The modern girl is unconventional and not immoral, Jane Addams, nationally known social worker told the United Press today.
Seated in a plain rocking chair in the barely furnished reception room of her "Hull House" in the tenement district where she has spent a life time working toward the uplift of the "downtrodden girl," Miss Addams dismissed with a flourish of the hand and a weary smile all the hullabaloo about the immorality of the modern girl.
Smooth speaking, the typical American mother type, she refuses to get excited about the charges of "wildness" hurled at the American girl.
"Just because she paints a little, wears short skirts, bobs her hair, and is wont to go automobile riding with men she does not know very well, is no reason to assume she is immoral," Miss Addams said. "I work among them all the time, and I can say that the girls I know are not immoral."
And Jane Addams knows most every type of girl. "Hull House" situated in Chicago's ghetto, daily sees the girls come to Miss Addams for advice and help.
"Girls now work around men," Miss Addams said. "They understand them better. Consequently they are able to cope with most circumstances. And the modern girl can take care of herself at most any time.
"As for women drinking, I don't think that there is one little bit more drinking among women at present than there was before prohibition."
The automobile is blamed to some extent by Miss Addams for what immorality there is.
"I think that the automobile is one of the reasons for the 'Wildness' of some girls. It has brought about a new situation. A couple is able to go a great distance away from home to some place where they are not known. Consequently some things are done that shouldn't be done."
"But you don’t think that as a general rule the modern girl is any worse than her predecessor?" she was asked.
"Well, we are living under different conditions," she replied. "We now have a modern world. The ideas toward women have changed. They are allowed greater freedom, and they are taking advantage of it. But as for all this talk of immorality, there's nothing to it."
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