Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-06-30
rs THERE NO REMEpYl

and revolving stuff" as the San francisco |
Examiner and some others of the press are |
daily printing. There is not in all the |
books and prints the statutes make 1t GRIM
inal to possess, or to send through the
mails, or to offer for sale, anywhere near
such filthy, demoraliziEg and erotic nasti-
ness as appears in the columns OF some
of the papers of this State from day
to day. The excuse that the matter
is report of proceedings in Court is
not sufficient, for the worst of the moral
miasma with which the columns TEEN is in
the form of interviews and recitals of mat
tiers not testified to in any tribunal. 1t is
shameful to journalists and an outrage
upon the public that such Stuff as the
Examiner last week published, for instance,
concerning an infamous amour, should be
printed and placed or public sale to cor
rupt youth and demoralize tastes. Other
papers have patterned after it, and just
now torrent of vile and obscene matter
is being poured out by the press. The
same matter printed In book form would
be prohibited from appearing on the coun-
ter or shelf of any decent bookseller in the
land. The same matter, if in book form
and offered for sale, would render the
vendor liable to indictment, fine and i'm
prisonment for violation of the express
statute of the State. An offender was re-
Gently sent to prison in San Francisco for
selling printed matter not more OBJ
jectionable. How can any conscientious
manor, waving that-how can any man
with wife, children and kindred, and
claiming the respect of his fellows, and the
right to move in decent society, excuse
himself for such outrageous offenses as
we charge to the proprietorship of the San
Francisco paper named. 1t was this paper
freighted with such rottenness and moral
poison, that few days ago was circulating
among the school children of the metrop-
oils on the strength Of prize it offered for
intellectual competition. What is to be
expected from youth before which such
reading is placed? 1t cannot be defended
on the ground that it is news, for it hap
pens that the major part of the rottenness and
poison for which our offending papers make
themselves the vehicles, is industriously
searched out and concerns very Indifferent
people, and their purely private affairs.
But however prominent the participants,
there can be no justification for their
dirty linen being thus publicly washed
and the "suds scattered over the COM
munity, 1t is not surprising that provin-
cial journals should ape the example of
metropolitan sheets. Here we have the
San Jose Herald teeming with vulgar and
demoralizing matter relating to scandal
in that city, that in recital makes any
thing Paul de Kocll wrote pale, and that
is neither privileged by the law nor de-
feasible under the plea of enterprise. Is
there to be no end 10 this sort of thing
Are the decencies of life to be no more re-
garded? Is this epidemic of filth to be
permitted to run on unchecked, and every
girl and boy in the State made brazen and
hardened by familiarity with recitals that
in their obscenity would put the fsh-wo-
men of Billingsgate to the blush, and make
the abandoned of the purlieus of Paris hide
their heads in shame? There is nothing
of jealousy in our complaint, since we do
not aspire to the notoriety that rests on
obscenity in print. When the RECORD
UNION for want of clientage has before it
the alternative of catering to the tastes of
the depraved and the ibertines who feed
on such matter, and cessation of existence,
it will choose the latter. 1t does not
however, propose to remain silent before
the outrageous conduct of certain of its
contemporaries just now in the publica-
ton of matter that not one of the editors
of those journals would so deg rade himself
as to place before his own children. The
press of the State owes it to itself and the
profession to call halt in this march of
obscenity. There is no paper that can es-
cape wholly from the odium of acts by
journals of the State, that tend to de-
grade the profession and bring the news
paper into discredit and loathing. If
decent regard for the prophecies cannot
be enforced by appeals to the moral sense
of the journalists, then let the officials of
the law intervene and punish offending
newspaper publishers precisely as they
would, and do, prosecute offending book
sellers.