Page 12
University Daily Kansan
Friday, Feb. 28, 1964
Children, Mail Boost Pornography Sales
By Harry Ferguson
WASHINGTON—(UPI) Dealers in pornography do a $500 million annual business in the United States. Their products consist of pictures, books, magazines, photograph records and movies, and much of it is delivered to American homes and addressed to children.
This is what is known as "hard core pornography" — smut for smut's sake—and the material makes no artistic or literary pretensions. Obscenity and hard core pornography enjoy no legal protection. In numerous decisions the U.S. Supreme Court has denied to obscenity the freedoms accorded to speech and the press.
Producers of pornography are difficult to apprehend because so many of them use the refuge of the first class mail to distribute their wares. The Post Office Department has no authority to open and inspect first class mail. A common device of the pornography trade is to offer a toy airplane, a baseball or a doll. The advertisement is read by children who write asking for articles.
In return they receive in first class mail a nude photo or two along with a sales pitch that they can buy even more daring things if they will send some money. A conservative estimate is that the names of a million children are on the mailing list of the pornographers.
THE NEWSTANDS. in many cities are loaded with magazines and paper back novels that make "Lady Chatterley's Lover" read like a nursery rhyme. The U.S. Post Office is flooded with letters demanding that the traffic be halted, but the writers misunderstand the problem.
That type of pornography is not under the jurisdiction of the Post
Office because it does not move through the mail. It is shipped in trucks, chiefly from New York and Los Angeles.
It is an offense to move obscenity in inter-state traffic, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has jurisdiction. But the flood of pornography has swollen to such proportions that the FBI could not stop it even if it increased its personnel tenfold. It would involve stopping and inspecting trucks on all the main highways of the nation.
What is obscenity? It is more than publishing a photograph of a nude. Playboy magazine publishes pictures of undraped girls, but it also carries articles of general interest by well known authors, and it moves through the mails without restraint.
IN THE FAMOUS Roth case in 1957—the trial of a man caught sending pornography through the mail—the U.S. Supreme Court offered this definition to help determine what was obscene:
"Whether the average person applying contemporary community standards the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest."
It left some questions unanswered. Who is the average person? How old is he? Male or female? What is the standard of a contemporary community? Which community? Do people in Tuscon, Ariz., feel the same way about nude pictures as the population of Miami Beach, Fla.?
Thus each case must be fought on its own merits, but one phrase in the Supreme Court decision—"the dominant theme of the material as a whole"—offered a loophole to lawyers. The whole book or magazine must be considered, not just the sexy passages.
THAT IS WHY bookstores now
sell Frank Harris" "My Life and Loves." He writes plenty about sex, but also about art, politics and philosophy and, according to some critics, with considerable literary skill.
The Post Office Department has developed a new approach in its fight against pornography by trying to remove itself from the role of censor. It took a defeat in 1959 when Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield personally ruled that "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was "obscene and non-mailable." Grove Press, the publishers, took the case into federal district court in New York and Judge Frederick Van Pelt Bryan ruled that the postmaster general "has no special competence to determine what constitutes obscenity." He also ruled that the book was not obscene.
The new approach of the Post Office Department is to permit obscenity cases to be tried on the state and community levels with the local prosecutor doing the work. The department, if convinced it has an authentic case of obscenity, will assist the local prosecutor in any way possible including the production of evidence.
If you or your children receive something through the mail that you regard as obscene, the thing to do is turn it over to the local postmaster or prosecuting attorney. That will set legal machinery in motion.
KU Reaction Varies On Tax Cut Measure
Bob M. Keeney, instructor of business administration, said, "An equivalent amount of deficit spending would be more effective."
The tax cut law that President Johnson signed Wednesday was met on the KU campus in a variety of ways.
J. T. McDonald, senior analyst in the Governmental Research Center, said, "The administration feels this will get the economy sailing by giving more spending money to the people; England had a similar tax reduction last year which gave their economy a boost, however, the full effects of it are yet to come."
George W. Brown, assistant professor of political science, said, "It (the tax cut) is based on economic assumptions which have never been implemented in the United States. I hope the assumed growth is forthcoming, but I doubt if it will affect unemployment.
Darwin Daicoff, assistant professor of economics, said, "This is not a sudden happening. It's been going on for some time and is not going to have a dramatic effect. Many groups have already acted on the supposition of its being passed. There may well be some long range effects on income."
Clark Coan, assistant dean of men, said, "I hope it meets its objective of boosting the nation's economy, but I'm not altogether sure it will. More basic tax reforms are needed that weren't included. There are just too many loop holes."
Ronald K. Calgaard, assistant professor of economics, said, "Unless we have information as to the likely response of Federal Reserve policy, we can make exact predictions of employment effects, income effects, and balance payments. In general I regard the tax cut as desirable. A majority of the profession is in favor of the tax cut now and has been since it was proposed."
Some of the students were not aware that such a bill even existed. Others knew the full text.
MANY PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS have been formed to fight pornography. The Citizens for Decent Literature with headquarters in Cincinnati invites the public to send in complaints and, in turn, advises what legal steps to take.
Duane S. Knos, associate professor of geology, said. "I'm all for it. If we want to have growth we will have to have increased consumption. It is an effective way to create bigger demand, if it is not accompanied by cuts in government spending."
"President Johnson's 'fireside chat' signified the end of official obesisance of the Puritan ethic (of hard work, be frugal, and save). The new ethic is work, but not too hard, don't save, engage in conspicuous consumption—and somehow poverty will disappear."
The "average" student knows about the tax cut, but does not know the slightest micron about how the new bill works. He knows that it will mean a few dollars more in the consumer's hand each month which the consumer is supposed to spend. Somehow the money he spends is to relieve unemployment and a few other nice things for the government.
Then it publishes lists of objectionable and non-objectionable material. It is basically a Catholic organization but includes Protestants and Jews on its panel of 150 reviewers.
Lawrence Speiser, director of the Washington office, defined the organization's position:
The American Civil Liberties Union almost always is in the forefront of the fight against censorship, but it does not offer help to everybody accused of obscenity.
The National Office for Decent Literature in Chicago concentrates largely on material for minors. Once a year it reviews established magazines and comic books, new magazines and comic books when they appear and pocket-sized books when they are published.
"We will not enter into every obscurity case. We will intervene in those cases which we feel will offer an opportunity for the protection of the right of freedom of expression under the Bill of Rights. It depends largely on the merits of each individual case."
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