Walter White (ahem), the superintendent of schools of Rhea County, Tennessee, which contains Dayton, proposes a Fundamentalist college to be named Bryan University. Fund-raising has begun. (William Jennings Bryan University will be founded in 1930; now called Bryan College, it’s still around).
At the Scopes trial, much of the day is spent on arguments over whether scientists should be allowed to testify, but the arguments aren’t exactly focused on the law:
Attorney General Tom Stewart: “Would they have me believe that I was once a worm and writhed in the dust? Will they take from me my hope of a hereafter?”
Dudley Field Malone: “Are preachers the only ones in the country who care about our youth? Are churches the only teachers of morality?”
William Jennings Bryan, describing yesterday’s testimony by zoologist Maynard Metcalf: “Did he tell you where life began? Did he tell you that back of all that was God?” The Commoner says evolution isn’t even a theory, it’s a hypothesis. That puts you in your place, evolution! And, he says, evolution eliminates the Virgin Birth and gives us Nietzsche.
Malone, again, responding to Bryan’s statement that this was a duel to the death: “There is never a duel with the truth. The truth always wins. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan.”
H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “His own speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility. Its climax came when he launched into a furious denunciation of the doctrine that man is a mammal.”
Daytonihoovians, by the way, have finally found out what Mencken’s been writing about them: Babbitts, morons, peasants, hillbillies, yokels, etc. Sounds like there are meetings on every street corner on driving him out of town or beating him up.
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