Dr. Wertham. Yes, these are photostats I had made for your benefit.
Now, it is a known fact, althongh it is not sufficiently emphasized, ihat many delinquents have reading disorders, they can't read well. There have been estimates as to how many delinquents have reading disorders.
We hare found over and over again that children who can't read are very discouraged and more apt to commit a delinquency and that is what Ma. Beaser meant, if there is another faetor.
There is another factor.
Mr. Beaser. Many other factors.
Dr. Wertham. Yes, many other factors. We have isolated comic baoks as one factor, A doctor tries to isolate one factor and see what it does and tries to correlate it with other factors which either coun- teract if or help it or run parallel.
Now, Mr, Chairman, I have put the results of this investigation into several documents. One of them is an article in the Ladies Home Journal which gives a nmuber of eases.
Another one 3s an article in the Render's Digest which came out today.
The third one is a book.
1 would like, Mr. Chairman, to draw your attention to the illus- trations, but 1 would like to say that Tam perfectly willing inasmuch as J have written this book with the greatest scientific care and checked and rechecked, and IT am perfecily willing to repeat every word in there nnder oath,
The Chairman. Doctor, these documents will be made a part of the subcommittee's permanent file, without objection. Let that be exhib- its Nos. 10a, 10b, and 10c.
(The documents referred to were marked "Exhibits Nos. 10a, 10b, and 10c," and are on file with the subcommittee.)
Dr. Wertham. Mr. Chairman, 1 would like to pomt out to you in conclusion that mine, in my own Gpinion, is Net a minority report. I don't feel that way.
T would like to tet] you that the highest psychiatric official in the Federal Government, who is also cousnited when psychiatric problems come up inthe Federat Government, Dv. Winfred Overholser, the Su- perintendent of Saint EJizabeths, has written that the evidence in my book is incontrovertible evidence of the pernicious influences on youth of crime comic books.
Prof. C. Wright Milt, a famous sociologist, a professor at Columbia, sunilarly agreed.
IT would like to read you a word from the director of the juvenile delinquency project of the Children's Burean in Washington, who has written:
In comie books we have a constant stream of gurbige that exnnat fail to pol- lite the minds of readers. After reading Dr. Werthany's book I yisited my local newsstand aud found the situation (o be exactly as he reported it.
Senator Kefauver. Who is it that wrote that?
Dr. Wertham. Mr. Bertram M. Peck, the director of the current juvenile delinquency project in Washington.
The Chairman. He was before the subcommittee earlier in the hearings.
