We early encountered the difficulties
of that old problem of restoring the woman, or even the child,
into the society she has once outraged. I well remember our
perplexity when we attempted to help two girls straight from a
Virginia tobacco factory, who had been decoyed into a
disreputable house when innocently seeking a lodging on the late
evening of their arrival. Although they had been rescued
promptly, the stigma remained, and we found it impossible to
permit them to join any of the social clubs connected with
Hull-House, not so much because there was danger of
contamination, as because the parents of the club members would
have resented their presence most hotly. One of our trustees
succeeded in persuading a repentant girl, fourteen years old,
whom we tried to give a fresh start in another part of the city,
to attend a Sunday School class of a large Chicago church. The
trustee hoped that the contact with nice girls, as well as the
moral training, would help the poor child on her hard road. But
unfortunately tales of her shortcomings reached the
superintendent who felt obliged, in order to protect the other
girls, to forbid her the school. She came back to tell us about
it, defiant as well as discouraged, and had it not been for the
experience with our own clubs, we could easily have joined her
indignation over a church which "acted as if its Sunday School
was a show window for candy kids.
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