According to Edward V. Hickey, a Quincy businessman who heads the Society, some 350 publications have been removed from stands in and around Boston by "purely voluntary" methods. Again, the bookseller is merely "requested", presumably in a man-to-man talk, to remove the material from sale; according to Hickey, "we made no threats of boycott or prosecution."

The Holy Name Society, which Hickey said is often aided in its efforts by other organizations, bases its action on reports from the National Organization for Decent Literature. It is on the watch, only for obscenity, Hickey said, and is not concerned with material which might prove objectionable on racial or religious grounds.

"Not for juveniles" has never been this group's catch phrase, however. It aims, frankly at any and all indecent literature, no matter what the possible audience.

"It's the same problem in selling bum goods of any kind," Hickey said, "and we ask sellers to look at it that way."

Since its formation, the Advisory Committee--the more publicized of the two groups--has withstood vigorous, albeit sporadic, attacks from opponents both to the right and to the left.

Vagueness?

Those of the conservative element feel the advisory group is far too wishy-washy; as is implied in three bills still pending in the Massachusetts House, they want censorship with a punch to it.

Squatters on the other side of the fence are inclined to think the Committee's functioning vague and inconsistent. Writers, critics, publishers and various literati most frequently fall in this camp. They question the value of banning a 25 cent reprint edition of a work, while allowing the two or three dollar hard cover edition to go scot free, for instance. On the other tack, when one publisher's book came under the prohibitory advice of the Committee, he claimed that the entire group was set up on the "perilous presumption" that 29 individuals can act as censors.

On the whole, the Advisory committee has done a good job, as intelligent a job as could be expected from a group of its nature. The group has tried to keep a sober, balanced perspective on the problems of censorship, and by its very existence, perhaps prevents other more vicious forms of censorship from being set up. Various members, in fact, have recently been called upon to lobby against House bills which attempted to deal with the exact situation the group handles.

Commendable Enterprise

No one can question the motives of the Holy Name's work, either, in carrying on its anti-filth campaign. The enterprise is commendable; the effect so far has been limited to minor volumes of an obscene nature.

Massachusetts moral forces are hardly alone in their realization that low-priced publications are a problem. A House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials is at present holding hearings in Washington on that very subject. The atmosphere, as could have been expected, is seething. The following are excerpts from publication of testimony:

Vituperation

Margaret Culkin Banning, author and Vassar graduate says: some 1100 magazines now being sold have no other purpose but that of "pictorial prostitution."

Rep. E. C. Gathings (D. Ark.), chairman of the committee: Pocket-sized books have become "artful appeals to sensuality, immortality, filth, perversion, and degeneracy."