FLAPPERS AND REFORM

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4592, 18 May 1922, Page 4

FLAPPERS AND REFORM

BARE KNEES BAD MORALS. ALARM IN UNITED STATES. San Francisco, April 11. There is no diminution in the efforts of reformers to make America 100 per cent, pure, but it is recognised that the difficulty lacing these well-meaning reformers is daily growing more monumental, for the spread of ilapperism appears to almost perplex the loud and continuous voice of those seeking to exclude these modern Jez reels from present-day America.

The utter abandon of hundreds of thousands of young American women to indulge in flaunting themselves in the public gaze attired in the.filmiest creations of the fashion dictators, and in“vamping’” eligible male friends, seems to have occasioned immense concern to these reformers, who are uttering stronger protests daily. It is in New York where another severe condemnation has been levelj led at the genus flapper, this time by i Rev. isDr. J. Frank Norris, the “Texas Tornado,” who arrived in j Manhattan early in April to “save New Y’ork” by a series of revival meetings. In a word, Dr. Norris said: “The cause of the next war — the flapper—struts up Fifth Avenue to-day and her .sister out on Main street apes her. The flapper will bring about this country’s downfall, just as sure as Delilah caused Samson’s. Every great war has been traced to the depravity of women, and they never were as bad as they arc today. “When a woman shows her knees you can see the finish of her and that of the nation as well. We cussed tlie Kaiser for starting the last war; but we ‘pet’ the cause of the next. Our statesmen are scrapping the battlefields; they ought to be slapping the flappers. “The modern girl is 100 times worse than the girl of last century and the country girl is just as had as her city cousin. Once upon a time country girls were pure, blit gasoline spoiled that. We have closed up our redlight districts and put them on rubber tyres. WOMEN SMOKING.

“Women smokers are indecent. The spark from a woman’s cigarette is going to touch off a conflagration that will destroy this country within fifty years. “Jezebel was the worst woman in the world. She was the first queen of the shifters. The last thing she did before she died was to paint her face and then the dogs ate her.” The cigarette habit has broken out among the schoolgirls, according to an assertion brought before the Women’s Vigilant Committee of_ that city, and it produced an explosion ot moral indignation which resounded through the offices of the police chief in the Hall of Justice. The discussion of smoking cigarettes by schoolgirls led to another subject almost equally explosive, namely, the wearing of bloomers by schoolgirls on the school grounds. Some of the mothers of girls have complained to the Vigilant Committee that crowds of men gather about the school grounds to watch the girls play basket-ball, at- which play the girls are dressed in bloomers. Mrs Hamilton defended the wearing of bloomers, and declared the only thing to do was to educate the men not to stare at the girls. It was suggested, hut not acted upon, that the police be asked to keep tho curious male away from those playgrounds when the bloomer girls appear.