The spirit of youth and the city streets / by Jane Addams.

  • Jane Addams
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The spirit of youth and the city streets / by Jane Addams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    / , “gin-palaces,” they are called in fiction; in Chicago we euphemistically say merely “places,”—in which alcohol is dispensed, not to allay thirst, but, ostensibly to stimulate gaiety, it is sold really in order to empty pockets. Huge dance halls are opened to which hundreds of young people are attracted, many of whom stand wistfully outside a roped circle, for it requires five cents to procure within it for five minutes the sense of allure- ment and intoxication which is sold in lieu of innocent pleasure. These coarse and illicit merrymakings remind one of the unrestrained jollities of Restoration London, and they are indeed their direct descendants, properly com- mercialized, still confusing joy with lust, and gaiety with debauchery. Since the soldiers of Cromwell shut up the people’s playhouses and destroyed their pleasure fields, the Anglo- Saxon city has turned over the provision for public recreation to the most evil-minded and the most unscrupulous members of the com- munity. We see thousands of girls walking up and down the streets on a pleasant evening with no chance to catch a sight of pleasure
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