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Ruin in Disguise.

ANTHONY COMSTOCK,

Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, New York City.

"The labor of a day will not build up a virtuous habit on the lines of an old and vicious character." -BUCKMINSTER.

T

HE folly of youth is, oftentimes, the ruin of future prosperity. The psalmist of old cried out because of the effect, in after years, of the sins of his youth. Ephraim "smote upon his thigh" and cried out bitterly because of the curse flowing from the sins of his youth. Job said, "Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to inherit the sins of my youth."

The sins of youth, or, to use a common expression, "the sowing of wild oats in youthful days," brought a harvest of bitterness into the lives of these men of old.

It is not my purpose, in this article, to discuss the causes that have led to the decay of cities, fortresses, or castles, nor search for the secret that has overturned nations in the past.

Rather, we discuss the work of destruction to health and morals that is going on in our very midst.

The lives of men, like the history of cities and nations in the past, are for our example, instruction, and warning. We need not go back to ancient history, however, to ascertain the cause of decay and destruction that is going on about us. We must look facts, unpleasant though they be, in the face. We must take the world, to-day, as it is, not as we would wish it were. People who live in our large cities, and are actively engaged in the busy world of manufacture, trade, and commerce, are mak

ing life a rapid transit, and are being whirled along at a pace that kills.

A fair illustration of the nerve-grinding process may be witnessed during the business hours at any of the stock, produce, manufacturing, or mercantile exchanges, where transactions, embracing thousands of dollars of stock or produce, are opened with a shout and closed with a nod of the head or gesture of the hand from the party fortunate enough, in the confusion, to catch the seller's eye.

Fortunes amounting to millions of dollars are made in a few brief years by sharp and unscrupulous men. But these fortunes cannot bring peace, happiness, and security into the home. They oftentimes smother conscience and torture the soul. Wealth and position cannot prevent death from entering the home, nor curb the appetite for strong drink and unclean living.

Too often wealth is misapplied to furnish those things which an inherited appetite suggest, or which unhallowed passions and tastes crave and demand.

For every effect there stands a cause.

For every harvest there has been a seed sowing.

What is the cause, to-day, of the downfall and ruin of so many youth?

What is the cause of so many scandals in high life? Why are there so many houses of prostitution and dives in our great cities, and why are they steadily on the increase?

If diphtheria appears in a tenement house, if a case of yellow fever or smallpox is discovered in the community, immediately the health officers seek to quarantine the disease and discover its source. In like manner, let us look for the cause of the moral leprosy existing in our land. Our young men and maidens are falling like autumn leaves upon every side of us. Many are stricken down by a contagion that destroys character, blasts future prospects of happiness, and mortgages the soul to the devil.

Much of the sorrow and misery, squalor and want, moral leprosy and sin, that now curse the human race, and are leading

so many to ruin and destruction, is to be charged up to the four great crime-breeders of the day:

Intemperance, gambling, evil reading, and infidelity. The first three, like marauding guerrillas scattering missiles of death, are destroying thousands and tens of thousands. Their victims are struck down in the homes of the wealthy and through all grades in society to the hovels of the most wretched. Sons and daughters are stricken with a moral pestilence in the home. Guardians and parents are mourning over the loss of their children. Parents' hearts are broken, and schools, seminaries, and colleges are disgraced by the discovery of evils growing out of debauched minds.

Many evils sting to death in secret, while others stalk forth in open day.

The policy shop, lottery office, gambling hell, pool room, and race track gambling receive the patronage of some so-called respectable men, and are allowed by a deadened public conscience to conduct their business in open day, in defiance of law, order, and morals.

Intoxicating liquor is on tap in the land. Collected into one stream, and allowed to flow into one river, it would almost outrival Niagara's mighty flow.

Evil reading is the miasma of the moral atmosphere, which poisons the soul. Much of it is disseminated broadcast, and frequently enters the home where children dwell, with the tacit consent of the parent.

Outside of a very limited circle of earnest, devoted, and heroic men and women who have supported the work of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for the last score of years, there are very few in the community who have any idea of the blasting influences and the appalling effects flowing from the devil's printing press.

Many of the books are of a character so degrading that no human mind can be brought into contact with them without feeling a shock; while imagination receives an indelible stain that nothing but the grace of God can remove.

Many of these publications reach innocent childhood and youth without the knowledge of parent or teacher.

The bloom of youth fades; the eyes become sunken and lusterless. The spirit is broken. The will becomes paralyzed, the conscience seared, the heart hardened, and the soul damned by these corroding influences, which, like wild beasts of prey, are hunting our children in secret to destroy them.

Two hundred and twenty-nine different books, many of them of the vilest possible character, have been published in this country during the past last half century. Like a moral pestilence they have swept over the land. Many and many a home has been shrouded in misery; many a young life quenched because of the fatal stab that has come through the tainted pages of such publications.

The catalogues of schools, colleges, and seminaries have been collected by these moral cancer planters, and the names of innocent boys and girls, thus obtained, have first been used to send the circulars and advertisements of the party first obtaining them, and then these names and addresses are sold as a matter of merchandise to other scoundrels, in order that they, too, may bid for the moral purity of these innocent ones, by sending their advertisements of corrupt enterprises to defraud and ruin.

The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice have seized more than one million of names and post office addresses found in possession of persons raided or arrested by them.

Again, schools and seminaries are invaded by miscreants who copy with a pen some short sketch from a foul book, or some poem or doggerel of a filthy character, and then, getting it into the hands of one bad boy or debased girl, a whole school will be defiled.

A young lad, a few weeks ago, was found in an institute with some of the foulest pictures, which he was in the act of showing to a number of his schoolmates when detected.

Another institute of learning was visited by the agent of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and every boy in the school had, or had had, the vilest possible matter; copies of which had

been made by boys and girls and passed from one to the other, until, not only all of the boys, but a portion of the girls. had been infected with this deadly virus.

One instance brought to the writer's attention, a young man, one of seven children, his father a minister, was found with twenty-one varieties of these matters, which he had been copying with his own hand and sending to boys in a school on the Hudson. When his father's attention was called to the fact that his son had possession of these things, some of which he had had for a period of seven years, with tears streaming down his furrowed cheeks, he said: "This explains it all. This explains why Willie is not converted. All of his brothers and sisters have been brought into the fold of Christ except him. We have prayed in the class room, at the prayer meeting, and family altar for his conversion, but nothing would seem to touch him."

Again, the "blood and thunder" story papers are breeding youthful criminals. Many and many a boy who has been arrested for larceny, dishonesty, highway robbery, or for murder, has traced his downfall to the fascinations and allurements of the half-dime novel, or "Boy and Girl Story Paper of modern days.

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One young man was arraigned at the Tombs police court recently for manslaughter, who, after reading some of these stories, had purchased a revolver and when in dispute over a gambling game (doubtless learned from the same source), having been told that he lied, deliberately arose from his seat at the table, drew his revolver, and with the braggadocio of a dime novel hero said, "Johnnie, that has got to be wiped out with blood," and shot his associate down.

Three young men were committing a burglary. One of them shot and killed the proprietor of the store thus being raided. When arrested and told that the man was dead, he says, with the unction of a dime novel fiend: "I must be a tough' now. A fellow is not a 'tough' until he has downed his man." Intemperance, gambling, and evil reading sow to the wind

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