Incident
United States postmaster bars the magazine The Masses from the mail under the Espionage Act
Weeks after the United States entered the First World War, the New York postmaster used the new Espionage Act, a law against interfering with military recruitment, to bar the socialist magazine The Masses from the mail. A judge's order protecting the magazine was reversed on appeal.123
What happened
Congress passed the Espionage Act in June 1917, a law that made it a crime to interfere with military recruitment or operations during the First World War. New York's postmaster, Thomas Patten, used the act to declare the August 1917 issue of The Masses, an anti-war socialist magazine, unmailable because of its cartoons and articles opposing the war and the draft. The magazine asked the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the federal trial court covering Manhattan, to block the ban. Judge Learned Hand agreed, ruling that the magazine's writers had criticized the war without directly urging readers to break the law. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the appeals court above Hand's, reversed him months later, and the mail ban stood. The Post Office went on to deny mailing privileges to dozens more anti-war and socialist publications under the same law.123
What reason was given
Stated justificationPostmaster Patten found the magazine's cartoons and articles likely, in the language of the Espionage Act, to cause insubordination in the armed forces and to obstruct recruiting.1
What changed for reporting
The Masses lost the low second-class postal rate that let it reach subscribers across the country and stopped publishing within months; dozens of other anti-war and socialist papers lost mailing privileges the same way.3
Timeline
1917
Who acted
| Name | Role in this incident | Office at the time |
|---|---|---|
| Albert S. Burleson | enforced | United States Postmaster General |
| Learned Hand | ruled | Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York |
| Thomas G. Patten | enforced | Postmaster of New York City |
| Woodrow Wilson | other | President of the United States |
Outlets and journalists
| Name | Kind | Relation |
|---|---|---|
| The Masses | outlet | affected |
Sources
Claims and evidence
Each numbered claim quotes the source it rests on.
- Judge Learned Hand held that stopping short of urging readers to break the law should not be treated as an attempt to cause a violation of it.
If one stops short of urging upon others that it is their duty or their interest to resist the law, it seems to me one should not be held to have attempted to cause its violation.
Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten (S.D.N.Y.) (1917) archived copy, The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University.Claim 114, checked 2026-09-22. - Hand's opinion said the government had to point to language that specifically urged breaking the law, not merely to radical opinion.
the state point with exactness to just that conduct which violates the law
Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten (S.D.N.Y.) (1917) archived copy, The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University.Claim 115, checked 2026-09-22. - By 1918 the Wilson administration's Post Office, led by Postmaster General Albert Burleson and Attorney General Thomas Gregory, had denied mailing privileges to 74 newspapers under the Espionage Act.
By 1918, in actions that seriously threatened First Amendment freedoms and that likely would not be upheld today, 74 newspapers had been denied mailing privileges.
Espionage Act of 1917 archived copy, The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University.Claim 116, checked 2026-09-22.