No smut! / Notre Dame Student Committee for Decency-in-print ^>*Y>o+ , /U>0S6Q7 SMUT! Notre Dame Student Committee for Decency - in - print. DEDICATED to MARY IMMACULATE whose intercession is asked for the success of the National Organization for Decent Literature Feast of St. Patrick, 1939. Cum permissu. Very Rev. Thomas Steiner, c. s. c., Provincial. Censor deputatus , Rev. T. E. Dillon. Imprimatur , )© John F. Noll, Bishop of Fort Wayne. The Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, Deaddie^ THE CHALLENGE A7"OU’RE walking down the street one day minding your own business. You’re healthy and happy. Everything’s right with the world. You’re not sore at a soul. There’s a funny sound as you pass by the alley. “Psst!” You turn to the right. “C’mere,” the big fellow beckons with a hurried wiggle of his index finger and an upward jerk of the chin. You don’t like his dark, slick looks. But you’re human and curious and unafraid. “I got something,” he says in a half-smothered mumble and he pokes a shiny black bomb into your mitts. “No thanks!” you say, but he reaches into his pocket and adds, “here’s a match.” You size him up and sort of sarcastically add, “Then what?” He shrugs. “Why worry about that? It’ll make a swell noise.” Using Your Head “Sorry,” you tell him as you hand the bomb back, “HI not be around for the noise.” And you go on down the street thinking what a lot of queer people there are in the world. Nuts like that ought to be locked up, you say to yourself. He’s going to hurt the rest of the world as long as he’s loose. Sooner or later he’ll find a kid dumb enough to touch off the black, shiny apple—then, whoosh! You almost walk past the corner store, but one of your pals inside notices you going by. He whistles. You join him. You’re still thinking about the moron passing out bombs. You order a ( 1 ) 2 NO SMUT! “coke”. Meantime your friend keeps sipping his as he thumbs through the lively pages of a flashy magazine full of pictures. “Wow!” he exclaims, as you pull up to the table. “Look at Squint this week, hottest number yet.” You agree. You get up and look over the other bright covers sitting there on the news- stand. Flaming red Sex Sensations claims it gives you “the facts of life.” On top of the rack is Quagmire, dressed to kill, silky paper. It will cost you exactly one-half a buck. You scan the cheaper pulp numbers, Movie Lowdown, Paris Thriller, Boy Loves Girl, and The Western Wooer. * You’re reaching for Quagmire. . . Common Sense Is Consistent Listen, Buddy, you had a head on your shoulders when you said a quick, firm “No Thanks!” to the bomb. Leave the smut- bomb alone then. Filth-in-print will blast your life into bits. It’s T. N. T. for your body and soul. It will wreck your health. It will spoil your prospects of raising a decent family. You’ll be no good when your country needs you. In a single word, filth-in- print will ruin your self-control. That means it will ruin you. That’s putting it strong, you think. But listen to this young man who tells the world why he committed two of the vilest crimes a man can commit and why he’s serving a long term in prison : I’m no different than anybody else. I can see now what made me what I am. It didn’t come from inside me but from outside. From those filthy magazines that you nice people allow to be plastered all over your newsstands. You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? You preach about 'bringing sex out into the open because you think it’s fashionable and •sophisticated. ... You don’t know the half of it. I was a kid at a news- NO SMUT! 3 stand when I started down. I didn’t know the meaning of sex, much less perversion. It was one of your wealthy citizens who started me down. The big wealthy guy that owned the newsstand. He used to bring his rotten magazines to my stand and show me the worst pictures and give me the wink and say: “Hot stuff. It’ll make you rich!’’ How was I to know that the stuff was poison? I drank it all in before I sold it. It changed my blood to fire.* Pretty tough accusation, you say. This is one true story with no story-book finish, no hero, no heroine. It ends black and hope- less. There’s scorn for the bomber and hate for the bomb. But there’s also an act of love. And, taking it back, there’s a hero too. This young man, once pure and whole, now morally crippled, is thinking of you. He warns you against the slimy craft of the Number One Public Enemy of American youth. Keep away, he tells you, from Mr. I Sellsmut! Where Do You Come In? Perhaps you’ll pass it off with the thoughtless remark, “Well, that’s his case, and he was a fool.” Yes, he was a fool all right. But it might hare been you! He was also a victim. And, again, it might have been you. How would you feel if indecent magazines made you one more tragic victim? blunted your mind? crushed love from your heart? squelched all your joy? Think now of the young man doomed to the profitless cell. Have you a kid brother? Have you a pal? What wouldn’t you do to keep them out of the way of Mr. I. Sellsmut’s bomb? You can help them and yourself by shaking hands with your pastor and bishop. They’re launching a fight to the finish against every filthy I. Sellsmut from coast to coast. * From the Liguorian. 4 NO SMUT! NO SMUT! 5 Whom do you choose? Your parish priest or I. Sellsmut? Another choice is implied. Is it Christ or Satan? The good of your soul, which lives forever, or the passing pleasure of your earthly body, which one day must go back to dust? As you read you’re right on the spot. You must choose now between Christ and “I. Sellsmut”. The outstretched hands of Christ bled for you on the Cross. The outstretched hands of “I. Sellsmut” only stick a bomb into your mitts. THE FACTS “All right, all right, I’m not dumb,” you say. U I choose Christ. It’s the sensible thing. I want to be rugged, athletic, and manly. I want a bright future. But aren’t you laying it on kind of thick? Is this bad literature business as bad as you paint it?” It is. And worse. Here are the facts: 400 magazines are now being published in the United States, which violate the very sensible code set up by the committee of bishops. 15,000,000 copies of this erotic filth leave the presses every month . Therefore, presumably 60,000,000 people—among them per- haps your brothers and sisters—read these magazines. Three-fourths of these lewd magazines have been launched since 1930. Money-hungry, unscrupulous Mr. I. Sellsmut has capitalized on the leisure of unemployed youth by pumping poison into their veins, making sewers out of their minds. The United States leads all other countries in the publication 6 NO SMUT! of smutty magazines. More than 100 of those printed over here are banned in Canada and Australia. Every six hours in New York City an individual is arrested for a sex crime of the most revolting type. And these crimes are on the increase. The New York Police Commissioner reports: “Sex offences reported in 1937 number 1,892, as compared with 1,251 in 1936.” Every other large city of the nation is propor- tionately bad. Joseph A. Frayne, Chairman of the New Jersey Child Wel- fare Committee, says: “Foremost among the factors contributing to the deplorable increase of youthful criminals is the reading of indecent literature now being circulated, without restriction, throughout the country.” “Count Me Out” “Okay. There’s a danger. But I’ve come this far without getting in trouble. The stuff doesn’t harm me.” Don’t kid yourself. Maybe bad pictures don’t seem to harm you when you re looking them over. But inevitably they must harm you. You’re not made of stone, but of flesh and blood. And the flesh is weak, bent toward evil. Once you’ve let a foul image get in, you’re no longer boss. It’s in , and it’s part of you. It flies around in your cranium, comes up again and again in your consciousness. You cant get it out. It worries you. It makes you nervous. It excites you. You bet it harms you! Don’t stick your neck out. Fly from smutty pictures and, incidentally, filthy jokes, as you would from the open jaws of an angry lion. Flight is , in this case, the best fight. Stay away. NO SMUT! 7 You have eyelids to go with your eyes. Shut down on in- decent literature. Prudence has it all over regret. Uncle Sam Speaks His Mind The United States Government publishes a pamphlet called ‘'Keeping Fit.” It reads in part: If a boy or a man frequently permits himself to look at suggestive pictures, to listen to vulgar stories, and to indulge in lewd thoughts, he brings about a mental condition which may lead him later into serious sin. Furthermore, such indulgence develops a low attitude toward sex, which ought to be associated with the finest and most beautiful relation- ships in life. While it is not always possible to prevent lewd ideas coming to one’s attention, it is possible by using one’s will power, to direct the attention away from them and center it on wholesome subjects. Some young men will need to learn the trick of switching the thoughts away from vulgar subjects quickly to sports, school work, or other helpful activities. The mind should not be made a cesspool, but a reservoir. “Art for Art’s Sake 99 Perhaps you’re thinking by this time: ‘‘That's all well and good. But a lot of this stuff you call bad literature is art. It’s life. It’s real. A fellow needs to know something about the other side. He has to have ex- perience.” Yes, it’s art. The stinking art of snatching purity from the pure of heart. Why should Artist I. Sellsmut make money by damaging you? “It’s life, real life.” So is the garbage can. So are the rotten sores of the leper. Must you poke your head like a hog into swill? Must you fill your bloodstream with leprous germs ‘Tor the sake of experience?” Aunt Het had the right idea when she said that you’re not NO SMUT! Vou will be a belter Ofmerican and a better Gatkolie for exterminating this rat. NO SMUT! missing a thing by throwing foul magazines out of your life. What does it profit you to know how a skunk smells? Don’t forget your body and soul are also real. They’re life. And to keep them 4 ‘in shape” is the best art in life. Athletics will help you attain to physical culture. Good reading’s the thing you want to look into to help build up the culture of your mind and heart. Ask your teacher for your reading list. Think of Others “Well,” you ask, “supposing I do not stay away from indecent literature, isn’t that ,enough? Do I have to get into this good literature drive and try to make the world over?” • . »' . You’ve got a point. If you stay away from the bad stufi, you’re helping a lot. The world, after all, is only a collection of people. It’s you multiplied. And if you and you and you stay away from lewd literature, old I. Sellsmut will soon go bankrupt. But why not help to get you and you and you all together? Thats’ the drive. Some of your pals may not see the danger so clearly as you do, or they may realize it too late. Remember the words of the ruined prisoner: “How was I to know that stuff was poison? I drank it all in.” Perhaps, unknown to you, your own brother and sister or your best pal has fallen prey to I. Sellsmut’s putrid pages. Perhaps right now they’re thumbing through his maga- zines, printing pictures in their minds that stay, that become a part of them. It’s worth all you’ve got to protect them, especially your sister and your pal’s sister. For they are America’s future mothers, the wealth of the nation. If you want to be a good citizen, help. NO SMUT! The U. S. A. Again Says Uncle Sam’s pamphlet, ‘‘Keeping Fit”: “A nation may well be judged by its attitude toward women. The youth who is fair will treat every girl as he expects other boys and men to treat his own sister, his girl friend, or his sweetheart. . . . Each youth who grows up and marries becomes a link in a great chain of human beings. This chain reaches back into the past for hundreds of years, and it may reach forward into the future for an even longer time. One false step may infect the racial stock and blight the lives of generations to come. If the young man keeps his body in good condition and lives a clean life, his descendants will in all probability be vigorous and useful citizens. The spark of life is to be accepted as a sacred trust to be transmitted undimme