118

A WORD
WITH THE WOMEN

(By Elia W. Peattie)

The grand jury has found the dimensions
of the county jail too small to acrecommends
that the portion of the jail
owners confined within its walls. It has
found that the women are confuned in
the basement, which is poorly ventilated,
damp, dark and unhealthy. It
recommend that the portion of the jail
now occupied by the deputy sheriff or
jailer be converted into rooms for the
women and that a matron be appointed.
Unless the expense and trouble of
convening a grand jury are to stand
for so much waste, the reccommendations
of this body should be respected
and acted upon. The women of this
city-who pay no contemptible amount
of faces of this corporation-desire to
have a motion placed in charge of those
miserable women They want the
women prisoners to have more room,
places where they can have stationary
beds and not as now, to be confined in
what are practically the store rooms of
the jail , along with piles of stuff of
various sorts, in rooms in which the
sun can shine but a small part of the
rooms are now, black and
white base and suspected, young and
old but be huddled together. An insane
woman, no matter how respectable
or refined, or how conscious of her
state, would be put in with the most
debased of her sex. A woman under
suspicion, who migh be innocent, would
suffer the same indignity And it goes
without saying that there is seldom or
never a time when some disgusting
offenders are not in this prison house.
A matron is needed not only to minister
to the sick the insane and the young,
but to restrain the vicious and to win
them if possible, to a better mental
condition There is no longer any argument
against this There is no use in
saying it cannot be done. For it has
been done over and over again by Mrs
Cummings at the city jail. There are
happy little homes in the city which
have come into existence as the work
of the matron of the city jail, who has
saved women from their lower selves,
reconciled them to the husbands, lovers
or mothers that they have offended.
There are slef-respecting girls working
in kitchen and stones, who have become
self respecting by means of the influences
thrown around them by the excellent
woman, and by the assistance
she gave them in finding honest work.
The law provides for a matron at the
county jail. Let us have one more there

The grand jury also finds the rates
charged for rent in the Ninth street district
exorbiant and advises the extension
of that distict. Does the grand
jury advise other citizens to offend
against the statues of this state in
letting houses for immoral purposes?
That is very singular advice to give.
The grand jury might much more appropiately
have advised the prosecution
of all citizens who leased, rented or
used the buildings for such purposes.
That would have been in keeping with
the law I could not as a woman for
one moment approve of the persecution
of any soman no matter how fallen--
indeed the more miserable the woman
the more to be pitied and protected
and I do not therefore wish to go on
record as approving of the cruel extortions
levied against the women whose
nofailous trade confines them to the unholy
precincts near the river. But why
they who are laow breakers, should be
encouraged to continue in their work, or
why other citizens should be tempted to
aid and abet them in law breaking by
having official approval of the extensions
of precincts set aside for this
illegal traffic, I do not know. The
grand jury appeals to be encouraging
and fostering that vice It must be said
that there are times when this city can
be more magnificently indifferent to
law in the following of its own ideas
of what is firing or permissible, than
any other community excepting a
mining district, with which one has acquaintace
.The grand jury speaks
also of abolishing the district referred
to, This does not however, meant to
abolish the evil by to relieve the evil
does from all restraint.

Sixty persons are to be prosecuted at
Berlin for lese majeste in speaking disresctfully
of the emperor a song. The
life of a book reviewer will be attended
with difficuliteis if the emperor insists
upon becoming an author.