p. 11 | Pernicious Literature by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 21, 1913

Pernicious Literature

By Editor

It is a timely warning which the Youth's Companion sounds against the reading of many of the periodicals which are now being printed:—

Not long ago there was a time when parents could leave any American periodical upon the sitting-room table without misgiving. That time has passed. The periodicals that you do not need to examine with some care before you put them where your girls may see them are now few. Under one specious pretext or another, those who control them are printing stories and articles that are far from paying that deference to modesty and decency upon which our literature used justly to pride itself. This is a matter for very great regret. Periodicals intended for general reading seek to enter the home—on the plea always that they bring wholesome recreation, if not more solid benefits. Thus they rest under a peculiar obligation to be careful what they print. That obligation they are now disregarding, to the injury of our youth.

If the new standards of the periodicals are to persist, the difficulty of the problem of bringing up our young people in sweetness and wholesomeness of mind is greatly increased. Their reading must be much more strictly supervised; their taste for what is good and pure and wholesome in literature must be more sedulously cultivated; and their characters must be molded to new strength to resist in a world no longer tender of them.