In the whole long document of which only a brief portion is given here, there is only one mention of the words “preventing conception” and that is in a letter which Mr. Merriam quotes from Comstock and this _one mention is solely in connection with indecencies and perversions_. “Mr. Speaker, the purposes of this bill are so clearly in the best interests of morality and humanity that I trust it will receive the unanimous voice of Congress. It is terrible to contemplate that more than 6000 persons are daily employed in a carefully organized business, stimulated to activity by all the incentive that avarice and wickedness can invent, to place in the schools and homes of our country books, pictures and immoral appliances, of so low and debasing a nature that it would seem that the brute creation itself would turn from them in disgust.” With this, his opening paragraph, Mr. Merriam proceeded to express his confidence that Congress would so act and that “the outraged manhood of our age” would condemn this traffic which sought to make “merchandise of the morals of our youth.” Recent revelations had shown that no school or home was safe from these “corrupting influences” and that “the purity and beauty of womanhood has no protection from the insults of this trade.” Mr. Merriam said further that this trade was worse than war, pestilence or famine. Only this subtle influence, now revealed, could explain the “crime and depravity in this our day.” He then praised the revelations made by “one young man in New York whose hand with determined and commendable energy is falling heavily upon the workers in this detestable business,” referring to his exhibit of over 15,000 letters received by dealers in this literature from students of both sexes in all parts of the country. These and other letters in the Dead Letter Office had exposed a regular circulating library of obscene books and pictures. Most of the book plates had been recently seized and destroyed. With the object of placing all the facts before Congress and the country, Mr. Merriam placed in the Record as part of his remarks a long letter which he had received from Anthony Comstock of New York. The letter is dated January 18, 1873, and its first paragraphs are as follows: “Dear Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 12th instant in which you ask for a statement from me in reference to the traffic in obscene literature.