Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/149

Rh you have slightly here, anyway, reluctantly perhaps, condemned this kind of horror comics.

The. The Senator from Tennessee has made his position in this matter emphatically clear.

I would like to hear from the witness now.

Mr. . It is a Jittle difltcult for me to have to go back ve- peatedly to my original statement. IT pointed out before, sir, that our association by its avowed purposes is not a social action organiza- tion, is not an organization in the field of delinquency.

We have never in any other respect worked in this particular field. Therefore, it is entirely within keeping of our purpose that we have merely, as I have said in my statement, alerted, and I think if you will read over my statement, the combined statements, and they are yery strong, they go back to early days when people had not yet written popular articles. This was stated at a time when other people had not vet spoken—this is a fact I want emphasized—we had called attention to these things, but we are not the National Probation and Parole Association, we are not the United States Children's Bureau, and you kuow the testimony which came to you as chairman ol the previous comimittee from them.

We are not an agency working in the field of delinquency, never have; this is not our purpose.

Therefore, we called merely, as E pointed out in my statement, at several times for community action, but if was not our place to do so.

T said very specificatly other organizations in this country, many of which I support with my own contributions because 1 have been in this field, are presumably working in this ares,

Therefore, when you raise a question, why have we not dene sumie- thing. £ think the question might well be put, why has ucbody else done anything ?

At least we have very specifically and I emphasize very specifically strenuously, you can't say more than these things shauld be off the stands,

I think that makes it a very pointed thing. We didn't say they might be harmful, but that they should not even be around.

[ think we haye made our position clear, hut we are uot a social action group and particularly not a social delbnquency group, but others are in this country and, therefore, I must say that in al) fair- ness the question should be put to the other organizations who were apprised by ns of this sifuation.

This was the first point.

The second point which I must make is this: the particular conic book publisher for whom our staff associate is adviser, and which ts one of the largest publishers of comic books, to my mind, coes not particu- larly, by his products, play a vole here in this cominittee.

For instunce, when counsel talked about advertising matter, being aware of the fact that this had not played a particular role in these earlier studies I went through every single issue of the last issue of these things and T would like to find someone pointing out to me one uttvertisement which is of the nature which Mr. Beazer refers to,

Now, I personally don't think much of the Atlas strong boy, it is poor taste. There are some people who even feel there might be some question how good it is.

But in general these advertisements here seem to be the popsickle, the twin bicycle, and that is about all.