The Girl and Her Religion | Page 4

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, pass through the gate and are gone, the majority to be lost in the mass 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 God-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