that broadcasting will not have attained its full development as an instrument of democracy until the measurement of its performance in the public interest is determined by the people-as is the case in the press-rather than by the licensing authority.

That there is danger of censorship where there is power to license is implicit in S. 1333, wherein it is provided that section 16 shall amend section 326 to change the titular heading to "censorship." Appearing in the new language (S. 1333) is the statement:

(b) "The Commission shall have no power to censor, alter, or in any manner affect or control the substance of any material to be broadcast, et cetera."

If it is the intent of the language to deny all mechanics of censorship to the licensing authority, then section 3 of S. 1333 should contain specific definitions of the words "censor" and "substance."

I subscribe to the belief that the Federal Communications Commission's blue book-Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees, March 7, 1946-and the Mayflower decision-which holds that licensees have no privilege of advocacy-are instruments of censorship.

There are only two avenues to the thought processes of man: The eye and the ear. If we are to undertake a philosophy of government which anticipates free access to those avenues, as I understand the Bill of Rights to assert, we cannot differentiate between them. Whether a man reads something or hears something does not fundamentally alter the proposition that he thereby acquires knowledge.

The same knowledge transmitted over a broadcasting station to lisening ears or transmitted through news columns to reading eyes is, in the final analysis, directed to the mind of man. Consequently one instrument of transmission should be subject to no more control of its product than the other, if the avowed purpose of free media in a free nation is to enlighten the people.

If such premise is acceptable, then new legislation governing broadcast licensees should endeavor to clarify beyond any reasonable doubt the limitations placed upon the licensing authority.

I do not believe the present act does so, for, despite its language, the Commission has adopted such a decision as that encountered in the Mayflower case; and the Commission has issued the blue book whichas defined by Chairman Charles R. Denny, Jr., before the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives, 1947-establishes "standards” that—

comprise the gloss which the Commission's decisions have written around the words "public interest, convenience, and necessity."

Nor do I believe that S. 1333, as written, does so, for it incorporates in its language the undefined term "substance" and adds the proviso: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to limit the authority of the Commission in its considerations of applications for renewal of licenses to determine whether or not the licensee has operated in the public interest.

The Commission's chairman has testified that this phrase ""public interest" permits the establishment of standards which represent "gloss." I understand that "gloss" has a special meaning to a lawyer-I am not an attorney, Senator-i. e., functions and powers not conferred by law. Five of the seven members of the Commission are attorneys and would be conversant with this definition, one presumes.

If a commission comprised for the most part of attorneys acknowledges that legislative language gives it the power to “legislate beyond the statute," we encounter here two specific dangers:

(1) The surrender of legislative power by the duly constituted lawmaking body, the Congress of the United States.

(2) Negation of our historic governmental concept that the law should comprehend and make provisions against "the insolence of office."

A brief examination of the development of a free press in this Nation illustrates the emergence from "licensed authority" of one of our great media.

Movable type was discovered by Gutenberg in 1443. One might consider this in context with the discovery of the audion tube by Dr. Lee DeForest in 1906.

The first press established in the Colonies was installed at Harvard College in 1638. Exactly 280 years later, in 1918, vacuum tubes began to replace the old spark and arc transmitters.

The CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt? Did I understand you to say that you are not a lawyer?

Mr. RICHARDS. I am not a lawyer, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you are arguing legal and constitutional problems pretty freely for one who is not a lawyer.

Mr. RICHARDS. It seems that you are hearing a lot of former newspaper men here, Senator. I am a former newspaper man, and I have had some experience, from observing lawyers at work and associating with them. I think that from here on the principal burden of my testimony will have to do with the relationship between newspapers and the radio.

The CHAIRMAN. I just wondered whether this was your production or someone's else.

Mr. RICHARDS. This is my own production.
The CHAIRMAN. Excuse the interruption.

Mr. RICHARDS. Quite all right, sir.

The first newspaper published in America issued in 1690 from the press of Richard Pierce in Boston, under the masthead "Publick Occurrences." The first regularly operated standard broadcasting station in the United States-KĎKÁ, Pittsburgh, and WWJ, Detroit-went on the air in 1920.

The early newspapers, such as Publick Occurrences, were licensed by the Crown. And the first radio stations were licensed by the radio division of the Department of Commerce.

Radio stations in the early days-circa, 1920—were licensed primarily because of the confusion which resulted from the limitation on the number of available frequencies.

The first newspapers were licensed arbitrarily, for purposes of governmental censorship.

According to Robert W. Jones in his Journalism in the United States (E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.) :

The first American editors were confronted by coldly hostile officials inclined to discipline any critical comment.

This policy is best evidenced by one instruction from the Crown, which stated

and for as much as great inconvenience may arise by liberty of printing within our said territory under your Government you are to provide by all necessary

orders that no person keeping any printing press for printing, nor that any book, pamphlet, or other matter whatsoever printed without your especial leave and license first obtained.

It is interesting to observe, inasmuch as in the current broadcasting legislation we are dealing with the phrase "public interest, convenience, and necessity," that even in this early seventeenth century, regulation by the Crown, the word "inconvenience" was introduced. The term, in this instance, anticipated that the inconvenience was one which the Crown felt would cause most distress to the King's ministers, with little concern given to the "convenience of the public."

During these early days of colonial printing, the hand press in usesimilar to the screw-type wine press-was so small that a four-page paper usually required four impressions. The paper was moistened before the impression was taken and between runs the paper was suspended from strings to dry. Printing ink was of poor quality, for the most part home made. It was smeared on the form by hand with a piece of buckskin. One finds analogy here in the early, faltering development of broadcasting-when the few listeners who could hear stations listened on headphones, and found the static as disturbing to their ears as the smeared newspapers were to colonial eyes.

Newspaper printing as a mechanical art really made little progress until the nineteenth century. Had Gutenberg walked into an American print shop in 1800, most authorities agree, he would have found little to surprise him.

In 1822, Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, built a press with a wooden frame designed to be driven by steam. Isaac Adams, of the same city, improved the Treadwell press in 1830. In 1923, by way of comparison, the principle of negative feedback to stabilize and reduce distortion in transmission circuits, modulators, amplifiers, and detectors, also describing automatic volume control, was developed by Stuart Ballantine.

The newspaper then, about one century before broadcasting did so, was emerging from the experimental "baling wire" era as a result of laboratory research.

Most of us consider the emergence of broadcasting from a distorted signal reaching a mere handful of people to its position today, 27 years later, as a phenomenon.

Yet, the newspaper proceeded from small weekly operation with limited circulation to metropolitan daily operation with large circulation in a span of 30 years only-between 1830 and 1860.

In 1775 there were 37 newspapers in the Colonies. In 1840 there were 1,631 in the United States; and in 1850 the figure was 2.302. On January 12, 1922, there were 30 broadcasting stations in the United States; by 1940 there were 814; and by January 1, 1947, there were 1,523.

Mechanical development accounted for the increase in both media; mechanical development which made it possible to establish more units and to extend the coverage of the individual units.

Impetus was given to newspaper development by the first cvlinder press, developed in 1846. It was installed by the Philadelphia Ledger. A 10-cylinder rotary press was capable of 20,000 impressions hourlyheralding the day of big newspaper circulation.

In 1925, KDKA Pittsburgh and WGY Schnectady tested 50,000 watt transmitters which were to multiply manifold the audience

available to radio-by increased output-as did the rotary press in the newspaper field.

In 1848 newspapers discovered a system for employing telegraphic four coast-to-coast networks and four nationwide news-gathering agency, the Associated Press.

The first network broadcast was between WEAF New York and WNAC Boston in 1923-5 years before the National Broadcasting Co. was to establish the first coast-to-coast network. There are now four coast-to-coast networks, and fur nationwide news-gathering services.

In 1861, the curved stereotyped plate was developed-and cylinder presses thereafter imprinted by this plate process, rather than by cylinder-set type.

And in 1932, the velocity microphone was perfected by RCA-making possible more faithful reproduction of sound, as the stereotype made possible more faithful reproduction of typeface.

The analogy between the development of the press and the development of broadcasting can be carried forward in greater detail. But this should serve sufficiently to indicate that there was sharp correlation between the two in the mechanical phase.

The importance of this historic relation is to be found in this remarkable development: as the unlicensed press has advanced in its capacity to serve the people, the cause of a free press has advanced as well; but as licensed broadcasting stations have advanced in their capacity to serve the people, their freedom has been retarded.

We have then a situation which is not consonant with the philosophy of our form of government.

The conception that the FCC is trustee for the American people is completely erroneous. Sovereignty in the United States is vested in the American people. The American people delegate it to Congress. That authority-the people's authority-cannot be delegated to anyone, except for limited purposes designated by Congress.

As a consequence, there exist no trustees for the American people, for the Constitution's guarantee of rights reserves those rights to the individual citizens.

This theory finds successful acceptance and is practiced in the areas of the press. It is not practiced in broadcasting.

One of the Nation's first newspapers of pre-Revolutionary days to successfully oppose the oppressive censorship of the Crown was Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette.

In the early eighteenth century the following advertisement appeared in the Gazette:

Superfine crown soap-it cleanses fine linens, muslins, laces, chintzes, cambric, et cetera, with ease and expedition, which often suffer more from the long, hard rubbing of the washer, through the ill qualities of the soap than the wearing.

That was probably the first "soap commercial" in American history and it was written by Benjamin Franklin himself in 1732—just 28 years after the first newspaper was founded in America.

Radio, considerably maligned these days in certain quarters for its commercials, is 27 years old.

It is at least diverting to note also that Benjamin Franklin was in other diversified pursuits; this in view of the fact that some regulatory implications have been attached to the diverse pursuits of a few broad

casting station owners. Mr. Franklin was not only a trader of considerable renown but, additionally, owned a company which produced two popular patent medicines of the day: (1) True and Genuine Godfrey's Cordial; and (2) Seneka Rattlesnake Root.

It is not difficult to conjure, for example, what Benjamin Franklin might consider a philosophy for regulating broadcasting today, especially in light of the fact that he not only was one of America's first editors to militantly demand freedom of the press, but also found a place in chronologies of radio's development through his kite experiments in an electrical storm in 1749.

As the Colonies approached the revolutionary period of our history, several newspapers were established which began to shake off the yoke implied in that masthead dictum "Published by Authority."

Among these was 21-year-old Isaiah Thomas of the Massachusetts Spy; Sam and John Adams contributed richly to the Boston Gazette; Benjamin Edes, John Gill, and John Hancock were others.

Attempts to suppress such papers as the Massachusetts Spy, and indict its publisher for seditious libel, failed. The public was beginning to awaken to the value of the press as a force for common good. This process was hastened by the famous pamphlets of Tom Paine during the Revolutionary period.

It was the newspapers' active part in the Revolution which gained prestige for their owners.

Printers emerged from the conflict with something of the dignity which identifies editors today. It was a far cry from November 17, 1734, when Peter Zenger was tried for "publishing several seditious libels having in them many things tending to raise factions, tumults, and sedition among the people.'

It was the stirring defense of Mr. Zenger by Andrew Hamilton which laid the foundation for free press in the United States, when Mr. Hamilton said:

I hope to be pardoned sir, for my zeal upon this occasion. It is an old and wise caution that when our neighbor's house is on fire we ought to take care of our own. Withal, blessed be God, I live in a government where liberty is well understood and freely enjoyed; yet experience has shown us all-I'm sure it has me-that a bad precedent in one government is soon set up for an authority in another and therefore I cannot but think it mine and every honest man's duty that, while we pay all due obedience to men in authority, we ought at the same time be on our guard against power, wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects.

This brief review of the development of the press as it relates to the development of broadcasting is offered to indicate that the difference between the two media is not one that can be defined by the boundaries of public interest. Both exist to serve the public interest. Both have emerged into fuller development after distressing periods of trial. Each survives by revenue collected from advertisers. Each, in its way, strives to inform and to entertain.

The difference that originally did exist is one not accentuated by method of operation, historic development, or content, but rather by a physical phenomenon: the limitation on the number of frequences available for broadcast. But even this phenomenon has grown less important in recent years. Additional frequencies have been found. so that the Federal Communications Commission was able to allocate in the year 1946 more broadcasting stations than had been allocated