Free Speech Bibliography

FREE SPEECH BIBLIOGRAPHY by THEODORE SCHROEDER, secretary and Attorney of
THE FREE SPEECH LEAGUE. This Bibliography by Mr. Schroeder INCLUDES EVERY DISCOVERED ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PROBLEM COVERING EVERY METHOD OF TRANSNSMITTING IDEAS AND OF ABRIDGING THEIR PROMULGATION UPON EVERY SUBJECT - MATTER. I will let Mr. Schroeder write this description from "AN EXPLANATION" at the beginning of this book - he writes: "First let me say that I use the word “speech” in its broadest sense as including every method of transmitting intellectual light and heat. When confronted with the task of making classifications for this bibliography I was perplexed by the absence of precedent. First came the thought of a chronological arrangement, with author and subject-index. With a chronological arrangement, every item of one’s interest might be found on a different page, needing to be traced by oft repeated references to the subject index. Hence a waste of time. The chronological arrangement has obvious advantages only for students of the historical development of the free speech issue. One asks, why not make a subdivision on the basis of the external circumstances to which censorship is applied. Thus: Street-speaking, Theatre, Moving pictures, Parks, Post Office, Express, Inter-State Commerce, Newspapers, Magazines, Pictures, etc. This again involves and multiplies the same confusion as the chronological arrangement, and would furnish a minimum of help to those seeking light. Persons using this bibliography will seldom have their interests centre around the physical circumstances of censorship. That interest is more likely to be motivated in some fundamental lust for power, satisfiable by means of reputation, of property, or of political and religious institutions, and sexual customs. This reference to the human impulses that make for censorship may almost be called the psycho-genetic approach to a bibliographical classification. From this point of view, most censorships would be classified under such heads as sex motive, religious motive, economic motive, personal motive, etc. Under each of these could be subheads which relate more specifically to the motive, or other classifiable quality of the censored expression or persons. Thus economic motive would have such subhead as socialism, anarchism, labor unions, etc. Under sex motive we should think of birth control, sex-education, sex-reformers, etc. Under religious motives come blasphemy, Church and State, etc."
Emmett F. Fields