T. J. O’Flaherty steps right in to the ‘culture wars’ of the 1920s through the person of William Jennings Bryan as only he could. The trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee was a major social event of the 1920s. Epitomizing ‘culture wars’ since, lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan seemingly representing the larger divide between progressives and conservatives in the country. O’Flaherty sees nothing but ignorance and hypocrisy.

‘William Jennings Bryan and Other Animals’ by T. J. O’Flaherty from the Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 2 No. 136. June 20, 1925.

William Jennings Bryan, America’s most perennial presidential candidate, has lent the lustre of a well advertised name to many causes and also the aid of an eloquent tongue, but it is doubtful if at any time during the long public career of this spectacular mountebank, he got entangled in an issue that will contribute more to his political delousation than his espousal of the lost cause of fundamental ignorance it the realm of biology, thru the medium of the Scopes case about to be tried in Dayton, Tennessee.

The facts of the case, briefly stated are: John Thomas Scopes, football coach and science teacher in a Dayton high school taught the theory of evolution to his pupils. Until the year 1924 it was perfectly legal to do this, but the state legislature of Tennessee among others, under the influence of ignorant cave-men like William Jennings Bryan, had a bill passed which made it a violation of state law for a public school teacher to inform his pupils on the Darwinian theory or any other theory of evolution.

John Thomas Scopes deliberately set about violating this law in order to test its constitutionality. He immediately became a national figure, thereby banishing James A. Stillman and his concubines from the front page, for the time being, and forcing the Chicago gunmen to resort to unusual forms of murder in order to make the eight column headline.

Publicity means as much to a political mountebank as water does to a thirsty mule, so when William Jennings Bryan, scented a chance to break into the headlines as a leader of the forces of darkness he hit the trail to Tennessee with as much zest as a tomcat on his way to a love tryst. Religion, according to Bryan, had one foot on a banana peel of ancient vintage while the other foot was standing on the brink of an open grave and smeared with gudgeon grease in addition. Clearly there was need for a savior.

Bryan, who was at this time busily engaged selling real estate lots in Florida, threw up his $1,000 a day job and seizing his bible and his torch he called on the organized morons of America to proceed to defend the sacred sepulchre of ignorance against the demon of knowledge. Many answered his call, because there are many ignoramuses in America. bible would help to make confusion more confounded while the torch would serve as an intoxicating symbol for those in whose veins runs the blood of the witch-burners of all the ages. Even if the law forbids the immolation of John Thomas Scopes on the blazing faggot pile, the sight of the torch would remind Bryan’s pious followers, of the good old days when the smell of burning infidel would soothe their nasal passages and send them on their way happy in the thought that a merciful and just god was still in his heaven.

The battle was on. We must admit that ignorance was well served in the person of Bryan. He is no compromiser in this respect. He will defend fundamental ignorance without the crossing of a “t” or the dotting of an “i.” Those who have rallied to the defense of evolution are not cast in the same mold, it must be respectfully admitted.

Led by the Civil Liberties Union, several lawyers have offered their services to defend Mr. Scopes. Among the number are Bainbridge Colby, secretary of state (for a while) in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet and Clarence Darrow, one of the most noted criminal lawyers in the United States, and sole proprietor of a “what’s the use” philosophy, that has no use for anything except high legal fees and a general acceptance of the capitalist system as an endurable phenomenon. According to newspaper reports, which are not always reliable, the Scopes defenders hope to use the trial for the purpose of “reconciling religion and science,” thru the testimony of heads of more or less liberal denominations, or denominations that cater to a clientele that cannot swallow the immaculate conception not to speak of the special creation theory, and yet like to hold on to the god of their fathers even tho he is much the worse for wear. The liberal churches put this god thru a fumigating process and serve him up to suit the tastes of their more advanced customers, while churches that carry such atavists as Bryan on their books, feature the old reliable Jehovah, the same old boy who used to command his favorite sons of Israel (before they fell from grace) to kill all their male captives and the old females, but to keep the virgins for procreative purposes.

The hope that evolution and science can be reconciled is that one must be deferred. And the bible said that “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” Religion has fought science down thru history. Every advance made by science has been over the wounded body of religion. Beaten in the battle, religion has tried to maintain some footing by compromising with science or with some alleged scientists to the extent of trying to prove that there is no fundamental conflict between science and religion; that god is still there, tho heaven is gone.

Religion can no more be reconciled with science than the conflict between the capitalists and the workers can be reconciled. Capitalism must go. It’s on its way and so is religion. Religion is based on blind faith. Science is knowledge gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking. Capitalism is not fighting those sciences which it needs in its business. It is fighting the science of sociology, with which Marx armed the workers and in the hands of the great revolutionary engineer, Lenin, opened the door to the new order of society, where ignorance as well as exploitation will be treated like a criminal. Capitalism would prefer that the workers still believed they owe their origin to a piece of dirt moulded by Jehovah’s paws and set in motion by a whiff of his breath, but it takes intelligence to run the capitalist industrial machine and you cannot prevent intelligent workers from thinking. What can’t be cured must be endured and the capitalists make the best of the situation.

The “Battle of Tennessee,” as the militant pacifists like to label it, may result in the anti-evolution laws passed in Tennessee and other states being declared unconstitutional. As to teaching of the theory of evolution does not endanger the existence of the capitalist state, the United States supreme court will undoubtedly rule on the side of safe and sane progress. This will please the radicals who have deserted the fight against capitalism and now get their thrills taking it out on Jehovah. Dayton will get a lot of publicity out of it and real estate values should go up, despite the presence of the ungodly Scopes, who by the way declares he is as good a friend of god’s as anybody else. But he’s got to show the Bryanites. Whether the anti-evolution laws will be wiped off the statute books or not, the trial should be valuable. It will make the study of biology more interesting for one thing, and provided there are no juicy murder cases with a sex flavor on the boards while the trial is on, or Coolidge has not sent an expeditionary force to Mexico, Darwin will get a real introduction to the American public. His name will no longer mean a word of six letters in a cross word puzzle. In other words let the trial come on and do its damndest. We are for it, but more interested in what’s taking place in China and Morocco; in Nova Scotia and Mexico.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n136-supplement-jun-20-1925-DW-LOC.pdf