Free Press Anthology

This book is all about freedom of speech and that of the press. The fundamental questions the author raises in this book find a similar resonance even today.

In author’s words:
“A FEW YEARS ago, I went to a public library containing 250,000 volumes, and found in its catalogue only two items indexed under freedom of speech and press. In several smaller libraries nothing upon this subject was found. Such conditions evidence a supine and lethargic security which is ever the best possible encouragement for the destroyers of liberty. I was therefore partially prepared for another extraordinary discovery.

A comparative study of the laws persuaded me that, notwithstanding our paper constitutions to the contrary, liberty of speech and of the press, in some parts of the United States, is now abridged to a greater extent than it is in England, or was, even a century ago. While the cruelty of the penalties has been much relaxed, the number of penalized ideas has been increased. Now, as then, these repressive laws are not generally enforced, but are always readily and successfully invoked against persons who have otherwise made themselves unpopular.

The arbitrariness of the lawless suppression of free speech by ignorant, hysterical, and tyrannical police officers, and through the extension of executive process and government by injunctions, and the unjust discrimination manifested in the exercise of a lawless discretion on the part of municipal executives and our quasi-official moralists for revenue, should be apparent and abhorrent to all who view current events with an earnest and intelligent desire to promote truth, justice, and liberty.

This deplorable condition of the public indifference to the facts, and the unconsciousness of their wrong, or of the future support of these precedents abridging free utterance, together with the quite general judicial indorsement of this abridged freedom, make such a book as this an unappreciated necessity, and useful in spite of its many defects, simply because it is the only thing of its kind in existence”. — Extract from the Author’s Introduction