Obscenity Bypath

The Senate continued its struggle with the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. Minute seemed the possibility that it would even begin to debate schedules before the closing of the special session. Yet Senators, unmindful or unworried, last week made little tariff progress, went instead down two attractive bypaths. One bypath was the issue of Philippine Independence (see p. 17). Another was the issue of censor ship, by U. S. Customs officials, of allegedly obscene books imported to U. S. shores.

The decency debate was precipitated by Senator Bronson Cutting, Harvard-educated New Mexico Republican. He maintained that Customs officials are not qualified to pass upon literary imports. A recent example of the Customs censor ship was the barring of Voltaire's Candide, for centuries a classic, yet officially considered unfit for U. S. consumption. Other famed books barred from U. S. ports include unexpurgated editions of the Arabian Nights, various of the works of Aristophanes, Balzac, Rousseau, Havelock Ellis. Ridiculous, said Senator Cutting, was a situation in which "two-by-four clerks" could decide what the U. S. public might read. Allied with Senator Cutting were Senators Borah, Wheeler, Tydings, Norris, La Follette.

Most of the Administration Republicans and several Southern Democrat Senators opposed the amendment, which finally passed only by a 38 to 36 vote. Furthermore, Utah's Reed Smoot (opposed) announced that the amendment would be voted upon again when the tariff bill is reported out by the Committee of the Whole. If the amendment stands, Customs officials can still bar "indecent pictures and transparencies," contraceptives, and books or other printed matter advocating forcible resistance to U. S. law or threatening the persons of U. S. citizens.