Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/219

Rh children under the guise of something that originally started out supposedly to be funny.

Incidentally, they call it Humor in a Varicose Vein,

The. Do you know how many of these particular publications go out every month?

Mr. . Of this particular one; no, str, I do net. T dou't have the staff to do the kind of detailed investigation that you are doing so experfly with tis type of thing. I know that your connsel is doing a fine job of tracing individual publications.

The. I might ask our counsel for the record, do we have an account of the number of issues of Panic?

Mr. . We have minimum and maximum publication figures,

Mr. . There are approxunately 90 million comic books a month being published and distributed. You have those figures. But how numny of this particular issue, Lean t tell you.

As I said before, and E pointed ouf in my statement. Dr. Wertham has told you how we start then: on this, and we condition them, and bring them along.

Just briefly I would ike to mention this because T think it ties im the <arect picture. After we have conditioned them on tlus type of thing, ow sex and horrer, which he himself suys is the sole purpese of this publication, we then give them this tvpe of thing: She Lived in Sin, Shameful Love, Confessions of a Pick-up Girl, Shameless Play Girl, aud Ont of Bounds.

T would ke to submit these Lo your committee, sir.

The. They will be made a part of the subcommittee's files. Let that be exhibit No. 26,

(The material referred to was marked "Exhibit No, 26," and received for the record.)

Mr. . Now, what the publishers of this type of book are presenting fo our youth, as acceptable in ihe freld of morals, can be determined from a deseription of sin, taken from one such pub- licatton and included in our cotnmitiee’s report at pave 75. It is stated im one such publeation that fhere is no suel thing as sin and that “Sin is a Jabel that has heen attached to the most daring and enjoyable experiences which those who decry if ave either foo old or too unattractive to enjoy.”

That, sir, is their version of sin.

Now. may I sav also that we have tried m our report to show very quickly the type of complete and utter filth that can now be found in pocket books, available for children or anyone else, on the news- stunds of Uus State.

Ou page 77 of our report, sir, you will find that for 35 cents, any- one, child or otherwiseI say child, of course, I am talking of the juvenileanyone 14, 15, 16 years old, who might be interested for 35 cents in 1 book, can read about Lesbianism, call girls, marihuana, switch-blade knives, immorality, prostitution, murder, narcotics, and male prostitution.

This pocket-book material is not fit for adults, and certainly should not be permitted to fall into the hands of juveniles, or to be displayed where youngsters can view the cavers, so aptly described by Margaret Culkin Banning as "pictorial prostitution."

Turning to the field of congressional action, I feel that one of the greatest services this committee can render is to seek by publicity to