POISON IN PRINT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3445, 26 March 1920, Page 5

POISON IN PRINT.

I-FLSI-lOP CLE'ARY’S ATT \ 3!{

The forcible imlictm-fiat of n;ag'2.zines and fiction with an ind:-,’(‘:Pllt tendency, u‘ri'm'ed by Bishop Clary in his Lenten Pzistorul will be rsnda‘ med by all thinking people. l‘ho Bishcp specially urges ]>al'E.’ll‘f‘S to lmc-\]) this poisonous stuff out of the lmn-‘ls of t'h(ril' Children. H 0 S:l_\'S, t.l'(\n(*h~:lnf--13'. “Such fiction plays :1 more d«=2dl_v part in the home than the germs of typlioid and influenza."

“No respectable bookseller would

keep the sort of stuff I presume ils

meant.” said the liead of :1 well-known Queen Street business. “There is a certain amount of it in Auckland, and it is sold quite openly. It does not come within the- law which seeks io prevent the spread of indecent. literature, but is probably more insidious because it wears a disguise of respectability.” He mentioned the sort of place their kept this “spicy? literature, and went on to say that many of the proprietors of these shops did not seem to have the same sense of responsibility as men who had been trained to the bookselling business. He said it was surprising how many shops were kept by people who had drifted into the business from other occupations, some of which were not exactly the sort iii-at. one would de-

‘scribe as a good training ground for 3 bookseller. “Are there many requests for this ‘spicy’ stuff?-’ “Oh, yes, plenty. And I am sorry to say that nine-tenths of the people who ask for it are Women. That is the e.\‘pel'ience of all the people in our establishment, and it 18, I a rather regrettable feature 0! ml question.” ' “I see a lot of stuff about——Ameri-' can Inostly—Which I would be very sorry to see in the hands of young girls and growing boys,” vgas the reply of a gentlemas whose work brings him in contact with courts of justice, when asked if there was much of the style of literature complained of by Bishop Clear-y. “It is certainly not" healthy. It is suggestive, and casts 8 glamour over sexual wrongdoing which cannot help having a bad influence. While you cannot say that these publications are indecent, the result of continual reading that sort. of thing must be a slackening of the 11101-nl fibre!’