POLICE PROHIBIT THE
POPULAR BARN DANCE.
As It's Presented in North End Halls
It Shocks Moral Guardians.
"Cut It Out," They Say.
Whew! The police object to the popular barn dance and have put the ban on it in Kansas City. They do not consider it up to the moral standard of what should take place in a well regulated ball room. The officers who tightened the lid on the barn dance refused to say what their private opinion of the dance was after having watched an exhibition given for their personal benefit.
Acting under orders from Captain Walter Whitsett, two plain clothes men, Ben Goode and John McCall, went to a hall in Campbell street last Wednesday evening and informed the members of a dancing party there that they would not be allowed to dance the barn dance. The merry young people strenuously objected to police interference, and the officers were the recipients of all kinds of dire threats.
A party of the young people pleaded that the dance was "perfectly" proper and "lovely," and went through one turn of the hall to show the officers really what the barn dance was. The hard-hearted officers, however, remembered that stern duty called to them and refused to allow the pleading of the pretty young misses to sidetrack them from their duty.
Not to be outdone by the big captain in regulating the social events and amusements of the city, Sergeant Patrick Clark, also commanding the North End social pink teas, sent Sergeant E. McNamara to the hall and had the lights turned out. The people residing in the vicinity of the hall complained to the police that they were unable to sleep whenever the hall was used for dances. The music was too loud for the sleepers and the shrill laughs and giggles of the young ladies got on the nerves of the men who were compelled to stay at home with their wives and take care of the fretful babies.
Whether the hall will be opened for dancing in the future the police refused to say, but they were confident that the barn dance would not be danced there again.
