High-class dances and low-neck dresses

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It always tickles my funny bone a little when people are scandalized about "indecency" and "decorum." In a hundred years, anyone in a huff over short skirts and tattoos is going to sound just like Rev. Haines and his outrage over golfing on Sundays.

Trenton Evening Times
November 29, 1916

Dancing on Thanksgiving [in Doylestown] will be attended by spicy comments, both in the social set and our. The reason therefor is that the Rev. C. W. Haines, pastor of the First Baptist Church, has taken exception to the holding of a dance while union services are in progress at the Lutheran Church.

Society matrons, who will act as patronesses of the assemblage tonight, are not taking kindly to the criticisms of Mr. Haines. Some of them said yesterday the status of those who arranged the affair was such as to insure the preservation of a proper Thanksgiving spirit.
What particularly aroused the social set was Mr. Haines' reference to "high-class dances and low-neck dresses" in a recent sermon. He is giving a series of sermons on the general subject of Doylestown, with specific reference to things he thinks might be avoided to advantage. In speaking of the "sins of society," he said:

"We will have a union Thanksgiving service in the Lutheran church on Wednesday night, at which time we will assemble to worship God and express our gratitude for the blessings of the last year. And at the very same hour the high-class society of this town will give a high-class dance in the Armory, and the dancers probably will say: 'What care we for Thanksgiving? We'll dance it out with high-class dances and low-necked dresses that are a disgrace.'

Nine-tenths of the gambling in this town is in the upper classes of society. I know that, once in a while, we hear of a few men gambling in a back room, and immediately a cry goes up, "The town is going to the bad." But hardly a day goes by that the women of the upper class do not gamble for prizes, a thing that is just as wicked as the gaming in the smoke-filled back room."

Mr. Haines has come out empathetically against Sunday golf and other Sunday recreations at the proposed Doylestown Country Club. "The Bible does not say anything," he said, "about keeping Sunday morning holy or Sunday afternoon; it says we are to keep the day holy. If it's right to play golf on Sunday, it's right to play cards, to have 'movies' open and to keep all the stores open. I am uncompromisingly opposed to it."