Birmingham age-herald., 1894-12-02
SAM JONES' LETTER.
A Needed Addendum to the Dis-
 course on Social Purity"
The Celebrated Southern Writer ana Speaker Decries the Evil Influence of Publicly Displayed Obscene Pic
 tures-W Where Reform Is Needed.
lcoPYRIGHT, 1se4.l

My letter Of last week on social pur- ity perhaps needs an addendum.
 Some one said: 'Show me the pictures of nation and will know the morals of a nation"
 In books we read about things, in the picture before us we see the best representation that can be given to tho senses.
 Puck is a power, Judge, Truth, etc, wield the most potent influence in the political world to-day Some carica- lures in Puck and Judge startle, con- vince and move the masses. Their caricatures have made President Har- rison better known standing under his grand-daddy's hat, or in it, or by it, than he is known as ex-president.
 Cleveland as the Stuffed Prophet has been set forth wildly by Judge. Our great daiies realizing the power of pictures not only have them in the advertising columns but in their col umns both reportorial and news.
 If pictures in books mean so much, and we may surely say the children's pictorial Bible has given the little fel- lows the wisest and highest views of Prophet, Priest, and King. Dante's Inferno was made famous by Dore.
 What amount the obscene and nuded placards on the walls of every city and town in the United States of the av- craze theatrical performer have done to debauch public sentiment? In many cities I see the protest of good mothers and the Womans Christian Temperance union, calling upon the authorities to have pictures removed from the walls along the streets, in the interest of home and decency. You can debauch nation socially with these pictures. Do these pictures really represent the thing like it is? To gaze upon them for week, as you walk the streets of cities, then can you explain how de- cent woman can take her husband and sit before the footlights of the average theater in this country for three mortal hours and watch the half-nuded forms dance before their eyes, not knowing that the pictures were the first lesson and watching the forms behind the foot-lights the second, then her once pure and noble husband was graduated in a school whose only diploma is a night key by which he could enter without arousing the balance of the family.
 Mathematics philosophy or the lan- guages were never more definitely learned in any college than social inn purity and debauched sentiment is learned before the foot-lights of the average theater.
 A many a wife has walked up to the consciousness that her husband is not Gtoo ,iYaC T ever looking back to see how she has either led or followed him to the very place where his manhood was de- bauched and his purity endangered.
 The only conception. I have of mother, wife or a daughter is woman who is we'll dressed and thor oughly dressed and modestly dressed. Whatever weans me away from my model changes my sentiment, damages my purity.
 No man ever sat with the bald heads in the theater who had never sat with his wife before little more respecta- ble performance.
 Social impurity, like intemperance, goes in at the front door of the gilded and gay and seemingly beautiful until finally he is kicked out at the back door of corruption.
 Let the good women of our country make a crusade upon the pictures placarded upon the walls of our cities and towns. Wherever their earnest voices are heard men will hear, author ity will heed. Every woman that loves the social purity of her home ought to fight the pictures that would debauch it.
 The public performances set the tune for parlor performances and wax floor performances.
 The evening dress had it's origin on the stage behind the foot lights and will have it's end in hell. What we see may determine largely what we will do, and the most horrible fact after all to my mind is the fact that cigarette pictures, tobacco boxes, perfumed soaps and so on carry the pictures of the originals.
 The women of our age ought to be the leaders of the modesty of the age. Have they become the leaders of the modesty of the age?
 The minstrel shows and the adver- tised half nuded theatrical performers and the shows for the bald heads are bue ulOob ldISciy PdolOhiSSu oo o unudA thing. Humanity keeps the pace set by the pictures
 Generally the theater, the ball room, the club rooms, are frequented by the same crowd, where else the male DOT tion of the crowd goes deponent sayeth not.
 The average community in this coun- try has had enough scandals, military weddings" and. so on. Let's call a halt and save the generation growing up to-day.
 Those whose sentiments are already debauched may hang such pictures within the walls of their own home, but let's keep them from before the eyes of innocent children as they go aud come from school, from before the eyes of pure mothers and daughters who have never given their presence or lent their social influence to such performances.
 As sure as saloons will make drunk