DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA - NEWSPAPERS - The Washington Post, Monday, February 3, 1896, pg. 10 ----¤¤¤---- This file is part of the DCGenWeb Archives Project: http://www.usgwarchives.net/dc/dcfiles.htm ********************************************* http://www.usgwarchives.net/dc/dcfiles.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ********************************************* Contributed to The USGenWeb Archives Project by: Jamie M. Perez (jamiemac@flash.net) --------------------------------------------------- HELP THE ERRING ONES Crittenton Mission Workers Consider Ways and Means. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC Startling Statistics Quoted by Mrs. Edholm, Who Says that 700 Girls Are Falling Every Week Into Vicious Ways – Causes Which Produce Scarlet Women Freely Discussed – Poor Wage-earners Literally Driven to Lives of Shame. The interest the public is taking in the efforts of the Florence Crittenton Hope and Help Mission workers was exemplified yesterday afternoon by the large crowd which attended their meeting at Calvary Baptist Church. The auditorium and galleries were entirely filled. On the platform were Dr. Greene, pastor; Dr. Power, Miss Mary C. Catlin, Mrs. La Fetra, Mrs. Edholm, and Mrs. Kate Barrett, the national organizer. Following devotional exercises Mrs. Dr. Power sang “Can a Girl Forget Her Mother’s Prayer, When She Has Wandered God Knows Where?” a solo. Mrs. Charlotte Edholm talked upon the local rescue work. She solicited prayers for the girls in the Division. “Girls are falling,” she said, “at the rate of 700 a week, and, according to authentic statistics, many girls who were perhaps in the pews of churches last Sunday are to-day spending their first Sabbath in the haunts of vice all over the land. What Drives Women to Vice. “Every week adds a responsibility to the public to save them while they are young in their erring way. We have shown many people, who did not see it last week, that these girls can be saved. Some of the principal causes of their downfall are the round dance, the theaters and wine suppers, the starvation wages paid the working girls of this country by the millionaire manufacturers, and the child labor system. “Carroll D. Wright says that drunkards are driving their female children to graves of shame. Are the girls who work for 10 cents a day in some of our large cities to be blamed for erring when they are hungry and it is the only way to get bread? This is the class of girls in which there is an organized and systemized system of traffic. You have 800 girls in your ‘Division,’ and half of them are not there from choice. They have been entrapped and then cast off by society.” A Story from Real Life. Dr. Greene, pastor of the church, told a pathetic story of a widow in his church who had an erring daughter, who was finally saved and married to a man she had lived with, after years of work by himself and her mother, and the man and woman both confessed to their conversion to him in that church. He said about the mission: “There is no charity in this city more deserving than this one.” Mr. Lewis, of the Board of Children’s Guardians, spoke of the mistake in separating mothers and illegitimate children, which is practiced in charitable institutions. They are cared for together in the Crittenton Mission, and he thought it one of its best features. Mrs. Kate Barrett spoke of the general reformation of our social system for the advancement of public sentiment in favor of the redemption of the scarlet woman. She said: “We have been criticized and prayed for during the past week. The prayers for us will help us, and we never shy from criticism, for we always learn something by it. It had been said we should be ‘stay-at-home- women,’ and that we should attend to our domestic life, but we have been blessed with daughters who do not need watching, and we must help to bring back to the recognition of society the erring daughters of heart-broken mothers who are less fortunate than ourselves. The Villainy of Mankind. “Some of the causes that have produced the scarlet woman are the villainy of men and the depressing condition of our society. If society would close its doors to licentious men, as it does to an erring woman, the evil we seek to abate would soon pass away. The secret of the turning of this immoral tide is to check the erring women early in their course. I have seen, as a minister’s wife for twenty-one years, the vile procurer under the very pulpit, in the Bible class. Our laws and our society protect the woman who entraps the man into marriage, and gets far more than she give, but, the woman who man entraps is cast out.” A house warming will take place at the Crittenton Mission this afternoon and evening, to which the mission workers invite the public, and solicit contributions and donations. The Washington Post, Monday, February 3, 1896, pg. 10 [Historical note: W. T. C. U. stands for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It was founded in 1874 in Cleveland, OH, and still exists today.] WORK AMONG COLORED WOMEN. Mrs. Jesse [sic] Lawson, of the W. C. T. U., Addresses a Large Audience. Mrs. Jessie Lawson, superintendent of department of work among colored people in the W. C. T. U., was greeted by a large audience when she stepped upon the platform to address the lyceum of the Second Baptist Church yesterday afternoon. She spoke upon the subject of “Work Among Our Women,” and the field of labor for colored women in the District of Columbia. She told of the resolutions passed by the first national congress of colored women, held in connection with the Cotton States and International Exposition at Atlanta, Ga., December 27, 28, 1895, urging the colored women throughout the country to pay more attention to the practical things of life; to follow the poor, unfortunate girls into the reform schools and prisons of the country, with a view to lifting them up and making better women of them; to organize so as to exert a moral influence upon the youth of the land, and to teach them such things as will enable them to make an honest living. Mrs. Lawson gave a graphic picture of the convict lease system as she saw it in operation in the South, and the picture presented a dreadful aspect. The good effects of the Atlanta Exposition were dwelt upon at length in Mrs. Lawson’s paper, and she urged her hearers to patronize the reception to be given at the rooms of the Y. M. C. A., 1600 Eleventh street northwest, Wednesday evening. The paper was discussed by Mrs. Keeler, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Mr. Charles H. Joell, Mr. T. H. Campbell, Miss Ida A. Gibbs, Mr. Reuben S. Smith, and others. The lyceum will be addressed by Miss Georgia Simpson Sunday, February 16, and by Representative James G. Maguire, of San Francisco, Cal., February 23. A resolution was passed asking the District Commissioners to establish a school in the District of Columbia, where colored children may learn a complete trade.