THE SCOPES “MONKEY TRIAL”
Document A: “Anti-Evolution League,” Literary Digest, July 25, 1925
Document B: Quoted in “Dayton’s Amazing Trial,” Literary Digest, July 25,
1925
"[T]he Bible is the foundation upon which our American Government is built and
the teaching of any theory which denies that Bible will, I believe, destroy the
principles which have made our nation what it is." […] The teaching of this theory
of evolution breaks the hearts of fathers and mothers who give their children the
advantages of higher education in which they lose their respect for Christianity and
become infidels. The evolutionists against whom the law is directed deny the
immortality of the soul, the virgin birth of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and
that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. If we are to exist as a nation the
principles upon which our Government is founded must not be destroyed, which
they surely would be if we became a nation of infidels, and we will become that
very thing, a nation of infidels, when we set the Bible aside as being untrue and put
evolution in its place…”
-John W. Butler, Tennessee Legislator who drafted the Anti-Evolution Law
PROHIBITION OF ALCOHOL
Document C: Posters Encouraging Prohibition of Alcohol
NATIVISM
Document D : Nativist Document
“Against these unassimilated and unassimilable peoples the proposed measure
would discriminate. They all represent the newer immigration. Before 1890 the
United States received mainly folk from northern and western Europe. Since 1890
the majority have come from southern and eastern Europe. […] There is no
blinking the fact that certain races do not fuse with us and have no intention of
trying to become Americans.”
-“Guarding the Gates Against Undesirables,” Current Opinion, April 1924
Document F: Immigration Before and After the Quota Laws
Northern & Western
Southern & Eastern
Europe
Europe, and Asia
176,983
685,531
Average # 1907-1914
198,083
158,367
Quotas under 1921 Act
140,999
21,847
Quotas under 1924 Act
132,323
20,251
Quotas under 1929 Act
THE RED SCARE
Document G: The Palmer Raids
“Behind, and underneath, my own determination to drive from our midst the agents
of Bolshevism. I have discovered the hysterical methods of these revolutionary
humans. I have been asked to what extent deportation will check radicalism in this
country. Why not ask what will become of the United States Government if these
alien radicals carry out the principles of the Communist Party?
In place of the United States Government we would have the horror and terrorism
of Bolshevik tyranny such as the destroying Russia now. The whole purpose of
communism appears to be the mass formation of the criminals of the world to
overthrow the decencies of private life, to usurp property, to disrupt the present
order of life regardless of health, sex or religious rights.
These are the revolutionary tenets of the Communist Internationale. These include
the IWW's, the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who
oppose the limitations of unionism, the moral perverts and the hysterical
neurasthenic women who abound in communism.”
-A. Mitchell Palmer, “The Case Against the Reds,” 1920
Document H: The Sacco & Vanzetti Case
“I am suffering because I am a radical and, indeed, I am a radical; I have suffered
because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my
family and for my beloved than for myself but I am so convinced to be right that if
you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would
lived again to do what I have done already.”
-Bartolomeo Vanzetti, speech to Judge Thayer at his murder trial (1927)