CENTS
$2*00
YEAR
A MAGAZINE OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP
I
SHAKING THE FAITH OF A NATION
THROUGH FOOLISH LEGISLATION
I
'T'HE LEGISLATIVE tendencies in America in this day and
* age are justly causing widespread alarm. Men and groups
of men of a selfish and intolerant turn of mind are today seeking
and obtaining seats in the legislative halls of the states and the
nation, through the grant of ignorant franchise holders. Meas
ures intended to give preferences and advantages to one set of
citizens, obviously detrimental to other citizens, and citizens in
the making, are now frequently passed with seeming utter aban
don, and indifference to the thoughts of equal rights. Crude and
unfinished drafts, proposals for laws, with vague and hidden
meaning, are traded in the legislative mill and eventually turn up
on the pages of the statute books. Courts are today continu
ally called upon to define the meaning of these newly enacted
and hopelessly worded laws and, finding this task impossible, the
judges are invariably forced to search for the actual intent in the
legislators’ minds. Offensive language that would not go un
challenged in the streets, where the simple principles of American
rightsand equality are still in practice, is used with impunity in
our legislative halls. Asinine measures designed to abrogate in
alienable rights, placing citizens in jeopardy because of their
origin or their faith, have with frequency, in recent years, been
written into state and federal statutes over the feeble protests of
those who had the courage and who sensed that such enactments
would gradually open the way for an onslaught on America’s
most cherished ideals and institutions.
The time is NOW to begin replacing the statutes that have a
sinister meaning, in order to bring back the old civic faith and
replace in our country that assurance of Liberty and Justice for
All which in the beginning made the very name America a syno
nym for the Rock of Ages.
I
!
OCTOBER 1925
PORTLAND. OREGON