Poison Through the Mails

The Catholic Standard and Times

The part played by the mail service in the diffusion of moral poison is a subject of the most momentous importance. We note with gratification that several attempts have been made on the part of the postal authorities to check the practice of debauching the mail service for the benefit of rogues and quack doctors and other vile criminals. It is a proof that the postal authorities are fully alive to the dangers that lurk in the mail-box, and are determined to minimize them, so far as their legal powers will enable them. But they have only touched the fringe of the evil. There is a vast deal more that is not so easily grappled with.

A new form of public demonstration has suddenly grown up and assumed most alarming proportions. This is the immoral and indecent postal card. It is omnipresent. In the shop windows of every street this vile output of the Devil's workshop flaunts itself in the face of the public, attracting crowds of callow, sickly youths by its bold appeals to all the animal and the gross in degraded humanity. It is a most deadly, audacious pest. The Post-office very properly has taken this evil by the throat. It will hold up every card that is objectionable. This is quite right and quite commendable. It remains for the public authorities everywhere to strengthen the hands of the postal officials in trying to choke off this monstrous pest. In Chicago strong steps are being taken by the authorities toward an abatement of the nuisance, and similar measures are being adopted in parts of New Jersey. They should be adopted in every municipality and town.

Now, if the Post-office can act as the Censor Morum in regard to objection

able "art," why should it not be equally puissant in regard to print? The foul print is not a whit less excusable than the lascivious card.

It might be well that this grave subject were taken up at the meetings of the Catholic Federation. It is one of the highest Christian duties to check the spread of indecency in art and literature. Such stimulus is swiftly leading the youth of this generation, male and female, down the slope of ruin, whose end is the suicide's grave and the convict prison.

We are culpable if we do not do our best to withdraw the stumbling blocks from the path of easily-tempted youth. We acquiesce in the making of the pitfalls into which they are blindly plunging. It is useless for us to pray not to be led into temptation while we do naught to prevent the weaker souls from being so led. If we fail in our duty, woe be to us in the hour of arraignment.

Boston's Mourning

The Pilot

It is sixty years since a mayor of Boston has died in office. When Mayor Davis passed away in 1845, mourned and honored, this remote successor of his was an Irish babe of a year old. Boston was a strictly Protestant city. The people of Irish blood within its borders were accounted exiles and strangers, the Know-nothing agitation was rising, transforming passive to active dislike of the "foreigner;" and he had been surely stoned like an unwelcome prophet of old who had dared to predict an Irish mayor, also to die in office, with such love and grief to mark his passing as public servant never had before in Boston.

The future Catholic mayor of the then

Puritan stronghold found Boston a few years later an inhospitable place, which he was soon glad to leave for a time for the broader-minded West.

Whoso questioned kindly that mighty host of the immigrants of '48-'49 might have won from them much the same answer as to their portion in the building of America which their poet-laureate later spoke for them:

"O willing hands to toil; Strong natures tuned to the harvest song, and bound to the kindly soil; Bold pioneers of the wilderness, defenders in the field,

The sons of a race of soldiers who never learned to yield.

Young hearts with duty brimming as

faith makes sweet the due;

Their truth to me their witness they cannot be false to you."

These things were what Collins and many of his compeers brought to the New Land; but not only was their worth to the country for a time unrecognized, but they were distrusted, misjudged, yea, persecuted by men whose eyes were held.

It was the privilege in an eminent degree of Patrick Collins to demonstrate in his own person the worth, industrial and intellectual, of the immigrant; and to come back to Boston, and to lift his voice in her State House to liberalize her laws, and make sure that none who came after him should suffer the sorrows of his boyhood.

He helped to clear the long obscured vision of the sons of the Puritans. Step by step he rose in their confidence and esteem. They made, as is their just fashion, ample reparation for ancient wrong; and they helped in 1901 to put Patrick Collins in the highest place in the city's gift, and two years later to return him to the same office by such majority as was never before received by the successful candidate in a mayoralty campaign.

They mourned for his untimely death. The city's two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary came as he lay cold in his coffin, and she passed it by unmarked— for sorrow for this beloved adopted son. The sons of the Puritans joined with the sons of the Irish pioneers to give the Irish-American mayor obsequies that a king might have desired. The tribute of Protestant minister was as ungrudging as that of Catholic priest.

Honor to the man who, rising, lifts his own up with him. The strength of Patrick Collins was that he stood with his own, not to keep them a class apart, but to share with them his own gains, and to demonstrate to those who once had questioned and doubted that all his people, even as he, were whole-hearted Americans, and as such worthy of all that America can give to her true lovers, and the most enthusiastic exponents of her spirit.

Boston will name a schoolhouse for Patrick Collins. She will tell his story to the young Italians and Hebrews and Poles who seek her citizenship, and for his sake she will continue to smooth the way to freedom for the Old Land which breeds for her such men as he.

Effective Answer

Catholic Union and Times

While the carping critics were finding fault with Catholic priests for not attending meetings to talk about means to quell the yellow fever raging in New Orleans, the priests were busy attending to the stricken ones, both spiritually and corporally; hearing their contrite confessions, whispered with contagious breath; and, on bended knees beside. their plague-covered bed, holding up the crucifix to the gaze of the dying, and breathing words of comfort and hope through the plenitude of the Redeemer's mercy.

This is what Catholic priests were doing while their spectacular critics were talking; and many of them-beginning

with their noble Archbishop-as well as several of the brave sisters who stood fearlessly at their posts to nurse the sick and console the dying, fell victims. to the terrible plague and received martyrs' crowns for their heroic charity.

Yellow Journalism and Its Remedy
The Catholic Mirror

An interesting step has been taken by the Holy Name Society of New York, which in large measure is a pioneer effort in its peculiar direction.

At the quarterly meeting of the Archdiocesan Societies, just closed, vigorous resolutions were passed denouncing the evils of yellow journalism in strong terms and calling for an organized Catholic effort which may truly be called a boycott.

The resolutions recite the facts that the press of New York, while admirable in some respects, not infrequently goes beyond the limits of decency; that despite the fact that there are over one million Catholics in New York City, their public enterprises of every character receive paltry notice, and further recommend that those papers only, be patronized which maintain a high standard in the purveyance of news and that a copy of these resolutions be forwarded to the editors of all New York papers. The resolutions close as follows:

"Resolved. That this Union appoint a press committee of five to act in a supervisory capacity along the lines suggested by His Grace, and in accordance with the the purposes of the International Catholic Truth Society, such committee to report its findings at each quarterly meeting for appropriate action by the Union."

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The reference made to His Grace, Archbishop Farley, in the above lines, gives the key to this crusade, for it was he, in an address delivered before the graduates of St. Francis Xavier's Col

lege, who gave the first inspiration to this movement. He said on the occasion of his remarks:

"We are partly at least responsible for the character of our newspapers. We are told that the newspapers reflect in a great measure the lives that we live. I am sure that if we made it plain that we did not relish certain kinds of matter that was offensive to us, the newspapers would not print it.

"If no attention is paid to such protest, then drop the subscription. You must protect the morals of your children and your families by not subscribing to such papers as offend public morals."

These are the words which led to the action taken by the Holy Name Society, quite radical in a way and practically amounting to a threat of boycott, the outcome of which will be watched with considerable interest.

It is pertinent here, to ask-Who is responsible for the form which our present day journalism has taken? In fact it is only when we have truthfully answered this question that we can begin to correct with any possible hope of ultimate success, the pernicious conditions which now obtain.

Says Archbishop Farley in answer to this question: "We are partly, at least, responsible for the character of our newspapers." We would go further than this and say we are wholly responsible for it. You do not like this-possibly you do not believe it; yet it is true. You personally and individually may not be wholly responsible, but understanding by "we" the tastes of the majority of the people, there can be no question of it. And why?

Did the same conditions prevail now which were common in the early part of the eighteenth century there would be a different answer to give. If the newspapers and magazines of those days were less up-to-date, they possessed, at least,

that charm which has been lost for time out of mind-individuality. The editorial column stood for something; it represented the ideas of the editor, who was in most cases part or whole owner of the paper.

In such circumstances the public could not with any show of justice be blamed for the character of the paper since its ideals were those of its editor.

What do we find to-day? The modern newspaper is owned by that nonentity or shade-like being, the corporation, which knows no morals, no ideals, no right or wrong-only the dollar sign, which shuts out of its vista every other object and dictates its editorials. The editor is a hired stenographer who pens at the corporation's dictation those columns of wishy-washy rot which will bring the best financial returns.

There are some notable exceptions to this, it is true, but they are so few and far between that the universal character of the statement need hardly be changed for their benefit.

Having eliminated every other consideration but that of money from the field, it is not difficult to see how it ultimately comes back upon the public. If the newspaper is in business for money, it will cater to those from whom the money comes. These are not its advertisers, for the advertising value of a sheet is in direct proportion to its circulation. The circulation list, therefore, while it may not by any means represent the largest income of the paper, is nevertheless the keystone of the arch without which the rest is impossible.

If yellow journalism is rampant today it is because the people want it and subscribe for it.

Indeed, the course of action which the Society urges-that of the individual cancelling his subscription if offensive matter is persistently published—is the only course which will be thoroughly effective.

What we would lay especial emphasis on, however, is that this is what might be termed a proximate remedy. The important consideration still remains :

what reasons will urge the individual to cancel his subscription? If these reasons are all to be found in the Society's recommendations, then large results cannot be looked for.

In other words, an educational campaign must be inaugurated and carried vigorously forward against yellow journalism just as any other evil would have to be combated. The public must be brought to recognize the baneful effects. which the circulation of this sensational reading has upon the childish mind and what a degrading influence it exerts upon those of mature years. Above all, the children who are to be the fathers and mothers of to-morrow must be brought up in an atmosphere in which. vicious tastes will be rooted out before they crowd out with their rank-growing foliage those tenderer plants which grace with perfume and blossom the garden of the mind.

The mythological labors of Hercules were as nothing when compared with those that confront education to-day. Take what you will, the corruptions of the day find their source in a perverted system of education which ignores the real for the perishable, and plain as is the connection of cause and effect between our school system and our morals, the Protestant world for the most part refuses to see it.

In the efforts for clean journalism, education must be the prime factor, fostering in the public a literary sense, however humble, capable of distinguishing the good from the bad, quickening, above all, the activity of that inborn

moral sense, the natural law, whose precepts God has written with His finger on the human heart.

'Tis a great work, this, for education, but it needs only the time, and with its achievement is bound up also the passing of the yellow journal.

Victory for Catholic Schools

The New World

There was a time once, and not so long ago, when certain Catholics affected to believe that Catholic schools were of little use. Some of these people yet exist. Last week a New World representative found a Liberal Catholic out in another state who flatly asserted that Catholic schools are no good.

People of this class ought to be made look in this direction. It will not, we think, be contended that the Chicago Normal school has any particular fondness for Catholics. Some of those connected with it have, in simple truth, come before the public with hints of Catholic persecution.

Nevertheless, there was an examina-. tion the other day of young people who seek to become teachers. Entrance to the Normal can be gained only by a trying examination, in which no favor is shown any one. What, to Catholics, was the result of that examination? Here it is, and it is significant:

St. Gabriel's Catholic high school: Miss Callahan received an average of 93.5; the other pupils an average of 90. All passed.

St. James' High school: Seventeen took examination. All passed.

these examinations the pupils of those Catholic institutions were in open competition with the pupils of the public and high schools of the city of Chicago and that the latter cannot truthfully boast such record. They had many failures.

It is a striking victory for the Catholic school. It is absolute proof that it educates.

The American Magazine
The Republic

The American magazine, as it now exists, is the result of a long process of development. Its crude beginnings were defaced by hideous wood-cuts and desecrated by type that was an affront to the eye. The literary tone of the essays and tales was a dim echo of what the essayists and novelists on the other side of the water were doing. It is still a mystery how Americans could take delight in those staring and vulgar pictures or those insipid stories that invested the English squire and the amiable vicar with a glory that seemed a trifle absurd to those who had outgrown the colonial's awe of the people at "home." But times have changed, and our periodicals have shown the grace of growth. The stupidly violent lack of art has given place to a chastened feeling for form, and the fiction that is now given us is not infested by the Church of England clergyman, who takes his devotions three times a day in a weak dilution of rose-water.

The best of our magazines are handbooks of culture. Both in pictures and text they are admirable. They are

Providence Academy: All who took examination passed.

Academy of Our Lady of Longwood: Two took examination. Both passed.

Now, if this is not a remarkable record we beg to learn what it is. In the four schools so far heard from not a single failure! And bear in mind that in

of the foreign infiltration to show that we are cosmopolitan. Magazines such as we have are the fine flower of a complex civilization, and the early American, half horse, half alligator, that Mrs. Trollope knew, could no more have anticipated their appearance than he could have foretold the trolley car or the horseless carriage.