The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-12-20
By WILLIS THORNTON
NEA Service Staf Correspondent

NEA Service Stan Correspondent
 The principle of a free press once established, the years since have witnessed a continual fight over the question, "How much 1reedom?"
 Obviously there can be no such thing as an absolutely free press, any more than there can be abso- lutely free speech. There are some things that can not be said public ly, or printed publicly, without ir- reparable damage to people.
 Thus both speech and press al. ways have been hedged about by laws defining what may be said and what may be printed.
 Those two things are Siamese twins. A restriction on one is al- most certain to be a restriction on the other, though the regulation of what may be printed is neces- sarily closer than on what may be spoken, because the printed word usually reaches more people and may do more harm.
 At least that was so before ad- vent of the radio, and most such laws are pre-radio.
 RIGHT OF ALL WHO
 MAY WISH TO PRINT.
 No editor questions the right to punish him after publication, if he violates the laws against li- bel or indecency. What the press insists on is the right to print without official supervision or license, assuming the conse- quences.
 And that right is not a right granted to specific group, say ''the newspapers" The right of freedom to print and publish is right of the little fellow who sets up a press in back alley.
 It is not the right of the "big city papers, alone, but of the 12,O0O weeklies, the 700 religious papers, the 2744 class and trade papers.
 To-day, in Hillside, N. J., there is case against an. obscure agi- tator, charged with giving out radical pamphlets without a permit" that involves freedom of the press as vitally as would SUD- pression of the New York World Telegram.
 It is not question of the na- turc of the literature which An- tonic Gabriel and John Gasperei- tis gave out. It is the fact that they were required to take out 9 license to give it out at all.
 Freedom of the press involves equally the right of Antonio Gabriel to distribute pamphlets : printed in some obscure shop and the right of the greatest newspa- pers to circulate.
 CURES ARE AIMED AT
 FREEDOM OF PRESS
 Curbs on the fredom to express and distribute thought usually run in these channels:
 1. Licensing-the position that no one may print anything at all unless it pleases the authorities.
 2. Taxation-imposing discrim- inatory or confiscatory taxes for the express purpose of driving certain publications out of busi- ness.
 3. Restriction = making suc- cessive restrictions on what may be printed, such as the device that a government body itself may be libeled, and suits for confiscatory sums.
 
 forbidding publication.
 In the effort to preserve all the liberty necessary to free discus sion and information, and yet pre- vent libelous, scandalous, and so- cially undesirable publications, a legal balancing act has been go- ing on for 150 years, leaning now this side, now that, of the wire. S,rATES HAVE TRIED TO CLAMP ON GAGS The states, since congress is forbidden expressly by the Con- stitution to pass any law abridgins the freedom of the press, have been the experimental grounds for such attempts. There have been many.
 The city of Chicago, for in- stance. sued the Chicago Tribune for $1O.00O,O0O, alleging libel That was a new one, for Ameri- can precedent always had been