HIS 216 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Anthony Comstock, Comstock Laws, Billy Sunday
29 Nov 2017
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Document Summary
The turn-of the century city and its vices immigration, industrialization. Traditional vices (drink, prostitution, gambling); modern, comm"l amusements (dance halls, nickelodeons, amusement parks) Reform: traditional moralists vs. modern experts (old-style moralists - religious framework of sin, repentance, suppression of evil - evangelical preacher billy. Sunday - anthony comstock, ny society for the suppression of vice, comstock law, 1873, & little. Comstock laws (modern experts - dominance, though never unchallenged natural & social sciences - degrees vs. sentiment scientific analysis, statistical surveys focus on physical environment of vice (vs. vice itself) use of government power (laws, regulations) Alcohol: anti-saloon league; prohibition; what saloons were really like. Prostitution: morals efficiency commissions - from social purity to social hygiene (scientific view, objectivity & candor, public health model) - american social hygiene association (1913) - white slavery & the mann act (1910) The court proceedings psychiatrists, freud, & the new psychology warped childhoods produce diseased children legal insanity (the m"naughton rule) vs. abnormality.
