There is a feeling today however that the police partly in answer to a public demand, overstepped their powers…. Summary restriction of the liberty of the parents to send their children out of town because their purpose is disapproved of or because the authorities feel that it is not necessary, encroaches upon the natural rights of parents to control them.³⁵

Governor Foss of Massachusetts wrote to the Attorney-General ordering an investigation and the taking of any necessary action to assure all citizens free and untrammelled exercise of their rights. No action was taken.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS

There are nowadays no “cruel and unusual punishments” in the sense of the constitutional prohibition, inflicted by any courts. Plenty of them are inflicted by the police and by officials of penal institutions. Torture is used for disciplinary purposes or to secure confessions from suspects. This cruelty is general and is used against workers as well. Here is an instance in the class struggle:

Among the strikers gathered in by the police (of Paterson, N. J.) was a mother with a nursing baby. She was fined $10 and costs with the alternative of 20 days in jail. She was locked up but the baby was not allowed to go with her. In 24 hours the mother's breasts were filled to bursting but the baby on the outside was starving. He refused to take any other form of food. In a few hours the condition of the mother and baby was so dangerous that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn went to see the Recorder. She told him the baby would die…. He replied, “That's none of my business.”³⁶

110 HOURS IN A STRAIGHT-JACKET

Jacob Oppenheimer, confined in San Quentin penitentiary, California for murder, tells this experience with disciplinary punishment: