The average girl is in many ways the most important member of society,
for what the average girl is, that society is. Society cannot be more
generous-hearted, pure, altruistic, content and happy than its average
girl.
I am thinking of two towns whose inhabitants number between three and
four thousand. In one, the girls are careless in dress, vulgar in
speech, spend their evenings in the two dance halls and the cheap
picture shows. While still young girls they marry men who drink and
gamble, start homes with practically no money, are poor cooks and
housekeepers and know nothing about the care and training of their
children when they come.
There are beautiful homes in that town and sweet, fine girls with the
highest ideals. There are wretched hovels in that town with wicked and
criminal inmates. But neither the girl with the highest ideals, nor the
girl with the lowest, can stamp that town; neither the sweet, refined,
cultured girl, nor the immoral and vicious one can stamp that town. The
_average_ girl determines the character of it.
In the other town the girls impress every stranger with their
cleanliness in dress and in speech; the streets are clean, the homes are
simple and neat. The girls spend the evenings in their own homes, in
"The Center," a house dedicated by one of the churches to the young
people of the town for their enjoyment, in the one excellent moving
picture establishment.
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