The Barnes Bill

At first sight, the Barnes Bill could appear to be an unextravagant little document--unextravagant, certainly, in an era notable for the existence of the government loyalty tests and the J. Parnell Thomas Committee. The Bill is entitled as an act to "prevent Communists and others who advocate the overthrow of government by force, violence, or other unlawful or unconstitutional means from being employed as teachers or otherwise in institutions of learning or schools or in the public education system." Although anyone who calls himself a liberal would scarcely approve of such a bill, it might will be considered as acceptable by those many who sincerely believe communists to be an existing threat to the safety of the "American way of life." But it would take the most extreme sort of reactionary to condone the Barnes Bill in the face of Professor Kirtley F. Mather's brilliant attack Friday evening and the overwhelmingly convincing evidence presented in the State House yesterday afternoon by President Conant and other important educators.

It is remarkable to discover how many insidious implications, probably unconstitutionalities, and vicious vaguencesses Attorney-General Barnes has been able to be fined ten thousand dollars for employing a maid in Dunster House who had expressed approval of the United Nations. The bill provides, in other words, for the punishment of employers of guilty persons. It also makes any employee--not only teachers, susceptibe to guilt. And it deems approval of communist party . . . doctrines" to be illegal. But it does not indicate what these "doctrines" are, and consequently support of the U.N., which is advocated in the Communist Party constitution, could certainly be one of them.

Each of these aspects of the Barnes Bill has many implications. The vagueness of the "doctrine" phrase, for instance, could render the act unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court has overruled several bills because of their lack of definition. But notice in particular the ramifications of the section making the employer a potential lawbreaker. Not only will school and university administrations take care not to employ Communist Party members, but they would be afraid for their own hides to hire anyone liberal enough to be suspected of advocating communist doctrines. The tremendous restriction of this aspect of the bill on academic freedom would be difficult to over-estimate.

As for the clause concerning punishment for advocating overthrow of the government by force or violence, commendable as this sentiment may be, it is unnecessary to make it law, simply because a law--the anti-anarchy act of 1919--already exists on the books and covers precisely this classification. The Attorney-General, who has been provided by subsequent legislation with ample power to enforce the law, is therefore responsible if any persons advocating overthrow of the government by force are now reaming freely about the Commonwealth. It has been persistently removed, incidentally, that the Attorney-General is interested in becoming Governor in 1952, and that his current bill is a political maneuver. The theory is that a record of good clean anti-communism goes a long way toward winning a Massachusetts election. In this case, it could also go a long way toward restricting the very Americanism that it purports to defend.