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Anthony
Comstock,
agent for the Committee for the Suppression of Vice Melvyn D. Magree Originally published in Reader Weekly April 19, 2001 Last week I wrote about Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler who edited and published works of famous authors with all words, phrases, and ideas removed which they thought were unsuitable for “decency.” Their actions have been immemorialized in the word “bowdlerization”. Their work was “innocent” in that it was a private effort. Another person spent his life getting the Federal Government involved in squelching words, phrases, and ideas that he thought were “indecent.” His life's work would lead George Bernard Shaw to coin another word concerning the control of what people read: comstockery. Anthony Comstock was born 7 March 1844 in New Canaan, Connecticut to Thomas Anthony Comstock and Polly Lockwood Comstock. Both parents were Puritan by descent, and it is quite possible that they used a popular Bible altered by Noah Webster. In 1872 when Comstock was living in Brooklyn, New York, he wrote to the YMCA about the sale of erotic books. He had already made several arrests of stationers when he wrote. One supposes these arrests were made by dragging a policeman along and insisting that the policeman perform his duty. The YMCA was receptive to Comstock because the Young Men's Christian Association had been founded to improve the moral character of young men, young men living in boarding houses with idle time on their hands. The YMCA was also instrumental in the 1868 New York bill on the "suppression of obscene literature". Several members of the YMCA board began privately supporting Comstock in his crusade. They soon formed the Committee for the Suppression of Vice and made Comstock their agent. They got more than they bargained for. These well-known businessman had set out quietly and with decorum to fight the publishers of "obscene" literature. Comstock on the other hand relished in publicity, including getting a reporter to accompany him as he made his arrests. At this time, the Rev. Harry Ward Beecher was quietly ignoring a scandal about a rumored affair. One publisher thought Beecher was hypocritical. Victoria Woodhull, stockbroker, an ardent spiritualist, a passionate supporter of women's rights, and an advocate of free love, also published with her sister Tennessee Claflin a "radical reformatory paper" called Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. In their 2 November 1872 issue, Woodhull lashed out at Beecher and one Luther C. Challis. Challis supposedly had slandered the sisters and they counterattacked with an exposé on his seduction of two maidens at a ball and his later boasting about it. Comstock considered this obscene and brought suit in Federal court under a statute prohibiting mailing an obscene publication. Many newspapers came to the sisters' defense. The Weekly Argus of Easton, Pennsylvania may have said it the most succinctly. “One of our standing boasts, ‘Liberty of the Press,’ is ours no longer, when, in the opinion of any single person, the contents of a paper are not exactly moral or high-toned, and should therefore be suspended and its publisher imprisoned." This was not the last of his battles with "The Lady Brokers". If you would like to read more about the long feud between the strong-willed adversaries, read Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord, by Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech. Published in 1927, it is available from the UMD Library but not the Duluth Public Library. The UMD Library also has The Champions of the Church by D. M. Bennett which contains a chapter entitled “Anthony Comstock, his career of cruelty and crime.” In my original search in 1990 I had also found Anthony Comstock: Fighter, a semi-official biography by Charles Gallaudet Trumbull. With Google I found 1230 pages on the web. One interesting article is from the Cato Institute, "New Age Comstockery: Exon vs. the Internet"; it swings back and forth between Comstock’s career and Sen. James Exon’s (D. Neb.) attempt in 1995 to regulate what is transmitted on the Internet. I would have also like to have told you about Comstock’s run-in with George Bernard Shaw, but this essay would have become overly long. Let it suffice that Comstock was instrumental in the 1873 Federal law on obscenity and had himself appointed as a special, unsalaried agent of the Post Office to enforce the law. He proceeded to attack all kinds of vice: obscenity, gambling, swindling, abortion, and medical quackery. One might make a case for his cleaning up the newspapers of ads for swindles and useless medicines. On the other hand obscenity was often by his own definition. In many court cases that he pursued, the evidence was not even shown to the jury, the judges ruled that it was "too obscene". Nevertheless many juries found guilty verdicts! Comstock arrested one woman for calling her husband a "spitzbub" on a postcard. Spitzbub is German for a tricky person and is a common nickname in Germany, including for babies! Comstock's definition of obscenity and abortion included any mention of contraception. In fact, he lumped promoters of contraception in with the "abortionists". Possibly the last case he gave evidence in was in 1915 against Margaret Sanger's husband William for distributing her pamphlet, Family Planning. Comstock's attitude was, "Are we to have homes or brothels? Can't everybody, whether rich or poor, learn to control themselves?" Sanger, father of "three lovely children", went to jail for thirty days rather than pay a $150 fine. In his late sixties Anthony Comstock was still going after miscreants of all sorts, but he had lost much of his popular support. Some of the young people he had set out to protect were now newspaper editors and reporters who questioned both his purpose and effectiveness. He did set out to slay giants but in the end tilted at windmills. In his summary on censorship, Heywood Broun wrote, "It seems rather petty that the machinery of justice should be invoked for no more weighty purpose than to keep Comstock, or some other performer from being irritated." The French have a saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” “The more things change, the more they are the same.” I still read at least once a month that someone somewhere is offended and wants some governmental or other organization to protect their tender ears. ©2001, 2006, Melvyn D. Magree |