While representing the ACLU before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in May of 1948, Arthur Garfield Hays (who was testifying against a proposed measure which would force the counsels of witnesses subpoenaed before the committee to take an oath that they were not, nor had they ever been, members of the Communist Party) submitted the following measure for consideration by Congress:

A BILL to provide means to eliminate the Communist nuisance.

    WHEREAS this was a happy land with no troubles until hordes of Communists overran us, causing high prices, strikes, conspiracies and treason; and

    WHEREAS Communists have, since the beginning of our history, caused all the hell-raising in the United States; and

    WHEREAS experience during the late war proved conclusively that the F.B.I., the police, the military and all of our courts and laws are incapable of doing their jobs of apprehending traitors; and

    WHEREAS treason is hard to prove under the Constitution of the United States; and

    WHEREAS Communists advocate deceit, confusion, and are traitors; and

    WHEREAS one of our chief difficulties is that we cannot distinguish Communists from anyone else; and

    WHEREAS there is a pressing need for some means of easy distinction; and

    WHEREAS we have all sorts of investigations, committees, commissions, but no machines to read a man's mind:

    1. That all suspected Communists or people we don't like be submitted to a mental test.

    2. That we appropriate $10 billion to set up a commission to invent a mental reading machine which when applied will say "Communist" when the individual is not a loyal citizen.

    3. Until such machine is fully developed, all Communists must wear boots, red shirts, fur caps (both male and female), and grow beards (both male and female).

    4. This law shall be self-enacting and shall take effect immediately.

Representatives McDowell and Hebert declared themselves not amused.

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