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Complaint Was Made by Augustus Bedford, Grand Secretary of the American Flag Protectors, Because It Contained a Cartoon Showing the Nation's Emblem Covered with Printed Matter.
The Detroit News recently printed a cartoon showing an American flag with lettering, which was republiahed in the Irish World last week. When the paper reached Boston and had been on sale but a few days the police stopped the sale of the paper on complaint of Augustus Bedford, who says he is grand secretary of the American Flag Protectors, an organization which pays particular attention to saving the flag from being defaced or used for advertising purposes.
The cartoon represented "Uncle Sam" holding a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes flying in the breeze. The inscription on the flag read a follows:
This Flag Stands for Liberty, Equality, Independence, Justice, and Fraternity, IF Congress or the President so Will.
In front of "Uncle Sam" were representations of three children wearing broad brimmed straw hats and labelled "Puerto Rico," "Cuba" and "Philippines." Beneath is the motto, "Flag Day in the Dependencies," and then the quotation: "0, say, does that star spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" The New England News Company distributed five thousand copies of the Irish World in its territory. When they received the order suppressing the paper, nearly all the copies had been sold -- in fact, only one hundred of them were left. Mr. Bedford, in an interview, states that the orders were issued by the police upon his complaint, under authority of a statute passed in 1899, which says:
"It shall be unlawful for any person to display the flag of the United States or of Massachusetts, or any representation thereof, upon which are any words, figures, advertisements or designs, provided, however, that flags belonging to Grand Army posts or flags the property of, or used in the service of the United States, or of this State, may have inscribed thereon the names of battles and the name and number of the organization to which such belong.
"Whoever publicly mutilates, tramples upon, defaces or treats contemptuously any of said flags, whether such flags are public or private property, shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor within the meaning of this act." "Any violation of the provisions of this act shall be punished by a fine of not less than $10 or more than $100, and the police, district and municipal courts and trial Justices of the Commonwealth shall have authority within their several jurisdictions to enforce the provisions of this act.'
Augustus Ford, the business manager of the Irish World, when seen in New York by representative of THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, said:
"The suppression of our paper has done us no harm and has served to call attention to an absurd law which ought never to have been passed. This paper is opposed to imperialism, and the cartoon was designed to give expression to our ideas regarding this Government's interference with the affairs of other countries.
"An Illinois court has declared similar law in that State unconstitutional. Such, I believe, will be the fate of the Massachusetts law when it comes to be tested, as it surely will be."