Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/206

194 Mr. . Then how do you account for the number of complaints to the Post Office Department from irate parents that them children, 15 years, 10 years, 9 years of ave, have received your circular advertis- ing your books?

Mr. . Which circular?

Mr. . A circular from you, advertising "The Art of Love," for example.

Mr. . We don't send these to children.

Mr. . How did the child's name get on the mailing list?

Mr. . The child's name originally gets on a mailing list when they fill out the coupon, but we don't mail circulars to those children. They become inactive. We neither sell if nor rent it, nor use it onu- selves.

Now it is possible, as I said, that occasionally a tray, like a year ago, will get mixed up; but we are not mailing te ehildren at all of any kind even though we have the best children's books im the field. Tsay that, barring none, there is nothing that has ever been published of nature for childreneven the titles here were selected with a view to getting the child interested in this type of subject. We were going to put outa whole lst of these, by the way, but in view of the fact that the response has not been as great as we thought, we stopped at these four tities.

Mr. . I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. . As to this one book that I have here, "The Art of Love," the cover refers to some article, "What Every Boy and Girl Should Know."

Mr. . That is not our book, sir.

The. It is published in London.

Mr. . It is advertised by you, though, is it not?

Mr. . We don't have that. We don't advertise it for children. The majority of the places that book is advertised is in adult books, like women's romance books and male adult books.

By the way, that particnlar book, but not that particular issne, was given out as a preminm aboul a year ago by a large soap company. Tt was given out as a premium with a certain purehase. Apparently it was not considered objectionable cnongh, because nine-tenths or eight-tenths of that book is Greek mythology, and certainly no juvenile delinquent could ever conceivably delve through that Greek imyth- ology, to come to the 10 or £5 percent Jove counsel, that 1s given in that book.

By the way, talking of comtes, Mr, Chambers has found im 5 years of work, that the gang boys do not vead comies at all. He lived with them day to day, and he found they do nol read the comics at all. There is a statement here which is so different from the usual con- cepLion, because very few peaple really know anything about juvenile delinquents. They know from reading other books. THe lived with them for 5 years, and he says they never read the comiesthe gang boys. Actually at ene time he had to engugevo in with them on some of their, let us say, semiquestionable activilies tn order to main- tain their confidence, because he was making a study of juvenile delinquents.

Mr. . We were talking about your ad. How do you know, when you get an answer back on one of these coupons, whether it is a child or is not a child?