2                                                                                            FREEDOM IS AS FREEDOM DOES

Hague's pohee arrested me for the high crime and misdemeanor
of walking up and down in front of the plant in question and
carrying an appropriate placard.

I was arraigned, fingerprinted and put behind the bars in a cell
in the city jail for a few hours while bad was arranged. My case
never came to trial because the issue over which I was concerned
was soon settled when the higher courts, beyond the control of
Boss Hague, reversed previous anti-picketing decisions in New
Jersey and established the right of peaceful picketing in Jersey
City on the grounds that it was a legitimate part of freedom of
expression.

From 1934 on, I became increasingly involved in a direct per¬
sonal sense in the struggle for civil liberty. Since my views on pol¬
ities, economics, international relations and philosophy are for the
most part unorthodox and unpopular, I have often been in trouble
on account of them. As a teacher, writer and lecturer, I regard
freedom of expression as a necessity for my regular work.

Many first-rate books have recently been published on some
special aspect of the current civil liberties crisis. I refer to such ex¬
cellent studies as those issued by the Cornell University Press dur¬
ing the past decade under the general direction of Professor
Robert E. Cushman of Cornell. However, since the appearance of
Osmond K, Fraenkel's Our Civil Liberties in 1944, there has been
no volume that adequately presents a documented over-all survey
of the drive against freedom in the United States. I am seeking to
fill that gap and to alert as many of my fellow citizens as possible
to the grave dangers which now confront American democracy.
In endeavoring to carry out this difficult task, I have had to sift
j and analyze an enormous amount of material. My method has
I been to select for discussion a Hmited number of laws, decrees,
1 investigations, cases and incidents that illustrate the general pat-
! tern of repression. This study, then, is no encyclopedia of the all-
\ but-numberless violations of civil hberties that have occurred in
i America during the past decade.

I do not attempt to cover, either, the important sphere of race
relations, where there has been genuine though spotty progress