The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
The paper contains the usual Sunday morning quota of
church notices, religious news and editorial moralizing--
constituting a delectable olla-podrida calculated to turn the
stomach of a self-respecting yaller dog. Doubtless many
purveyors of garters keep in stock those peculiarly
adapted to the trade of the "tenderloin"; but this is
the first time that I have seen such truck advertised in any
paper permitted to pass through the mails or enter the
homes of respectable people. Imagine a Houston parson
rising from family prayers on Sunday morning and placing
in the hands of his young daughter a "great moral daily"
which sets forth in display type that, for the small sum of
fifty cents, she can secure a pair of silken garters that warn
the great he-world that she's "a warm baby," and bid it
"look quick" at her shapely legs! Think of a modest old
mother in Israel watching the face of her youthful son as he
learns for the first time of garters that invite him to "take off
your things"! Fine Sabbath morning reading that for the so-
called Christian people of Harris county! Such an "ad."
would forever damn even the Nashville Banner, or show
in the feculent columns of the Kansas City Star like a
splotch of soot on the marble face of Raphael's Madonna.
The Police Gazette and Sunday Sun are debarred
from the mails, yet neither ever contained aught one-half so
horrible. We keep the "Decameron" and Daudet's
eroticisms under lock and key; yet they are only
"suggestive," while this is frankly feculent, a brazen bid for
bawdry. Should the ICONOCLAST publish such a thing it
would be promptly denounced from ten thousand pulpits as
a pander to pruriency; yet against the iniquity of the Daily
Chippie Chaser, alias the Houston Post, not one
preacher has raised his voice in protest! Why? Because
the dirty rag does not attack their religious dogma--does not
strike at their bread and butter! The shortest route to the
heart of the average parson is through his pocket--hit him
there and you raise a howl that startles high Heaven. Print
his church notices, report his foolish little sermons, kneel
with him in prayer, slander agnostics and atheists, serve
the ICONOCLAST as the foul yahoos did Gulliver, flip
a plugged nickel into the contribution box, and you may
safely flaunt the patois of the nymph du pave in the fair
face of every honest girl between Cape Cod and the
Golden Gate. And as it is with the average preacher so it
is with the bulk of his parishioners. The Post introduces
the language of the prostitute into the parlors of its patrons.
It boasts a boys' and: girls' club--"The Happyhammers"--of
more than six-hundred members, and to these children it
carries the first knowledge of sexual perversity, gives them
their initial lesson in social sin. Were this the paper's first
offense we might attribute it to the carelessness or stupidity
of a clerk in its counting-room and the incompetence of its
business; manager; but it is an old, a shameless, a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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