Limitless Leaflets

Two years ago, Mrs. Alma Lovell, devoted member of Jehovah's Witnesses, walked through the sleepy streets of Griffin, Ga. handing out the gospel of God's Kingdom in printed form. A policeman arrested her and a recorder sentenced her to 50 days in jail in default of a $50 fine for violating an ordinance prohibiting the distribution of "literature of any kind" without getting a license from the city manager.

Last week, her case having reached the U. S. Supreme Court, Mrs. Lovell obtained ultimate and full-panoplied justice. "The ordinance," announced Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, "is invalid on its face." Determined to protect the free press even in its simplest form, the august Justice intoned:

"The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. Mere publication is not the full measure of a free press, the Court continued: "Liberty of circulating is as essential to that freedom as liberty of publishing; indeed, without the circulation, the publication would be of little value."

Whatever joy Jehovah's Witnesses may have evinced at this victory was drowned in the triumphant cries of C. L O. and its friends, to whom the many ordinances restricting handbill distribution have often meant denial of the sole means of communicating their message to large groups of workers. In Jersey City, where the battle between C. I. O. and Mayor Frank ("I am the Law") Hague (TIME, Jan. 17) has languished during the past few weeks, things happened fast. Representatives of the Workers Defense League stationed themselves in its busiest thoroughfare and began handing out leaflets containing pertinent quotations from the Supreme Court decision. Police confiscated the leaflets as fast as they could be produced but, in accordance with an old Jersey City custom, refused to arrest the distributors. One Defense League representative was told by a police captain: "We're enforcing the Jersey City ordinance, not the Constitution." But next day, after consultation with his absent chief. Jersey City's corporation counsel conceded that the city's 22-year-old ordinance "comes within the scope of this opinion." By week's end, dozens of leaflet distributors were luxuriating in unmolested distribution. Sniffed the Hague-baiting New York Post: "That funny smell in Jersey City is the fresh air of freedom."

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