“The truth is that the Dime Novel was regarded as something worse than a waste of time… It was wrong to read Dime Novels because they were so interesting. Like the movies today they were a moral danger because they were so much more attractive than school, church, Sunday school, or ‘good’ reading. And wandering through Mr. O’Brien’s collection one realizes that the moving picture of today has little in the way of sensational appeal over the static picture of yesterday… There had been periods when the virtues of of the pioneer, his enterprise, his self-reliance, his courage, his romantic love for the wilderness, had been necessary to the development of the country. That time was passing. To excite admiration for such qualities was to introduce an element of restlessness and disquiet in communities in which flannel shirt and Bowie knife had given place to white collar and lead pencil”.
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