p. 12 | The Comic Supplement by E. C. JAEGER

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 22, 1909

The Comic Supplement

By E. C. JAEGER

E. C. JAEGER

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS have established a church-school system for a two-fold reason; first, to give their children a knowledge of God's Word, and second, to provide an education free from the errors taught in the public schools. Our schools are accomplishing the work we have purposed for them. But there is great danger that many of the parents who support these same schools, and are sending children to them, may in their homes tear down the good work done by our Sabbath- and church-schools.

I speak of the comic Sunday newspaper supplement. All the week the teacher tries to instil respect for authority, reverence for old age, and a love for truthfulness. Sunday morning comes. The father buys a Sunday newspaper. Around him crowd the children, each anxious to get hold of the “funny sheet,” as they call it. And what does the comic sheet do for them? I quote: “Instead of helping to counteract the too prevalent tendency among children to irreverence and resistance to authority, these pictures and jokes actually teach our children irreverence and lawlessness by ridiculing home discipline, by making cheap fun of old age, dignity, good breeding, and all the pieties and amenities which make the family the most sacred and important of all human institutions. It is as if we parents, by letting our children have these supplements, were doing our best to cheapen the authority of the home, to emphasize the spirit of lawlessness in our children, and to vulgarize their minds.” The standard joke in one of these supplements is an old grandpa deceived by a child or a child deceived by the grandpa, a parent being hoodwinked, or a wife playing a joke on her husband, and similar incidents.

Monday morning Mary and John go to school; they're mischievous; the parent laments; he can not see why he should have such children. Is there a reason? Look over your pile of Sunday newspaper supplements, and perhaps you may see the same mischievous joke John has tried, painted therein in some cheap, crude, and gaudy colors. As some have said, “It is beyond our comprehension that parents otherwise intelligent do not see the inroads upon the characters of their children by these infamous ‘supplements.’”

Not a single service of any kind does the comic sheet serve. It was only gotten up to increase newspaper circulation. It satisfies the pampered taste of cheap minds.

Our children should not be allowed to read the comic supplement; for, as the Outlook says, “There is probably at present no single influence that is poisoning America at the fountain-sources more than the so-called comic supplement.”

I believe that I have not exaggerated in saying what I have. I only hope that at least some may be influenced to see the matter in its true light, and to refuse to buy a newspaper that maintains a comic supplement.

Riverside, Cal.