NOVEMBER 1, 1912 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Our Homes 



Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her 

 patlis are peace. — Prov. 3:17. 



The house of the strange woman is the way 



to hell, going down to the chambers of death 



Prov. 7:27. 



Dear friends, you may be surprised to 

 see the beautiful text at the head of this 

 talk linked together, as it were, with the 

 one just below it; and, in fact, I have 

 placed them side by side purposely in 

 order that both of them may shine out by 

 the strong contrast. Wisdvnis "ways" are 

 contrasted Avith the ways of wickedness and 

 sin. It is like the whiteness of snow when 

 it is in contact with the blackness of soot. 

 My talk is to be mainly under the head 

 of the second text — life and death con- 

 trasted — spiritual life and spiritual death. 

 Below is a clipping from the Cleveland 

 Plain Dealer. Read it : 



Cleveland morally is better off than it has been 

 for ten years, police announced last night. 



This is the result of the most energetic "clean- 

 up" that police in that time have conducted of 

 so-called gi-ill rooms, doubtful rooming houses, 

 questionable dance halls, and other places in what 

 was referred to in the Baptist vice report as the 

 "flat district." 



Lieut. Thomas Martinec, placed by Chief Kohler 

 in charge of a special vice squad of thirty-five 

 plain-clothes men about two months ago, when the 

 crusade was taken up, yesterday said more than 

 500 undesirable men and women, mostly women, 

 have been sent out of town in that period. 



Hundi'eds of girls, young women, aud men 

 nightly have been talven unceremoniously out of 

 so-called grill rooms, rooming houses, and various 

 other places by the special vice detail, placed in 

 patrol wagons, and taken before Lieut. Martinec. 

 Their names and addresses have been taken, and 

 they have been either "golden ruled" and warned 

 not to be caught again, or ordered out of the city. 



"We have seen that every one of the 500 and 

 more ordered out of town actually did go," de- 

 clared Lieut. Martinec. "In every single case a 

 plain-clothes man went along to see that they gath- 

 ered up their effects, bought a railroad ticket, and 

 were aboard their trains." 



The past week marked the culmination of the 

 "clean up" that has rid Cleveland of so many un- 

 desirables. Police Inspector Rowe last night de- 

 clared himself well satisfied with Cleveland's pres- 

 ent moral tone, adding that the city is cleaner 

 than it has been in years. 



Just how much longer the plain-clothes vice squad 

 will be kept at work Inspector Rowe said he 

 did not know. It may be only another week, it 

 may be all winter, he said. He said, however, 

 that the work has been accomplished much more 

 thoroughly than it ever has been before. 



There are about fifty of these so-called grill 

 rooms, Lieut. Martinec said, that are little more 

 than saloons with a back room furnished with 

 drinking tables where women who have been the 

 object of the special "clean-up" have jjlied their 

 trade. As the result of police activity, patronage 

 at these places has fallen to ne.xt to nothing, in- 

 vestigation has shown. 



Conditions in this section were at their worst 

 when the Baptist vice commission made its report 

 a year ago. At the time, the report said an in- 

 vestigation by women detectives of 1200 working- 

 girls, receiving small wages, disclosed that "out of 

 the total number of cases gone into it was found 

 that about 200 girls were living in rented rooms 

 in the downtown section, and soliciting in down- 

 town grill rooms, on the streets, and in the dance 

 halls." 



One ease, worse than the others, was that of 

 a girl 14 years of age, brought in with a man much 



her senior. The girl was turned over to juvenile 

 court. The man was sent to the workhouse. 



The above long editorial, of which I 

 have taken only a few fragments, was writ- 

 ten or dictated with the idea that it was 

 encouraging news. Well, in some respects 

 it is encouraging. I am glad, and, in fact, 

 I rejoice to know that the officers of the 

 law have done something; but, oh dear me ! 

 what an admission it is in regard to the 

 iniquity going on in great cities! The 

 italics in the above are my own. Notice 

 first there were 500 "undesirables" all to- 

 gether; and then look at that comment — 

 "mostly women." 



The whole State of Ohio has just been 

 discussing how much better morals we 

 should have if women were allowed to vote ; 

 and the whole wide world, or at least a part 

 of it, is in the habit of looking up to the 

 women as the saints or as "guardian an- 

 gels" compared with the rest of mankind; 

 and this is right and i^roper and true. That 

 expression, "grill room," has always jarred 

 on my sensibilities; and may be I am 

 stupid, or behind the times, when I con- 

 fess that I had until now only a dim idea 

 of what a grill room is. The above extract 

 gives the definition. It is a saloon open 

 at night, and especially nights and Sun- 

 days as well, with a back room where lewd 

 women -"ply their trade." The city ac- 

 knowledges there were about fifty such 

 places in Cleveland. 



By the way, let us pause a little right 

 here. When that Baptist commission a 

 year ago demanded that the saloons should 

 close nights and Sundays according to law, 

 the chief of police of the city replied 

 sneeringiy that "there would not be pris- 

 ons enough in the whole city to hold the 

 culprits." That Avas given as a reason 

 for not enforcing the law. By the way, 

 Mr. Rockefeller donated a very large sum 

 of money to eradicate the hook-worm in 

 the South. This was a praiseworthy ob- 

 ject; but what is hook-worm compared with 

 the grill rooms of our cities — rooms where 

 they entice (and perhaps purchase for 

 money) girls fourteen years of age or 

 less? And this is going on right here in 

 this land of the free and the home of 

 the brave — right in our own fair State of 

 Ohio — the State that we have proudly 

 boasted was centrally, geographically, and 

 in other ways, in the front rank in regard 

 to morals. May God help us. We can 

 fight smallpox, yellow fever, diiDhtheria, 

 and all such things, without let or hin- 

 drance ; but when it comes to petitioning our 



