Declaring the mails were being flooded with anti-Semitic propaganda, Senator Alexander Wiley (Rep., Wis.) today introduced a bill which would require a label on all foreign propaganda sent through the United States mails.
The bill would require that all material disseminated through persons registered with the State Department as agents of foreign governments be identified as of foreign origin. Senator Wiley urged prompt consideration of the measure by the Senate Post office Committee, “in order that we may plug up an important loophole in our national defense, our mental defense.”
Senator Wiley said he had been prompted to introduce the bill by a constituent’s letter quoting an anti-Semitic statement falsely attributed to Charles Pinckney, South Carolina statesman of the revolutionary period.
“I had the Library of Congress check up on this quotation and found it absolutely false,” he told the Senate. He asserted that the mails were flooded with this type of material, “which the average citizen is inclined to accept at face value because it does not occur to him to question the source and it would be difficult to trace its actual foreign origin if he were so inclined.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
