The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-10-21
HALrING "NARCoTIc CURES.


From the Literary Digest.
Kansas City is the latest center to take
up a combat with immortality. The coun-
try is hearing horrible stories of juvenile
excesses,' not among the wage-earning
classes or the 'half-world," which are
receiving so much attention In various
parts of the country. but confined mainly
to the richer classes who have automo-
biles to put to use in their misdemeanors.
The preachers and the women's clubs are
demanding a curfew law and general
closing of the streets to young people
after q certain hour. These remedial
means are called merely narcotic cures"
by the San Francisco Argonaut, which
breaches a little homily designed to point
the real causes of such ills as Kansas
City now suffers from, and what 1t re-
CARDS as the mistaken methods of fren-
zied reformers. We read:
There will be no disposition anywhere
to treat a, terrible evil with levity OF
even with indifference. And it is a ter
rible evil San Francisco has had her
own experiences. and 1t is quito easy to
believe that other cities are similarly sit
uated But unfortunately there is a dis
position to resort to snap remedies and
to treat the results rather than the
causes. Nothing is so fatally easy as to
pass law. There is no more popular
narcotic for an uneasy public conscience.
But narcotics are not cures, and Kansas
City will be likely to find that police con-
troll is the worst possible substitute for
parental influences, and that even cur
few law cannot take the place of those
elementary duties that can be performed
in the home, and nowhere but the home.
But the neglect of parental duties is
by no means the only cause for the APP
parent extinction of the moral barriers
that were once so effective. The barriers
of morality and convention are by no
means so distinct as we likeeto suppose.
Usually they supplement each other Dur
ing the last few years we have seen the
almost complete destruction of those re-
licences upon sex matters that doubtless
had their own attendant evils. but that
did actually prevent far more evils than
they caused. What we call plain speak,
ing became vogue and fashion. Liter
ature and the drama combined In what
was said to be a moral crusade, but that
was actually financial crusade. and
now the churches have followed suit
Nothing is too private for public discus
sion, no audience too young for admis-
sion and participation. no vital fact too
| explosive for reckless handling. Upon
every side we see gross familiarity at its
deadly work. Here in San Francisco we
are about to have what its promoters call
a purity Sunday. Countless sermons will
be preached to audiences of young men
and young women, and with their own
sex relationships as a topic Does any one
with a sane knowledge of human nature
suppose that even the most exquisite del
icacy can neutralize the inevitable poison
of those sermons? Is 1t not well known
to even the tyro in such matters that
here at least the most fatal and irresist-
fble of all forces is that of suggestion,
and that reason and prudence struggle In
vain against it. The cure for this sort
of evil is reticence and not publicity,
mystery and not familiarity. the home and
not the pulpit, the mother and not the
school teacher. To err in such mat
ter as this is to poison the rising gen.
GRAFTON. Indeed, If we are to credit the
hysterical exaggerations of the women's
clubs the rising generation Is already
poisoned by a familiarity that presents
experiment as pleasing adventure in
well known paths
Therefore 1t is time that We called
halt to the sex fanatics. They have been
at their work for some years past, and
now the air is becoming unbreathable,
Every field of publicity has been invaded
They have almost persuaded us that sex
is the one thing worth thinking about and
worth talking about. The results are
sufficiently evil upon matured minds that
have learned to govern themselves. Upon
immature minds to whom self government
has hardly occurred it has. been little
short of disastrous. Every sacred mys-
terry of life has been cheapened, coars-
ened, profaned. All the protective wells
of mystery and sanctity have been broken
down, and In their place we are offered
statistics, hospital reports and iodoform.
1t is these sex fanatics that are largely
responsible for the juvenile immortality
of the day. 1t is the sex newspaper, the
sex drama, the sex novel, the sex REFORM
er and the sex pulpit that have created
it. And it has been nourished by the
apathy and the neglect of parents who
are quite content that the policewoman
and the delinquency court shall do the
work that has been so shamelessly neg
lected by themselves. $50 s'gg
Let us hope that we are nearly at
the end of this particular epoch lest some
worse thing befall us. 1t is bad enough
that for years past our young people
should have been forced to live in an at
mosphere of public discussion comparable
only with that OF an open sewer. Things
will have come to pretty pass II we
must now forbid our children to go either
| to school or to church for fear of the
moral contamination that must ensue."
POINTED PARAGRAPHS
From the Chicago News.
| Many man can't because he believes
he can't.
Most married men are happier than
| they suppose.