The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1891-03-19

| preston of vice, still there is enough OF
it left in this country to bring down upon
us the thunderbolts of an incensed God
In the year 1868, the evil had become so
great in this country that the congress
of the United States passed law for
bidding the transmission of bad liter
ature through the United States mails;
but there were large loops in that law
through which criminals might crawl
out and the law was dead failure
that law of 1868. But in 1878 another
law was passed by the congress of the
United States against the transmission
of corrupt literature through the mails
"a grand law, potent law, Christian
law-and under that law multitudes of
these scoundrels have been arrested,
their property confscated, and they
themselves thrown into the peniten-
tiaries where they belonged.
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
blessing of the post office to all honest
business and to all messages of charity
and kindness and affection, for all
healthful intercommunication, he did
not mean to make vice easy or to fill the
mail bags of the United States with the
scabs of such leprosy.
1t ought not to be in the power of
every bad man who can raise one
! cent stamp for circular, or a twO-cent
stamp for letter, to blast a man or de-
stroy a home. The postal service of
this country must be clean, must be
kept clean, and we must all understand
that the swift retributions of the L United
States government hover over every
violation of the letterbox.
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 intelligence
for purposes revengeful, salacious and
: diabolic. Wake up the law. Wake up
: all its penalties. Let every court room
on this subject be Sinui thunderous
5 and aflame. Let the convicted of
, tenders be sent for the full term to
. Sing Sing or Harrisburg
, am not talking about what can not
be done. am talking now about what
, is being done. A great many of the
; printing-preSses that gave themselves
to the publication of vile literature
have been stopped or have gone into
, business less obnoxious. What has
, thrown off, 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 no
ticed 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.
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 the dealers in impure literature,
from the fact that over one thousand
arrests have been made, and the aggre-
gate time for which the convicted have
been sentenced to prison is over one
| nd ha
fact that about two millions 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
balked? Oh, no. You might as we'll
go into jungle of the East Indies and
put a cobra on the neck, and with pro-
found argument try to persuade it that
it is morally wrong to bite and sting
and to poison anything. The only
answer to your argument would be an
uplifted head and hiss, and a sharp,
reelxing tooth struck into our arteries.
The only argument for a cobra is a
shotgun, and the only argument for
these dealers in impure literature is the
clutch of the police and bean soup in a
penitentiary. The law! The law! l
invoke to consummate the work so
grandly begun! -
Another way in which we are to drive
back this plague of Egyptian frogs is by
filing the minds of our young people
with a healthful literature. l 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 ''Old Hundred" i have no sympathy
with the attempt to make the young
old. i would rather join a crusade to
keep the young young. Boyhood and
girlhood must not be abbreviated. But
there are good books, good histories,
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 the
vicious than there is room for chaff in a
bushel measure which is already filed
with Michigan wheat.
Why are fifty per cent. of the crimi'
nails in the jails and penitentiaries of the
United States to-day under twenty-one
years of age? Many of them under sew
, enteen, under sixteen, under fifteen,
under fourteen, under thirteen. Walk
along one of the corridors of the Tombs
II - Il =.