Traps for the Young (John Harvard Library)

Anthony Comstock (18441915) was the self-styled guardian of the moral purity of youth, special agent of the Post Office Department, founder and leading spirit of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and premier anti-vice crusader in American History. Comstock wrote Traps for the Young to publicize and justify his activities and methods, which, according to his critics, verged on entrapment. One clergyman described Comstock as a man whose work was displeasing to Satan and whose methods were displeasing to saints. In Traps for the Young he deals with the menace of "evil reading," presents a raid-by-raid account of his crusade against lottery and policy operations, and denounces all efforts to repeal or modify the anti-obscenity laws he lobbied for and succeeded in having enacted.