208                                                                                       FREEDOM IS AS FREEDOM DOES

New York City dropped The Nation because it printed Paid Blan-
shard's informative articles eonceming the CathoHc Church.
These were later included in Blanshard's book, American Free¬
dom and Catholic Power, which has sold more than 225,000
copies.

A comic interlude in censorship took place when the Student's
Union store at the University of Calffornia stopped selHng the
National Guardian after the students protested tliat it was com¬
munistic. The store management explained that its policy was to
ban any publication if three students complained about it. Forth¬
with the requisite number of complaints was registered against
Life, Time, the Reader's Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and
Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. At this point the store abruptly
changed its policy and decided to handle all of these publications,
as well as the National Guardian.

In New York City in 1954 the police arrested Ammon Hennacy,
associate editor of a monthly newspaper called The Catholic
Worker and author of Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist, for
selling both the periodical and his book without a Hcense. Con¬
victed by a Manhattan magistiate and fined $10, Mr. Hennacy
told the court it was against his principles to pay the fine and so
was sent to jail for five days instead. The New York Administia¬
tive Code makes it unlawful to peddle without a license, but ex¬
empts persons seUing newspapers and periodicals. Hennacy won
his case on appeal.

Like the municipal police, the U.S. Congress has a deep and
abiding interest in literature. In 1952 a group of official snoopers—
the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials,
witii Representative E. C. Gathings, Democrat of Arkansas, as
Chairman—became very busy looking into a sphere of writing long
exploited by prurient priers. This Committee, with a mueh-pubh-
eized display of purity and righteousness, made an investigation
of comic books, "cheesecake" or "ghlie" magazines, and pocket-
size paper-bound books. The Committee concentiated on the last-
named category and said in its report: "This type of writing has