The Girl and Her Religion | Page 2

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 amusements 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 amusement 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 advertisements, 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 assistance 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