A new conscience and an ancient evil / by Jane Addams.

  • Addams, Jane, 1860-1935.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new conscience and an ancient evil / by Jane Addams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    far the average upright living is the result of external props, until they are suddenly withdrawn. This is especially true of domestic life. Even the sordid marriages in which the senses have forestalled the heart almost always end in some form of family affection. The young couple who may have been brought together in marriage upon the most primitive plane, after twenty years of hard work in meagre, unlovely surround¬ ings, in spite of stupidity and many mistakes, in the face of failure and even wrongdoing, will have unfolded lives of unassuming affection and family devotion to a group of children. They will have faithfully fulfilled that obligation which falls to the lot of the majority of men and women, with its high rewards and painful sacrifices. These rewards as well as the restraints of family life are denied to the soldier. A some¬ what similar situation is found in every large construction camp, and in the crowded city tenements occupied by thousands of immi¬ grant men who have preceded their families to America. In the light of the history of prostitution in relation to militarism, nothing could be more