BANNED BOOKS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 194, 12 May 1921, Page 3

BANNED BOOKS

The house-to-house canvassing of prohibited literature has oeen the subject of some correspondence in the Auckland newspapers. The writer of one letter published in the "New Zealand Herald stated:—“l have just completed a tour of four months on life insurance business in the King Country, and on the start of my journey, about twenty miles from Te Kuiti, overtook on tho road a rider and two pack-horses. We engaged in conversation, and ho informed me that, ho was selling drapery, etc., and, in addition, books and magazines. He showed me specimens of his stock of books and pamphlets, which included, the prohibited works ‘Red Europe,’ ‘The Communist Programme of World Revolution,’ end other prohibited revolutionary literature. I was, of course, surprised in being offered for sale, by a stranger, prohibited and revolutionary books, but at his solicitation, purchased specimens of his varied stock, and perused them. He explained that owing Ic the now chancing social and economic conditions arising out of the war, quite a considerable number of the people, including the small farming community, were receptive to reading upon political and eco-. nomic questions that heretofore would not have interested them, und that he found he could dispose at profitable prices literature, in addition to his drapery wares.”