Off the job, working women appeared to social workers to spend their leisure hours solely in pursuit of men. They congregated in movie houses, amusement parks, and dance halls, where they expressed their inten- tions even more graphically. ‘‘Spieling,’’ ‘‘pivoting,’’ and ‘‘tough danc- ing’’ accented body contact and sensual, rhythmic movements. Those women on the sidelines, hardly wallflowers, openly hugged and kissed their partners for the evening. The rapid growth in the population of wage-earning women, up 60 percent since the 1870s, undoubtedly magnified this trend. But middle-class women evidently felt similar urges. One coed confided to her diary that she was always honest with men, telling them she was not bargaining for a promise of marriage; rather, ‘‘this intimacy was pleasant and I wanted it as much as they did.’’ All in all, the novelist Gertrude Atherton reflected, young women seemed ‘‘determined to have their fling like men,’’ and the tales they told made even her ‘‘sophisticated hair crackle at the roots.’’