SALE OF UNCLEAN LITERATURE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27402, 15 July 1954, Page 12

SALE OF UNCLEAN LITERATURE

Auckland Booksellers Reply To Minister REFERENCES “ VERY UNFAIR” (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 14. The Government should examine the sale of trash in railway bookstalls before debasing booksellers in general, said the chairman of the Auckland Booksellers’ Association (Mr A. D. Mackay), commenting today, on behalf of the association, on the references by the Minister of Social Welfare (Mrs G. H. Ross) last night to the sale of unclean literature.

“Members of the association have repeatedly voiced their objections to the current flood of salacious magazines and so-called comics, which really concentrate on sex and crime,” said Mr Mackay. “Mrs Ross is being very unfair to an important section of the trading community when she blandly includes booksellers in her list of sources of supply for unclean trash. “Genuine booksellers do not stock this rubbish, and never will. “At the annual conference held at Wairakei last April it was unanimously agreed that members of the association would refrain from stocking and would return to distributors all publications which they found to be Tn poor taste,” he added. “Booksellers will continue their efforts to raise the standard of reading for young and old. No reputable member of the trade would consider action by the Government on Mrs Ross’s unclean trash as interference. In fact, they would like nothing better than a firm stand by the Government to suppress this harmful matter.

“Would it not be possible for some prosecutions to be instituted as a warning to milk-bar proprietors, tobacconists, and others, so that they will not be free to disseminate the type of literature which, we are sure, contributes to juvenile delinquency?”

N.Z. ASSOCIATION’S VIEW (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. July 14. The Associated Booksellers of NewZealand, replying |o “a reference in this morning’s paper to a large majority of booksellers stocking literature of an undesirable nature,” said today:— ‘‘The opinion of the Associated booksellers of New Zealand is well known throughout this country, and at successive conferences, and at the last conference in particular, booksellers showed that they are concerned at the trend of certain publications, and have always’offered every assistance in this matter. “The council recalls that two years ago it offered the Government every assistance in controlling the importation of low-class reading matter, and although a commission was set up by the Government no definite action appears to have been taken.”

MRS ROSS THANKED FOR APPEAL Thanks to the Minister for Social Welfare (Mrs G. H. Ross) for the “splendid and outspoken appeal” she made in the House of Representatives on Tuesday were expressed in a resolution passed unanimously at a meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Justices of the Peace Association last evening. Mrs Ross had appealed not only to members of Parliament but to the country to do everything possible to safeguard the moral welfare of the young people of New Zealand, the resolution continued. ‘‘We will wholeheartedly support the Minister in her efforts,” it said.