Hysterical critics of the New York Assembly have accused the Judiciary Committee of that body of accepting as evidence against the five suspended Socialist Assemblymen every conceivable reproach against the Socialist Party of America which could be scraped together out of its entire history. An inquiry to ascertain the qualifications of Socialists to make the laws of the land assuredly would be justified in searching every possible source of information. But, as a matter of fact, the Judiciary Committee confined its investigation to evidence bearing directly upon the political and governmental aspects of the case.
Had the Judiciary Committee wished to bring out what would most surely and deeply shock the moral sense of the American people--the organized propagation of immorality with which the five suspended Assemblymen were linked--the facts given in this and the preceding chapter show that no difficulty would have been found in digging up overwhelming evidence. The preceding chapter shows the propagation of free-love doctrines through all the publicity departments of the Socialist Party of America. The present chapter shows that the "New York Call," the chief political organ of the New York State branch of the Socialist Party of America, with which the five suspended Assemblymen were most intimately linked, has for years carried on an unclean and indecent propaganda to teach all within its polluting reach to violate one of the laws of the State of New York.