Today -100: July 22, 1925: He is our Exhibit A

The Scopes trial was supposed to resume today with a continuation of Clarence Darrow’s questioning of William Jennings Bryan, but Judge Raulston announces that it won’t and that Bryan’s testimony will be stricken from the record because it “can shed no light on any issues that will be pending before the higher courts.” Darrow admits that he’s not sure Bryan’s testimony would help the state Supreme Court “or any other human being,” but says he wasn’t done. Now Bryan won’t be able to get his heart’s desire to put Darrow on the stand to expose his “religious attitude” (or maybe Attorney General Tom Stewart vetoed the silly idea).

With that, Darrow says screw it and asks for a directed verdict of guilty. The jury duly convicts and Scopes is fined $100. Which he will never pay.

Bryan’s been working on his closing speech for 3 months, and now won’t be able to give it.

Outside the court, Bryan sends Darrow the questions he wanted to ask him on the stand, related to Jesus’s divinity, the immortality of the soul, etc. Darrow mostly responds with longer versions of “Dunno, I’m an agnostic, dude.” Bryan says the Scopes trial has proved that the Bible is true. Um, sure. He says the issue of whether the Bible is true “dwarfs all other issues now under consideration by the people of the United States and of the world.” Christians, he says, “are at last awakened to the insidious attacks which have been made, under cover of scientific hypothesis, upon the authority of the Bible by unbelievers of every grade and class. The attack upon the authority of the Bible is organized, deliberate and malignant, and had only to be uncovered to be understood.” Bryan calls Darrow “the finished product of evolution... he embodies all that is cruel, heartless and destructive in evolution. He is our Exhibit A.” 

Darrow, referring to Bryan’s statement as “rabies,” responds that Bryan is not a product of evolution, but a reversion to type.

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Today -100: July 21, 1925: What is the meaning of all this harangue?

At the Monkey Trial, Clarence Darrow surprises William Jennings Bryan by calling him to the stand as a witness for the defense as an alleged expert on Christianity and the Bible. Bryan being Bryan doesn’t object, but proves (partial transcript) unable to answer questions about where Cain’s wife came from (“I leave the agnostics to hunt for her”), the nature of Jonah’s whale, Adam’s rib, how old the Earth is, whether Chinese or Egyptian civilization is older than he thinks the Earth is, etc.  At one point Attorney General Tom Stewart tries to intercede, asking “What is the meaning of all this harangue?”, to which Darrow responds, “preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the educational system of the United States” (hey Linda McMahon, I think he’s talking about you). Bryan jumps up and yells, “To protect the word of God from the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.” He accuses Darrow of casting slurs on the Bible; Darrow says he’s just “showing up your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on Earth believes.”

Typical exchange: “Have you ever investigated to find out how long man has been on the earth?” “I have never found it necessary.”

Awesome exchange: “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” “Do you think about things you do think about?” “Well, sometimes.”

Bryan demonstrates that he is not only ignorant, even about the Bible, but profoundly uncurious.  But what will really damage his reputation among Fundamentalists is that he allows for non-literal readings, admitting that the 6 days in which God created shit were “Not six days of twenty-four hours” but could be millions of years.

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Today -100: July 20, 1925: These people are all right

John Scopes says the Fundamentalists also don’t like him because he smokes and (gasp) dances. He says the trial is defeating the purpose of the Butler Act by making people think about science and religion. “These people are all right. They’re intelligent, but hitherto uninformed.”

Former Vermont governor (1896-8) and possessor of The Most Vermont Governor Name Ever, Josiah Grout, dies at 84.

New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore Cotillo, head of the New York State branch of the Sons of Italy in America and son of the man who introduced spumoni to the US, accuses John (Giovanni) Di Silvestro of being a “tool of Mussolini” (Fact Check: Correct) and trying to subordinate the body to the Fascist Party in Italy (Fact Check: Correct). Not that Cotillo doesn’t love him some Duce too, he just thinks that Fascism shouldn’t be imported into the US and believes Italian immigrants in the US should assimilate. The Mussoliniists accuse Cotillo of being a Bolshevik, as is the custom. Di Silvestro will win this battle (which is also about who gets to steal the Sons’ pension fund), but the friendly dialogue over links with Italy will continue. For example, in 1933 a bomb will destroy Di Silvestro’s Philadelphia home, killing his wife and 4 of his children.

Failed coup attempt in Portugal.

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Today -100: July 19, 1925: Of konflicts, vaccines, and race in Staten Island

The Colorado Ku Klux Klan is in conflict with the national Klan, which is trying to force out its grand dragon. 40,000 kluxers have resigned and joined the Minute Men of America.

British doctor William Ewart Gye has developed a vaccine against the cancer, um, germ.

The Scopes trial is in recess for the weekend, so the duel of wits in Dayton is confined to written statements. William Jennings Bryan has found what he thinks is a devastating argument against evolution: Darwin was religious when he was young but died an agnostic, demonstrating the effects of the theory of evolution on the mind. Bryan thinks there’s been a major cover-up about this.

French and Belgian soldiers start leaving the Ruhr. The occupation should be over by the end of the month. They depart quietly in the early morning to avoid any sort of response by the locals, sarcastic applause or whatever.

80 young members of the Hakenkreuzler, an Austrian Nazi-adjacent group, invade a Viennese restaurant and attack the guests, yelling “Out with the Jews!” A hakenkreu, by the way, is a swastika, which is a word the Nazis never used and which won’t make its way into English for a few years.

A bunch of white men attack the home of Samuel Browne, a black mailman in Staten Island, the only black-owned house in the neighborhood. The Brownes have been offered substantial amounts to sell the house they bought last year and were “rude” when a “citizens’ committee” explained to them that property values in the neighborhood depended on its “exclusiveness.” The KKK will take credit for the attack, for whatever that’s worth. There have been numerous acts of vandalism, letters threatening that Mrs. Browne will be shot on her way home from the school where she teaches by an ex-serviceman (unnamed), and an attempt to get the Brownes’ fire insurance cancelled. There will be indictments and a lawsuit, which will not come to much of anything. (Update: oo, there’s a blog post on all this). Browne will soon start the first Staten Island NAACP chapter. According to their grandson, they lived in that house until they died in the early 1970s.

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Today -100: July 18, 1925: Evidence

Scopes trial judge John Raulston rules out expert testimony on evolution, saying the only question is whether Scopes taught evolution. He offers to let the defense put on their witnesses out of the presence of the jury and have them be cross-examined by the prosecution, solely to make a record for the inevitable appeal. That’s just not a thing that courts do, and the defense refuses to take the bait. They will, however, put in affidavits of what they’d hoped to demonstrate, for the upper courts. Bryan is pissed that this will eliminate his ability to cross-examine or rebut. The judge points out that it was the prosecution’s position that none of the evidence about evolution was relevant and he had ruled in their favor, so shut up.

The first part of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published.

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Today -100: July 17, 1925: The truth does not need Mr. Bryan

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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Today -100: July 16, 1925: It is a tragedy to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon

At the Scopes trial, Dudley Field Malone denies that the theory of evolution conflicts with the Bible. 

Since only one member of the Scopes jury admits to having read anything about evolution ever, Clarence Darrow suggests they should be allowed to hear about what evolution is before they decide whether the thing that John Scopes taught was evolution. So he calls zoologist (and Christian) Prof. Maynard Metcalf. After objections, Judge Raulston hears from the prof in the absence of the jury (who are told to stay away from the loudspeakers outside the courthouse). At his assertion that life on Earth began at least 600 million years ago, “There was an incredulous laugh among the spectators in court.”

Attorney General Tom Stewart feels the need to counteract whatever effect the reading from a (state-mandated) biology textbook had by reading the Book of Genesis to a bored jury. A 14-year-old student is asked what Scopes taught and gave a 14-year-old student answer, after which Darrow asks, “It hasn’t hurt you any, has it?” “No.”

H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob against its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teachers. He can never be the peasants’ President, but there is still a chance to be the peasants’ Pope. ... One somehow pities him, despite his so palpable imbecilities. It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.”

Women in Detroit will be allowed to smoke in street cars.

The sheriff of Frederick County, Maryland carries out a sentence of 10 lashes for a convicted wife-beater, the first judicial whipping for years. That is, the first judicial whipping of a white man.

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Today -100: July 15, 1925: This is a god-fearing country

The Scopes defense team objects again to the prayers opening the trial. Judge Raulston says he’ll leave the choice of preachers up to the local Pastors’ Association. It’s pointed out that that group consists entirely of Fundamentalists. Attorney General Tom Stewart “advises” – his word – Dudley Field Malone “this is a god-fearing country.” And that’s all the business the court seems to have conducted today.

William Jennings Bryan writes to the NYT to deny reports that he advocates putting religion in the Constitution. 

Sen. Coleman Blease of South Carolina wants SC to go beyond a proposed anti-evolution law and require all teachers to declare their support for the divinity of that Jesus guy.

Gloria Swanson denies having had a face-lift. She had a sunburn, she says.

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Today -100: July 14, 1925: Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding

Clarence Darrow (after objecting to the prayer at the opening of the court) “thunders” his first speech (transcript) of the Scopes Monkey Trial, an argument to quash the indictment. Like pretty much all the big moments that will come in this trial, the jury isn’t present. “This is as brazen and bold an attempt to destroy liberty as was ever seen in the Middle Ages,” he says of the Butler Act, “Of all the strange, weird, impossible and medieval things, of all the combinations of bigotry and ignorance brought together to make this statute, I can’t conceive of anything greater.”  “Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always they are feeding and gloating for more. Today, it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.” Darrow is on a roll.

H. L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun, says Darrow’s speech “was not designed for reading, but for hearing. The clanging of it was as important as the logic. It rose like a wind and ended like a flourish of bugles.” Still, Mencken says, Bryan has the local people behind him: “These are his people. They understand him when he speaks in tongues.” Mencken is on a roll.

Standard Oil of New Jersey adopts an 8-hour day on its oil fields, down from 12, evidently John D. Rockefeller’s initiative. They will be paid something like 20% less for the shorter day’s work.

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Today -100: July 13, 1925: The breakdown of the reasoning powers

Tennessee hill folk (“queer fish,” the NYT calls them) flock into Dayton from all over the state to listen to William Jennings Bryan as he teaches Sunday school and gives an outdoor speech. He says “It is possible to carry education so far that a person will look down upon religion as a superstition.”

H. L. Mencken, who definitely looks down on religion as superstition, writes in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “It is the four Methodists on the jury who are expected to hold out for giving Scopes Christian burial after he is hanged.” But back to the NYT: “No one can yet measure the impulse and encouragement to erratic thinking which the Dayton trial is giving. It is a sort of notice, posted up so that the whole nation can read it, of the breakdown of the reasoning powers.”

Assistant Treasury Secretary (and former army general) Lincoln Andrews, the dude in charge of the federal Prohibition effort, is reorganizing that system into 22 regions, disregarding state lines. This means 22 administrators to be hired, and Republicans are determined to see 22 patronage appointments. The NYT seems to think Coolidge & Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon will back up Andrews against these pressures.

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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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Today -100: July 11, 1925: Cranks and freaks

Headline of the Day -100:

Yup, the Scopes Monkey Trial is in full swing.

It starts with a 15-minute prayer, because of course it does. The jury has been chosen. It includes 9 or 10 farmers, a shipping clerk, and, of all things, a teacher. No women. One is illiterate (Darrow tells him, “Well, you are fortunate”), 3 say the only book they read is the Bible, none believe in the theory of evolution. Attorney General Tom Stewart objects when Clarence Darrow tries to exclude with cause evolution-denies, saying if he were allowed to do so then the state could exclude evolution-believers. Darrow responds, “If you can find any one around here who believes in evolution you are welcome to challenge him.” He does get excluded a Fundamentalist “minister of the mountains” who has preached against evolution.

H. L. Mencken, describing Dayton, Tennessee in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism”. While he spies an “air of a religious orgy” in Dayton (religious orgies are the worst kind of orgy), he did point out a couple of days ago the absence of the Klan in Dayton. Today he adds, “If it has any bootleggers, no visitor has heard of them” and “No fancy woman has been seen in the town since the end of the McKinley administration.”

Headline of the Day -100:

A coup, which must indeed be pretty upsetting.

Acting Secretary of War Dwight Davis tells New York City to stop dumping its garbage in the ocean. New Jersey was complaining about all the whatever washing up on its beaches.

Kinky Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 10, 1925: Dayton decorates

The head of Coolidge’s Secret Service detail valiantly alerts him to the presence of an open elevator shaft at Fort Andrews by falling into it himself, sustaining minor injuries, allowing Coolidge to leap back instead of also falling into it. Fort Andrews is a bit of a mess, which is why Coolidge wanted to inspect it.

In Dayton, Tennessee, they’re cleaning up the courthouse, putting a big ol’ “Read your Bible” sign on it, and putting up bandstands for the Circus Trial of the Century. Judge Raulston has announced that due to the heat he will allow men to take off their coats. In the town, if one is tired of listening to many assembled religious fanatics orate and longs for the silence of the cinema, one can see “The She Devil,” which is presumably the 1918 Theda Bara film; if it isn’t already clear, Dayton is a little behind the times.

A NYT op-ed denies that William Jennings Bryan is using this trial as a springboard for yet another presidential run. “All he asks is that the world recognize him as the greatest moral statesman of his time. And if the world doesn’t do it, he will talk it blue in the face.”

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Today -100: July 9, 1925: William Jennings Bryan likes potatoes

William Jennings Bryan says if he loses the Monkey Trial, he will campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban the teaching of evolution. Evidently he’s been working on his closing speech for two months and, the NYT predicts, “It will undoubtedly be his greatest oratorical effort since his famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech”. And boy will Bryan be pissed off when he isn’t allowed to give that closing speech.

Dayton, Tenn. is a small town. So just as John Scopes’s father is in a drugstore explaining that he dislikes Bryan because Bryan is too well-read to believe the shit he’s spouting, why there the Commoner is in the next aisle. John then politely introduces Bryan to his father and they shake hands.

Scopes expresses astonishment at Bryan’s nutritional ignorance: Bryan claims to be on a diet and to have has given up white bread because of the starch but chows down on potatoes.

Former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby was supposed to be one of Scopes’s lawyers, but the overturning of Home Rule in New York City, whose attorney he is, will keep him too busy to come to Tennessee.

John Hylan says he’ll run for a third term as mayor of New York City even if Tammany Hall doesn’t nominate him, so presumably running as an independent.

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Today -100: July 8, 1925: A duel to the death

William Jennings Bryan arrives in Dayton, Tennessee. He says “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death. ... the two cannot stand together.”

The Washington D.C. commissioner of public buildings and parks, who issued the permit for the big Ku Klux Klan parade next month, refuses one for an anti-Klan meeting because it would be “political.”

The English Lord Chamberlain bans Ernest Vajda’s play “The Harem,” which recently finished a 183-performance run on Broadway, because “the plot is objectionable, the dialogue nasty, and the whole atmosphere salacious.” Sounds cool.

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Today -100: July 7, 1925: Of rum-runners, home rule, skyscrapers, and excessive laws

Pres. Coolidge, annoyed at watching rum-running ships visible from his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts, orders the Coast Guard to put a stop to it. The rum-runners’ cache was stored in the very next cottage. The Swampscott police chief was recently arrested under the Volstead Act.

The appellate division of the NY Supreme Court rules that the change in the state Constitution granting home rule to NYC was not legally adopted, the 1920 and 1922 Legislatures having passed different versions of the constitutional amendment. So a bunch of laws passed under home rule are null and void, including pay raises, the city running buses and setting routes, police licensing of taxi cabs, etc.

House of Representatives Chaplain James Montgomery says there are too many laws, which just confuses the average citizen. What we really need in terms of laws is the suppression of seditious publications, heathen churches, and undesirable immigration.

The Tribune Tower opens in Chicago. I do love a skyscraper with buttresses.

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Today -100: July 6, 1925: Princey goes bang bang

In Rhodesia, Edward, Prince of Wales shoots the largest blue wildebeest ever shot there, because he’s a dick.

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Today -100: July 5, 1925: Of birthday harmonicae

Pres. Coolidge is visited in his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts by a local boy on his 13th birthday and Coolidge’s 53rd (yes, the 4th of July, the only president born on that date, if you’re looking for a bit of trivia with which to delight your friends and confound your enemies). He is turned away, but his note and a gift of chocolates are sent in and Cal sends a car to bring him back to White Court, where they give him some of the president’s birthday cake (made by the former pastry chef of King Albert) and a harmonica.

At a Garibaldi fête in NYC, anti-Fascist red shirts and Fascist black shirts have a little brawl after the Fascisti attack an actual 82-year-old veteran of the Garibaldi movement as he walks to the offices of the radical newspaper Martello on East Fourteen Street, which takes him past Fascist hq; the two buildings are so close to each other I’m surprised this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time.

July the Fourth was Defense Day. 8 million Americans either take part in a little parade or enroll themselves for military service in the event of a national emergency. Gen. Pershing and VP Dawes have a phone conversation which is broadcast over the radio.  One person not so ready for a national emergency: Secretary of War John Weeks, who hasn’t exactly announced that he’s resigning due to ill health, but has sold his D.C. home.

Some interesting info about the film biz in the Daily Mail (London) from an English owner of 24 cinemas in France, who says that after trying to fill up a weekly program of 90 minutes (the normal length in Britain is 150 minutes), he runs out of French films, few of which are made because the French market is so small (1,500 cinemas, 1/10th the number of the US) and French films just don’t sell in the US, which doesn’t like them any more than the French like American films, but since he needs to fill that 90 minutes the French audiences can watch American films and lump it (British audiences, on the other hand, love American films).

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Today -100: July 4, 1925: Of eccentric music and safety first

John Scopes’s lawyers, or at least Clarence Darrow, plan to get his trial transferred to federal court in Chattanooga or Knoxville, considering that the circus atmosphere in Dayton would be a problem and that the constitutionality of the anti-evolution law needs to be adjudicated pronto, before other states pass their own versions.

The Dayton school superintendent has evidently asked the evangelist Billy Sunday to assist the prosecution. AP reached Sunday’s wife, who says he won’t do it.

A man dies of blood poisoning in Niagara Falls after a “Safety First” sign falls on him.

Headline of the Day -100:

59.

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Today -100: July 3, 1925: But what about gorilla gods?

Black groups protest to Pres. Coolidge over the march in D.C. the Ku Klux Klan plans for August 8th, suggesting it might lead to a race riot. Catholic and Jewish groups also object.

Alfred W. McCann, author of the error-filled anti-evolution book God — or Gorilla? (1922), declines William Jennings Bryan’s invitation to testify at the Scopes trial  because he believes in free speech.

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