For what reason does the modern woman give so much time and thought and money to the improvement or adornment of her person? Is it to subjugate and attract man?
Or is it to outrival her sister woman? Or really because she is innately vain and has grown accustomed to consider beauty woman’s only excuse for a persistent existence?
If the first reason carried any weight, man is deserving of all commiseration. There is no domestic appendage so trying as a beautiful wife. Other bees scent and swarm around that wonderful flower and distract it, and annoy its unenviable possessor. Jealousy and rivalry and ill will are rarely absent from such a union. Yet it is no uncommon opinion I quote when I say that the generality of women would sacrifice anything, do anything, so only they might own the prestige of personal loveliness! What men bargain for in modern wives would puzzle a sage. Is it the genuine face or figure, hair or complexion of a woman?
Or is it chin straps, wrinkle plasters, face creams, figure-reducing belts, bust developers, nose machines, face masks and hair transformations such as meet the eye in every advertisement column of the women’s journals of the present day? It is an appalling thought, when one looks at the modern woman: How much is real and how much art?
Mrs. Desmond Humphreys
The lust for slaughter
Staying the other day with a hospitable friend of my own age, who was entertaining his friends, as the manner of the time is, with every facility for the destruction of unoffending creatures in fur and feather, I found myself indulging in reflections, not original, I dare say, on the curious survival of the tastes of the savage man, which the daily press reveals to us at this time of the year. Pheasants darted between the trees, to be picked off with ease by the accomplished sportsmen; others in desperation soared sky high, only for the most part to find death too quick for them, to fall headlong to the ground with a sickening “thud,” and to lie there quivering in misery till some one came to wring their necks. Some, but not all, of these sportsmen, no doubt, if they had the chance, would be as keen against the tiger as against the pheasant. That is sport, indeed, and that sportsman is a public benefactor who destroys at great risk to himself the man eater who is the terror of helpless thousands. But to go on inflicting death and pain incessantly on weak little frugivorous birds and beasts is an amusement not fit for an intelligent Christian gentleman.
Sir Lewis Morris
Preventing disease
Your editorial “Science and Pneumonia” and comments on Dr. A.D. Bevan’s alleged statement “Pneumonia is not influenced by drugs” are certainly thought producing. Prevention is the “whole thing” in medicine. The laws of health are simple, easily followed, and with little effort.
We habitually eat too much. We chew improperly, we exercise too little, we pay little attention to the proper ventilation of our apartments, offices and churches–and our own lungs; we drink too little of pure water. We are human and love our ease. We do know, but it is too much trouble, we forget, we are too busy otherwise. Educate the young! Prepare the soil first, then sow your seed. There is an elementary course in physiology in the public schools, but even that is slurred over and given no importance. Educate the rising generation, teach them to think, teach them the duties of good citizens, and teach them, while the brain is most receptive, how to live right.
R.J. Smith, M.D.
A womanly act?
There is no doubt that cigaret smoking is on the increase among women. I think you will agree with me that a woman should be allowed to do anything honorable that she can do in a womanly way; and no fair minded person can call the act of smoking a cigaret either unwomanly or ungraceful. So long as the cigaret is treated as a plaything, taken up only at odd moments, and not missed when cast aside, it does no harm; but when it becomes a necessity it is dangerous. From the social point of view much might be said in favor of it. Sitting with feet on fender, smoking with a congenial friend, one’s heart does expand, one’s sympathetic insight is quickened, and one becomes more human.
But the argument is altered when smoking takes the place of all those little womanly accomplishments which distinguish the woman from the man and make for the adornment of life. I am glad to say I only know one woman who smokes like a man, continually, dirtily, everywhere; and she is not a nice woman.
Sarah Grand, author
The origins of crime
A few years ago, 20 boys were picked out at random from among the number at Pontiac and the history of each boy traced back until it was discovered that in every case the boy began his waywardness with truancy. On more than one occasion Judge Tuthill has said that every case that comes into the Juvenile Court is primarily a case of truancy. Doubtless there are several ways to deal with this phase of the boy’s weakness, but one important way is more playgrounds. A boy likes nothing better than to match his skill and strength with other boys, especially if they be boys of another school or another club. The moment he represents his school against another school he at once takes a new and deeper interest in his own school.
When Dr. Woods Hutchinson says that, between a school without a playground and a playground without a school he would take the playground, he says in words what every normal boy says by his acts.
More playgrounds, less truancy; less truancy, less crime.
J.B. Riddle, probation officer
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UPDATES AND DETAILS
The rest of the story
In order to put together this issue of the magazine, certain liberties had to be taken. A few of the photographs, for instance, are not precisely from 1904 but are of that era. The stories have been reconstructed from various sources, including histories, biographies and Tribune files.
Page 4: Letters were excerpted from “Editorials by the Laity” and “The Round Table,” features that ran in various 1904 editions of the Chicago Sunday Tribune and the Chicago Daily Tribune.
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