recently authorized its reporters to use street-walker[1] But in certain quarters the change is viewed with alarm, and curious traces of the old prudery still survive. The Department of Health of New York City, in April, 1914, announced that its efforts to diminish venereal disease were much handicapped because "in most newspaper offices the words syphilis and gonorrhea are still tabooed, and without the use of these terms it is almost impossible to correctly state the problem." The Army Medical Corps, in the early part of 1918, encountered the same difficulty: most newspapers refused to print its bulletins regarding venereal disease in the army. One of the newspaper trade journals thereupon sought the opinions of editors upon the subject, and all of them save one declared against the use of the two words. One editor put the blame upon the Post-office, which still cherishes the Comstock tradition. Another reported that "at a recent conference of the Scripps Northwest League editors" it was decided that "the use of such terms as gonorrhea, syphilis, and even venereal diseases would not add to the tone of the papers, and that the term vice diseases can be readily substituted."[2] The Scripps papers are otherwise anything but distinguished for their "tone," but in this department they yield to the Puritan habit. An even more curious instance of prudery came to my notice in Philadelphia several years ago. A one-act play of mine, "The Artist," was presented at the Little Theatre there, and during its run, on February 26, 1916, the Public Ledger reprinted some of the dialogue. One of the characters in the piece is A Virgin. At every occurrence a change was made to A Young Girl. Apparently, even virgin is still regarded as too frank in Philadelphia.[3] Fifty years
- ↑ Even the Springfield Republican, the last stronghold of Puritan Kultur, printed the word on Oct. 11, 1917, in a review of New Adventures, by Michael Monahan.
- ↑ Pep, July, 1918, p. 8.
- ↑ Perhaps the Quaker influence is to blame. At all events, Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world. Early in 1918, when a patriotic moving-picture entitled "To Hell with the Kaiser" was sent on tour under government patronage, the word hell was carefully toned down, on the Philadelphia billboards, to h——.
