Social Purity and the Press

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 24, 1913

Social Purity and the Press

SPEAKING of nude art and of the efforts which are being made for social purity, the Advance of April 3 aptly says:—

“At the very time the press is clamoring for higher wages in the interests of virtue, the papers, art critics, and book reviewers of Chicago are doing all they can by pictures, plays, and vulgar novels to disseminate the very vice they profess their anxiety to suppress. They don’t wish to suppress it. They are doing more to scatter it over the city than the white-slavers themselves.”

We believe in the suppression of the white slave traffic and in the punishment of the white-slavers, but we believe that if the reports of scandals and records of crime which are published in the newspapers were omitted, it would be going a long way in the prevention of an education that prepares the minds of men and women for the white slave traffic. A reform in purity that is effective will not only take hold of the outward activities of mankind, but must extend to the home and to the private lives of individuals. Many to-day need to pray the prayer of David, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”