New-York tribune., 1920-12-27
Crafts Turns
Puritan Guns
On Newspapers
EnrollsReformation ofPress
Among Al Other Things
10 Be Accomplished by
the Blue Law Program
Calls Editors Ignorant
New York Is Classed as
Least American of All
Y. S. Cities in Forum Talk

Ihe Rev. Wilbur Fisk Crafts, Super
lntendent of the International Reform
bureau, of Washington, addressed
forum at the West Fifty-seventh Street
Y. NJ c. A. yesterday afternoon on the
subject of Sunday blue laws, enactment
OF which the bureau advocates.
III we array on one side the half of
the people who turn aside from money!
making one day week to promote love
Of God and love to man. and on the
other side those who have deser+ad
synagogue or church to devote every
day to the selfshness of monev-makina
or pleasure making, on which side
would you find the crime wave and the
equally dangerous vice wave?" he asked
was present at the dedication of
ehe fllgrlm monument in Central Park
IN 1859. All through the exercises it
was the Puritan, not the Pilgrim who
was recalled and extolled. Every class
the Puritan had antagonzed was repre-
senleo on the program and each We'd
with the other in eulogy.
Sees Peril in Films
Not a speaker on the program, nor
an editor in reporting it, spoke of the
Inytnlcal blue laws written, not as his
tory, but as satire by a man named
refers, expelled from Connecticut for
dlsloyalty when our fathers were foht.
Ing for civil liberty.
lt is national peril that so many
people 60 so constantly to see movie
nctlon that they know nothing Of
american and European history. as is
ee1hceo .si1n by the great number who
.alk as If a mild law to give the Ma
ulohai capital such Sunday observance
Is d an tne states except California,
nave is an alarming novelty.
The New York Evening Post. which
assumes to be the very solon Of the
metropolitan press, speaks editoriallv
OF TINS law, which has been before Con,
Sress for thirtyvtwo years. as a trial
oalloon'-that is, as new restrictive
pill suggested by the triumph of pro-
This is but one of thousand ex-
al aslmples OF press Ignorance of facts
that should be in the files of everv
newspaper, if not in the heads Of the
yoilors. Newspaper reform is in nv
nss OF the big four and forty more
rel orms that are needed
1T is ominous for democracv +b,+
the press Of the whole nation sbo,,Id
De De led INTO crusade against all laws
mat make it harder to do wrono, hv
the prohibition World and Tbs
Tribune, of New York, assisted hv nrn~
moters of five great money-makine in
terests, interpolatinc into that pro-
gram OF urgent and sane reforms an
alleged national blue law that was
never INTRODUCED in Congress and was
hot approved by any reform society
whatsoever. What may hapDen some
day when the whole nation is fooled
again at some more critical time be-
eause neither reporters, editors nor
readers are from Missouri" ."
Reform Bureau Investigation
i am not going to discuss Sunday
moves, n for the main issue is that many
o. them are not fit for anv dav.
wonder how many papers are frae
enough of domination oy adyertisers
TO report that the International Re-
form bureau has ascertained by many
palnstaklng investigations that the
lure OF crime and vice has been mani
Test in many of the movies that have
been % exhibited all aver the land.
Does anyone suppose the detailed
!ltellke pictures o. highway robbery
burglary and murder have had no part
Ii Ii the rising flood of juvenile crime
Really, the greater evil is one that
seldom gets into the papers, the scduc-
ton of hundreds of thoughtless girls
every day in New York, who. in turn,
prey upon thousands of men.
II have great sympathy with those
WHO seek honestly to preserve or de-
veiop true Americanism in New York,
which in every sense is the least
American of all our cities I charge
you to take a few days off from movies
and JOY rides to study American his
tory of against the history of CONT
mental Europe, lest New York first and
then America be Europeanized Why
have the majority of New York resi-
dents come here from abroad, If Ameri-
can ways have not worked better than
continental ways"
DR.. Crafts will conduct a forum at
the Labor Temple on January 16, ami
versary of prohibition. His topic will
be: HAS. prohibition been 4 benefit to