A Fearful Situation

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1902

A Fearful Situation

In addressing a society for the study of life, on the dangers that beset children, Anthony Comstock remarked that “it is safe to say that there is not an institution of learning for the young that is wholly free from the corrupt and degrading influence of indecent literature and pictures.” He then said: “A short time ago I was entering a car at a railroad station, and passed through a group of schoolboys on the platform. One was handing a small book to another, and as I took my seat, I recalled it. I went out to see the boy, and asked him to let me see the pamphlet, which he finally did. I tried to find out where the boy procured it. He told me, and I got off the train at Newark with the group, and went to their school. I found so that every boy in that school and several girls from sixteen to nineteen years of age had the same kind of literature. Step by step I traced the source until I came to a beautiful girl in a lovely home, who received it from a young man of good family, living in a neighboring town.”

Mr. Comstock then said, “If I had to choose between seeing the mind of my own little girl so corrupted, and burying her, I would cheerfully dig her grave with my own hands.”

We have been informed of over twenty institutions of high grade to whose schools Mr. Comstock’s researches have led him, with similar results. His information is chiefly derived from parents who have found such abominable, corrupting things, worse than any adder, viper, or other snake that injects venom, in the possession of their children. The anguish of parents who had the utmost confidence in their children, on ascertaining that they had been corrupted, is something indescribable. Mr. Comstock added: “No mother can be sure that her son is free from these degrading influences; for I have found them in the hands of youths of our best families; in some cases youths who had made themselves agents for the spread of corruption have been regarded as the best boys in school.”

Let none who are responsible for children thrust these statements of Mr. Comstock aside as the utterances of a crank or a man who is determined to find what he looks for.

The evidence is overwhelming, as the distinguished citizens who act as executive committee of the Society for the Prevention of Vice know to their hearts’ sorrow.—The Christian Advocate.