Senator W. Warren Barbour (Rep., N.J.) today introduced a bill which would make it a criminal offense to send through the mails matter inciting racial or religious hatred, among other things. It is similar to a measure offered by Barbour which died in the last Congress.
“While this measure, of course, is designed to bar the mails to all propaganda which would attack basic American principles,” Senator Barbour declared, “it was inspired by the fact that certain Congressmen have in the past used their mailing and franking privileges to spread un-American attacks on certain races and religions, not only through their own constituencies but through the entire country.”
He added that such propaganda by either public officials or private citizens was especially serious at this time as it attacked American national unity and the basic principles of democratic government.
Specifically, the Barbour bill would amend the Federal Criminal Code to make it a penal offense to send through the mails “indecent matter, or matter inciting to arson, murder, riot or assassination, or forgeries and matter of a character fraudulent, scurrilous and tending to incite hate against any creed or race or religious sect.”
In addition to the Barbour bill, the Senate received a bill from Senator Willis of Indiana which would make it mandatory that all publications sent through the mails bear the names and addresses of the publisher, editor and other officials.
A similar move had been urged recently by Chairman Gillette of the Senate Campaign Fund Investigating Committee as a result of his probe of scurrilous campaign literature distributed in the last campaign, a large part of which was anti-Semitic in tone.
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.
