More of my conversation with this woman

"I have a daughter of eleven," she said. "She reads comic books. Of course only the animal comics. I have heard that there are some others, but I have never seen them. Of course I would never let them come into my home and she would never read them. As for what you said about crime comics, Doctor, they are only read by adults. Even so, these crime comics probably aren't any worse than what children have read all along. You know, dime novels and all that." She looked at me then with a satisfied look, pleased that there was one subject she could really enlighten me about.

I asked her, "In the group that I am to speak to, do you think some of the children of these women have gotten into trouble with stealing or any other delinquency?"

She moved forward confidentially. "You've guessed it," she said. "That's really why we want these lectures. You'd be astonished at what these children from these good middle-class homes do nowadays. You know, you won't believe it, but they break into apartments, and a group of young boys molested several small girls right in our neighborhood! Not to speak of the mugging that goes on after dark."

"What happens to these boys?" I asked her.

"You know how it is," she said. "One has to hush these things up as much as possible, but when it got too bad, of course, they were put away."