Article May 27, 1911 Issue

Los Angeles is opposed to the system of medical tyranny...

Los Angeles (Cal.) Express

Los Angeles is opposed to the system of medical tyranny over the public school designed to be established by Senate bill No. 733 and Assembly bill No. 964. The fathers and mothers of this city will not deliver their children over to the doctors' trust which those measures would create. If the price of education at the public schools is to be the surrender of all attending scholars to the arbitrary authority of state physicians who will prescribe in bigoted obedience to the requirements of a would-be medical monopoly, Los Angeles will not pay that price. As the parents of southern California would resist to the uttermost the introduction into the schools of a group of sectarians who should exercise exclusive control over the religious teaching of their children, so will they resist the proposed surrender of their children to a medical trust. As the public schools, attended by children of all religious creeds, must be kept free from the dominating influence of any single creed, so must they be kept free from the dominating influence of any single school of medicine.

We are of the race that during these centuries has won liberty of conscience and freedom of belief. As no state would now dare direct how the children in its schools should worship God, so should no state dare attempt to compel such children to submission to the tenets of some particular school of medicine. If, in opposition to the beliefs and convictions of parents, their children are to be treated and prescribed for by state practitioners exercising arbitrary authority in aid of the establishment of a medical monopoly, it will not be long before state clergymen, representing some state creed, will be given exclusive control over their religious beliefs.

Let the Legislature make no mistake in its judgment of public sentiment as to this proposal. All else that it has done, important as its work has been, sinks into insignificance beside this act that is proposed. If the Legislature aids the doctors' trust to this attempted seizure of the public schools, it will become infamous. If it attempts to compel the boys and girls of California to submit themselves to the arbitrary control of monopolistic medical arrogance, it will become odious and hateful. No legislation of this character should receive an instant's consideration. It were suitable to the period in which men were burned at the stake because they chose to worship God in accordance with their consciences, but it has no place in this century of freedom and enlightenment.

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