THIS MODERN HYPOCRISY

New York State is to be made simon-pure by the morality-makers at Albany. Their latest effort, as all now know, is directed at literature. It is, say these Solons, to be protected from itself, and kept from doing harm. The situation in a nutshell reveals an odious tale of legislative tinkering. Books are to be mailed and backed and literature to be made a handmaid of the State Legislature, People will be led with spoonvictuals of Pollyanna strain. Authorship will amount to a disgraceful truckling to the prudes of a loud-voiced minority. The public press is to be silenced by a threat.

Books pass current for a sort of slice from life; it is life as reflected, then, which is objectionable to these self-styled judges for the people. "Evil to him who evil thinks." Great books in every age have grappled with the raw problems of life, near as they are to universal experience. The Albany legislators either deny the reality of these problems, or think that they can legislate them into smoke by passing bills against pictures or representations of these problems in one form or another. In their zeal for meddling and political quackery, the sponsors of the "Clean Books Bill" have forgotten the fact that experience shows the impossibility of legislating morality into people.