Today -100: July 12, 1925: Foreign scientists should be barred from Dayton

NYC Mayor John Hylan denies that it’s New York garbage washing up on NJ beaches, says it’s garbage dumped by ships.

On Monday (this is Saturday), the Scopes trial will take up the question of whether scientists may testify about the theory of evolution. The state of Tennessee says the Butler Act plainly forbids the teaching of evolution, so what’s the point? But the poorly written act bans the teaching of “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The defense says these are two distinct things, so evidence is required to prove that teaching evolution does not necessarily deny religion. William Jennings Bryan, who resides in Florida, trumpets, “Foreign scientists should be barred from Dayton.” Clarence Darrow accuses the prosecution of “a plain effort to run away from the facts, and is doubtless on account of their inability to get any scientific man in the world to deny the facts that prove the correctness of evolution.” He also notes that “Science is the same everywhere.” “We have no doubt that some scientists will be called from Tennessee, as the statute is so recent that there are some scientists left here.”

John Scopes says he won’t be returning to teaching in Dayton. “It wouldn’t be pleasant.”

The Metric Association, meeting in Lake Placid, passes a resolution asking Tennessee to ban the metric system, which they snarkily suggest would be a boost to their attempt to get it adopted.

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