Ohio History Journal

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152 OHIO HISTORY

152                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

27. Bettman to Bailey, January 16, 1930; Bailey to Bettman, January 28, 1930. ACLU

Archives.

28. Bettman to Bailey, December 24, 1929, ACLU Microfilms; Bettman to Bailey,

January 16, 1930, ACLU Archives.

29. Motion for a New Trial, Johnson et al. v. State of Ohio, November 21, 1929,

ACLU Microfilms.

30. Bettman to Bailey, January 16, 1930, ACLU Archives.

31. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925).

32. Ibid., 666.

33. Ibid., 668.

34. Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927); Murray, Red Scare, 235.

35. 274 U. S. 357, p. 371.

36. Chaffee, Free Speech in the United States, 319, 344.

37. Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U. S. 380 (1927).

38. Ibid., 382-383.

39. Ibid., 386.

40. Bettman to Bailey, December 18, 1929, ACLU Microfilms.

41. Bettman to Bailey, December 24, 1929, ACLU Microfilms.

42. Bettman to Bailey, May 22, 1930, ACLU Archives.

43. Johnson et al. v. State of Ohio (unreported), Seventh District Court of Appeals

for Belmont County, St. Clairsville, Ohio, ACLU Archives.

44. Johnson et al. v. State of Ohio (unreported), Seventh District Court of Appeals

for Belmont County, ACLU Archives. After Johnson was remanded, the Belmont County

Prosecutor announced that his staff would retry the case. "They are hard losers," Mrs.

Land explained to the ILD, "and are willing to go to bat once more with this case,

knowing full well that the Court of Appeals will reverse them once again." Yetta Land

to Samuel A. Darcy, November 11, 1930, ACLU Archives. The International Labor De-

fense, confronted with the possibility of a new trial, tried to condition Bettman's con-

tinued participation on a procedure not "restricted to legal technicalities," but explanded

to include "the political phase of the issue." Bettman refused in strong language. "If I

participate," he told Mrs. Land, "I can only try the case in my own way. If we could

get the case dismissed on the prosecutor's showing, I would do so. If I would deem it

advisable to go to the jury on the prosecutor's case, I would do so. If it became, in my

opinion, advisable, to put the defense on the stand, I would restrict the questions to

what I deemed necessary to counteract the testimony of the plaintiff. I would seek to

keep out issues not relevant or necessary, for meeting the prosecutor's case." The ILD

labelled the reply of the ACLU attorney as "vague and general"; Mrs. Land, on the con-

trary, thought that Bettman's answer was a "very clear statement that he will proceed

with the case, as he, according to a trial lawyer, sees fit." "If you desire," she informed

the ILD, "to . . . deviate from the strictly legal and technical procedure, and thereby

admit certain evidence into the trial, which is not absolutely relevant and yet which

from the standpoint of the ILD [is necessary], it will be necessary to proceed without

Mr. Bettman." Yetta Land to Bettman, November 21, 1930; Bettman to Yetta Land,

November 22, 1930; Darcy to Yetta Land, December 2, [?] 1930; Yetta Land to Darcy,

December 4, 1930. The foregoing correspondence are copies contained in a covering

letter from Bettman to Bailey, December 15, 1930, ACLU Archives. The revived contro-

versy over trial strategy and ACLU-ILD relations concluded anticlimatically in May 1931

when the Johnson case was dropped by a new prosecuting attorney. See Bettman to

Bailey, May 18, 1931, ACLU Archives.

 

SOCIALIST PARTY OF OHIO--WAR AND FREE SPEECH

1. William English Walling, ed., The Socialists and the War (New York, 1915), as

cited by David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America: A History (New York, 1955),

82.

2 George R. Kirkpatrick, War! What For? (West Lafayette, Ohio, 1910).

3. All background information on the activities of the Socialist Party of America and

its efforts to bring about international Socialist unity for peace is taken from Shannon,

Socialist Party of America, 81-90.