The Scopes Trial: The Book Scopes Used Was As Much About Eugenics As Evolution

At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.
George William Hunter's A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, p196--the book John Scopes wanted to teach evolution from.

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Yet if John Scopes were to teach the very same Civic Biology in a modern classroom, he would probably be put on trial again. Because buried under the dust of history is the fact that this progressive, pro-evolution text was also quite racist.
Garin Hovannisian, A Book for No Seasons

Here is an excerpt from Inherit The Wind, based on the Scopes Trial:



Great movie. Great play.
The only problem with it is that the movie and the play it is based on are not faithful to the facts and give a distorted picture of what the trial was all about.


In Teaching the flaws in Neo-Darwinism, Edward Sisson writes:

In the Scopes trial, there was never any judgment or verdict that unintelligent evolution is true. (the prosecution argued and the judge agreed that the Tennessee statute in question barred the teaching of the theory even if it were true, so its truth was not an issue in the case.) Nor notably, was the truth of the theory of unintelligent evolution and the supposed evidence for it ever subjected to cross-examination. Scopes's lawyers presented extensive written statements from seven scientists stating that evolution is the correct explanation for the diversity of life on earth. The prosecution sought permission to cross-examine the five pro-Darwinian science experts whose statements had been read in open court, but Clarence Darrow and the other Scopes lawyers objected and the court refused to allow it.

Two other points Sisson makes:

• Prosecution lawyer William Jennings Bryant agreed to be questioned by Darrow on his religious beliefs on the condition that Darrow be questioned on the evidence for evolution. But after Darrow got to examine Bryant, Darrow unexpectedly changed Scopes's plea to guilty--closing the evidence and making it impossible for Bryant to question Darrow as agreed. Darrow got to make fundamentalism into the issue of the trial and avoided putting evolution under scrutiny.
  
• "According to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in his 1990 introduction to The Scopes Trial, those who advocated for evolution in 1925 included "racists, militarists, and nationalists" who used evolution "to push some pretty horrible programs," including the forced "sterilization of 'unfit' and 'inferior'" people; "the anti-emigration movement" that wanted to bar immigration of people of "inferior racial stock"; and "Jim Crow" laws that evolutions "rationalized on grounds of the racial inferiority of black."

Sisson also makes the point that the book Scopes used, A Civic Biology: Presented In Problems, by George Hunter has racist overtones and is racist.

Here are some excerpts from the book Scopes wanted to teach evolution from, indicating the author's view of race:

Excerpted from George William Hunter, A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (New York, 1914): pp. 193-196, 253-254, 261-263.

Evolution of Man. - Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave. The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized.

The Races of Man. - At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest race type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Charles Darwin and Natural Selection. - The great Englishman Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to realize how this great force of heredity applied to the development or evolution of plants and animals. He knew that although animals and plants were like their ancestors, they also tended to vary. In nature, the variations which best fitted a plant or animal for life in its own environment were the ones which were handed down because those having variations which were not fitted for life in that particular environment would die. Thus nature seized upon favorable variations and after a time, as the descendants of each of these individuals also tended to vary, a new species of plant or animal, fitted for the place it had to live in, would be gradually evolved.

Artificial Selection. - Darwin reasoned that if nature seized upon favorable variants, then man by selecting the variants he wanted could form new varieties of plants or animals much more quickly than nature. And so to-day plant or animal breeders select the forms having the characters they wish to perpetuate and breed them together. This method used by plant and animal breeders is known as selection.

Improvement of Man. - If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment.

Eugenics. - When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.

The Jukes. - Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as "Margaret, the mother of criminals." In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the "Kallikak" family. This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves!

Parasitism and its Cost to Society. - Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

The Remedy. - If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Sisson takes a look at the lab book that accompanies the textbook:

The lab book, at Problem 160, asks students to use inheritance charts "[t]o determine some means of bettering, physically and mentally, the human race," so that students can answer the concluding question: "Should feeble-minded persons be allowed to marry?" A "Note to teachers" states that "[t]he child is at the receptive age and is emotionally open to the serious lessons here  involved." Ironically, the lab book contains nothing on evolution. Apparently the scientist who wrote the book, and the scientific establishment that applauded it, felt it was more important for the "receptive' young students to learn eugenics than evolution.

Considering the importance of the Scopes trial in shaping the debate for and against evolution, it is helpful to go back and get an idea of what was actually going on. After all, it's not the first time that the facts surrounding an event have been clouded in myth.

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