Crusade On Mashers

Scheme For Protecting Girl Workers In Denver.

FAIR SEX TO PATROL STREETS.

A systematic Plan of Gathering Evidence to Secure Conviction In Court of Those Who Make "Goo-goo Eyes" - Young Women Workers to Be Organized on Mutual Protection Idea.

Miss Louise Lee Hardin, president of the Denver Women's Business club, has started to put into execution a plan for the extinction of the masher, says the Kansas City Times. The object of this is to protect the girls who work in shops and offices.

The plan is a far reaching one. It consists, first, of a patrol of the streets by a score of young women, who will keep a vigilant outlook for the street "masher" and when found report his offense to the nearest police officer. In addition, Miss Hardin proposes to organize the young women in the offices and shops on a mutual protection plan. In this way when a girl has a complaint against her employer she can rely on the assistance of many of her fellow employees to prove her charges.

The details are being carefully worked out, and before Christmas shoppers swarm the streets the women expect to drive the "mashers" from their familiar haunts.

Miss Hardin is confident of her scheme, and woe betide him who attempts to flirt with some entrancing maiden he may observe upon the street. The prettiest of the working girls have been picked out by Miss Hardin to recruit the "antimashers" police. She is working along Parisian methods, and before complaint is filled there will be ample evidence to sustain every charge preferred against the culprit.

"No one woman will have to confront her employer in court, to be browbeaten and intimidated by lawyers and retire wilting under the abuse heaped upon her." says Miss Hardin. "She will have several witnesses of her own sex to substantiate her charges."

Miss Hardin says she was actuated in starting the new crusade by her experience in seeking work in Denver.

"I know we will succeed." she said. "Every day we are getting stronger. Interest has been awakened, and the working girls of this city will have protection. It is surprising when one sums up how many homes are solely dependent on one little woman."

In elaborating the detective plan Miss Hardin advanced the ideas that certain kinds or grades of work demanded more protection than others. To strangers coming to Denver, to girls alone in the city, to the ones stranded on account of illness or other trouble, the Business Women's club pledges help, but not in the name of charity. It is the intention of Miss Hardin to ask the 900 members of the Woman's club to fraternize so that an immense army of influential women may lend their aid to the cause.