Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1910-10-17
Ayers SarsaparAa
POuer
THE VULGAR FUNNY PAPER
The CoIored Sheet In Sunday Papers
Said To Have DemoraIizing Effect Up.
on Children

The following is published by re-
quest of one of the Capitals sub
scribers, and is copied from THE
Outlook"
lone of the most interesting fea-
lures of the recent meeting of the In
ternational kindergarten Union in
Buffalo was the vigorous discussion
| of the demoralizing influence of the
so-called comic supplement, the evils
of which The Outlook pointed out
several months ago. The principal
| address was made by Mr.. Percival
| Chubb, teacher and writer of au-
thority on educational subjects, in
which he said that he would exclude
/ any comic supplement from the house
on the ground that these supplements
are calculated to produce a kind OF
insanity in the young.
AFTER examining a number of these
sheets on recent Sunday, mr.. Chubb
said: i found the same old gloriti-
cation of the smart kid the 'smarty,
the 'up-to-snuff' type of children; the
worst American type of the forward
child. Furthermore, found again
the child who is obsessed by the idea
of practical joking, who begins to
'roughnouse' in the nursery and
haze in the kindergarten.
Il found no diminution of that dis
tressing vulgarity which seems to be
growing upon US in our great cities.
Vulgarity-a Haunting commences
of mind-appears to be product of
the great city. 1t is quite different
thing from coarseness, a rustic
crudeness. That is tolerable, some
times picturesque. / attribute the
inroads of this vulgarity to the de-
cline of reverence, the lack of any
awed converse with great things, an
incentiveness to what is fine, distin-
guished, holy.
in the young city people, in high
school and college, in attempting to
quicken their deeper admiration for
great literature; commences of
mind, cheap f1ippancy, lack of
refined humility; of reverence, in
shor. 1t is vulgarity at its worst
that thrusts its impertinent tongiu
at US in the comic supplements, n
crude violence of color, in grotesque
distortions of the human countenance'
and figure-grotesque very different
in spirit from those sportive gargoyles
of medaevial architecture-in the
caricatures of elders-aunts and
uncles, grandmothers and grandfath-
ers, aye, mothers and fathers, who
are transformed to clowns in order
that pert youngsters may have their
little jokes. Yes, joke will excuse
a most anything nowadays.
1.-The example of the Boston Herald
shows that better counsels are be-
ginning to prevail among US. They
will prevail further. and quickly, toe,
if we lift our united voices against
these violences of newspaper world
which seeks to win favor by getting
on the nerves of highly nervous,
not to say aeurotic, public. We
must lift them up in the interests of
childhood. More and more the
function of the school and the teach
er becomes that of providing a pro-
tsctive environment in which for a
few hours every day the child shall
be surrou nded with influences of
health and quiet, of order and SIM
pie beauty.
The school has to save the child
from.the unhealthy and unlovely world
outside. That is deplorable mega
tive function. We cannot rest here.
We must transform the environ
ment. We must insist that there
shall be nothing in it to affront the
soul of the child, to corrupt its mind
or soil its heart. We must begin
with ourselves by working for a
clean press, and, above all, digni-
fed Sunday press.