Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/110

98 I publish comic magazines in addition to picture stories from the Bible. For example, I publish horror comics. IT was the first pub- lishey in these United States to pubhsh horror comics. [ am respon- sible, [ started them.

Some may not like them. That is a matter of personal taste. It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the srblimity of love toa frigid old maid.

My father was prond of the conites he published, and I am proud of the comics J publish. We use the best writers, the finest artists; we spare nothing ta make each magazine, each story, each page, a work of art.

As evidence of this, I might poeini out that we have the highest sales in individual distribution. I don't mean highest sales in coin- parison to comics of another type. I mean highest sales in compari son to other horror comies. The magazine is one of the few remain- ing—the comic magazine is one of the few remaining pleasures that a person may buy for a dime today. Pleasnre is what we sell, enter- tainment, reading enjoyment. Tutertaining reading has never harmed anyone, Men of good will, free men, should be very gretefid for one sentence in the statement made by Federal Judge John M. Woolsey when he lifted the ban on Ulysses. Judge Woolsey said:

It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.

May I repeat, he said. "It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned." Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action.

Perverted Httle monsters are few and far between. They don't read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children.

What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? We think one children are so evil, simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them te murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery ?

Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by 2 comsic.

As has already been pointed out by previous testimony, a little, healthy, normal child has never been made worse for reading comic magazines.

The basic personality of a child is established before he reaches the age of comic-book vending. I don't believe anything that has ever been written can make a child overaggressive or delinquent.

Tho roots of such characteristics are much deeper. The truth ts that delinquency is the product of real environment in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads.

There are many preblems that reach onr children today. They are tied up with insecurity. No pill can cure them. No law will legislate them ont of being. The problems are economic and social and they are complex,

Our people need understanding; they need to have affection, decent homes, decent food.