The Trial of the Twentieth Century – And its relevance for tensions in modern America

The Scopes Trial was very possibly the most important of the twentieth century in the US – and has many considerations for today. Here, Edward J. Vinski returns and shares his reflections on Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter in present-day America in the context of the Scopes Trial. You can find out more on the Scopes Trial in Edward’s previous articles over three parts here, here and here.

The Anti-Evolution League at the Scopes Trial. Source: Mike Licht, available here.

I write this on July 10, 2016, ninety-one years to the day since the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial began. This court case has fascinated me for well over a decade.  I read every book and article I can find about it. I have seen several documentaries. I have watched the dramatization "Inherit the Wind" so often I can almost recite it verbatim. I have thought about it and written about it. I follow new attempts at removing the theory of evolution from the public school classrooms with great interest. Nevertheless, it is only today that I came to a momentous conclusion: We, all of us in the United States of America, may have been wrong about William Jennings Bryan.

Not from a scientific perspective, mind you, because Bryan was no scientist and he often showed his ignorance. He valued scientific achievement for its benefits to humankind, but he had very little understanding of scientific principles. In some instances, his ignorance was nothing short of laughable as in this section from his famous "Prince of Peace" address:

I was eating a piece of watermelon some months ago and was struck with its beauty. I took some of the seeds and dried them and weighed them, and found that it would require some five thousand seeds to weigh a pound; and then I applied mathematics to that forty-pound melon. One of these seeds, put into the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it gathers from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forcing this raw material through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon...[u]ntil you can explain a watermelon, do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power of the Almighty and say just what He would do or how He would do it. I cannot explain the watermelon, but I eat it and enjoy it (Bryan, 1909).

The argument appears to be, in essence, that science is faulty and God exists because William Jennings Bryan did not know where watermelons come from.

Bryan’s ignorance

Nowhere was his ignorance more evident than in the Scopes Trial itself. In an astonishing development, defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, called Bryan to the witness stand to answer questions about the Bible. Darrow, however, chose his questions carefully from biblical events that pressed up against the boundaries of science. Thus, Bryan stumbled badly when asked questions about such things as the age of the earth, the length of the days in the Genesis account of creation and how these stories contradicted accepted scientific facts. At best, he did nothing to help his cause. At worst, he played directly into the defense's hands.

Bryan was clearly wrong about evolutionary theory. How, then, have we misunderstood him?

Present events

You see, I am also writing this in the wake of a tense week for America. The shooting deaths of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed a few days later by the shooting deaths of five police officers in Texas. Social media is currently undulating between prayers for the victims, sadness, outrage and anger. In addition, the all too familiar battle lines are once again drawn between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.

The names of these movements, however, give a hint of something that Bryan foresaw over nine decades ago: Dehumanization. When we see only the dark skin and the blue uniform, we cannot help but lose sight of what inhabits both - an individual human being. One of Bryan’s greatest arguments for the banning of evolution had nothing to do with science per se. Rather, it was that while science clearly had produced the mechanical marvels of the twentieth century, it had produced no code of morality to keep these marvels in check. Bryan feared that the "survival of the fittest" interpretation of Darwin would lead to eugenics, sterilization, euthanasia and wars of aggression.

For evidence of this, we need look no farther than the textbook under scrutiny at the Scopes Trial, George William Hunter's "A Civic Biology". In a lengthy passage, Hunter describes precisely what Bryan feared most:

Hundreds of families [...] 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.

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 (Hunter, 1914).

It is noteworthy that Hunter's book was published in 1914, the very year in which a Great War broke out that would eventually see some smaller, weaker nations swallowed up by larger, stronger ones.

War without a moral code?

Bryan worried that the proliferation of evolutionary theory without a proper moral balance would lead humanity to make judgments about those who are fit for life and procreation and those who are not. Those in positions of power could use evolutionary theory as a justification to eliminate those deemed parasitic, troublemakers, or just unpleasant. Had not such philosophies already affected the way we conduct our wars?  Science, Bryan wrote:

Has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plan-the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above (Scopes Trial Transcript).

No less an authority than the secular evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould seemed to think that Bryan was on to something, writing, "when [Bryan] said that Darwinism had been widely portrayed as a defense of war, domination, and domestic exploitation, he was right" (p. 163). Within a few years of the Trial, Adolf Hitler would show, just how right Bryan was.

Understanding others

We see this same Dehumanization in our day when we look at the tragedies of Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. Depending on which side we find ourselves supporting, we see either black skin or a blue uniform, but not the person inhabiting them. Even the reasonable-sounding All Lives Matter perspective, while certainly true in the broadest sense, dehumanizes as it removes all traces of personal identity from the equation and ignores the reality faced by individuals of color and of law enforcement on any given day. For all of our advancements as a society, we have never been able to understand the world clearly from the perspective of another. There are those who cannot see how the actions of a white police officer against a black person could possibly be viewed as racist. There are those, on the other hand, who cannot see how such actions could be anything but. I may be able to sympathize with someone else, celebrate with them in triumph and commiserate with them in sorrow, but I can never truly see how they operate in the world and how the world reacts to them. If I cannot do this among my most intimate of friends, how then, can I ever hope to do so with those I know only through the broadest of generalities, which, by their very definition, dehumanize even further? The "you" and "me" of intimacy become the "them" and "us" of separation. Rodney King, the subject of another period of racial tension a generation ago once asked, "can we all get along?" Until we are able to view the world from the perspective of others, to understand them as individual human beings bound up in a history that is both of their own making and also beyond their control, the answer to that question is likely to remain a sad and resounding "no".

William Jennings Bryan did not understand evolutionary theory. His grasp on the scientific method was sketchy at best. He understood people, however. This skill enabled him to become a three-time candidate for President of the United States and one of the most popular public speakers of the twentieth century. His performance at the Trial led to his being labeled a villain, a bully, a buffoon. Maybe his insight went further than we thought, however. Maybe he knew what we would do to each other given only the slightest provocation and with only the slightest scientific justification. Maybe, just maybe, he was more right than we knew.

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References

• Bryan, W.J. (1909). The Prince of Peace. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.
• Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
• Hunter, G. W. (1914). A Civic Biology Presented in Problems. New York: American Book Company.
•  Scopes Trial Transcript, 1925

The trial of Religion versus Science – And one amazing day in court

One of the most important trials of the twentieth century, the Scopes Trial, took place in 1925 and pitched religion against science. And one of the key participants was former presidential contender William Jennings Bryan. Here, we look at the amazing scenes that occurred when he took the stand and faced defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

In this article, Edward J. Vinski follows up on his pieces about how Hollywood blurred the facts of the trial (here) and what William Jennings Bryan believed (here).

Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the Scopes Trial.

The most intriguing moment of the Scopes trial, in which Tennessee school teacher John T. Scopes was tried for teaching evolutionary theory to his students, no doubt occurred on its seventh day. Having been denied the opportunity to question scientists about the validity of evolutionary theory, the defense called prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan as a witness. Bryan, a former three-time presidential nominee and a well-known lay religious speaker, was to be questioned on the Bible. The Tennessee statute specifically prohibited public schools from teaching an account of human evolution that contradicted the Biblical account of creation. The defense hoped, in the first place, to show that what Thomas Scopes taught in his biology classroom was not, in fact, contradictory to the Bible. In the second place, they also wanted to show that the Bible is filled with events that were not scientific and thus its creation account should not be treated as such.

Reporters and spectators alike salivated at the prospect of the country’s most famous trial lawyer, defense attorney Clarence Darrow, questioning its most famous political figure and lay preacher. As if this weren’t enough, Bryan’s agreement hinged on his being able to question Darrow and the other defense attorneys in return (see the Scopes Trial Transcript). Even the setting proved unorthodox. Anticipating that closing arguments would take place during the session, and fearing that the crowds would be too great for the courtroom floor to support, presiding judge John T. Raulston had moved the trial to the yard outside the courthouse. Thus, he guaranteed that one of the most famous events in American legal history would have the largest possible audience (Larson, 2006).

Darrow’s questioning involved “the well-worn questions of the village skeptic” (Larson, 2006, p. 187). In so doing, Darrow often pinned Bryan into a corner where he was forced to choose between Biblical literalism (a position not entirely in keeping with Bryan’s own beliefs), a scientific account of the phenomena in question (which might run counter to the prosecution’s case), and admitting his own ignorance. As a result, most contemporary accounts gave the victory to Darrow and the defense (Larson, 2006; Kazin, 2008; and Farrell, 2011). More recently, in 1999 evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould suggested that while “Darrow may have come out slightly ahead… Bryan parried fairly well, and certainly did not embarrass himself” (Gould; p. 137). But even this latter, more generous, view still gives the Darrow the win. What had happened to Bryan on the witness stand that led to his defeat?

The Rusty Attorney

The first and easiest explanation is that, although Bryan had practiced law for several years, he had not been in a courtroom for decades. As a politician and as a popular speaker, he was without peer when giving prepared speeches. He was no match, however, for an aggressive and fast-thinking trial attorney like Darrow. When he needed to think quickly and off the top of his head, Bryan was generally ill equipped to do so.

Bryan Was Not A Theologian

A second explanation emerges with a close reading of the transcript. Bryan had truly studied the Bible, but he did so as a member of the faithful. His reading was designed to bring him closer to God and as such, his Christian metaphysics runs through his testimony. This metaphysics allows him to account for miraculous events in ways that Darrow, with his agnostic and skeptical point of view, would dismiss as nonsense. This is clearly evident in Bryan’s explanation of the Jonah story about which he said “I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both do what he pleases,” and later “it is just as easy to believe the miracle of Jonah as any other miracle” (Scopes Trial Transcript). For Bryan, God intercedes in human events, and while we should be awestruck by His power and His willingness to do so, we should not be surprised by it or question it. But this point of view created its own problems. As a religious speaker, Bryan was most interested in the greatest of miracles: the Creation (which set humanity above all other creatures) and the Resurrection of Christ (which gave humanity its hope beyond the grave). Unfortunately for him, those miracles were not part of Darrow’s questioning. Thus, when Bryan placed all biblical miracles on the same plane, “laudable simple faith became laughable crude belief” (Larson, 2006, p. 189).

While such a reading of scripture may be an admirable quality in a man of God, it is clear that Bryan never studied scripture in the manner of a theologian or Biblical scholar. He was, therefore, ill prepared to address the inconsistencies it contained. He knew large parts by heart and tried to live by its precepts, but he never considered its contradictions. For instance when asked by Darrow where Cain found his wife (if in the beginning there was only Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel), Bryan could only answer that it “never bothered me” and “I never tried to find out” (Scopes Trial Transcript).

He Was Not A Scientist Either

This lack of inquisitiveness led to a third explanation for his failure: If Bryan was no theologian, he was still less a scientist. He was interested in the potential science and technology held for humankind, but did not view the world through a scientific lens. In response to many of Darrow’s questions about the Bible (e.g. the age of the earth), Bryan frequently responded with statements such as “I don’t know,” “I couldn’t say,” and “I wouldn’t attempt to tell you that” (Scopes Trial Transcript). When he was willing to make a definitive statement on an issue, he typically did so in one of two self-destructive ways. First, he hand-picked research and books that supported his own views while ignoring those that contradicted them. For instance, his reference to George M. Price, a creationist geologist, caused Darrow to exclaim “he has quoted a man that every scientist in this country knows is a mountebank and a pretender and not a geologist at all” (Scopes Trial Transcript). Second, he would respond in ways that played directly into Darrow’s hands. When Bryan conceded, for instance, that the “days” mentioned in the Genesis creation account were not necessarily 24-hour days, and that “it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 600,000,000 years” (Scopes Trial Transcript), he was interpreting the Bible. This would prove fatal. For if the biblical account can be subject to interpretation, then one must question whether John Scopes’ biology lesson actually “den(ied) the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible?” (Tennessee House Bill 185).

All For Naught?

For Bryan the trouble didn’t stop there as insult was soon added to injury. When the trial recessed for the day, Chief Prosecutor, Tom Stewart, seeing his deftly managed case unraveling before his eyes, informed Bryan that should he insist on continuing with his testimony, the prosecution would drop the charges against Scopes (Larson, 2006). In the end, perhaps, none of it mattered. The next day, Judge Raulston struck Bryan’s testimony from the record, ruling that it could shed no light on the particulars of the Scopes case. As a result, Bryan was denied his chance to cross-examine the defense attorneys. Then the defense rested its case and asked for a guilty verdict so that they could begin the appeal process. By doing so, they robbed Bryan of the chance to make his closing statement. It is almost certain that, with a script to follow and a chance to prepare, he would have fared much better than he did on the witness stand. A few days after the trial, Bryan died in his sleep. Sometime later, the guilty verdict would be overturned due to a technicality.

By testifying, Bryan had hoped to show the world that he was “trying to protect the word of God against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States” and that he was “not afraid to get on the stand in front of him and let him do his worst” (Scopes Trial Transcript). He was, no doubt, courageous for doing so. Courage alone, however, could not win this day. He was over confident in his knowledge and his ability. As such, he was also clearly overmatched. Like David of old, Bryan brought his sling and stones into battle. But this time, Goliath was waiting with a Kalashnikov.   

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References

• Farrell, J. A. (2011). Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned. New York: Doubleday.
• Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books. 
• Kazin, M. (2006). A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books.
• Larson, E. J. (2006). Summer for the gods: The scopes trial and America’s continuing debate over science and religion. New York: Basic Books.
• Scopes Trial Transcript.
• 1925 Tennessee House Bill 185.

The truths and untruths about one of the trials of the century…

Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan was involved in one of the most important trials of the twentieth century. The Scopes Trial took place in 1925 and involved the age old debate between religion and science. Edward Vinski follows up on his first article on the trial (available here) and considers what William Jennings Bryan believed and when he believed it.

On the surface, William Jennings Bryan’s involvement in the famous State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes court case seems inconsistent with his earlier public life. Although he was long a supporter of progressive causes, Bryan’s prosecution of Scopes, a high school teacher who violated Tennessee’s statute against the teaching of non-Biblical Human Evolution, appears to represent an about-face: a harsh, conservative punctuation to the life of a man who famously backed women’s suffrage, prohibition and regulation of the railroads. Indeed, for those whose knowledge of Bryan comes only from the film or stage versions of Inherit the Wind, dramatizations that use the trial as a metaphor for McCarthyism, he appears to be an arch-conservative purveyor of hostility and fear. What is the truth about Bryan’s anti-evolution position? Were they long-held beliefs or did they reflect a growing conservatism in Bryan’s social ideas?

Who Was William Jennings Bryan?

Born in 1860, Bryan became one of America’s most influential political and social figures. His famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention secured him that party’s presidential nomination. Despite his loss to William McKinley in the general election, Bryan would receive the Democratic nod two more times, losing to McKinley again in 1900 and to William Howard Taft in 1908. In spite of his pacifist leanings, he volunteered for duty in the Spanish American War, and although he never saw combat, he achieved the rank of Colonel in the Nebraska State Militia. Bryan was selected as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, but resigned in 1915 over a disagreement with Wilson’s position following the Lusitania sinking. Still, he campaigned for Wilson’s re-election in 1916, and offered his services to the President following the United States’ entry into World War I. In the years following his work for Wilson, he was, among other things, a frequent speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, and a supporter of the progressive movements mentioned above. 

A campaign poster for William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 presidential election.

In the film version of Inherit the Wind, The Bryan character[1] speaks in opposition to “godless science” and “agnostic scientists”.  In fact, Frederick March, in his portrayal of the character goes so far as to pronounce “evolution” as “evil-ution” throughout the film. Bryan is portrayed as being a strict Biblical literalist who believed truly that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and in the accuracy of Bishop James Ussher’s estimates of the earth’s age. In fact, Bryan was excited by the potentialities of applied science. He went so far as to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a means of refuting the notion that he opposed scientific investigation. Bryan also accepted the possibility of non-human evolution, but he was worried that when science denied the supernatural, “every manner of immoral behavior” would be unleashed upon the world (Kazin, 2006, p. 273).    

Two questions now arise. First, did Bryan’s opposition to evolution reflect a long-standing belief or a change to more conservative opinions in his later years? Second, to what degree was his attack on science inconsistent with his progressivism? To answer these questions, we will turn our attention to three sources: Bryan’s oft-repeated speech “The Prince of Peace”, his argument against scientific testimony during the Scopes Trial and his never-delivered closing speech that was included as a postscript in the trial transcript.

The Prince of Peace

One of the first clues to Bryan’s position on evolution comes from his 1904 speech “The Prince of Peace” (published in book form in 1909). In it, he stated that:

I have the right to assume, and I prefer to assume, a designer back of the design-a creator back of the creation… no matter how long you draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands back of it you cannot shake my faith in Jehovah… I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as some do; I am not yet convinced that man is a lineal descendant of the lower animal. I do not mean to find fault with you if you want to accept the theory…you shall not connect me with your family tree without more evidence than has yet been produced” (Bryan, 1909, p.12-13).

Fine. He seems willing to say “to each his own”. Yet years later, he would be at the fore of the anti-evolution movement in the United States. Was this a change of heart? Well, a closer examination of “The Prince of Peace” demonstrates that there was not necessarily a substantial change, for there is one easily overlooked passage a mere three pages earlier that sheds light on his fears. In describing why a system of morality based upon reason alone would be deficient, he stated:

As it rests upon argument rather than authority, the young are not in a position to accept or reject. Our laws do not permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he is twenty one…because his reason is not mature (Bryan, 1909, p.9).

Bryan’s concern for the moral life of young people would, in part, drive his anti-evolution crusade decades later. He feared their blind acceptance of materialistic arguments without a solid foundation of faith behind them. Shortly after this statement, he described his own youthful skepticism before concluding that “I have been glad ever since that I became a member of the church before I left for college, for it helped me during those trying days” (p. 11). The young person “is just coming into possession of his powers, and feels stronger than he ever feels afterwards-and he thinks he knows more than he ever does know” (p. 11). Thus, young people can become easily confused.

The Argument Against Expert Testimony

The second source for understanding William Jennings Bryan’s ideas comes from the Scopes Trial Transcript. On Thursday July 16, 1925, the focus of the trial turned to whether or not the testimony of scientists would be admitted into evidence. The defense hoped that these scientists would demonstrate that the study of evolution did not necessarily contradict the Biblical account of creation. In speaking against such testimony, Bryan turned to the tried and true position that had made him a three-time presidential nominee: the right of the populace or their elected representatives to regulate what is taught in US public schools.

“The statute,” he said, “defines exactly what the people of Tennessee desired and intended and did declare unlawful and it needs no interpretation” (Scopes Trial Transcript). The statute contained two provisions. It was illegal first “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Devine Creation of man as taught in the Bible” and second “to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals” (Tennessee House Bill 185). Bryan acknowledged that the testimony of experts would be acceptable if the statute only contained the provision relating to Biblical contradiction. By adding the provision about descent from lower animals, however, the legislature removed that possibility.

This is not the place to try to prove that the law ought never to have been passed…the people of this state passed this law, the people of this state knew what they were doing when they passed the law, and they knew the dangers of the doctrine-that they did not want it taught to their children (Scopes Trial Transcript).

It is not for nothing that he was called “The Great Commoner”. Long a champion of the working class and opponent of corporate power, he fought to protect the weak and poor from exploitation. “The rule of majority opinion against imposing elites” (Gould, 1999,p. 156) was long one of William Jennings Bryan’s primary focuses, and it is that point he tried to drive home in his attempt to block expert testimony.

Bryan’s Final Speech

A final source of Bryan’s views come from his proposed address following the trial. On the final day, the defense led by Clarence Darrow waived its right to closing argument and recommended that the jury return a verdict of guilty upon Scopes. In so doing, they not only set the stage for an appeal, but also deprived Bryan of his own closing remarks. Bryan’s speech was, however, appended to the trial transcript.

In the address, Bryan rehashed several of the points we have covered. Citing recent precedent, he pointed out the right of the state to control the public schools and to “forbid the teaching of anything ‘manifestly inimical to the public welfare’” (Scopes Trial Transcript). In addition, he claimed that the law was in no way an attempt to force religious beliefs upon the populace, but rather the majority’s attempt to protect its religious heritage from attacks by “an insolent minority…to force irreligion upon the children” (Scopes Trial Transcript). The statute, according to Bryan, did not represent a devaluation of science, and in fact Christians welcome truth wherever it may be found. This, in turn, led to his second point: that evolution is not truth but rather “millions of guesses strung together” and that “there is no more reason to believe that man descended from some inferior animal than…to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage” (Scopes Trial Transcript).

Toward the end of the address, however, Bryan describes Darwin’s “barbarous sentiment”. “Darwin,” he wrote, “speaks with approval of the savage custom of eliminating the weak so that only the strong will survive” (Scopes Trial Transcript). It was the Social Darwinism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that William Jennings Bryan most feared. He feared that under it, eugenics, euthanasia and sterilization would flourish as persons and nations tried to create a perfect race based upon the doctrine of survival of the fittest. From those perfect “supermen” world-dominating superstates would surely emerge. “Science,” he continued, “is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine” (Scopes Trial Transcript). In Bryan’s mind, this was never more evident than in the First World War - not yet a decade in the past. “Science,” he wrote, “has made war more terrible than it ever was before. “The world needs a Savior more than it ever did before” and it is only “the meek and lowly Nazarene” who could save it (Scopes Trial Transcript). With that, Bryan returns full circle to “The Prince of Peace”.

Conclusion

It’s clear that Bryan’s involvement in the Scopes Trial did not represent a substantial deviation from his prior progressive tendencies. He was long concerned with the effect adults can have on the impressionable minds of the young, and he strove to protect the young from such influence. He championed the right of the people to determine their laws. Finally, he long believed that, left unchecked, science posed a great threat to humanity. 

With hindsight, it is hard to argue with Bryan’s claims. One can only image his outrage at Nazi concentration camps, at US internment camps, and at bombs so powerful that they could destroy the world as we know it several times over. Bryan may have been wrong on a number of levels, not least of which is that scientific facts are not bound by majority opinion. But if he was wrong, he might well have been wrong for the right reasons.    

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Edward J.Vinski, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Education at St. Joseph’s College, NY.

[1] Bryan’s name was changed to Matthew Harrison Brady for Inherit the Wind. 

References

Bryan, W.J. (1909). The Prince of Peace. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.

Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books. 

Kazin, M. (2006). A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books.

Scopes Trial Transcript, 1925 Tennessee House Bill, 185.