The Skating Rink Panic of 1892
When a local major tried to shut down a Tacoma skating rink after a scandal involving his stepson, the local press defended the rink as a space for social independence rather than a den of iniquity.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Major Stem, of Tacoma, because his stepson has been arrested for seducing a young woman whom he met at the skating rink, wishes to abolish the rink. Suppose his stepson had first met his victim at a church sociable, or a Good Templar lodge, or a Sunday-school picnic, would the major abolish all these opportunities for the social meeting of the sexes? The trouble is not with the skating rink; the trouble is with the young man and the young woman. Young people who have to be hermetically sealed up and kept under lock and key lest they sin are not worth worrying about; they will be sure to sin whenever they are turned loose. Virtue that cannot hold its ground except when all possible opportunity for doing wrong is removed is about as worthless as the sobriety of the man who can't keep sober because there is a saloon in town. The world is full of good and evil; we are free to choose sides, and we are not efficient soldiers in life's battle if we preach the shallow doctrine that men will never be sober or chaste until the saloon and the brothel go, rather than insisting on that self-restraint which makes the world of saloons and brothels a deserted village. The devil does not lie in the skating rink, which is innocent, legitimate recreation in itself; the devil lies in those who are ready to abuse the decencies of every place of public assemblage from a church choir to a skating rink.
“Virtue that cannot hold its ground except when all possible opportunity for doing wrong is removed is about as worthless as the sobriety of the man who can't keep sober because there is a saloon in town.”
This 1892 editorial captures a classic American tension: the impulse to police physical space to control morality versus the argument for personal responsibility. It mirrors contemporary debates in Seattle where public disorder or specific incidents are often blamed on the 'environment' (like parks or specific businesses) rather than addressing the deeper social conditions that cause the behavior.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.