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design,” a theory that supposedly takes religion out of cre-

ationism.

The Supreme Court of Tennessee overturned the guilty

verdict in 1927. In the opinion of Chief Justice Green, the Acts

of 1925 did not violate the First Amendment prohibition

against established religion. Instead, the Court found that only

the jury, not the judge, could impose a fine of more than $50.

The decision was not appealed any further.

________________________

_______________________

July 9

On the eve of the great contest Dayton is full of sickening

surges and tremors of doubt. Five or six weeks ago, when

the infidel Scopes was first laid by the heels, there was no

uncertainty in all this smiling valley. The town bloomers

leaped to the assault as one man. Here was an unexam-

pled, almost a miraculous chance to get Dayton upon the

front pages, to make it talked about, to put it upon the

map. But how now?

Today, with the curtain barely rung up and the worst

buffooneries to come, it is obvious to even town boomers

that getting upon the map, like patriotism, is not enough.

The getting there must be managed discreetly, adroitly,

with careful regard to psychological niceties. The boomers

of Dayton, alas, had no skill at such things, and the experts

they called in were all quacks. The result now turns the

communal liver to water. Two months ago the town was

obscure and happy. Today it is a universal joke.

I have been attending the permanent town meeting

that goes on in Robinson’s drug store, trying to find out

what the town optimists have saved from the wreck. All I

can find is a sort of mystical confidence that God will

somehow come to the rescue to reward His old and faith-

ful partisans as they deserve—that good will flow eventu-

ally out of what now seems to be heavily evil. More

specifically, it is believed that settlers will be attracted to

the town as to some refuge from the atheism of the great

urban Sodoms and Gomorrah.

But will these refugees bring any money with them?

Will they buy lots and build houses? Will they light the

fires of the cold and silent blast furnace down the railroad

tracks? On these points, I regret to report, optimism has to

call in theology to aid it. Prayer can accomplish a lot. It can

cure diabetes, find lost pocketbooks and retain husbands

from beating their wives. But is prayer made any more

officious by giving a circus first? Coming to this thought,

Dayton begins to sweat.

The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected

to find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on

the horse blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the

inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found

was a country town of charm and even beauty. . . .

July 10 (The First Day)

The town boomers have banqueted Darrow as well as

Bryan, but there is no mistaking which of the two has the

crowd, which means the venire of tried and true men.

Bryan has been oozing around the country since his first

day here, addressing this organization and that, presenting

the indubitable Word of God in his caressing, ingratiating

way, and so making unanimity doubly unanimous. From

the defense yesterday came hints that he was making hay

before the sun had legally begun to shine—even that it was

a sort of contempt of court. But no Daytonian believes

anything of the sort. What Bryan says doesn’t seem to

these congenial Baptists and Methodists to be argument; it

seems to be a mere graceful statement to the obvious. . . .

July 11

The selection of a jury to try Scopes, which went on all yes-

terday afternoon in the atmosphere of a blast furnace,

showed to what extreme lengths the salvation of the local

primates has been pushed. It was obvious after a few

rounds that the jury would be unanimously hot for Gene-

sis. The most that Mr. Darrow could hope for was to sneak

in a few bold enough to declare publicly that they would

have to hear the evidence against Scopes before condemn-

ing him. The slightest sign of anything further brought

forth a peremptory challenge from the State. Once a man

was challenged without examination for simply admitting

that he did not belong formally to any church. Another

time a panel man who confessed that he was prejudiced

against evolution got a hearty round of applause from the

crowd. . . .

In brief this is a strictly Christian community, and

such is its notion of fairness, justice and due process of

law. Try to picture a town made up wholly of Dr. Crabbes

and Dr. Kellys, and you will have a reasonably accurate

image of it. Its people are simply unable to imagine a man

who rejects the literal authority of the Bible. The most

they can conjure up, straining until they are red in the

face, is a man who is in error about the meaning of this or

that text. Thus one accused of heresy among them is like

one accused of boiling his grandmother to make soap in

Maryland. . . .

July 13 (The Second Day)

It would be hard to imagine a more moral town than Day-

ton. If it has any bootleggers, no visitor has heard of them.

Ten minutes after I arrived a leading citizen offered me a

drink made up half of white mule and half of coca cola, but

he seems to have been simply indulging himself in a

naughty gesture. No fancy woman has been seen in the

town since the end of the McKinley administration. There

is no gambling. There is no place to dance. The relatively

1312 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

wicked, when they would indulge themselves, go to Robin-

son’s drug store and debate theology. . . .

July 14 (The Third Day)

The net effect of Clarence Darrow’s great speech yesterday

seems to be preciously the same as if he had bawled it up a

rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan. That is, locally,

upon the process against the infidel Scopes, upon the so-

called minds of these fundamentalists of upland Tennessee.

You have but a dim notice of it who have only read it. It was

not designed for reading, but for hearing. The clangtint of

it was as important as the logic. It rose like a wind and

ended like a flourish of bugles. The very judge on the

bench, toward the end of it, began to look uneasy. But the

morons in the audience, when it was over, simply hissed it.

During the whole time of its delivery the old mounte-

bank, Bryan, sat tight-lipped and unmoved. There is, of

course, no reason why it should have shaken him. He has

these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His

brand is on them. He is at home among them. Since his

earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among

the folk of remote hills and forlorn and lonely farms. Now

with his political aspirations all gone to pot, he turns to

them for religious consolations. They understand his pecu-

liar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of sense. When

he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice like

pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan. . . .

July 15 (The Fourth Day)

A preacher of any sect that admit the literal authenticity of

Genesis is free to gather a crowd at any time and talk all he

wants. More, he may engage in a disputation with any

expert. I have heard at least a hundred such discussions,

and some of them have been very acrimonious. But the

instant a speaker utters a word against divine revelation he

begin to disturb the peace and is liable to immediate arrest

and confinement in the calaboose beside the railroad

tracks. . . .

July 16 (The Fifth Day)

In view of the fact that everyone here looks for the jury to

bring in a verdict of guilty, it might be expected that the

prosecution would show a considerable amiability and

allow the defense a rather free play. Instead, it is contest-

ing every point very vigorously and taking every advantage

of its greatly superior familiarity with local procedure.

There is, in fact, a considerable heat in the trial. Bryan and

the local lawyers for the State sit glaring at the defense all

day and even the Attorney-General, A. T. Stewart, who is

supposed to have secret doubts about fundamentalism, has

shown such pugnacity that it has already brought him to

forced apologies.

The high point of yesterday’s proceedings was reached

with the appearance of Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf of the

John Hopkins. The doctor is a somewhat chubby man of

bland mien, and during the first part of his testimony, with

the jury present, the prosecution apparently viewed his

with great equanimity. But the instant he was asked a ques-

tion bearing directly upon the case at bar there was a flurry

in the Bryan pen and Stewart was on his feet with protests.

Another question followed, with more and hotter protests.

The judge then excluded the jury and the show began.

What ensued was, on the surface, a harmless enough

dialogue between Dr. Metcalf and Darrow, but under-

neath there was tense drama. At the first question Bryan

came out from behind the State’s table and planted himself

directly in front of Dr. Metcalf, and not ten feet away. The

two McKenzies followed, with young Sue Hicks at their

heels.

Then began one of the clearest, most succinct and

withal most eloquent presentations of the case for the evo-

lutionists that I have ever heard. The doctor was never at a

loss for a word, and his ideas flowed freely and smoothly.

Darrow steered him magnificently. A word or two and he

was howling down the wind. Another and he hauled up to

discharge a broadside. There was no cocksureness in him.

Instead he was rather cautious and deprecatory and some-

times he halted and confessed his ignorance. But what he

got over before he finished was a superb counterblast to

the fundamentalist buncombe. The jury, at least, in theory

heard nothing of it, but it went whooping into the radio

and it went banging into the face of Bryan. . . .

This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob

against its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teach-

ers. He can never be the peasants’ President, but there is

still a chance to be the peasants’ Pope. He leads a new cru-

sade, his bald head glistening, his face streaming with

sweat, his chest heaving beneath his rumpled alpaca coat.

One somehow pities him, despite his so palpable imbecili-

ties. It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to

end it as a buffoon. But let no one, laughing at him, under-

estimate the magic that lies in his black, malignant eye, his

frayed but still eloquent voice. He can shake and inflame

these poor ignoramuses as no other man among us can

shake and inflame them, and he is desperately eager to

order the charge.

In Tennessee he is drilling his army. The big battles,

he believes, will be fought elsewhere.

July 17 (The Sixth Day)

Malone was in good voice. It was a great day for Ireland.

And for the defense. For Malone not only out-yelled

Bryan, he also plainly out-generaled and out-argued him.

His speech, indeed, was one of the best presentations of

Postwar Society 1313

the case against the fundamentalist rubbish that I have

ever heard.

It was simple in structure, it was clear in reasoning,

and at its high points it was overwhelmingly eloquent. It

was not long, but it covered the whole ground and it let off

many a gaudy skyrocket, and so it conquered even the fun-

damentalist. At its end they gave it a tremendous cheer—

a cheer at least four times as hearty as that given to Bryan.

For these rustics delight in speechifying, and know when it

is good. The devil’s logic cannot fetch them, but they are

not above taking a voluptuous pleasure in his lascivious

phrases. . . .

July 18

All that remains of the great cause of the State of Ten-

nessee against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of

bumping off the defendant. There may be some legal

jousting on Monday and some gaudy oratory on Tuesday,

but the main battle is over, with Genesis completely tri-

umphant. Judge Raulston finished the benign business

yesterday morning by leaping with soft judicial hosannas

into the arms of the prosecution. The sole commentary of

the sardonic Darrow consisted of bringing down a

metaphorical custard pie upon the occiput of the learned

jurist.

“I hope,” said the latter nervously, “that counsel

intends no reflection upon this court.”

Darrow hunched his shoulders and looked out of the

window dreamily.

“Your honor,” he said, “is, of course, entitled to

hope.”. . .

The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in

a manner exactly fitted to the anti-evolution law and the

simian imbecility under it. There hasn’t been the slightest

pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-

election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent

side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been

an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and supersti-

tions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a

competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a

convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to

make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice

prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief,

was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever

under Tennessee law. . . .

Darrow has lost this case. It was lost long before he

came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has neverthe-

less performed a great public service by fighting it to a fin-

ish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for

comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves

notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing

in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid

of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging

him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts con-

verted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a

mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other

States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun

is at their gates.

See also

CHARLES DARWIN

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

1859.

Source:

Linder, Doug. Famous Trials, University of Missouri–Kansas City

Law School Faculty Projects. Available on-line. URL: www.

law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menk.htm.

Accessed November 2003.

Gitlow v. People of New York, 1925

This decision, issued on June 8, 1925, for the first time incor-

porated First Amendment freedom of speech as a limitation of

state as well as federal government. Benjamin Gitlow was a

socialist and, with three associates, was convicted for viola-

tion of the New York Criminal Anarchy Act of 1902. Because

his 1920 pamphlet was found to advocate the overthrow of the

government by force, violence, or other unlawful means, the

lower court ruled against them, and the Supreme Court major-

ity, in Justice Edward Terry Sanford’s opinion, agreed. It held

that the state was justified in prohibiting the pamphlet in order

to preserve the public peace. But the Court also established

that the due process protections of liberty in the Fourteenth

Amendment “incorporated the First Amendment.” However,

not until

Stromberg v. California

(283 U.S. 359 [1931]) did the

Court actually strike down a state law on free speech grounds.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, with Justice Louis Brandeis

concurring, dissented. He asserted that only action, not advo-

cacy, could be punished under Holmes’s “clear and present

danger” doctrine.

________________________

_______________________

Mr. Justice Sanford delivered the opinion of the Court.

Benjamin Gitlow was indicted in the Supreme Court

of New York, with three others, for the statutory crime of

criminal anarchy. New York Penal Law, Sections 160, 161.

He was separately tried, convicted, and sentenced to

imprisonment. The judgment was affirmed by the Appel-

late Division and by the Court of Appeals. People v. Git-

low, 195 App. Div. 773, 187 N. Y. S. 783; 234 N.Y. 132, 136

N.E. 317; and 234 N. Y. 539, 138 N.E. 438. The case is

here on writ of error to the Supreme Court, to which the

record was remitted. 260 U.S. 703, 43 S. Ct. 163, 67 L. Ed.

472.

The contention here is that the statute, by its terms

and as applied in this case, is repugnant to the due process

1314 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Its material provi-

sions are:

“Sec. 160. Criminal Anarchy Defined. Criminal anar-

chy is the doctrine that organized government should be

overthrown by force or violence, or by assassination of the

executive head or of any of the executive officials of gov-

ernment, or by any unlawful means. The advocacy of such

doctrine either by word of mouth or writing is a felony.

“Sec. 161. Advocacy of Criminal Anarchy. Any person

who:

“1. By word of mouth or writing advocates, advises or

teaches the duty, necessity or propriety of overthrowing

or overturning organized government by force or violence,

or by assassination of the executive head or of any of the

executive officials of government, or by any unlawful

means; or,

“2. Prints, publishes, edits, issues or knowingly circu-

lates, sells, distributes or publicly displays any book, paper,

document, or written or printed matter in any form, con-

taining or advocating, advising or teaching the doctrine

that organized government should be overthrown by force,

violence or any unlawful means, . . .

“Is guilty of a felony and punishable” by imprisonment

or fine, or both.

The indictment was in two counts. The first charged

that the defendant had advocated, advised and taught the

duty, necessity and propriety of overthrowing and over-

turning organized government by force, violence and

unlawful means, by certain writings therein set forth enti-

tled “The Left Wing Manifesto”; the second that he had

printed, published and knowingly circulated and dis-

tributed a certain paper called “The Revolutionary Age,”

containing the writings set forth in the first count advocat-

ing, advising and teaching and doctrine that organized gov-

ernment should be overthrown by force, violence and

unlawful means.

The following facts were established on the trial by

undisputed evidence and admissions: The defendant is a

member of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, a

dissenting branch or faction of that party formed in oppo-

sition to its dominant policy of “moderate Socialism.”

Membership in both is open to aliens as well as citizens.

The Left Wing Section was organized nationally at a con-

ference in New York City in June, 1919, attended by ninety

delegates from twenty different States. The conference

elected a National Council, of which the defendant was a

member, and left to it the adoption of a “Manifesto.” This

was published in the Revolutionary Age, the official organ

of the Left Wing. The defendant was on the board of man-

agers of the paper and was its business manager. He

arranged for the printing of the paper and took to the

printer the manuscript of the first issue which contained

the Left Wing Manifesto, and also a Communist Program

and a Program of the Left Wing that had been adopted by

the conference. Sixteen thousand copies were printed,

which were delivered at the premises in New York City

used as the office of the Revolutionary Age and the head-

quarters of the Left Wing, and occupied by the defendant

and other officials. These copies were paid for by the

defendant, as business manager of the paper. Employees

at this office wrapped and mailed out copies of the paper

under the defendant’s direction; and copies were sold from

this office. It was admitted that the defendant signed a

card subscribing to the Manifesto and Program of the Left

Wing, which all applicants were required to sign before

being admitted to membership; that he went to different

parts of the State to speak to branches of the Socialist Party

about the principles of the Left Wing and advocated their

adoption; and that he was responsible for the Manifesto as

it appeared, that “he knew of the publication, in a general

way and he knew of its publication afterwards, and is

responsible for the circulation.”

There was no evidence of any effect resulting from the

publication and circulation of the Manifesto.

No witnesses were offered in behalf of the defendant.

Extracts from the Manifesto are set forth in the mar-

gin. Coupled with a review of the rise of Socialism, it con-

demned the dominant “moderate Socialism” for its

recognition of the necessity of the democratic parliamen-

tary state; repudiated its policy of introducing Socialism

by legislative measures; and advocated, in plain and un-

equivocal language, the necessity of accomplishing the

“Communist Revolution” by a militant and “revolutionary

Socialism,” based on “the class struggle” and mobilizing

the “power of the proletariat in action,” through mass

industrial revolts developing into mass political strikes and

“revolutionary mass action,” for the purpose of conquering

and destroying the parliamentary state and establishing in

its place, through a “revolutionary dictatorship of the pro-

letariat,” the system of Communist Socialism. The then

recent strikes in Seattle and Winnipeg were cited as

instances of a development already verging on revolution-

ary action and suggestive of proletarian dictatorship, in

which the strike- workers were “trying to usurp the func-

tions of municipal government”; and revolutionary Social-

ism, it was urged, must use these mass industrial revolts to

broaden the strike, make it general and militant, and

develop it into mass political strikes and revolutionary

mass action for the annihilation of the parliamentary state.

At the outset of the trial the defendant’s counsel

objected to the introduction of any evidence under the

indictment on the grounds that, as a matter of law, the

Manifesto “is not in contravention of the statute,” and that

“the statute is in contravention of” the due process clause

of the Fourteenth Amendment. This objection was denied.

They also moved, at the close of the evidence, to dismiss

Postwar Society 1315

the indictment and direct an acquittal “on the grounds

stated in the first objection to evidence,” and again on the

grounds that “the indictment does not charge an offense”

and the evidence “does not show an offense.” These

motions were also denied.

The court, among other things, charged the jury, in

substance, that they must determine what was the intent,

purpose and fair meaning of the Manifesto; that its words

must be taken in their ordinary meaning, as they would be

understood by people whom it might reach; that a mere

statement or analysis of social and economic facts and his-

torical incidents, in the nature of an essay, accompanied by

prophecy as to the future course of events, but with no

teaching, advice or advocacy of action, would not consti-

tute the advocacy, advice or teaching of a doctrine for the

overthrow of government within the meaning of the

statute; that a mere statement that unlawful acts might

accomplish such a purpose would be insufficient, unless

there was a teaching, advising and advocacy of employing

such unlawful acts for the purpose of overthrowing gov-

ernment; and that if the jury had a reasonable doubt that

the Manifesto did teach, advocate or advise the duty,

necessity or propriety of using unlawful means for the

overthrowing of organized government, the defendant was

entitled to an acquittal.

The defendant’s counsel submitted two requests to

charge which embodied in substance the statement that to

constitute criminal anarchy within the meaning of the

statute it was necessary that the language used or pub-

lished should advocate, teach or advise the duty, necessity

or propriety of doing “some definite or immediate act or

acts” of force, violence or unlawfulness directed toward

the overthrowing of organized government. These were

denied further than had been charged. Two other requests

to charge embodied in substance the statement that to

constitute guilt the language used or published must be

“reasonably and ordinarily calculated to incite certain per-

sons” to acts of force, violence or unlawfulness, with the

object of overthrowing organized government. These were

also denied.

The Appellate Division, after setting forth extracts

from the Manifesto and referring to the Left Wing and

Communist Programs published in the same issue of the

Revolutionary Age, said:

“It is perfectly plain that the plan and purpose advo-

cated to contemplate the overthrow and destruction of the

governments of the United States and of all the States, not

by the free action of the majority of the people through the

ballot box in electing representatives to authorize a change

of government by amending or charging the Constitution,

. . . but by immediately organizing the industrial proletariat

into militant Socialist unions and at the earliest opportu-

nity through mass strike and force and violence, if neces-

sary, compelling the government to cease to function, and

then through a proletarian dictatorship, taking charge of

and appropriating all property and administering it and

governing through such dictatorship until such time as the

proletariat is permitted to administer and govern it. . . .

The articles in question are not a discussion of ideas and

theories. They advocate a doctrine deliberately deter-

mined upon and planned for militantly disseminating a

propaganda advocating that it is the duty and necessity of

the proletariat engaged in industrial pursuits to organize to

such an extent that, by massed strike, the wheels of gov-

ernment may ultimately be stopped and the government

overthrown. . . .”

The Court of Appeals held that the Manifesto “advo-

cated the overthrow of this government by violence, or by

unlawful means.” In one of the opinions representing the

views of a majority of the court, it was said:

“It will be seen . . . that this defendant through the

Manifesto . . . advocated the destruction of the state and

the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. . . .

To advocate . . . the commission of this conspiracy or action

by mass strike whereby government is crippled, the

administration of justice paralyzed, and the health, morals

and welfare of a community endangered, and this for the

purpose of bringing about a revolution in the state, is to

advocate the overthrow of organized government by

unlawful means.”

In the other it was said:

“As we read this Manifesto . . . we feel entirely clear

that the jury were justified in rejecting the view that it was

a mere academic and harmless discussion of the advan-

tages of communism and advanced socialism” and “in

regarding it as a justification and advocacy of action by one

class which would destroy the rights of all other classes and

overthrow the state itself by use of revolutionary mass

strikes. It is true that there is no advocacy in specific terms

of the use of . . . force or violence. There was no need to

be. Some things are so commonly incident to others that

they do not need to be mentioned when the underlying

purpose is described.”

And both the Appellate Division and the Court of

Appeals held the statute constitutional.

The specification of the errors relied on relates solely

to the specific rulings of the trial court in the matters here-

inbefore set out. The correctness of the verdict is not

questioned, as the case was submitted to the jury. The sole

contention here is, essentially, that as there was no evi-

dence of any concrete result flowing from the publication

of the Manifesto or of circumstances showing the likeli-

hood of such result, the statute as construed and applied

by the trial court penalizes the mere utterance, as such, of

1316 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

“doctrine” having no quality of incitement, without regard

either to the circumstances of its utterance or to the like-

lihood of unlawful sequences; and that, as the exercise of

the right of free expression with relation to government is

only punishable “in circumstances involving likelihood of

substantive evil,” the statute contravenes the due process

clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The argument in

support of this contention rests primarily upon the follow-

ing propositions: 1st, That the “liberty” protected by the

Fourteenth Amendment includes the liberty of speech

and of the press; and 2d, That while liberty of expression

“is not absolute,” it may be restrained “only in circum-

stances where its exercise bears a causal relation with

some substantive evil, consummated, attempted or likely,”

and as the statute “takes no account of circumstances,” it

unduly restrains this liberty and is therefore unconstitu-

tional. . . .

Source:

Supreme Court Reporter, Vol. 45. pp. 625–632.

Margaret Sanger, “Children’s Era,” 1926

Speech given by Margaret Sanger in 1926 at the sixth Interna-

tional Birth Control Conference. Sanger began advocating

women’s right to choose contraception in 1914, when she set

up the National Birth Control League and started circulating

magazines, such as the

Woman Rebel

and

Birth Control

Review.

In this speech, Sanger argued for the rights of unborn

children as well as of the women who bring them into the

world. She asked the conference to understand that not all

children are wanted or planned. She pleaded for the freedom

of women from “unwilling motherhood” and for help to stop

poverty and the unsanitary conditions that accompanied it.

Margaret Sanger’s activities raised the issue of birth control

into the public’s eye and helped doctors provide birth control

information to their patients.

________________________

_______________________

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: My subject is “The

Children’s Era.” The Children’s Era! This makes me think

of Ellen Key’s book—The Century of the Child. Ellen Key

hoped that this twentieth century was to be the century of

the child. The twentieth century, she said, would see this

old world of ours converted into a beautiful garden of chil-

dren. Well, we have already lived through a quarter of this

twentieth century. What steps have we taken toward mak-

ing it the century of the child? So far, very, very few.

Why does the Children’s Era still remain a dream of

the dim and the distant future? Why has so little been

accomplished?—in spite of all our acknowledged love of

children, all our generosity, all our good-will, all the enor-

mous sending of millions on philanthropy and charities, all

our warm-hearted sentiment, all our incessant activity and

social consciousness? Why?

Before you can cultivate a garden, you must know

something about gardening. You have got to give your

seeds a proper soil in which to grow. You have got to give

them sunlight and fresh air. You have got to give them

space and the opportunity (if they are to lift their flowers

to the sun), to strike their roots deep into that soil. And

always—do not forget this—you have got to fight weeds.

You cannot have a garden, if you let weeds overrun it. So,

if we want to make this world a garden for children, we

must first of all learn the lesson of the gardener.

So far we have not been gardeners. We have only been

a sort of silly reception committee. A reception committee

at the Grand Central Station of life. Trainload after train-

load of children are coming in, day and night—nameless

refugees arriving out of the Nowhere into the Here. Train-

load after trainload—many unwelcome, unwanted, unpre-

pared for, unknown, without baggage, without passports,

most of them without pedigrees. These unlimited hordes

of refugees arrive in such numbers that the reception com-

mittee is thrown into a panic—a panic of activity. The

reception committee arouses itself heroically, establishes

emergency measures: milk stations, maternity centers, set-

tlement houses, playgrounds, orphanages, welfare leagues

and every conceivable kind of charitable effort. But still

trainloads of children keep on coming—human weeds

crop up that spread so fast in this sinister struggle for exis-

tence, that the overworked committee becomes exhausted,

inefficient and can think of no way out.

When we protest against this immeasurable, meaning-

less waste of motherhood and child-life; when we protest

against the ever-mounting cost to the world of asylums,

prisons, homes for the feeble-minded and such institutions

for the unfit, when we protest against the disorder and

chaos and tragedy of modern life, when we point out the

biological corruption that is destroying the very heart of

American life, we are told that we are making merely an

“emotional” appeal. When we point the one immediate

practical way toward order and beauty in society, the only

way to lay the foundations of a society composed of happy

children, happy women and happy men, they call this idea

indecent and immoral.

It is not enough to clean up the filth and disorder of

our overcrowded cities. It is not enough to stop the evil of

Child Labor—even if we could! It is not enough to

decrease the rate of infantile mortality. It is not enough to

open playgrounds, and build more public schools in which

we can standardize the minds of the young. It is not

enough, to throw millions upon millions of dollars into

Postwar Society 1317

charities and philanthropies. Don’t deceive ourselves that

by so doing we are making the world “Safe for Children.”

Those of you who have followed the sessions of this

Conference must, I am sure, agree with me that the first

real step toward the creation of a Children’s Era must lie

in providing the conditions of healthy life for children not

only before birth but even more imperatively before con-

ception. Human society must protect its children—yes,

but prenatal care is most essential! The child-to-be, as yet

not called into being, has rights no less imperative.

We have learned in the preceding sessions of this Con-

ference that, if we wish to produce strong and sturdy chil-

dren, the embryo must grow in a chemically healthy

medium. The blood stream of the mother must be chemi-

cally normal. Worry, strain, shock, unhappiness, enforced

maternity, may all poison the blood of the enslaved mother.

This chemically poisoned blood may produce a defective

baby—a child foredoomed to idiocy, or feeble-minded-

ness, crime, or failure.

Do I exaggerate? Am I taking a rare exception and

making it a general rule? Our opponents declare that chil-

dren are conceived in love, and that every new-born baby

converts its parents to love and unselfishness. My answer

is to point to the asylums, the hospitals, the ever-growing

institutions for the unfit. Look into the family history of

those who are feeble-minded; or behind the bars of jails

and prisons. Trace the family histories; find out the condi-

tions under which they were conceived and born, before

you attempt to persuade us that reckless breeding has

nothing to do with these grave questions.

There is only one way out. We have got to fight for the

health and happiness of the Unborn Child. And to do that

in a practical, tangible way, we have got to free women

from enforced, enslaved maternity. There can be no hope

for the future of civilization, no certainty of racial salvation,

until every woman can decide for herself whether she will

or will not become a mother and when and how many chil-

dren she cares to bring into the world. That is the first step.

I would like to suggest Civil Service examinations for

parenthood! Prospective parents after such an examination

would be given a parenthood license, proving that they are

physically and mentally fit to be the fathers and mothers of

the next generation.

This is an interesting idea—but then arises the ques-

tions “Who is to decide?” “Would there be a jury, like a

play jury?” Would a Republican administration give par-

enthood permits only to Republicans—or perhaps only to

Democrats? The more you think of governmental interfer-

ence, the less it works out. Take this plan of civil service

examination for parenthood. It suggests Prohibition: there

might even be bootlegging in babies!

No, I doubt the advisability of governmental sanction.

The problem of bringing children into the world ought to

be decided by those most seriously involved—those who

run the greatest risks; in the last analysis—by the mother

and the child. If there is going to be any Civil Service

examination, let it be conducted by the Unborn Child, the

Child-to-be.

Just try for a moment to picture the possibilities of

such an examination.

When you want a cook or housemaid, you go to an

employment bureau. You have to answer questions. You

have to exchange references. You have to persuade the

talented cook that you conduct a proper well-run house-

hold. Children ought to have at least the same privilege as

cooks.

Sometimes in idle moments I like to think it would be

a very good scheme to have a bureau of the Child-to-be.

At such a bureau of the unborn, the wise child might

be able to find out a few things about its father—and its

mother. Just think for a moment of this bureau where

prospective parents might apply for a baby. Think of the

questions they would be asked by the agent of the unborn

or by the baby itself.

First: “Mr. Father, a baby is an expensive luxury. Can

you really afford one?”

“Have you paid for your last baby yet?”

“How many children have you already? Six? You must

have your hands full. Can you take care of so many?”

“Do you look upon children as a reward—or a

penalty?”

“How are your ductless glands—well balanced?”

“Can you provide a happy home for one! A sunny

nursery? Proper food?”

“What’s that you say? Ten children already? Two dark

rooms in the slums?”

“No, thank you! I don’t care to be born at all if I can-

not be well-born. Good-bye!”

And if we could organize a society for the prevention

of cruelty to unborn children, we would make it a law that

children should be brought into the world only when they

were welcome, invited and wanted; that they would arrive

with a clean bill of health and heritage; that they would

possess healthy, happy, well-mated and mature parents.

And there would be certain conditions of circum-

stances which would preclude parenthood. These condi-

tions, the presence of which would make parenthood a

crime, are the following:

1 Transmissible disease

2 Temporary disease

3 Subnormal children already in the family

4 Space out between births

5 Twenty-three years as a minimum age for parents

6 Economic circumstances adequate

7 Spiritual harmony between parents.

In conclusion, let me repeat:

1318 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

We are not trying to establish a dictatorship over par-

ents. We want to free women from enslavery and unwilling

motherhood. We are fighting for the emancipation of the

mothers of the world, of the children of the world, and the

children to be. We want to create a real Century of the

Child—usher in a Children’s Era. We can do this by hand-

ing the terrific gift of life in bodies fit and perfect as can be

fashioned. Help us to make this Conference which has

aroused so much interest the turning point toward this era.

Only so can you help in the creation of the future.

Source:

James Andrews and David Zarefsky, eds., American Voices: Sig-

nificant Speeches in American History, 1640–1945. White

Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1989.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,

Final Statements to the Court, 1927

Last formal statement made by Italian immigrant anarchists

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, on April 9, 1927,

shortly before his execution (along with fellow Italian immi-

grant anarchist Nicola Sacco) for the 1920 murder of two

shoe-factory employees in the course of a robbery. Maintain-

ing his innocence, Vanzetti restated a belief—widely held by

liberals about this cause célèbre—that he and Sacco had been

judged guilty at their 1921 trial, not because of the evidence

against them, but because they were foreign-born and avowed

anarchists: “I am suffering because I am a radical and . . .

because I [am] an Italian.” After numerous appeals, a blue-

ribbon panel sustained the verdict, and Sacco and Vanzetti

were electrocuted on August 23, 1927. The case has contin-

ued to attract scholarly and legal attention. Virtually all com-

mentators found the trial unfair by modern standards.

However, forensic and other evidence points to the guilt of at

least Sacco for the murders, although a number of researchers

consider Vanzetti innocent.

________________________

_______________________

Statement by Nicola Sacco

Yes, sir. I am not an orator. It is not very familiar with me

the English language, and as I know, as my friend has told

me, my comrade Vanzetti will speak more long, so I

thought to give him the chance.

I never know, never heard, even read in history any-

thing so cruel as this Court. After seven years prosecuting

they still consider us guilty. And these gentle people here

are arrayed with us in this court today.

I know the sentence will be between two class, the

oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always

collision between one and the other. We fraternize the

people with the books, with the literature. You persecute

the people, tyrannize over them and kill them. We try the

education of people always. You try to put a path between

us and some other nationality that hates each other. That is

why I am here today on this bench, for having been the

oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor.

You know it, Judge Thayer,—you know all my life, you

know why I have been here, and after seven years that you

have been persecuting me and my poor wife, and you still

today sentence us to death. I would like to tell all my life,

but what is the use? You know all about what I say before,

and my friend—that is, my comrade—will be talking,

because he is more familiar with the language, and I will

give him a chance. My comrade, the man kind, the kind

man to all the children, you sentence him two times, in the

Bridgewater case and the Dedham case, connected with

me, and you know he is innocent. You forget all the popu-

lation that has been with us for seven years, to sympathize

and give us all their energy and all their kindness. You do

not care for them. Among that peoples and the comrades

and the working class there is a big legion of intellectual

people which have been with us for seven years, but to not

commit the iniquitous sentence, but still the Court goes

ahead. And I think I thank you all, you peoples, my com-

rades who have been with me for seven years, with the

Sacco-Vanzetti case, and I will give my friend a chance.

I forget one thing which my comrade remember me.

As I said before, Judge Thayer know all my life, and he

know that I am never been guilty, never,—not yesterday

nor today nor forever.

Clerk Worthington: “Bartolomeo Vanzetti, have you any-

thing to say why sentence of death should not be passed

upon you?”

Statement by Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Yes. What I say is that I am innocent, not only of the Brain-

tree crime, but also of the Bridgewater crime. That I am

not only innocent of these two crimes, but in all my life I

have never stole and I have never killed and I have never

spilled blood. That is what I want to say. And it is not all.

Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all

my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood,

but I have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to

eliminate crime from the earth.

Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well

that I did not need to go in between the street and kill a

man to take the money. I can live with my two arms and

live well. But besides that, I can live even without work

with my arm for other people. I have had plenty of chance

to live independently and to live what the world conceives

to be a higher life than not to gain our bread with the sweat

of our brow.

Postwar Society 1319

My father in Italy is in a good condition. I could have

come back in Italy and he would have welcomed me every

time with open arms. Even if I come back there with not a

cent in my pocket, my father could have give me a posses-

sion, not to work but to make business, or to oversee upon

the land that he owns. He has wrote me many letters in

that sense, and other well to do relatives have wrote me

many letters in that sense that I can produce.

Well, it may be a boast. My father and my uncle can

boast themselves and say things that people may not be

compelled to believe. People may say they may be poor

when I say that they are to consider to give me a position

every time that I want to settle down and form a family and

start a settled life. Well, but there are people maybe in this

same court that could testify to what I have say and what

my father and my uncle have say to me is not a lie, that

really they have the means to give me position every time

that I want.

Well, I want to reach a little point farther, and it is

this—that not only have I not been trying to steal in

Bridgewater, not only have I not been in Braintree to steal

and kill and have never steal or kill or spilt blood in all my

life, not only have I struggled hard against crimes, but I

have refused myself the commodity or glory of life, the

pride of life of a good position, because in my considera-

tion it is not right to exploit man. I have refused to go in

business because I understand that business is a specula-

tion on profit upon certain people that must depend upon

the business man, and I do not consider that that is right

and therefore I refuse to do that.

Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all

these things, not only have I never committed a real crime

in my life—though some sins but not crimes—not only

have I struggled all my life to eliminate crimes, the crimes

that the official law and the official moral condemns, but

also the crime that the official moral and the official law

sanctions and sanctifies,—the exploitation and the

oppression of the man by the man, and if there is a reason

why I am here as a guilty man, if there is a reason why you

in a few minutes can doom me, it is this reason and none

else.

I beg your pardon. [Referring to paper.] There is the

more good man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a

man that will last and will grow always more near and more

dear to the people, as far as into the heart of the people, so

long as admiration for goodness and for sacrifice will last.

I mean Eugene Debs. I will say that even a dog that killed

the chickens would not have found an American jury to

convict it with the proof that the Commonwealth pro-

duced against us. That man was not with me in Plymouth

or with Sacco where he was on the day of the crime. You

can say that it is arbitrary, what we are saying, that he is

good and he applied to the other his own goodness, that he

is incapable of crime, and he believed that everybody is

incapable of crime.

Well, it may be like that but it is not, it could be like

that but it is not, and that man has a real experience of

court, of prison and of jury. Just because he want the world

a little better he was persecuted and slandered from his

boyhood to his old age, and indeed he was murdered by

the prison. He know, and not only he but every man of

understanding in the world, not only in this country but

also in the other countries, men that we have provided a

certain amount of a record of the times, they all still stick

with us, the flower of mankind of Europe, the better writ-

ers, the greatest thinkers of Europe, have pleaded in our

favor. The scientists, the greatest scientists, the greatest

statesmen of Europe, have pleaded in our favor. The peo-

ple of foreign nations have pleaded in our favor.

Is it possible that only a few on the jury, only two or

three men, who would condemn their mother for worldly

honor and for earthly fortune; is it possible that they are

right against what the world, the whole world has say it is

wrong and that I know that it is wrong? If there is one that

I should know it, if it is right or if it is wrong, it is I and this

man. You see it is seven years that we are in jail. What we

have suffered during these seven years no human tongue

can say, and yet you see me before you, not trembling, you

see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blushing, not

changing color, not ashamed or in fear.

Eugene Debs say that not even a dog—something like

that—not even a dog that kill the chickens would have

been found guilty by American jury with the evidence that

the Commonwealth have produced against us. I say that

not even a leprous dog would have his appeal refused two

times by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts—not even

a leprous dog. . . .

Well, I have already say that I not only am not guilty of

these two crimes, but I never commit a crime in my life,—

I have never steal and I have never kill and I have never

spilt blood, and I have fought against the crime, and I have

fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the

crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.

This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a

snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the

earth—I would not wish to any of them what I have had to

suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction

is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am

suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical;

I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am

an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my

beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right

that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be

reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I

have done already.

I have finished. Thank you.

1320 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

Source:

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives and Records

Preservation. Boston, Massachusetts. Sacco-Vanzetti Case.

Vol. 5, pp. 4,895–4,905.

Buck v. Bell, 1927

This 1927 Supreme Court decision upheld a Virginia law per-

mitting the government to order the compulsory sterilization

of young women it believed were “unfit to continue their

kind.” The law was an example of the type of Progressive Era

“reform” that would be considered regressive today. Carrie

Buck, who was withdrawn from school at the end of fifth

grade, lived with a foster Virginia family. Carrie became preg-

nant at 17 during what she said was a rape by a family mem-

ber. The family responded by having their own and a second

doctor testify to Charlottesville justice of the peace Charles D.

Shackleford that Carrie was feebleminded, thereby securing an

order committing her to the Virginia State Colony for Epilep-

tics and Feebleminded, in Lynchburg, on January 24, 1924.

(The family kept Carrie Buck’s infant daughter.) The superin-

tendent of the state colony, Dr. Albert Priddy, believed he

could help society limit the number of what he called “mental

defectives” by controlling the reproduction of his patients. Dr.

Priddy, claiming that he operated only to cure “pelvic dis-

ease,” had sterilized between 75 and 100 young women with-

out their consent before seeing Carrie Buck. The Virginia

assembly in 1924 adopted a bill permitting compulsory steril-

ization of “feeble-minded” or “socially inadequate person[s].”

The colony decided to use Carrie Buck as a test case that even-

tually reached the Supreme Court.

On May 2, 1927, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes deliv-

ered the Court’s opinion and Carrie Buck was sterilized by Dr.

Bell on October 16, 1927.

Buck v. Bell

’s implications reached

far past Carrie Buck, however. In the United States, more than

50,000 people were sterilized in 30 states in accordance with

laws modeled on Virginia’s. In Europe, following World War II,

Nazi lawyers defended the forced sterilization of 2 million

people by citing that the U.S. Supreme Court had declared

such laws constitutional in

Buck v. Bell,

which has yet to be

reversed specifically.

________________________

_______________________

Mr. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the

Court.

This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the

Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia affirm-

ing a judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County by

which the defendant in error, the superintendent of the

State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was

ordered to perform the operation of salpingectomy upon

Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of mak-

ing her sterile. 143 Va. 310. The case comes here upon the

contention that the statute authorizing the judgment is

void under the Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the

plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protec-

tion of the laws.

Carrie Buck is a feeble minded white woman who was

committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due

form. She is the daughter of a feeble minded mother in the

same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble

minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the

trial of her case in the Circuit Court, in the latter part of

1924. An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924, recites

that the health of the patient and the welfare of society

may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of

mental defectives, under careful safeguard, &c.; that the

sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in

females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substan-

tial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in

various institutions many defective persons who, if now

discharged, would become a menace, but, if incapable of

procreating, might be discharged with safety and become

self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society,

and that experience has shown that heredity plays an

important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility,

&c. The statute then enacts that, whenever the superin-

tendent of certain institutions, including the above-named

State Colony, shall be of opinion that it is for the best inter-

ests of the patients and of society that an inmate under his

care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the opera-

tion performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary

forms of insanity, imbecility, &c., on complying with the

very careful provisions by which the act protects the

patients from possible abuse.

The superintendent first presents a petition to the spe-

cial board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the

facts and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit.

Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the hear-

ing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate, and

also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian, the

superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the

County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor, notice also

is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the peti-

tion. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend the

hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence is

all to be reduced to writing, and, after the board has made

its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or

the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court

of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record of

the board and the evidence before it and such other admis-

sible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm, revise, or

reverse the order of the board and enter such order as it

deems just. Finally any party may apply to the Supreme

Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is to hear the

Postwar Society 1321