| Existing comment:
The Espionage Act enabled the government to ban periodicals from the mails. When The Masses, an avant-garde, Socialist magazine was banned in July of 1917, editor Max Eastman and contributors John Reed and Amos Pinchot wrote in protest to President Woodrow Wilson and unsuccessfully challenged the ban in court. In two separate legal proceedings in 1918, the government attempted to jail its editors, but failed. The various legal cases related to The Masses were important early battles in shaping free speech and civil liberties. |