Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/103

Rh Dr. . Now, there are quite a number of other people who feel the same way. I would like to quote to you what the Minister of Justice of Canada said. In the beginning of this month they had two long sessions iv the House of Commons, devoted almost entirely to my report on comic books and the Minister of Justice said:

In Canada, of course, they have the same situation, They get American comic books, not only diveetly, but they get them in plates. They can't help themselves,

Senator. Dr. Wertham, while you are on the Canadian matter, Canada, of course. has a law, which was probably passed largely on the testimony you gave the House of Commons in Canada, which bans the shipment of certain horror and crime books.

What has been thetr experience with the reflection, or the result of that law upen juvenile delinquency? When was the law passed first?

Dr. . I am not quite sure. Maybe 1951. The informa- tion I have is based on the present ollicial repert of these debates on April land 2, J judge from that that the law didn't work; that they made a list of crime comic books and they didn't know how to supervise it, in fact, they couldn't, and I doubt it can be done in that form.

They have more bad erime-comie books than they ever had. They never could get them off the stan.

The latest) proposal on the 2d of April that T have is that they want to put the crime comic-book publishers in jail, but they can't do that, for one thing—we have them.

I don't think that would work. So that experiment. is not yel com- pletely evaluated. All 1 know is that they are very much worried about the effect of comic books on delinquency, that they have not been able by this one amendment to the eriminal code to eur b this situation.

Stating that mine is not a minority report, Mr. Chairman, I would like to quote ohne more critic, Mr, Clifton Fadiman, who says that he senses the truth in my pr esentation as he sensed the truth in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I don't know the man personally.

Now, what about the remedy? Mr, Chairman, T am fat a doctor. I can't tell what the remedy is, I can only say that in my opinion this is a public-health problem. T think it onght to he possible to determine onee and for al] what is in these comic books and T think it ought to be possible to keep the children under 15 from seeing them displayed to them and preventing these being sold directly to ehil- dren.

In other words, I think something should be done to see that the children can't get them. You see, if a father wants to go to a store and says, "I have a little boy of seven. He doesn't know how to rape a girl: he doesn't know how to rob a store. Please sell me one of the comic books," let the man sell him one, but I don't think the boy should be able to go see this rape on the cover and buy the comic books.

I think from the public-health point of view something might be done.

Now, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, if I may speak in seriousness about one suggestion that I have, I detest censorship. I have appeared