Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-03-09
A MODERN PLAGUE.


Now that plague of frogs las come
back upon the earth. 1t is abroad to-
day. 1t is shifting this nation 1t
comes in the shape of corrupt litera-
ture These frogs hop into the store,
the shop, the Office, the banking house,
the factory, into the home, into the
cellar, into the garnet, on the drawing
room table, on the shelf of the library
While the lad is reading the bad book
the teachers face is turned the other
way One of these frogs hops upon
the page. While the young woman is
reading the forbidden novelette, after
retiring ut night, reading by gaslight,
one Of these frogs leaps upon the page.
Indeed, they have hoped upon the
news stands of the country, and the
mails at the postoffice shake oat in the
letter trJug:l hundreds Of them The
plague has taken at different times
possession of this country. 1t is one of
the most I0athsome, one of the most
frightful. ono of the most CHASTITY of
the ta.4 n!agues of our modern cities.
There is a vast number Of books and
newspapers printed and published
which ought never to see the light.
They are filed with a pestilence that
makes the land swelter with Il moral
epidemic. The greatest blessing that
ever came to this nation is that Of an
elevated literature, and the greatest
scourge has been that of unclean liter
allure. This last has its victims in all
occupations and departments It has
helped to fill insane asylums and peni-
tentiarieS and almshOuses and dens Of
shame. The bodies of this infection
lie in the hospitals and in the graves,
while their souls are being tossed over
into a lost eternity, an avalanche of
horror and despair. The London
| plague was nothing to it. That count
ed its victims by thousands, but this
modern pest has already shoveled its
millions into the charnel house of the
morally dead. The longest rail train
| that ever ran over the Erie or Hudson
| tracks was not long enough nor large
| enough to carry the beastliness and the
putrefaction which have been gathered
up in bad books and newspapers of
this land in the last twenty years.. The
| literature of a nation decides the fate
| of nation. Good books, good morals.
| Bad books, bad morals.
[ begin with the lowest of all the lit
erature, that which does not even pre-
| tend to be capitalization cover to
| cover a blotch of leprosy. There are
many whose entire business it is to dis
| pose of that kind of literature. They
display it before the schoolboy on his
way home. They get the catalogues
of schools and colleges, take the names
and postoffice addresses and send their
advertisements, and their circulars, and
their pamphlets, and their books to
every one of them.
SENDING OUT BAD BOOKS.
In the possession of these dealers in
bad literature were found nine hun
| dred thousand names and postotfice
addresses, to whom it was thought il
might be profitable to send these cor
| rupt things In the year 1873 there
were one hundred and sixty-five estab
lishments engaged in publishing cheap,
corrupt literature. From one publish
| ing house there went out twenty differ
ent styles of corrupt books. Although
over thirty tons of vile literature have
been destroyed by the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, still there i:
enough of it left in this country tx
bring down upon US the thunderbolt:
of an incensed God.
In the year 1868 the evil had become
SO great in this country that the con
,gTess of the United States passed a Law
forbidding the transmission of bad Lit
erature through the United State
mails; but there were large loops il
that law through which criminals nigh
crawl out, and the law was dead fail
ure-that law of 1868. But in 1873 an
other law was passed by the congress
of the United States against the trans
mission of corrupt literature through
the mails-a grand law, potent law