The Girl and Her Religion Part 1

The Girl and Her Religion.

by Margaret Slattery.

FOREWORD

TO THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK

It is not a technical book, it does not attempt philosophy. It does not contain the solution of all girl problems. It is not a great book, it is simple and concrete. It is a record of some things about which the girls I have known have compelled me to think. I have but one request to make of those who read it--that they also _think_--not of the book, not of the author, but of the _girls_--for _action_ is born of thought.

THE AUTHOR.

PART I

_The Girl_

I

THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL

She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of opportunity, the girl has her rights--the right to work, the right to play, the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the right to marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall choose. And in a sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our country gives to her some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the world. But as one learns to know her, little by little the stupendous fact is impressed upon him that girlhood has been and is being denied _its rights_.

_It is the right of every girl_ to be born into a community where the sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to enter upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But hundreds of girls every year open their baby eyes in dark inner rooms where the dim gas light steals what oxygen there may chance to be in the heavy air, take their first steps in foul alleys, find their first toys in garbage cans and gutters. They have been denied their rights at the start. In a Christian land, they grow weak, anemic, yield to the white specter and in a few years pa.s.s out of the unfair world to which they came, or remain to fight out a miserable existence against terrific odds. They make up an army of girls who have been denied their rights.

And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for that which she has been denied?

_It is the right of every girl_ to be born under conditions which will make possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of the same with a piece of stale cake or a cookie to help out. Nature calls aloud for nourishment and there is no answer. The girl enters her teens, finds a "job," goes to work, hungry the long year through, fighting to win out over the cold in winter, and to endure the scorching days of summer. And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for what she has been denied?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive, through the educational work of the community, training which shall fit her for clean, honest and efficient living. Yet every year sees hundreds of girls turned out into the world wholly unequipped for life, their special talents undiscovered, their energies undirected, their purposes unformed, their ambitions unawakened.

_It is the right of every girl_ to be shielded from the moral danger and physical strain of labor for her daily bread, at least until she shall reach the age of sixteen. Yet every year sees a long procession of girls from eight to sixteen entering into the economic struggle who cannot claim their rights.

_It is the right of every girl_ to have a good time, to play under conditions that are morally safe, and to enjoy amus.e.m.e.nts that leave no stain. Hundreds of girls live in communities where this is absolutely impossible. What has religion to offer to a girl denied an education which will fit her for the life she must live, compelled to enter into a fierce struggle for daily bread while still a child, surrounded by every sort of cheap, exotic amus.e.m.e.nt behind which temptation lurks? Has it anything to offer in compensation, if it permits conditions to go on unchanged?

_It is the right of every girl_ to enjoy companionship and friends.

Thousands of girls toil through the day in shops, factories, offices and kitchens and at night sit friendless and alone until the loneliness becomes unendurable and they seek companionship of the unfit and the refuge of the street. Has religion anything to do with lonely girlhood?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive such instruction regarding her own physical life and development as shall serve to protect her from the pitfalls laid for the thoughtless and ignorant, and shall fit her to understand, and when the time comes accept the privileges and responsibilities of motherhood. Every year sees thousands of girls enter the teens whose only knowledge of self and motherhood is gained through the half truths revealed by companions, the suggestions of patent medicine and kindred advertis.e.m.e.nts, or the falsehoods of those who seek to corrupt. What has a girl's religion to do with these simple undeniable facts?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive the protection of wise parental authority. The guidance of parents who earnestly, wisely and with the highest motives require obedience from those too young to choose for themselves is the right of every girl. Yet thousands of girls every year are left to decide life's most important questions, while parents, weak, indifferent or careless sleep until it is too late. Has religion anything to offer to girls whose parents have laid down their task and neglected their duty?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive such moral and religious instruction as shall develop and strengthen her higher nature, fortify her against temptation and lead her in the spirit of the Author of the Golden Rule into service for her fellows. Yet thousands of girls are without definite moral and religious instruction and unconscious of the fact that it is their right, and thousands more receive moral and religious training in haphazard fashion and from sources inadequate to the task.

When the community awakens to the necessity for sanitary conditions in the environment of every girl and honestly seeks the solution of the problems of economic injustice; when the educational system seeks to prepare its girls for the life they must live; when laws for the regulation of labor for girls are made in the interest of the girl herself; when the community makes it possible for its girls to play in safety and makes provision for friendless and lonely girlhood; when mothers instruct their daughters in the most important facts of life, parents exercise protective authority and the church provides adequate a.s.sistance in the task of moral and religious instruction, then, and not till then, will the girl receive her rights.

And the girl's religion? The girl is naturally religious. Without religion no girl comes into her own. Whenever and wherever religion concerns itself with the rights of a girl it becomes a girl's religion to which she can pledge body, mind and soul. For the coming of that religion the world of girlhood eagerly waits.

II

THE HANDICAPPED GIRL

They were both handicapped, as a careful observer could tell at a glance. One stood behind the counter, the other in front of it examining the toys she was about to purchase for a Christmas box for some young cousins in the country. She had not been able to find just what she wanted and was impatient in voice and manner as she explained to the girl on the other side of the counter what she had hoped to find. She was extravagantly gowned in a fashion not at all in good taste for morning shopping, but she was pretty and her fair complexion, her shining hair, soft and well cared for, the beautiful fur thrown back over her shoulders fascinated the other girl and filled her heart with envy. She was pale and anemic, her hair was dark and there was barely enough of it to "do up" even when helped out by the puffs she had bought from the counter on the opposite side. The weather had been bitterly cold and she was suffering from sore throat and headache. She had turned up the collar of her thin coat but it had failed to protect her and she was thinking of that as she looked at the fur. She was worn out by the strain of the Christmas season, had slept late, and then rushed to the store with only a cup of coffee to help her do the work of the morning.

She did not care much whether the girl before her found the toys she wanted or not. Toys seemed such a small part of life and Christmas aroused in her all sorts of conflicting emotions. It was winter and life looked very hard, as it can look to a girl of fourteen upon whom poverty had laid a heavy hand and whose life has been robbed by the sins and misfortunes of others, who has been handicapped from the beginning.

The girl before the counter finally decided upon the toys, ordered them sent to her home and looking scornfully at the cheap jewelry and tawdry ornaments pa.s.sed out of the store. She was thinking what a nuisance cousins were, how ridiculous it was in her father to insist each year upon her remembering his poor relations at Christmas, just when she needed all her allowance for herself, and planning to tell him that next year she did not intend to do it. She was in a most unhappy mood because she had been denied permission to attend a house-party and she could not bear to be denied anything. She was handicapped by the heavy hand of money, newly acquired by her father and by the atmosphere of pride, vanity and social ambition which surrounded her.

All day through the busy streets of the shopping district they pa.s.sed--the city's handicapped girls. Some were held back from the best that life can give by poverty, which like a great yawning chasm lies between the girl and all her natural desires and ambitions, some held back from the joy of simple, natural living by the forced, artificial social system of which they are a part, some pitiful specimens of physical and mental handicap and some who showed the strain of the handicap of sin, mingled in that Christmas crowd.

Through the open door of great sea-port cities there have poured during the years past steady streams of handicapped girls. They are poor, they are plunged into a life whose manners and customs they cannot grasp, they are handicapped by a language they do not understand and by great expectations seldom destined to be fulfilled.

According to our government statistics during nineteen hundred twelve, ninety three thousand, two hundred sixty-one (93,261) girls from fifteen to twenty-one years of age came to us from across the sea and in three years an army of two hundred forty-six thousand, five hundred fifty-four (246,554) became a part of the girl problem our country must meet. It is hard to picture in concrete fashion how great this host of girlhood is.

Sometimes when one looks into the faces of a thousand college girls at Wellesley, Va.s.sar, or Smith and realizes that in a single year more than ninety three times as many girls from fifteen to twenty-one came to test the opportunities of a new land, the significance of the figure becomes a little more clear to him. When he realizes that in three years enough young girls land in this country to found a city the size of Rochester or St. Paul, when he tries to imagine this army of girls marching six abreast through city streets for hours and hours until the thousands upon thousands, representing scores of tongues and nations, have pa.s.sed, some conception of the great task facing any organization attempting to direct that army of unprepared, unequipped and largely unprotected girlhood comes to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNCONSCIOUS OF HER HANDICAPS SHE ANTIc.i.p.aTES KEENLY LIFE IN THE NEW WORLD]

Where will they be in another year--those ninety-three thousand and more who came to us in nineteen hundred twelve? What an array of factories and kitchens, what rows of dingy tenements, the moving picture film could reveal to us if it followed these handicapped girls! It does not follow them--they come in over the blue waters of the bay, look with shining eyes at Liberty with her promise of fulfilment of all the heart's desires, they sit in the long rows of benches at Ellis Island, pa.s.s through the gate and are gone, the majority to be lost in the ma.s.s that struggles for a mere livelihood--just the chance to keep on living.

What if some summer morning, or in the dim twilight of a bitter winter day, a miracle should be wrought and the handicapped should be lifted so that girlhood might be free to work out the realization of its dreams!

Many have prayed for such a miracle, some have hoped for it--but it will not come. There will be no miracle suddenly wrought for men to gaze upon in wonder and after a time forget. The release of the handicapped can come only through man's G.o.d-inspired effort on behalf of his brother man. In removing his brother's handicap he will remove his own and both shall be free to live. But it cannot be done in a moment. Effort is slow. It cannot be done by any organization, or church, or creed or individual. It must be done by the public conscience. Educating the public conscience is a long process and America is in the midst of that process now. There are two qualifications without which the educator of the public conscience cannot succeed--one is patience, the other persistence. All educators of the public sense of right, like Jane Addams, have had these two characteristics in marked degree, and all churches, creeds and organizations which have had local success in removing local handicaps have shown the ability to wait and the power to persevere despite every opposition.

How the public conscience will act in directing the work of removing the conditions which so sadly handicap girlhood today we cannot say. It may be that vocational schools built and maintained by the State, not by charity, will be one strong hand laid upon the inefficiency and ignorance that handicap. It may be that the Welfare teacher whose salary and rank shall equal that of the teacher of Greek, Ancient History or arithmetic will be another hand laid upon the shoulder of the girl limited by the lack of friendship and protection. It may be that houses maintained as a business proposition and paying honest returns, built in such a way that girls obliged to work away from home may be decently housed and have a fair chance for health, will be another strong hand reached out to release her from the things that handicap. It may be that a minimum wage, safety devices, laws wiping out sweat-shop methods, will reduce the number of handicapped girls.

Wise cities may establish special schools for the immigrant girl where she shall learn something of the language while being taught the making of beds, simple cooking and the common kitchen tasks, then to be recommended with some equipment to the homes greatly in need of her.

Even if she should choose later to go into shop or store, the State will have gone a long way toward removing the great handicap by having taught her to understand the language of the new land, to care for a room, cook simple food and keep clean.

It may be that some thoughtful States will require school attendance until a girl is sixteen, the age under which no girl should enter the business world as a wage earner.

It may be that the natural good sense of the true American woman will finally triumph over the extravagant and unnatural living of the present day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display idleness, and wild pursuit of exotic pleasures shall be lifted from the girls now held prisoners by the tyranny of money and complex social life.

It may be that in all these ways and scores of others, the public conscience, working out along lines in which it finds itself best fitted and most interested to work, will solve the problem of the handicapped girl.

Before one can possibly help another in a permanent way he must know what is the trouble with him, and then _what_ has _caused_ the trouble.

The greatest encouragement in our girl problem today lies in the fact that _politics_ is looking at her and asking questions it scarcely dares to answer; the corporation is looking at her, compelled to do so often against its will; City Government, School Board, Board of Health are all looking at her; women's clubs, whose individual members have never given her a thought, are reaching out a hand to her; the Church, whose part we shall study definitely later on, is looking more practically and sensibly and with deeper interest than ever before; the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociations are looking wisely and intelligently, getting facts which speak with tremendous power and showing them to the world.

More than all this the handicapped girl is looking at herself.

It has become in these days the pa.s.sionate desire of those who see the problem with both heart and mind, and are interested not in abstract girlhood but in the individual, living, real girl, that the public conscience be more deeply touched and stirred until it shall feel that by whatever means the thing is to be accomplished, the bounden duty of Church and State to give themselves to the task of solving the problem is clear.

For in the midst of every problem--political, social, economic, religious, there stands _The Handicapped Girl._ G.o.d help her--and us--for until we have gained the wisdom to remove her handicap the whole problem will remain unsolved. We are learning--every year shows a gain and in this fact lies our hope.