Fight for Freedom
A
FROM OFFENSIVE BILLBOARDS
YOU CAN HELP WIN IT
MASSACHUSETTS IS LEADING THE NATION'S BATTLE for
legal restriction of billboards. If the contest can be kept up through the
State Courts, as expected, to the Federal Supreme Court, we shall have a
decision from the highest tribunal whether or not outdoor advertising
ON PRIVATE PROPERTY within public view can be regulated and
restricted by law under the Constitution of the United States.
The Massachusetts law, which authorizes towns and cities to regulate
billboards by local ordinance subject to general rules of the State Depart-
ment of Public Works, has been assailed by the combined bill-posting com-
panies on the claim that it is unconstitutional. No other state has ever
extended its police power thus outside of highway limits, and it is the fun-
damental principle of legal control of advertising on private land that is at
stake. If the law is finally sustained, as there is good reason to hope it will
be, by the United States Supreme Court, the way will be opened for like
control of billboards by all the states, cities and towns of the nation. On
the other hand, an adverse decision would destroy all present prospect of
effective restraint of this fast growing evil.
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, is therefore of vital interest
to the whole country.
This case, now before the
It is based on three applications by the billboard companies for injunc-
tions. The first, made in June, 1925, asks the Supreme Court to restrain
the state officers from carrying out their general regulations for billboards;
the second is against the Selectmen of Concord, who tried to enforce a local
by-law upon parties maintaining illegal billboards in that historic town;
and the third seeks to restrain the Department of Public Works from
removing a huge revolving electric sign of the Chevrolet car overlooking
Boston Common near the State House.
Over five thousand persons petitioned the Department to order this
sign down, but the enforcement of the order must now await the decision
of this case.
refusing an appeal to discontinue this advertisement, said, "I feel that the
problem is one of control by unprejudiced and unbiased authority that
would be recognized by all national advertisers."
believes the only fair method of control is by law.
Legal restraint of billboard advertising has proved effective abroad,
while lack of it in "America the Beautiful" permits our overgrown adver-
tising organizations to plaster the fair face of Nature with monstrous signs
regardless of public protest. Billboards not only damage real property by
defacing the neighborhood, but obstruct and distract the view of drivers on
roads, and in other ways are detrimental to public safety and welfare.
The president of the General Motors Company, in a letter
In other words he
