By David Dayton McKean
In addition to the two controls over meetings in private
halls and meetings in public places, Jersey City had, also an
anti-leaflet ordinance to control the distribution of all sorts
of printed matter. This was adopted in January, 1924, and
enforced at least until the decision of the Supreme Court in
the Georgia case of Lovell v. Griffin in 1937. (303 U.S. 444.) Even several
days after that decision was handed down, Mrs. Grace Milgram,
a resident of Jersey City, was arrested for distributing
civil liberties leaflets and taken before a Captain Quaile. She
testified that they `had a discussion concerning the distribution
of leaflets, and I asked him whether he intended to continue
to seize leaflets from leaflet distributors, and what he
was going to do about the Supreme Court decision, and he
told me, "We are enforcing the Jersey City ordinance, not
the Constitution." With a warning he let me go.' (Hague v. C.I.O., Transcript, pp. 421-422. Still later
the police confiscated leaflets being distributed by Joseph
Zarella and William Callahan of The Catholic Worker, but
they would make no arrests. Mayor Hague was confronted
with this evidence when he was on the stand in Newark:
Q. You think a religious circular should not be distributed?
Q. And if they are –
Q. I am not on the stand, sir. Ibid., pp. 1035-1036
This Web version, edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
He was then shown an unorthodox Catholic circular and
asked if there should have been objection to its distribution.
Q. Do you know that subsequent to the decision in the
Griffin case the police of Jersey City gathered circulars, took
them from the hands of persons who were trying to distribute
them
A. Well, it all depends just exactly what the circumstances
were. The police of Jersey City must assume that if there is
disorder and there is any danger of violence or uprising and the
circulars are a circular that would offend the people of Jersey
City, why, of course, naturally they would feel it was their
duty to remove the circulars.
While the Jersey City authorities soon announced that
they were going to enforce the Constitution, the distributors
of handbills may be controlled in other ways. They may be
locked up as vagrants or simply locked up for a few hours or
overnight without a charge. Most persons who resort to
leaflets as a means of influencing public opinion have but
little economic security; if they are not on relief or on W.P.A.
themselves they have friends or relatives who are, and they
do not even need a reminder of what can be done to them if
they `get out of line.' The organization, moreover, can
reward its friends and punish its enemies even in private
employment.
A. Well, I would say there is an objection to that; that is
not a proper circular to distribute amongst a community that
is law-abiding; that is a religious circular.
A. No, I do not. I think they ought to keep out.
A. They shouldn't come in there with any purpose of aggravating
the peace and quietness of the city. What right did that
circular have in Jersey City?
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