The new Federal Act, dealing
only with the mails, left certain loopholes; they were plugged up by
fastening drastic amendments upon the New York Code of Criminal
Procedure--amendments forced through the legislature precisely as the
Federal Act had been forced through Congress.[52] With these laws in his
hands Comstock was ready for his career. It was his part of the
arrangement to supply the thrills of the chase; it was Jesup's part to
find the money. The partnership kept up until the death of Jesup, in
1908, and after that Comstock readily found new backers. Even his own
death, in 1915, did not materially alter a scheme of things which
offered such admirable opportunities for the exercise of the Puritan
love of spectacular and relentless pursuit, the Puritan delusion of
moral grandeur and infallibility, the Puritan will to power.
Ostensibly, as I have said, the new laws were designed to put down the
traffic in frankly pornographic books and pictures--a traffic which, of
course, found no defenders--but Comstock had so drawn them that their
actual sweep was vastly wider, and once he was firmly in the saddle his
enterprises scarcely knew limits.
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