Louis Freeland Post
| Louis Freeland Post | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
November 15, 1849 Sussex County, New Jersey |
| Died | January 11, 1928 (aged 78) Washington, DC |
| Parent(s) | Eugene J. Post Elizabeth Freeland |
Louis Freeland Post (November 15, 1849 - January 11, 1928) was a prominent Georgist and the Assistant United States Secretary of Labor during the closing year of the Wilson administration, the period of the Palmer Raids and the Red Scare, where he had responsibility for the Bureau of Immigration. Post considered the process to be a witch hunt and is credited with preventing many deportations and freeing many innocent people.
Post opposed immigration restrictions and forcefully supported free speech and Henry George's single-tax movement. He once called George's political philosophy "my kind of radicalism...which regards the social values of natural resources as in their nature public property." He became an Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1913, a position he held until the end of the Wilson administration in March, 1921.
Early in March 1920, the temporary absence of Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson and the recent resignation of the Department's Solicitor General made Post the Department's Acting Secretary and the key person responsible for the Bureau of Immigration for two critical months. He directed the review of all deportation cases and often opposed the activities of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Justice Department's "Radical Division," soon renamed the General Intelligence Division. In 1919, in response to anarchist terror bombings, Hoover's agents penetrated many violent revolutionary groups and identified their members. In January 1920, Palmer and Hoover oversaw the Palmer Raids designed to arrest those members who were not U.S. citizens and deport them.
The Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918 set the standard for such deportations. It specified that "aliens who are members of or affiliated with any organization that entertains a belief in, teaches, or advocates the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States or of all forms of law" were subject to deportation. Post, often with the support of Secretary Wilson, distinguished carefully among those arrested, for example, determining that membership in the Communist Labor Party was not grounds for deportation because it did not meet the legal standard that other organizations with similar names did meet, like the Communist Party of America. By April 10, Post had reviewed a backlog of 1600 cases and dismissed 71% of them. Some had been held for as long as two months for having attended a meeting of a radical group. Post also determined that aliens were entitled to a fair hearing, which was contrary to the position of the Bureau of Immigration, which held that immigrants were not subject to constitutional safeguards. Overall, Post is credited with preventing many deportations and freeing many innocent people. He also declined to take action against those he called "harmless but technically culpable." Some had in good faith resigned from a proscribed organization. Others only became "members" of such an organization when organizations merged, as often happened. On the other hand, he authorized the deportation of anarchists even "of the extreme pacifist type," because he thought the law required that.
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