Lasting all day, this annual carnival of play is shared by school children, working girls and boys, and young men and women. In the morning the children play and perform their costume dances. In the afternoon the fields are given up to athletic sports of older children, and in the evening young men and women, of all nationalities, many wearing their old-world peasant dresses, revive the plays and the dances of their native lands. Tens of thousands view the beautiful spectacle, which each year excites more interest and assumes an added importance in the civic life of Chicago.

Each of the large parks in Chicago's system is provided with a municipal dance hall, spacious buildings with perfect floors, good light, and ventilation. Any group of young people are at liberty to secure a hall, rent free, for dancing parties. The city imposes only one condition,—that the dances be chaperoned by park supervisors. Beautifully decorated with growing plants from the park greenhouses these municipal dance halls are scenes of gayety almost every night in the year. Park restaurants in connection with the halls furnish good food at low prices. Of course no liquor is sold. Nobody wants it. This is proved by the fact that saloon dance halls in the neighborhood of the parks have been deserted by their old patrons.

Women have recognized the debt to youth and the joy of life, and they are preparing to pay it.

In this latest form of social service they have entered a battlefield where the powers of righteousness have ever fought a losing fight. Men have grappled with the social evil without success. They have labored to discover a substitute for the saloon, and they have failed. They have tried to suppress the dance hall and they have failed. They have made laws against evil resorts, and they have sent agents of the police to enforce their laws, but to no effect.

The failure of the men does not dishearten or discourage the women who have taken up the work. They believe that they have discovered an altogether new way in which to fight the social evil.