Air Patrol

Fortnight ago, the House passed a bill which affects the ears of more people than any other act of the present session of Congress. Last week the Senate twice refused to delay this bill by sending it back to conference. Passage loomed. "An Act," it is entitled, "for the regulation of radio communications."

Authors of the bill are Senator Dill and Congressman White.

Mr. Dill, after teaching country school and reporting for Cleveland newspapers, went West. He reached the State of Washington in 1909, and 13 years later persuaded that commonwealth to send him, only 38 and a Democrat, to the mighty Senate of the U. S.

Congressman White, 49, was born in Maine, graduated from famed Bowdoin* college, went promptly to Washington as a political clerk. Outside of Maine and the District of Columbia he has never earned a nickel; result: he is a skillful legislator.

Issue. The air has been filled, as everyone knows, with clamor for radio regulation. Pending law, Herbert C. Hoover did what he could. The only issue was whether Mr. Hoover and his successors in the Department of Commerce should rule the air, or whether it should be ruled by a commission. The Administration favored Hoover & Successors. Congressman White wrote an appropriate bill and the House passed it. For the Senate, Mr. Dill wrote a bill about a commission, and the Senate passed that. Committees of the upper and lower houses met, worked long, late. That consummate politician, Senator Watson of Indiana, labored for harmony. Harmony came, but the Senator idea, slightly anti-Administration, won.

The White-Dill Bill, as agreed on in conference, provides essentially:

1) That there shall be a commission of five, one from each of five zones. Except at the beginning when terms are "staggered," each commissioner shall serve for six years. Salary: $10,000 for the first year; thereafter

$30 per working day and expenses.

2) During the first year the Commission has power to regulate whatever and as much as it likes.

3) Thereafter, the Secretary of Commerce shall regulate under principles laid down by the commission, and shall initiate such further regulaton as may be necessary. BUT, anyone who dislikes a Department of Commerce regulation, may appeal to the Commission which will consider the case de novo. Ultimately, the Commission can remain "boss," if it so chooses.

4) Section 29, sonorously eloquent, affirms that no power of censorship is granted to interfere with the right of free speech. BUT "no person within the jurisdiction of the United States shall utter any obscene, indecent or profane language" by radio. This would technically bar most Manhattan plays and many an opera.*

5) The President can, by a stroke of the pen, capture every broadcasting station in the land. His signature must be appended to a proclamation that "there exists a war or a threat of a war or a state of public peril or other national emergency." (A Fundamentalist President could conceivably consider a decline in church-membership public peril.)

6) The bill refuses to grant anyone property-rights in the atmosphere. Licenses, renewable, run only for three to five years.

*Poet Longfellow graduated there. So did Nathaniel Hawthorne. Present enrollment, 500. *However, the Commission may decide that since most operatic swearwords are unintelligible, they do not violate the Third Commandment.