(The Cummins-Vaile Bill will also help to end it. Ed.) _Sen. Borah_: “Well, Senator Stanley, as I think you know from personal conversation, I am quite in sympathy with your view, but I am unable to construe this letter (from Postmaster General Hays, quoted above) in harmony with a number of statutes that are already upon the statute books, and already in force.” (The Comstock law, for instance. Ed.) _Sen. Stanley_: “It is unfortunately true.” _Sen. Borah_: “Indicating that we are taking a step back to constitutional government.” _Sen. Stanley_: “Buckle says that all civilization for five hundred years consisted in repealing laws. I wish Buckle were eligible for a seat in the Senate now.” (Hear, hear! Ed.) “Mr. Chairman, the greatest influence for good—and it may be greatest power for evil—is the power of the press. There is no free government without it. There are no free men without it. There is no free thought without it. I commend to your attention just a little paragraph from that great defense of free institutions, with (one) possible exception, the greatest in the English tongue: ‘Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?’” _Sen. Stanley_ continuing: “Now let us see what this bill prohibits. Section 5 reads: ‘No newspaper, postcard, letter, circular, or other written or printed matter containing information, or statements, by way of advice of suggestions, purporting to give the odds at which bets or wagers are being laid or waged, upon the outcome of speed, strength or skill, or setting forth the bets,’—now get this,—‘made or offered to be made, or the sums of money won or lost upon the outcome or result of such contest,’ etc. “If a school boy at college should write to his mother that his room-mate had bet five cents on a foot-ball game, he could be sent to the penitentiary for five years and fined $5000. “Put in force this act and then endeavor to convince a civilized world that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave.” (Compare the wording of this proposed law with that of the old Comstock law by which “every book, pamphlet ... paper, letter, writing ... or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly where, how or of whom or by what means,” etc., conception may be controlled is unmailable. Then parallel Sen. Stanley’s instance of the college boy and his five cent bet on the foot-ball game with the fact that no mother can now lawfully write to her married daughter any information even in a private letter as to how she may space the births of her babies. Ed.)