"FREE SPEECH IN CAROLINA"

From Columbia, South Carolina, comes the report that Peter Moody, college sophomore who revealed the miserable working conditions among the mill-workers in a recent article, has been ordered examined by a psychiatrist. The Carolina House of Representatives has struck back, and in the language of the ring, struck below the belt.

The obvious answer is that the legislature, controlled by the powerful mill interests, has seen fit to object to the probing finger of publicity on its most tender spot--conditions in the mills. As in the West Virginia coal mines of a few years back, and the Tennessee mines and Louisiana sugar plantations of today, the working conditions of the men and women employed is often appalling. The Moody case is an instance of the rigorous censorship which is kept on all unfavorable reports of what is going on below the Mason-Dixon Line.

This instance of suppression of free speech and terrorization should be brought before every university in the country today. No more flagrant example of intimidation has assailed the nostrils of American colleges in years and the action taken by the Carolina House should be relegated to the same ash-can as Representative Dorgan's fatnous attempt at self-immortalization, the Teacher's Oath Bill and his subsequent measures to clean up the impure allusions in Hamlet and The Old.

Such retaliatory measures are not only consummately unconstitutional and unjust but are above all else cowardly. They strike at those unable to defend themselves either with money or with popular and sympathetic support. If anyone doubts the truth of this let him ask himself whether the House of Representatives of Georgia has ordered Erskine Caldwell examined by a psychiatrist. Certainly the author of the famous "Tobacco Road" handed Georgia no orchids' in that brilliant yet searing expose. Though Caldwell and Peter Moody represent two totally different planes of achievement and position they nevertheless are doing the same thing:--telling of life and conditions as they see them, and the right to do so is guaranteed them. As long as any form of free speech and free press exists in this country, the action of the Carolina House will be a conspicuous blot on the debit side of the Carolina ledger.