ivered by the present active head of the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice before the Women's City Club of
New York, Nov. 17, 1916:

"Natural and inevitable conditions, over which we can have no control,
will assert themselves wherever population becomes too dense. This has
been exemplified time after time in the history of the world where
over-population has been corrected by manifestations of nature or by
war, flood or pestilence.... Belgium may have been regarded as an
over-populated country. Is it a coincidence that, during the past two
years, the territory of Belgium has been devastated and its population
scattered throughout the other countries of the world?"

[73] For example, the printed contract of the John Lane Co., publisher
of Dreiser's The "Genius," contains this provision: "The author hereby
guarantees ... that the work ... contains nothing of a scandalous, an
immoral or a libelous nature." The contract for the publication of The
"Genius" was signed on July 30, 1914. The manuscript had been carefully
read by representatives of the publisher, and presumably passed as not
scandalous or immoral, inasmuch as the publication of a scandalous or
immoral book would have exposed the publisher to prosecution. About
8,000 copies were sold under this contract. Two years later, in July,
1916, the Society for the Suppression of Vice threatened to begin a
prosecution unless the book was withdrawn. It was withdrawn forthwith,
and Dreiser was compelled to enter suit for a performance of the
contract. The withdrawal, it will be noticed, was not in obedience to a
court order, but followed a mere comstockian threat. Yet Dreiser was at
once deprived of his royalties, and forced into expensive litigation.
Had it not been that eminent counsel volunteered for his defence, his
personal means would have been insufficient to have got him even a day
in court.

[74] The chief sufferers from this conflict are the authors of moving
pictures. What they face at the hands of imbecile State boards of
censorship is described at length by Channing Pollock in an article
entitled "Swinging the Censor" in the _Bulletin_ of the Authors' League
of America for March, 1917.

[75] For example, the magazine which printed David Graham Phillips'
Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall as a serial prefaced it with a moral
encomium by the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst. Later, when the novel
appeared in book form, the Comstocks began an action to have it