Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1914-06-18
PRESS. SPONSORSHIP WILL FOLLOW
 GOVT OWNERSHIP OF TELEGRAPH
The Chicago Tribune says:

| NON0l OWllCl Ol ICiCSl oPl I wires would mean government censor l ship of the matter transmitted over them. It would mean an extension of the powers of what is becoming Offen- sive and obnoxious bureaucracy. It
 would mean a widening of the domain in which the bureau chiefs and their subordinates assume legislative and
 judicial functions.
 In America a dictorial bureaucracy
 $ repugnant to every principle of gov ernment It does away with establish ed and defined processes which pro-
 tect liberty. It sets up the dictum of chief or subordinate as the law.
 The defination of right is in the ipse dixit of some official.
 Censorship when it becomes politi- cal is danger to freedom; when it be- comes stupid it is a danger to intelli- gence.
 Government control of telegraph wires would put under bureau diree- tion the most important rceanS of tran smitting intelligence. Time is the essence in the use of the wires. Gen. sorship would constitute not a remedi- able but an rremedable intervention of authority
 Matter offered to the mails may be barred by a subordinate in the post service and later released by order of a higher official on the advice of the assistant district attorney general as signed to the department. The result is delay but not suppression. Mat ter offered for transmission over the telegraph wires in nearly all cases is of such character that delay is vir tual suppression.
 The postoffice is the most powerful! political organization in the federal government. Postmasters are active political agents. Sometimes they car ry their political functions into their work as post servants, even to the eX- tent of tampering with mail matter hey know to be in the interest of hostile political propaganda. That is aside from censorship. They are also the agents by which orders restricting or prohibiting the use of the mails are executed. They, or officials like them would be the censors of telegrams,
 It is not often they have the oppor- tunity to be censors of mail on their own initiative, but in the case of tele- grams they would always have the opportunity. All that would be nee essary would be to hold for instruc- tions from Washington. The loss of time would be suppression
 Acts of the postoffice department within recent memory do not serve to suggest that such fears are ex, treme. Two weeks ago a magazine was delayed while the officials at the department decided whether re- production of photographs of several pieces of statuary which the magazine contained came under the prohibition of the law. The subordinate who rais- ed the question was overruled and the released. In that case delay had some advertising value.
 The department barred from the i mails reports of sex hygiene lectures given in Chicago. The matter was offered at the Chicago office, where
 i5 was held for Instructions from Washington. The act was remedial ble. If telegram were offered and held, it would not be. Except in rare 1 cases, to hold a telegram would de- stroy the time value which required 1 that it be a telegram.
 Undoubtedly there was suppression of news in the Calumet mining dis trict. Consider the additional embar rassment to the presentation of facts if the Calumet district postmasters having the telegraph also in their con- trol, had been guided by local senti- ment, and had ruled that press tele- grams contained matter offensive to the public veal. AS it was, all that was known of the Mover incident was that he had been "escorted" to the rail road station and put on a train-until he arrived in Chicago with a bullet wound and went to the hospital
 Bureaucratic censorship of intelli- sence is something to be combated and not extended Punishment for misuse of the mails should be severe, but it should not rest, as it does now with subordinate to determine that an offense is about to be committed.
 In the case of the telegraph every government employe in charge of a telegraph office would have authority by merely holding for instructions, what might and what might not be sent
 This would be the most damaging sort of censorship that the frpedOnl of