Abstract

Full Disclosure: Public Safeguard

The article presents information on the opposition of the enactment of legislation requiring officials and other pressure groups to publish their purposes, their sources of income, their disbursements, and the names of their officers, by Arthur Garfield Hays. He argues that to require disclosure is to judge ideas by the people who advocate them as if people did not do this already. The greatest fear and embarrassment have been suffered by many thousands of citizens and government employees through their innocent association with false-fronted organizations. Their names have been euphonious and high sounding, their partially stated purposes of an appealing character, their list of members often heavily weighted with respected men, themselves misled.