in a highway or public park is no more an infringement of the
rights of a member of the public than for the owner of a private house
to forbid it in the house. When no proprietary right interferes the
legislature may end the right of the public to enter upon the public
place by putting an end to the dedication to public uses. So it may take
the less step of limiting the public use to certain purposes."[145]
Forty-two years later this case was distinguished in Hague _v._
C.I.O.[146] (_See_ p. 808.) And in 1948 in Saia _v._ New York[147] an
ordinance forbidding the use of sound amplification devices by which
sound is cast directly upon the streets and public places, except with
permission of the chief of police, for the exercise of whose discretion
no standards were prescribed, was held unconstitutional as applied to
one seeking leave to amplify religious lectures in a public park. The
decision was a five-to-four holding; and eight months later a majority,
comprising the former dissenters and the Chief Justice, held it to be a
permissible exercise of legislative discretion to bar sound trucks, with
broadcasts of public interest, amplified to a loud and raucous volume,
from the public ways of a municipality.[148] Conversely, it was within
the power of the Public Utilities Commission of the District of
Columbia, following a hearing and investigation, to issue an order
permitting the Capital Transit Company, despite the protest of some of
its patrons, to receive and amplify on its street cars and buses radio
programs consisting generally of 90% music, 5% announcements, and 5%
commercial advertising. Neither operation of the radio service nor the
action of the Commission permitting it was precluded by the First and
Fifth Amendments.[149]

Under still unoverruled decisions an ordinance forbidding any
distribution of circulars, handbills, advertising, or literature of any
kind within the city limits without permission of the City Manager is an
unlawful abridgment of freedom of the press.[150] So also are ordinances
which forbid, without exception, any distributions of handbills upon the
streets.[151] Even where such distribution involves a trespass upon
private property in a company owned town,[152] or upon Government
property in a defense housing development,[153] it cannot be stopped.
The passing out of handbills containing commercial advertising may,
however, be prohibited; this is true even where such handbills may
contain