100 years ago: Visiting evangelist attacks dancing, card-playing

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 15, 1915:

  • “In the sermon last night, [visiting evangelist Rev. William Minges] rapped dancing and card playing a hard blow. He said, ‘I have heard that you have a respectable devil here in Lawrence. You mothers don’t realize that in teaching your girls to dance that you are just training them for the brothel. In a canvass of all the eastern cities, out of a number of 500,000 fallen girls and women, 375,000 of them testified with their own lips that they got their start on the ball room floor. There are just two spirits in these things; card playing has the gambling spirit while dancing is nothing but sexual…. Dancing is just hugging set to music…. I would rather be a chamber maid in a livery stable than to be a dancing master.'”
  • “HOBOES MUST WALK – So Says New Poor Commissioner Who Refuses to Buy Them Tickets. – It was something of a surprise to Mr. Gray, the new commissioner of the poor, when he learned that in the last three months it had cost the county $41.54 to buy tickets for floaters who floated in and then rode out on the cars. ‘We have a nice rock pile,’ said Mr. Gray, ‘and anyone who hasn’t the price of a ticket can get 80 cents a cubic yard for breaking rock.’ Mr. Gray then told of a big husky who imposed upon the Salvation Army captain for food and lodging, and who absolutely refused to earn money by working.”
  • “The doors of the Men’s Union were closed permanently last night, and the Union is now a thing of the past at the University of Kansas. This action was prompted following a mass meeting in Fraser Chapel yesterday afternoon held as a last resort in hopes of saving the Union which started by the Men’s Student Council just a year ago. The financial condition of the Union has been in a shaky state all this year, on account of a failure among students to pay up the money they had pledged to support the Union. The Student Council has been attempting a campaign since the Christmas holidays in order to collect money to save the Union, but on account of the indifferent attitude of the student body, a mass meeting was held yesterday afternoon by the council to determine whether the student body really wanted a student Union. As only forty-two students, including ten councilmen, were present at the meeting, Victor Bottomly, president of the Council, concluded that the student body did not wish a union at K. U. and ordered the building closed last night. The union is about three hundred dollars in debt…. The furniture in the union building is the property of the university alumni association, and will be stored by them, in case any attempts are made to re-establish a student union some time in the future.”
  • “Representatives of the various parents and teachers associations of the city met yesterday at Central school and made arrangements for holding a meeting at 3 o’clock Friday afternoon, January 22nd …. Mrs. Irving Hill was chairman of the meeting Wednesday and the matter briefly discussed then and to be more generally discussed at the next meeting was that of the boys smoking cigarettes. Out of nineteen boys interviewed in one place fourteen of them were found to be smokers. That the law is being violated by men who are selling cigarettes is not only certain, but something is liable to drop some of these days and drop hard.”
  • “Emery McIntire, who was injured while coasting on the Indiana hill, has sufficiently recovered so that the doctors do not think that his life is longer in danger. It has required all attention to save the boy’s life, the doctors say, and his injured leg has taken second consideration. McIntire may always have a stiff leg but it can be helped after he has sufficiently recovered so that the leg can be worked. It is probable that an operation will be necessary.”
  • “Prof. P. F. Walker, dean of the University Engineering school, is in Topeka today conferring with certain parties who are preparing a bill to be introduced into the legislature to regulate the operation of steam power plants in Kansas. Dean Walker returned a short time ago from an extensive trip through the east during which he studied conditions in many of the large eastern power plants.”