News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-03-12

mission of corrupt literature through
the mails-a grand law, potent law,
a Christian law-and under that law
multitudes of these scoundrels have
been arrested, their property contis-
Gated and they themselves thrown into
the panitentiaries, whore they belonged.
HOW CAN TT BE FoUGHT2
Now, my friends, how are we to war
against this corrupt literature, and how
are the frogs of this Egyptian plague to
be slain? First of all, by the prompt
and inexorable execution of the law.
Let all good postmasters and United
States district attorneys and detectives
and reformers concert in their action to
stop this plague When Sir Rowland
Hill spent his life in trying to secure
cheap postage, not only for England
but for all the world, and to open the
blessings of the postoffice to all honest
business and to all messages of charity
and kindness and affection, for all
healthful INSTRUMENTATION, he did
not mean to make vice easy or to fill
the mail bags of the United States with
the scabs of such a leprosy.
1t ought not to be in the power of
every bad man who can raise a one
cent stamp for q circular, or % two cent
stamp for letter, to blast man or
destroy home The postal service of
this country must be clean, and we
must all understand that the swift ret
ributions of the United States govern
ment hover over every violation of the
letter box.
There are thousands of men and
women in this country, some for per-
sonal gain, some through innate de-
| pravity, some through a spirit of re-
venge, who wish to use this great
avenue of convenience and intelli-
gence for purposes revengeful, sala-
cious and diabolic Wake up the law.
Wake up all its penalties. Let every
court room on this subject be Sinai
thunderous and afame. Let the con
victad offenders be sent for the full
term to Sing Sing or Harrisburg.
am not talking about what cannot
be done | am talking now about
what is being done. A great many of
the printing presses that gave them
selves entirely to the publication of vile
literature have been stopped or have
gone into business less obnoxious.
What has thrown of, what has kept
off the rail trains of this country for
some time back nearly all the leprous
periodicals. Those of us who have
been on the rail trains have noticed a
great change in the last few months
and the last year or two. Why have
nearly all those vile periodicals been
kept off the rail trains for some time
back? Who effected it? These So
cieties for the publication of railroad
literature gave warning to the publish
ers and warning to railroad companies
and warning to conductors and warn
ing to newsboys to keep the Internal
stuff off the trains
PURIFYING THE NEWS STANDS.
Many of the cities have successfully
prohibited the most of that literature
even from going on the news stands.
Terror has seized upon the publishers
and dealers in impure literature, from
the fact that over q thousand arrests
have been made, and the aggregate
time for which the convicted have been
sentenced to the prison is over one hun
bred and ninety years, and from the
fact that about two million of their cir
culars have been destroyed, and the
business is not as profitable as it used
to be.
How have so many of the news stands
of our great cities been purified? How
has so much of this iniquity been
baked? BY moral suasion? Oh, no.
You might as well go into a jungle of
the East Indies and pat a cobra on
the neck, and with profound argument
try to persuade it that it is morally
wrong to bite and to sting and to poi
son anything The only answer to
your argument would be an uplifted
head and a hiss, and u sharp, reeking
tooth stack into your arteries The
only argument for q cobra is shotgun,
and the only argument for these deal
ers in impure literature is the clutch of
the police and bean soup in the peni-
tentiary. The law! The law! 1 in
woke to consummate the work SO grand
ly begunl
Another way in which we are to drive
back this plague of Egyptian frogs is
by filling the minds of our young people
with a healthful literature | do not
mean to say that all the books and
newspapers in our families ought to be
religious books and newspapers, or that
every song ought to be sung to the tune
of ''OId Hundred" l have no syInpa-
thy with the attempt to make the
young old. | would rather join in a
crusade to keep the young young. Boy
hood and girlhood must not be alb
breviated. But there are good books,
good histories, good biographies good
works of fiction, good books of all styles
with which we are to fill the minds of
the young, so that there will be no more
room for the useless and vicious than
there is room for the chaff in a bushel
measure which is already filled with
Michigan wheat.
".
Why are so per cent. of the criminals
in the jails and penitentiaries of the
United States today under twenty-one
years of age? Many of them under
seventeen, under sixteen, under fifteen.
under fourteen, under thirteen. Walk
along one of the corridors of the Tombs
prison in New York and look for your
selves. Bad books, bad newspapers
bewitched them as soon as they got out |
of the cradle. Beware of all those
stories which end wrong. Beware of !
all those books which make the road |
that ends in perdition seem to end in
Paradise. Do not glolify the dirk and
the pistol, Do not call the desperate |
brave or the libertine gallant. Teach |
our young people that If they go down |
into the swamps and marshes to watch |
the jack-o'lanterns dance on the decay |
and rottenness, they will catch the ma
laria and death
"Oh!" says some one, Il am a bust
ness man, and have no time to exam
inc what my children read. | have no
time to inspect the books that come
into my household" If your children
were threatened with typhoid fever,
would you have time to go for the doc
tor? Would you have time to watch
the progress of the disease? Would you
have time for the funeral2 In the pres
ence of my God l warn you of the fact
that your children are threatened with
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that
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