| OCR Text |
Show A COMMENDABLE ACTION. Decent people everywhere -will applaud ap-plaud the action of .the City Council of Mankota, in the State of Minnesota, in its decision to prevent the p: sting of obscene lithographs on the billboards of that city. And it is a fact, what the New York Press says in alluding to this action, that it is perfectly plain that the purpose of these pictures is to attract to the shows "which they advertise ad-vertise persons of low tastes. The injury, in-jury, however, to the public at large, and especially to the youths and maidens whose thoughts may be tainted or poisoned by the repeated sight of nearly nude women, is of far greater consequence than the possible effect on an audience of the show itself. it-self. To place these pictures where they will be seen by hundreds of young people every day is to sow the seeds of impure thoughts in as many minds and to unxi ermine" the morals'of the community. - The danger involved in any sort of a censorship for the regulation of these highly colored and demoralizing posters pos-ters lies in the possible abuse of the power of suppression and in the difficulty diffi-culty in defining the line between what is harmless and what is injurious. And yet considerable as this danger is, it is less menacing than is the vicious influence, if left unrestrained, of the pictures themselves. The point has been reached when the moral sense of the community ought to make itself felt in some form for the protection of the minds and morals ot the boys and girls. It is a question that every father fa-ther and mother ought to have at heart. For in their evolution these pictures have reached a point where they are not only a disgrace and a scandal, but a constant incentive to evil thoughts and hence to immorality. |
