Clean Up The Dance Halls Analysis

In the article “Clean Up the Dance Halls” Elisabeth Perry examines the age of the Progressive Era and the efforts by the reformers to get rid of unregulated dance halls. Perry adds how dance halls that provided “stylish drinks” and guaranteed popularity influenced many innocent girls to leave their households to embrace a life of alcohol, unmoral dancing, and eventually sexually relations with strangers. Perry also adds how the girls could not resist a man's love despite it meaning that they would loose their “girlhood.” One of the prominent reformers during this time was Belle Israels who sought to protect girls from being “played with” and sought to put an end to dance halls. As a result, the Progressive Era stirred together different social issues which usually led to controversy and tension as seen in the dance hall reform. Elisabeth Perry placed her thesis statement in her introduction and in her conclusion. She explained how dance halls have destroyed the traditional family and how the Progressive Era led to the first efforts to “understand, theorize, and control adolescence.” Perry strategically strengthened her thesis by telling the audience of a real life story of an innocent immigrant girl named Frieda who fell victim to dance halls and had to face the consequences.
However, I now understand that it was this period that helped shape our modern world. This also reveals that back then, society was more engaged in their communities and wanted everything to be their way where as present times, society is more loose and care free. This article was unique because not only did it give me a clearer understanding of that time period, but others as well. It shows that it is in human nature to have disparities and that it has been occurring since the beginning of