Science: Crusader

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.

In 1927 Crusader Katterfeld started a little magazine called Evolution. He solicited and published sound, straightforward articles from reputable scientists, avoided the wilder forms of abuse but exposed and excoriated antiscientific pressure wherever he found it. In 1932 he found the struggle to keep Evolution going too difficult, decided to stop publication for a while and lay the foundations for revival by a campaign of vigorous field work. His three daughters and two sons, although sympathizing and helping, were inclined to laugh at his “pipe dream.” But Katterfeld persisted.

First issue of revived Evolution was in the hands of 7,700 subscribers last week, of whom more than 4,000 bought their subscriptions from Crusader Katterfeld in personal interviews. In five years he canvassed libraries, universities and schools in 45 States and in Canada, estimates that he traveled 42,000 miles by bus, train and trolley, 12,000 miles on foot, made sales talks to 20,000 persons. He found that most universities offer some instruction in evolution, but that many present it as an unsubstantiated theory and many more avoid the term “evolution” entirely. Baylor University in Texas does not teach it at all. Mr. Katterfeld found that the worst metropolitan foci of anti-evolution feeling were Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles. In Boston he was informed that although there were no “official restrictions” on teaching evolution in the Boston high schools, a teacher who talked about it too freely would be fired on some other pretext. In the South, many a teacher who subscribed to Evolution cautioned him against sending copies to their schools, gave him their home addresses.

Under “Scientific Advisory Board,” the masthead of Evolution’s new issue is adorned with such distinguished names as Anton Julius Carlson (“Grand old man” of physiology at the University of Chicago) and William King Gregory (paleontologist of Columbia University and Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History). Since the last issue in 1932 three valued advisers died: Dr. Elihu Thomson, patriarch of General Electric Co.; Dr. Martin Dewey, onetime president of the American Dental Association, and President Maynard Shipley of the Science League of America. But Editor Katterfeld was happy to announce the acquisition of a new bigwig: the Carnegie Institution’s Dr. Riddle.

The issue contains an abstract from Dr. Riddle’s anti-anti-evolution blast delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science last year; an article by Dr. Gregory called Nature’s Upstart: Homo Sapiens, with a chart of the evolution of the brain from primitive fish to man; other articles by faculty members of Brooklyn College and the University of Utah. An article entitled Evolution Remains Darwinian, by the late Henshaw Ward (author of Evolution for John Doe) points out that the terms Evolution, Darwinism and Natural Selection were confused in the minds of many people who concluded that because the importance of natural selection was doubted by certain biologists, the fact of evolution itself was being called in question. Paleontologist Frank Morton Carpenter of Harvard recalls that at one time or another the presence of fossils in the earth was attributed to 1) a plastic force in the earth; 2) an attempt by the Creator to deceive man; 3) a collision between earth and the tail of a comet.

In a department called Funnymentals, attacks from the enemy camp are quoted. Sample, from the Rev. R. L. Stephens of San Antonio: “Any thinking man, who knows what evolution is, would rather be known as a horse thief, a pirate or a cowardly bushwhacker, than to be known as an evolutionist. . . . Evolution is a pack of damnable lies as black as the soot on the walls of hell; too filthy for carrion, too shameful for dens, too foul for the sewer and too prostitute for Jezebel or Semiramis.”

*Mr. Scopes is now a geologist for a Texas mining company.