Among us are some few who insist that the publishing business is going to the dogs – and taking most everyone right along with it, too. These public spirited folk have been busy, busy, busy "cleaning up" children's comics and now they're starting in on adult magazines and paperback books. The do-gooders have been trying (with a truly remarkable lack of success) to find some connection between books, magazines and juvenile delinquency. They're particularly concerned with some of the lurid covers on today's publications – the thinking being: junior skips to the corner confectionery for his daily supply of gumballs and there the sex and violence openly displayed on the magazine stand infects his little mind. That night, though his parents had always treated him kindly and indulged his every whim, the child sexually molests his baby sitter, garrotes the cat and burns down the family homestead.
"It's a mighty good thing they didn't have that kind of sensational stuff corrupting minds and morals when we were children," we said to a friend recently, "or think where the present generation might be."
"Horsefeathers," said our friend.
"Horsefeathers?" we queried.
"Horsefeathers," he repeated. "You've an extraordinarily poor memory. Magazines were considerably more sensational then than they are now."
"More sensational?" we gasped in disbelief. "But how can that be? It's a well known fact that the publishing business is going to the dogs and ..."
"Horsefeathers," said our friend.
So we checked. It did seem as though we'd read something a bit more exciting than Tom Swift and his Electric Grandmother when we were struggling through adolescence, but we were hardly prepared for what we found. Our friend was quite correct. Today's pocket-sized books offer an occasional plunging neckline, but in the good old days they didn't bother with necklines at all, just wisps of hair or smoke. And violence? Wow! Whips and axes – buzz saws and hypodermic needles!
We've collected a few of the choicer covers of twenty years ago to permit comparisons. Horsefeathers, say we. If the publishing business is on its merry way to the kennels, it's taking a hell of a roundabout way of getting there.
Today, collector's items like these sell for $5 and $10. During the Thin Thirties, used magazines came cheaper. The "exotic, peppy, exciting" issue below was stamped "2 for 15c" which referred, we think, to the publication.
Luckily for publishers, long hair was the style back in the Thirties
On magazine covers at least, it had a rare talent for always being in the right place at the right time.
No foul fiend was complete without hypodermic, test tube or buzz saw.
