FREEDOM OF SPEECH.-- When Lord Byron's "forest-born Demosthenes" thundered against Virginia's aceptance of the "constitution of 1787," until his amendments, which guaranteed free speech, free assemblage, etc., were embodied in it, he did so in the belif, which was general then, that such constitutional safe-guards would prove sufficient to protect posterity in its "inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and I think they wouldhave been if federalist judges had not twisted and tortured the whole instrument into a slave-making and slave-perpetuating machine.
Given a free press, free speech and the right to carry and bear arms, a people worthy of liberty can secure and maintain it, but in the absence of these essentials liberty is but a name, a mere ghost.
The question of a free press is the question which I am most interested in just now. Plutocracy and its allied interests have secured control of almost all great daily newspapers and use them to mislead the masses of the people.
A people fighting to regain control of their government must readily see the necessity of having and maintaining a daily newspaper in a great city like Chicago, for, say what we may, Chicago is and will be the storm center of the present and future struggles for industrial liberty...."
- T.P. Quinn, THE DAY BOOK An Adless Newspaper, Daily Except Sunday VOL. 5, NO. 97 Chicago, Friday, Jan. 21, 1916 Pg. 27.
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