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    "label": "Letter from Laurence Jaeger to President Harry S. Truman",
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    "title": "Letter from Laurence Jaeger to President Harry S. Truman",
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            "day": 14,
            "logicalDate": "1951-08-14",
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    "seq": 2,
    "pageIndex": 0,
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    "ocrText": "506 MCDONALD AVENUE\nBROOKLYN 18, N. Y.\nhysteria whipped up by vicious reactionaries and bigots who\njustify their campaigns of fear and hate by the fact that\nthe government itself is doing almost the same thing? Once\nthe snowball of suspecting and deducing a loathesome guilt\nfrom anonymous tips and possibly-malicious denunciations gets\nstarted in, say, the State Department, it is inevitable that\nit will roll into something huge and flatten everybody in\nits path -- be he postal clerk, typist or elevator operator.\nThe psychology of suspicion and intolerance quickly reaches\nthe point where it invades all walks of life, because we're\nall afraid of the same thing -- losing the democracy we all\ncherish SO. \"Reasonable doubt\" turns into \"reasonable\ngrounds\" for dismissal. What is the difference between\n\"reasonable doubt\" of a man's loyalty and \"reasonable grounds\"\nfor assuming his disloyalty? When you begin to think that\nway, where do you stop? Is it any wonder that our own Sec-\nretary of State and Defense Secretary can be called Communists\nwhen intelligent, respectable men can fire a person because\nof evidence that can never stand up in a court of law?\nx miscl\nYes, I'm really upset about all this. I heard\nof something today that got me mad. It was of a man I know\nwho is desperate, his family in a terrible way. He was a\npostoffice clerk, he's 34 years old. He's worked hard and\nstruggled all his life for the security he thought he had in\nthe postoffice. But then he lost his job in a loyalty in-\nvestigation because it turned out that somebody said that he\nhad been a member of a subversive organization when he was\n18 years old. He didn't deny it, it was true. I don't even\nknow what organization it was, but it probably was some\nCommunist-led group that said it wanted to do away with dis-\ncrimination and prejudice. He's a Negro so he joined it.\nWhy shouldn't he have? Do you ask for a man's credentials\nwhen you're sick and he promises to relieve your pain? Now,\n16 years later, he loses his job and his family's bread and\nTRUMAN\nLIBRARY\nbutter because he is suddenly labeled \"a known subversive\"!\nHARRY\nNATIONAL\nAND\nX93 miscel\nRODGRDS\nSERVICE\nThat's not the end of the story. He found another\nGOVERNMENT\njob -- as a truckdriver. I don't think it paid as well as\nthe one he lost but he couldn't be fussy. Then his firm got\na defense contract. He was fired again, same reason. Maybe\nhe'll find another job, maybe he won't for a long while. What\nis to happen to him, not only economically but morally? Is\nhis family to be disgraced because some narrow-minded group\nof officials don't have enough sense or decency to know\na subversive from a hole in the wall?\nIt's a nasty story, but I daresay it's not the\nonly one of its kind. I wonder what this man would say of\nthe kind of Amer icanism that gives him freedom of speech"
}