Life — February 10, 1910 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LIFE: Inhumanity T is an age of refinements. A young American woman who went to England to study political economy and was com- mitted to Halloway jail for illustrating her theories of that dry science by making a row at the Lord Mayor's reception in Guildhall, has returned to tell her native land the story of her wrongs. Sympathetic reporters met her at the wharf, and the next morning an agitated column of interview called attention in large letters to “Prison Horrors,"” and in small ones to “Dark episodes of prison life."” When we penetrated trem- bling into this darkness we found that the young lady had been forcibly taken from her bed, where she elected to re- main rather than wear the prison garb, and forcibly fed with milk and eggs when she elected to starve herself rather than eat the prison fare. With the first grievance it is impossible not to feel some measure of sympathy. When one remembers how an other- wise contented childhood was clouded by being forcibly ejected from one’s bed, day after day, and compelled to put on shoes and stockings; when one thinks of the hated bell which in the freezing gloom of a winter's morning summoned a whole boarding school from warmth and sleep, one can but admit that getting up is, or at least has been, a “dark episode ”” in life. As for the milk and eggs—well, if eggs cost sixty cents a dozen in England, as they have been costing here; if milk was as hard to come by in England as it has been here during this snow-bound winter, we can but marvel that these rare articles of diet should have been forced upon an unwilling consumer, Moreover, there are some of us who can remember when the words “ Prison Horrors" had a meaning, and were not the fervent hyperboles of the press. Imagine the captives at Arlersonville rebelling at milk and eggs, or the inmates of Libby prison lamenting because they had to get up. For the matter of that, the unfortunate rebels at Fort Delaware would ve considered milk and eggs as the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. Are we so remote from the realities of suffering that we can afford to use our biggest and blackest words for the semblance of things unknown? Agnes Repplier. 237 Please Endow the Shirt-Waist Strike T was in the paper that the Wellesley College girls sent to New York to help the striking shirt-waist makers a thousand dollars and an order for a thousand shirt-waists to be made in the Anne Morgan co-operative factory Well, well! We have been thinking that the shirt-waist strike ought to be endowed, made permanent, and added to the educational system of the State of New York; so inter- esting it has been and so instructive and valuable in its by- products. Observe who have rallied to the sbirt-waist strike’s sup- port: suffragists and college girls. It gave the suffragists a chance to demonstrate what they are here for, and they have embraced it with cleverness and much ability. About the college girls it has been very illuminating, illustrating the dif ference between them and other girls and the sort of leaven they are bringing into American life. As a group they have been conspicuously active for the strikers. They seem to be on the side of women and ready to do something about it. They seem actually to have sentiments about the sisterhood of members of the great Female Sect, and in that there is more or less novelty, Such action as that of the Wellesley girls results doubtless from the fact of association. A lot of girls in concert will do what as separate individuals they wouldn't do, Nevertheless, it also demonstrates that the college girls are different; not less women than other girls—more so, maybe—but women developed on different lines to different ends. . Excuse further disclosure on this subject until there is time for further meditation on it. And meanwhile please somebody capitalize the shirt-waist strike and maintain it as a permanent industry of great value for its by-products. E. S. M. Custer t Grane 1 THE POINT OF VIEW “DON’T Go, JACK—1T’s EARLy.”” comicbooks.com