on the evils of the skating rink

Here all who pay the admission fee—the virtuous maiden and the abandoned libertine, the drunkard, the gambler, and the church member—meet together on terms of social equality, and slide, and joke, and laugh, and bet with each other in the most unrestricted manner

• In Wilkesbarre, in a rink chiefly owned and controlled by a prominent member of a large, popular church, they had…a prize of twenty dollars for a twenty-four hours’ race. Nine boys entered. As the strength of the four who held out was failing, whiskey was given them freely. The ball of the great toe of one of the skaters burst open, and the blood ran freely. Some were doubtless disabled for life.
• Many a family has already been broken up by flirtations begun in the skating rink between the young wife and the practised seducer, who comes here to seek his victims.
• I was at a home for the fallen the other day, and the matron told me that the skating rinks were the greatest curse to the city and to the young, and that the majority of young girls under her charge were girls who were once pure and good, but had been allowed to attend the rinks, and now see their folly when it is too late.
• The Chief-of-Police of Coney Island, N. Y., Captain McKane says: “My private books will substantiate the fact that nine out of ten of the girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen arrested by my officers…have upon private questioning by me, dated their fall from the time when they commenced to frequent skating rinks. This is no exaggeration. 

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