Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-05-11
VICIOUS PRINTS.

TFS.
VICIOUS PRINTS.
Unbiased people will fail te see any dis
function between iewd and tdemoralizing
paper and lewd and forbidden book. The
latter are under the ban of the law in
every State of the American Union, and
no man entertains the thought of seeking
the repeal of such statutes. Georgia for
now three years has successfully defended
her Statute that excludes from exposure
and sale the vicious order of sheets, that
flaunt their nudity and illustration of
crime and amour in the face of all people
from the door-posts of thousands of news
stands in all the States except Georgia.
The bill of Mr.. Sweeney in the lower
House of Congress to exclude such sheets
from the privileges of the United States
mail is, therefore, one to be commended.
The Sweeney bill does not trench upon
the personal liberty of the citizen, since
personal liberty gives no license to anyone
to corrupt the morals, debauch the tastes
and wreck the lives of children. The only
apparent difficulty in the matter of the
bill is in the fact that it necessitates sort
of censorship. Censorship in itself is dam
gerous, since it may be exceedingly diff
| cult to draw the line at which it shall stop.
| TIE very idea of censor in free country
is repugnant. Yet here is great evil
that it is admitted on all hands is one that
| should be put an end to. Fortunately,
however, for decent publishers, there is
escape from this dilemma of rigid censor
ship, consistent with the exclusion of the
disreputable sheets from the mails, and
that is through the Courts. If the officials
of the Postal Department err in the slight
est, the judgment of Courts and juries can
be invoked, and thus an arbitrary censor
ship be avoided. Moreover, in the thou
sands of Postmasters We have thousands of
officials whose duty it will be to enforce
the exclusion, and therefore there cannot
be simply one judgment that will be in
vested with dangerous power.
1t is the commonest thing of the hour
for these vicious sheets to be mailed to
youths of both sexes and to be delivered
in the household, despite the watchful-
ness of parents and guardians. Any day
crowds of children, youths and men, can
be seen gathered about the bulletin boards
of news stands where the sole attraction is
the display of the vulgar and indecent
publications. Half nudity, worse than
full exposure, scenes of vice and crime,
views of events that are too disreputable
to be even spoken of between self-respect-
ing people, accounts of amours, escapades,
lewd doings and shameless revels, fill the
pages of these sheets, and as matter of
course demoralize the taste, corrupt the
thought and bestialize all plastic minds
coming in contact with them.
The people have never complained of
the postal officials Judgment in determin-
ing what are lewd and vicious books and
circulars for exclusion from the mails;
it is unlikely that they will do SO as re-
CARDS the judgment that is exercised
in excluding vicious papers. The dis
tinction between the volumes that are not
to be named, and which it is a crime
under all State laws to print or have in
possession, and the lewd sheets that are
issued weekly and are even worse than
the prescribed books is simply the distinc-
tion between sheet of paper folded to
octave page form and stitched and bound,
and one that is folded to quarto form and
issued unbound. That one class of immoral
publications should be excluded from the
mails, and the other admitted, is rank in
justice. We should not complain that youth
goes astray, that female virtue is consid-
cred only thing to be debauched, that
the estimate of cleanliness is ellmi-
mated from the youthful mind, that boys
come TO consider crime manliness and
criminal adventure heroism, that the in
famed passions of youth lead tens of thou
sands astray who, but for vicious literature,
would be susceptible to gentle humanizing
influences, so long as we permit the class
of sheets referred to to pour their poison
into the minds of youths, and to debauch
the taste and break down the respect for
virtue and the laws. We may provide
rigid statutes for the punishment of crime
and the restraint of the vicious, at will, but
SO long as We fail to remove causes such as
those mentioned, our case will be analog-
GUS to that in Bunyan's allegory, when
one stood in front of raging fire, pouring
on water, but the flames ragged the more.
Presently Greatheart took Christian aside
and pointed out that the sweating man in
front labored in vain, SO long as the evil
one stood behind the fireplace and
secretly poured in oil to feed the fame.