The latest in women’s apparel at Hale’s Good Goods, 541, 543, 545  S. Broadway. Young women, you are slaves to fashion!

541-545 S. Broadway via Google Street View.

July 3, 1913: A rabid dog runs through the streets of Tucson, biting four children and a man. “Police rounded up every dog in town suspected of having been bitten by the mad animal and drowned them,” The Times says.

J.A. Flicher, Sacramento’s finance commissioner, is finally able to say the word “damn” because the city’s only woman commissioner,  Mrs. A.J. Johnston, had completed her term, having been defeated for reelection.

Dr. Calvin S. White, secretary of the state Board of Health, bemoans the decadence of society.

“One of the principal causes of unhappiness,” White says, is “the foolish fashion in which women now bedeck their bodies.”

One cause of our moral decay is that the good, solid home life of the old days has been abandoned.  “Now, after the dinner, instead of gathering around the table, the sons and daughters go out for the night, and very probably, the parents go out also,” White says.

White also cites: “the desire of girls for the so-called ‘good time,’ which, interpreted by them, means dress, dinners, late hours and amusements which surround them with temptations.

“There are a hundred temptations today besetting boys and girls to one that existed 25 years ago,” White says. “The old-fashioned home life is gone.”

Also to blame: “craving for excitement, suggestive plays, billboard displays and other similar temptations.” Oh yes, and people are reading cheap dime novels instead of “good, clean stories of other days.”

Continue reading →