Show ft Americas America's F Free fee Speech 1 TT IT IS easy easy enough to be in favor o of of free i. i speech when nobody has anything exciting foay fo Say It Itis is quite another matter to be for it i someone insists on saying something ou dont don't lik like j v Many a nc bl public official 1 has has quite guite tracked under this strain It is a difficult situation Our sympathy accordingly goes to Mayor Gillespie of Pittston Pa a town which h is a focal point for much of Pennsylvania's Pennsylvania's Pennsyl- Pennsyl r vania's anias ania's coal field trouble Three New Yorkers vent went to PIttston to speeches about the way the strike wa was D eing handled The authorities locked them fp p Th The would be speakers declared that free ree peCh as far as Pittston was as concer concerned ed was bad dd S Mayor Gillespie denied it S S but it would be better if it were dead JJ said aid than to to have dead bodies lying in 1 streets II Now Isow it nay may well be that the mayor had hadde inside de information which told him that bloody rioting noting would surely follow any public cri i- i of Pennsylvania's s 's coal barons But even g. g t so so he might have made his v a l little HUle less broad r. r It happens that free speech which is guarin guar- guar guaranteed in our constitution is one of the fundamental fundamental funda- funda mental parts of our democracy And in case Mayor jayor Gillespie has forgotten someone tell him hint that in 1776 and thereafter r there were not a few Americans who hill preferred having any number of dead LT bodies lying in the streets to seeing free speech t lain They were quite serious about it in Virginia a young man named Patrick Henry Jenry declared openly that while others might do a 1 they wished he himself would rather be dead than live without libert liberty t Freedom Freedom of of speech 0 of conscience of S action is is a strange thing It does not merely merely'S S 'S mean the right to talk and act as you wish 1 Yh n your words and actions are similar to everyone rises rise's it means the right to speak our our mind and live your life when your s s ie arc diametrically opposed to those of the majority There have been Americans o who Iho realized this full well It was known in Boston for instance when a British general used muskets on a group of colonists who 4 w to speak their minds about oppression The Thc Boston massacre which resulted was 3 one of the things that led to o th the Declaration of Independence t It mi might ht be well welt for Pittston's mayor to borrow his sons son's school books and read a little American history He might might might-it it is possible possible find find it advisable to modify his statement just a little a |