In two different cities where I have labored recently in evangelistic work there has been uncovered a widespread and systematized traffic amongst high school and grammar school boys and girls in the purchase and circulation of prohibited literature. Books and magazines that could not be sent through the United States mail were shipped by express and handled by certain newsmongers, such as intoxicating liquor is handled by the backalley bootlegger or the blind tiger drug store. Arrests were made and plans laid to prosecute the men who were thus making merchandise of the youth of the community.
In another city I had delivered an address on the dangers which come to the home through the admission there of unclean and suggestive books and papers, following which I had made the announcement that, if those who possess such books and papers would gather them to be burned, I would personally kindle the bonfire. That afternoon on my way to service I found a group of boys with books piled in the street awaiting my coming, and boy who had prompted the burning of these books, and who was himself the most guilty in the type of literature he read, was the son of a distinguished mother who has made quite an enviable reputation as a lecturer on the home and the rearing of children. This woman came to me later in tears saying, “I did not realize my boy was reading such poisonous books.”
If one should start out on a tour of investigation, stopping from house to house, one would doubtless be amazed, first at the total ignorance on the part of the average parent regarding the literature which the children carry into the home, and second the appalling indifference on the part of the parents regarding this whole issue. Parents are ready to admit, without argument, that tainted and poisonous foods will spell out death to the bodies of their children, but they are not willing, it seems, to face the more serious fact that tainted and poisonous literature will spell out death to their children, mentally, morally, and spiritually. One ill often find that even in Christian homes practically no magazines are subscribed for, or books bought, that are noted for their high literary standards and for the wholesomeness of their fiction which they carry.
Bad books, booklets, magazines and papers by the ton, carload, and trainload are rushed through printing office and publishing plant, today, to be hauled out to the cities of the nation and shipped into villages and interior places, to be sold from the news-stand, or peddled through secret channels, to be carried at last into the most sacred precincts of the home. To the men and women who know the actual conditions that exist in this particular day nothing is more sure than that literally millions of boys and girls are spending hours every week reading books and magazines that will not alone unfit them for the big and responsible opportunities and tasks of life, but in thousands of instances is fitting them for every level of indolence, degeneracy and crime.
The average officer who has to do with juvenile crime knows that practically every budding young desperado got his inspiration or incentive in the blood-and-thunder novel, or in the darkened room of the moving picture show. Children can cultivate a taste for a better class of literature just as they can cultivate a taste for a better class of music. To be fed up on “jazz music’ and on “rag” means that in a very short while children will have neither ear nor taste for classic music, and to be fed up on blood-and-thunder novels or papers loaded with crime means that very soon children cannot be persuaded to look into a book that sounds a serious note or that points a high ideal.
When one turns back into the pages of history to read the stories of the achievements of the world’s great men, one cannot but be impressed by the fact that a large per cent of these men were literally made through the literature which they read. It is a matter of record that Abraham Lincoln as a boy practically lived in three books: Aesop’s fables, Weem’s History of the United States, and the Bible. Ifr Abraham Lincoln had had access to the cheap literature that is being poured out as a mighty deluge upon our rising generation today, it is probable the world would have never heard of Abraham Lincoln.
There is a story published, and said to be authentic, regarding two girls in the same home. One slept in a room where hung the picture of Marie Antoinette; the other slept in a room where hung the picture of Joan of Arc. Each morning as these girls awakened from the sleep of the night, they looked into the faces of these women. One became interested in Marie Antoinette and began a study of the life and immoralities of this vicious and beautiful woman. The other became interested in the story of Joan of Arc and the history of her times. The girl who became interested in Marie Antoinette in many said and heart-breaking particulars dropped to some of the levels on which that woman lived, while the girl who became interested in the life story of Joan of Arc was transformed into something of the likeness of that beautiful and wonderful woman.
The old-fashioned homes of a quarter of a century ago, out of which pastors, missionaries and evangelists came, were homes largely noted through the fact of a family altar, the prophet chamber, the sacred songs, wholesome literature, stately music, and pictures that pointed to a wholesome moral if not to a definitely religious ideal. The fact that multitudes of young people today are drifting from the church and largely losing their interest in spiritual things is easily accounted for when an inventory is made of home life and home conditions. Some homes that are even professed Christian homes spend many dollars each year for literature, and in the entire list of books, papers, and magazines often not a single purchase represents an investment in literature that is definitely spiritual or even halfway Christian.
Many homes are loaded up with bad books, bad pictures, jazz music, ragtime songs, and the whole atmosphere of the home is such that it would be nothing short of a present day miracle if children reared in such atmosphere ever came to seriously consider Christian work, much less enter Christian work. Even to the most optimistic student of the world needs today there comes the conviction that the fight of the next 10 years is a fight centered back in the home. Choices are made, character is settled, and destiny is decided while our boys and girls will never become serious minded enough to start climbing toward the mountain heights as long as they are wading around in the swamps of cheap literature, cheap music, and obscene pictures.
The ”evil communications corrupt good manners” of the authorized versions of our Holy Bible has been changed in one of the revised versions to “evil companionships corrupt good morals.” Naturally we think of that warning as applying only to those companionships of our daily association who enter with us into our daily walk and conversation.
We overlook the fact that there are companionships of the imagination created through our daily reading that may become more real and more tremendously potent in the making or unmaking of our character than those companionships that are clothed with real flesh, and who walk by our side. It was the belief of St. Paul that looking into the face of Christ was to be transformed into something of the likeness of Christ, and, if this is true, it is equally true that to look into the face of a Judas is to be transformed into something of the likeness of Judas.
To associate with thieves is to become a thief, to associate with gamblers is to become a gambler, to associate with drunkards is to become a drunkard, to associate with the impure is to become impure; and this is just as certainly true in the association of the imagination, or the association of our own daily thinking inspired by bad books as it is true of the crowd of vicious, immoral boys of back alley and slum. Greatness does not come by accident, but is the culmination of a long process of clean thinking, often inspired by the histories of men and women who have written their story in unselfish service to a suffering world. On the other hand, all that is vicious, immoral, and bad is not the result of accident or the caprice of fate, but is the definite result of a long process of wrong thinking.
To think up is to climb up, and to think down is to slide down. Thoughts are things; they are creative things, or they are destructive things. One cannot think on a high level and live on a low level. As naturally as we live and breathe, we will eventually gravitate to the level on which we think. There is no factor so potent in the life of the child that reads as the type of literature which the child reads. No greater service can be rendered the growing generations today than that which centers back in a persistent, intelligent, and constructive fight to purify the fountain-head of all literature, and to provide our homes with wholesome books, clean pictures, and a better grade of music and song.
From page 3 of The Reidsville Review, Monday, June 11, 1923
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