POPULAR LITERATURE AS AN INDEX
A WRITER in the New York Independent recently devoted a very interesting page to the changes that have come about in periodical literature, particularly the magazine, during recent years. The magazine editor of yesterday is pictured as one who stood for certain ideals in literature, and he was usually a man of ripened experience. But a great change has come about. One magazine after another is mentioned as having given way to the popular demand for light, fictitious reading. There is still much solid, wholesome literature, and most magazines still have in each issue one or two articles upon some theme or problem in human life that could not be classed as fiction, but the magazines of the time are devoted almost wholly to stories and other kinds of light reading. Scores of books of a similar character are coming from the presses every year. A great deal of this class of literature is not only trifling and fictitious, but is also pernicious. It panders to the sensuous and the depraved. The fact that so much matter of this kind is printed, shows unmistakably the great demand there is for it. And incidentally this demand shows the general condition of the public mind; and if there were no other factors at work to degrade society, this one thing in itself would be sufficient to bring about eventually decay and ruin. There are many people who think that it is necessary for them to have some light reading-matter occasionally as a diversion, but in the main they are readers of substantial articles and books. This class of people do not select for their light reading anything that is low and degrading. But there is another class — and it is growing every year — that never read anything to speak of that is solid. There never was a greater truth uttered than the statement that the books we read, the songs we sing, and the pictures we look at, mold our characters, and are largely responsible for making us what we are. If we will take time to consider seriously the class of reading-matter that this age is producing in order to supply the demands of the time, our eyes ought to be opened to one of the most serious problems that confront the world. It is a problem that carries with it that of almost every form of vice, debauchery, and degradation. The problem of pernicious literature is connected with every other problem that is before us. This objectionable literature comes to us in so many forms and, under so many disguises, the danger is that the mind will become confused — that it will be intoxicated with that upon which it feeds, and not realize that it is going to pieces under this baneful influence. And sadder still, many who are destroying their minds by what they read are under the hallucination that they are making progress in culture and refinement.