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Stafford: Cheap novels and the damage done

Updated 7:41 PM Saturday, October 17, 2009

The current concern is for video games.

But research for today’s, Oct. 19 Looking Back story about pioneer aviator Charles F. Walsh’s dramatic visit to Springfield revealed that in 1912, youth values were being put at risk by another insidious temptation.

Said the headline near the bottom of Page 1 of the Oct. 6, 1912, Springfield Daily News: Cheap novels lead to numerous thefts.”

“Cheap novels containing accounts of thrilling highway robberies, bank robberies and exciting wild west hold-ups, and films of this character in moving picture shows, are attributed for the apparent mania to steal which has developed in 14-year-old John Masters, who was in juvenile court Saturday,” the paper said.

After confessing to to Judge Frank W. Geiger than he’d stolen nearly $18 from two homes and a gun and a bicycle from a neighbor, the report continued, Masters seemed to confirm the fear.

“The boy ... told Judge Geiger that he read books on wild west stories and robberies, and that he read an average of a novel a day.”

The boy’s mother (the newspaper noted that she worked outside the home), was beside herself.

“She does not know how to prevent him from getting the cheap literature and from drinking in the ideas in exciting moving picture films,” the report said.

In the end, the judge decided to address Masters’ theft and reading habits with the same intervention technique.

Said the story: “The youth will be sent to the reformatory for a while to see if he can straighten up.”

Tom Stafford is a reporter for the Springfield News-Sun. Contact him at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.

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