Controlling Undesirable Magazines in Canada, 1946

Jessie Robson (Mrs. Austin) Bothwell and the Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council, The Problem of Controlling the Reading of Undesirable Periodical Literature. Regina: Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council, 1946. [A Brief presented to Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council on November 25, 1946; reprinted in the Ontario Library Review 31, no. 2 (May 1947): 125–136]

By 1950 romance comics were very popular with teenage girls

In the immediate years following WW II, the mass production and distribution of cheap publications, such as comics, pocketbooks, magazines, and tabloids, quickly became a new phenomenon facing Canadians. At the same time, the issue of adolescent development, youth culture, and juvenile delinquency came to the fore. The rapid spread of youthful preferences in fashion, popular music, sports, vocabulary, dating, and reading attracted the attention of parents, teachers, home and school associations, religious organizations, women’s groups, and other civic organizations eager to influence or control the cultural activities of teenagers. Libraries, of course, were confronted with the ever-changing accessibility of popular literature to children, youth, and the working classes.  At the spring 1945 session of the School and Intermediate Libraries Section of the Ontario Library Association, a lively round table discussion, “Are we too conservative in choosing books for young people?” elicited differing comments from librarians who were concerned with the spread of cheap, sordid pulp magazines and unrestricted sales at newsstands of comics featuring gangsters in Crime Does Not Pay or the superheroes battling villains in Exciting Comics.

June 1946 issue

These new social trends disturbed many Canadians at home and across the nation. For libraries, issues about suitable reading were not new. The most immediate postwar library examination of undesirable or salacious literature came from the Provincial Librarian of Saskatchewan, Jessie Bothwell, in 1946. She was an active member of women’s organizations in Regina and was well-regarded for her community work. She was born in Regina in 1883 and married a Rhodes Scholar, Austin Bothwell, who died in 1928, leaving her as a working mother of three children. After earning a library science certificate from McGill University in 1931, Bothwell became Saskatchewan’s Legislative Librarian and was promoted to Provincial Librarian in 1944 in charge of the legislative, open shelf, and travelling libraries. She also spurred the development of a regional libraries act for Saskatchewan in 1946 and became a lifetime member of the Canadian Library Association. She retired in 1951 and died in Regina in 1971.

When the newly elected Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government formed a seven-member Library Advisory Council in 1945, Jessie Bothwell became a member and its secretary. One of the aims of the Council was to investigate standards for library service. Possibly, this is the genesis of her report at the end of 1946 to the Council that was planning postwar expansion of public libraries. Her report documented arguments for and against questionable materials (mostly on newsstands, not libraries) and outlined contemporary efforts and ideas to control their circulation. There were six sections dealing with (1) the types of periodicals, (2) the arguments for and against, (3) the circulation of literature, (4) the distribution of magazines, (5) the efforts to control circulation, (6) three appendices with statistics on magazine circulation and a bibliography used for the report.

Types. Bothwell classed undesirable periodicals into five categories: (1) salacious and pornographic; (2) low-grade fiction specializing in love, crime, and westerns; (3) confession magazines such as True Story; (4) movie magazines; and (5) comic books. She noted there were already Canadian legal restrictions that could be brought to bear against the first class, which many people considered reasonable. The other categories were inexpensive and widely circulated across North America despite their objectionable, tantalizing features.

Arguments. In summarizing arguments about these periodicals, Bothwell stressed they were a kind of “literary malnutrition” that encouraged lazy reading and escapism. The emphasis on sex, violence and crude portrayal of human character indicated a decline in moral standards. Some materials were a poor substitute for more constructive leisure activities. She noted the argument that comic reading was associated with juvenile delinquency and dubious character formation. However, many people pointed to freedom read on the part of adults as a prime defence. As well, the step-ladder theory of reading and the potential of broadening a person’s knowledge of contemporary life were possible benefits. Further, attacking magazines alone could not solve the general problem of moral development because movies, radio, and popular songs were alternative questionable sources adults, adolescents, and children could access. Often, defenders stated that the causes of juvenile delinquency lay much deeper than reading comics.

Circulation and Distribution. Bothwell provided some interesting information on Canadian magazine reading habits post-1945 but was not able to identify specific figures for ‘problem’ magazines. She had to rely on American figures for the general classes she described. She felt the sale of American magazines followed patterns south of the border where comic books exceeded all other magazine genres in terms of readership: the monthly readership was estimated to be 100,000,000 per month. Popular weeklies, such as Liberty and Colliers, stood second in line. Women’s magazines came in third at just under 25,000,000 per month, followed by movie, confession and detective magazines. News and home and garden magazines were less popular than their newsstand rivals. There were only a few pulp magazines or comics published in Canada, and just ten percent of a 1941 poll read ‘story magazines’ (Redbook, True Story, etc.) Tobacco shops, general stores, and drug stores served as important retail outlets for these affordable magazines. She reported Canadian sales of $36,487,000 for books, magazines, and stationery for all of Canada in 1941.

Controls. The fifth section got to the heart of the matter, i.e., the control of controversial periodicals through legal means. Bothwell went into some detail on five fronts. She began by noting the federal Criminal Code prohibited the publication, sale, display, and distribution of mailing obscene matter that might corrupt morals. Provincial Attorney-Generals were responsible for enforcement. The federal post office had the power to bar obscene, immoral, seditious or indecent items from the mail. The federal Customs Tariff Act could seize seditious, immoral or indecent publications at the border, therefore preventing entry into Canada. These methods were workable, but it was not feasible to stretch the legal powers too far, as in the case of movie or confession magazines. Bothwell recounted the efforts to impose a tariff on periodicals in 1931 by the Bennett government that ended unsuccessfully because American firms began publishing magazines in Canada after the tax was introduced. The tax was repealed in 1935.

Provincial regulations were apparently not effective either. Provinces could legislate police in regard to public morals and delegate responsibility to municipalities. Municipal councils also controlled the licensing of newsdealers. A special sales tax on classes of periodicals was also possible through provincial legislation but there were problems concerning the collection of this tax, not to mention its unpopularity with the public. The report broached the difficult issue of grading periodicals, possibly into adult or juvenile classifications. The whole issue of establishing these grades, either by self-regulation or by the government, was left unsaid.

A second front, one educators and librarians had favoured for many years, was to provide alternative, wholesome reading, thereby opening the possibility of low-grade readers eventually transitioning to better publications. Of course, many of these readers did not use libraries. “Pressure must be put on publishers to bring out an increasing number of good books in paper-bound editions which are colourful, attractive and easy to read. The newsstands must also be encouraged to carry these.” Getting children to learn the ‘library habit’ at an early age was another potential counter to objectionable magazines and comics.

Canadian summer issue 1945

Bothwell then outlined attempts to influence magazine content. A community-based approach  — organized protests by women’s groups and community organizations against the “worst offenders” might induce publishers to “clean-up their publications.” As well, parents and teachers in homes and schools could influence better reading habits. Possibly, publishers themselves adhere to higher standards through self-regulating codes. Bothwell then turned to children’s reading, a concern to many educators, politicians, and librarians.

The fourth section on controls, that is, the intelligent use of comics, recognized this form of entertainment was likely to become a permanent feature. Already, some teachers realized that graphics, simple language, and comics type helped pupils grasp ideas more quickly. Comics could be an inspiration for artwork, posters, and dramatic productions and for instilling forward looking attitudes, ideas, and vocabulary building for some children. 

Finally, the report dealt with the potential to immunize children and adolescents against undesirable literature. Bothwell noted the conclusion of a recent British Columbia report on social welfare and education which recommended the government “lend every possible encouragement to the establishment and development of community centres, and the greater use of school buildings for recreational physical education, and other leisure-time purposes under the leadership of trained personnel.” With sufficient outlets for activities and a well-rounded life of work and play, children and young adults (a terminology that was becoming prevalent in libraries) would spend less time with comic books.

Jessie Bothwell’s report was the most substantive library report on the broader issue of controversial publications in Canada for many years. She did not elaborate on federal censorship of publications because these were not available for purchase by libraries. Nor did she wade into the issue of self-censorship by librarians selecting books. For the most part, she did not have to because libraries avoided steamy publications and they restricted adult access to risqué novels and controversial non-fiction subjects that adults normally had to request to read. Some publications that were sold in stores, such as Erskine Caldwell’s Tragic Ground or the magazine 1946 Cartoon, were subjected to criminal court actions during 1946. The Attorney-General in Ontario deemed these items salacious or obscene; however, court judges ruled otherwise during short trials and the charges against the Toronto book dealers and distributors were subsequently dismissed by early 1947. These test cases demonstrated the difficulty in pursuing criminal charges in the Canadian court system against realistic fiction and comic depictions of army jokes.

When the Ontario Library Association formed an Intellectual Freedom Committee in June 1948, it endorsed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and adopted a ‘watch and ward’ tactic to investigate any perceived infringements affecting libraries and librarians. However, efforts by the the American Library Association to counter intolerance, suppression of free speech, and censorship with its revision of  the Library Bill of Rights in 1948, did not really influence OLA or library practice in Canada. For Bothwell and many others, the larger question of censorship and the production or distribution of published material was of less concern because her support for the established role of the library to substitute good literature to counter the “low-grade magazines” struck a responsive note. Indeed, Bothwell became chair of the Canadian Library Association’s Committee on Undesirable Literature for a short time in 1950–51, and two years later, this committee, now headed by Edgar Robinson (chief librarian of Vancouver Public Library), submitted a report to the federal Special Committee on Sale and Distribution of Salacious and Indecent Literature that reiterated this position:

“That we are convinced that the most effective means of combatting [sic]the bad book is by substituting the good book. That we believe that the demand for undesirable reading can be decreased by increasing the number of libraries, and, with them, the supply of acceptable reading matter.”

By the mid-1950s, the ‘Golden Age’ of comic books and mass-market pulp magazines was drawing to a close. American publishers introduced the Comics Code Authority in 1954 to self-regulate the content of comic books and appease critics. Paperback novels, radio dramas, and television shows had eroded the popularity of long-standing magazines such as Love Story Magazine or Weird Tales. Most adults using libraries were conservative in their literary tastes and reluctant to alter existing conditions in the sphere of intellectual freedom. It was a complacency based on community standards that few librarians were prepared to challenge. Yet, there were signs of liberalization: the 1953 CLA brief to the Senate had stated that censorship was ultimately more harmful than good. In a few short years, the courts would reverse the ban on the novel Peyton Place, and bolder libraries would venture to circulate Lolita.

There is an online tribute to Jessie Bothwell by the Saskatchewan Library Trustees Association that was originally prepared in 1975.

Read my earlier blog on the acceptance of The Grapes of Wrath by chief librarian, Alexander Calhoun, Calgary Public Library, 1939.