The attempt to start a moral campaign against all modern dancing is destructive rather than constructive, unless we offer something better in its place, unless we go forward to newer dances—that appeal to the moral sense as well as to the eye.
All work and no play dulls both Jack and Jill. If young working men and women dance, they fling off morbid introspection; they become alert, alive, full of the zest of life. For the moment they forget the gray and sordid influences, thanks to the buoyancy of our American temperament; therefore I say that the best course in the interest of morals is to encourage dancing as a healthful exercise and as a fitting recreation.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me very improbable that the majority of boys and girls who go to public dances are guilty of harboring and of fostering the thoughts that are imputed to them by those who proclaim against dancing. I believe that only a small number of them dance vulgar steps, some perhaps impulsively, but chiefly because they do not know any better. They want to dance; they want pleasure and excitement, and they take it as it comes to them, the bad with the good. It is our duty to eliminate the bad and encourage the good.
Surely there cannot be as great moral danger in
dancing as there is in sitting huddled close in the
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