Many a newshawk who covered the "monkey trial" of John Thomas Scopes at Dayton, Tenn. in 1925 feels that the sudden death of William Jennings Bryan in that little town was in large part due to the forensic drubbing he received from the satanic tongue of Clarence Darrow. At one point the grim old lawyer said: "The Bible says every living thing that was not taken on the Ark with Noah was drowned in the flood. Do you believe that Mr. Bryan?"
The perspiring Commoner shouted "Yes, I do!"
Drawled Lawyer Darrow, "including the fishes that were left behind, Mr. Bryan?"
Opposition to the teaching of evolution in U. S. schools did not die out—or even languish—after the death of the most celebrated anti-evolutionist. Teacher Scopes was fined $100 (later remitted) and left Tennessee;* The Tennessee anti-evolution law still stands. Restrictive laws are also on the statute books of Mississippi an Arkansas. Dr. Oscar Riddle of the Carnegie Institution, one of the ablest biologists in the U. S., charges that there is even more pussyfooting in present-day textbooks than there was three decades ago.
"Some of the zoological textbooks of 30 years ago were dry," he writes, "but they were not rotten. Our effort is to learn why biological science has not obtained and maintained its proper place in our schools, and why great biologic truth is so little possessed by our people. We have yet to search the motivation of those several instances of State laws which prohibit the teaching of evolution. It was traditional religion that thus invoked the heavy hand of legislation. Elsewhere, without invoking the law but with its extended and varied influence, traditional religion is now effecting a widespread repression of the teaching of this central principle of biology in our public schools. It sometimes forces the resignation of able zoologists even from college positions; and in high schools and late primary grades there are probably today few places where straightforward teaching of the unmitigated evolution principle can be done except at the peril of the teacher. An eviscerated straw man is set up in place of the reality for the younger students of denominational and parochial schools everywhere. Many millions of our present and future citizens are robbed of a biological outlook, or they get one that is warped and unrecognizable. . . ."
One effect of the Scopes trial was to instill a burning determination to combat ignorance and bigotry in a wispy, grey, mild-mannered man named Ludwig Erwin Katterfeld. Born 56 years ago in Strasbourg, which was then German, Ludwig Katterfeld arrived in the U. S., worked on a Nebraska farm, graduated from a college in Kansas where he majored in sociology. He got interested in labor problems, joined the Socialist party, rose to a position of some influence, acted as a circulation executive for several left-wing publications. Meanwhile he made a living as a salesman. Now his crusade for scientific truth absorbs him entirely and he takes no active interest in politics, although he hates the German Nazis.