Word: croteau
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sole sober note amidst all the Bachannalian preparations was sounded by Louis Croteau, executive secretary of the Watch and Ward Society, from the recesses of the Christian Endeavor Building in downtown Boston...
Late in the 20's the need for change became apparent. While great numbers of the Society's directors predicted a Gomorrah-like conflagration, the new secretary, Louis Croteau, embarked on a policy that conceded to Evil on short-run objectives, but went down the line when it came to the greater dangers. These were, and are, according to Croteau, commercialized gambling, professional and simon-pure prostitution, the narcotics trade, and obscenity...
...Croteau is not the sort of man you'd expect in the wispy levels of morality. He stands with his feet firmly in the muck, in full knowledge of what goes on in Boston, and why, and whom to go to see to have it stopped. His great lament is the overplay given the Society's censorship activities, which take only ten percent of its efforts and even less of its $2,500,000 endowment. Outside the field of censorship, Watch and Ward is just another Legion of Decency, an unofficial vice squad that has the support of most communities...
Many will question the need for a watchdog of morality, especially in Boston. But Croteau cities Scollay and the "tenderloin" area (in and around lower Washington Street) as examples of what a surface-strict city will allow under the facade. Whether Watch and Ward can help has been a matter for frequent public debate. Certainly the Society's streamlined and neo-sociological methods in the field of vice-suppression cannot hurt. But along with the new methods has come expansion--Watch and Ward will move from its retreat to occupy the entire Christian Endeavor Building. Its new facilities will...
Friday. Most surprising witness was Louis Croteau, executive secretary of Boston's bluenosed, privately financed Watch and Ward Society, "watchdog of New England's morals." He qualified as smut expert because he sees four or five burlesque shows a week for 40 weeks a year (enough to make it pretty tiresome), hunts indecency in some 60 to 70 publications weekly. Said he: "After profound consideration, I didn't find anything. . . . lewd [in Esquire']. ... It is in the spirit of good clean slapstick humor and we could all use a little more of it right...