SEEN BY SOCIAL WORKER

Southland Times, Issue 19293, 11 July 1924, Page 8

SEEN BY SOCIAL WORKER

PROBLEMS OF TO DAY. DRINK, DANCES AND MOVIES. (Special to the Times.) CHRISTCHURCH, July 9. *Tm sorry to say jhat young girls are drinking a gocd deal these days,” said Miss Cardale, a well known Christchurch social worker, in giving evidence to-day before the Commission of Inquiry regarding mental defectives and sexual offenders. Miss Cardale was speaking of the causes of immorality of the present time when she made her remark. She also mentioned as causes dances, which, she said, were not properly chaperoned now like they used to be. “The root of all the evil,” she said, “is in the home fife of the young people. There seems to be little home life at all. Some parents do not seem to care what time their children come home at night and this is the base of much that is bad.” Miss Cardale also blamed the picture palaces in this connection. The bad influence cf the picture shows was seen, not so much in immoral girls, as among the children who were brought before the Juvenile Court. “There are very few pictures shown now,” she continued, “which haven’t a bad suggestion in them. I’m sorry to say one boy told me recently that he liked going to the picture theatre because there were generally between four and six murders in each picture. That is the sort of excitement that children crave.” On being questioned by members of the Commission, Miss Cardale said that her remarks regarding the appeal of the films was the effect more especially on the children. She was not thinging so much of the sexual appeal, though she admitted that many pictures gave wrong ideas of that also. There were many films which gave prominence to a very undesirable pilose of life from the social point of view.