The daily press is a power in the community for both good and evil which, on the whole, has no competitor. While its rightful function is to give legitimate news and to instruct and educate, it is, on the other hand, too often the vehicle of untruth, slander, impurity, sensationalism, indecency and licentiousness, at one and the same time catering to and begetting a vitiated class out of individuals predisposed to a loose manner of thought and action. One is almost led to believe that, even in this republic, a certain censorship will have to be exercised over the press in order to check the moral and esthetic devastation which so many of the papers are producing. Too often they spread to a deplorable extent the inmost details of private scandal, of family misfortune, of crime, filth, and wickedness of all sorts.
If any unfortunate one has made a misstep, or attempted suicide, or been the victim of some unusually calamitous circumstance, the published details, while injuring a certain class of readers and doing good to none, often make it impossible for that individual to recover his standing, or to remain in his accustomed locality.
By its advertisements, the press pretty generally gives to the public such information as will seemingly help them to escape the consequences of licentiousness, by referring them to charlatans, abortionists, and "baby farmers".
President Cleveland, in February, 1897, delivered a most scathing criticism upon the tendencies of modern newspapers to disseminate corruption when he denied a pardon to the editor of one of the Chicago dailies. This editor was "sentenced in December, 1895, in Indiana, to two years' imprisonment and $250 fine and costs for mailing obscene literature".
The President said:
" Denied. This convict was one of the editors and proprietors, and a distributor through the mails and otherwise, of a disgustingly vile and obscene newspaper. His conviction and sentence was an event distinctly tending to the promotion of public morals and the protection of the sons and daughters of our land from filth and corruption at a time when indecent newspaper publications are so dangerous and common. Everybody in favor of cleanliness should encourage the punishment of such offences and desire that it should be more frequently imposed. While I am much surprised by the number of respectable people who have joined in urging clemency in this case, my duty seems so clear that I am not in the least tempted to interfere with the just and wholesome sentence of the court."
There are in every community individuals who have stigmata of degeneration, either acquired or inherited. Such persons have latent instincts, which are acted on unfavorably by this sensational and impure literature, by the ethics which are often applauded in novels, and by the pornographic illustrations which represent the sole output of some publishing houses.
Alas! that the greed for gain should turn the mighty press of this land into engines of corruption. The degrading of our youth is a crying evil today. It is a seed-sowing from which brothels, dives, prisons, penitentiaries, asylums, and early graves are fast being recruited.
The report of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which is about completed for 1895, while it shows gratifying results, shows also cause for alarm.
The matters destroyed are one thing. But the matters which are to day at large (worse than ravenous beasts or poisonous serpents), prowling about the country and trailing their slimy and venomous form among the youth in our institutions of learning, is an entirely different thing.
"That report contains the arrest of 2,044 persons, and the seizure of 63,139 pounds of books, 27,424 pounds of stereotype plates for printing books, 836,096 obscene pictures, and 5,895 negatives for making the same. Also 96,680 articles for immoral use, 1,577,441 circulars, catalogues, songs, and leaflets, 32,883 newspapers, 1,102,620 names and post-office addresses seized in hands of dealers to which circulars were being sent".