Tenessee Monument

STATES & CITIES

Last week Tennessee refused to tear down its famed monument to prejudice. Before the State House of Representatives was a bill to abolish the law which forbids discussion of evolution in the public schools. Cried the bill's sponsor: "I'm getting tired of having people refer to Tennessee as the State with the monkey statute." Exclaimed another friend of evolution: "This law has done more to indict the intelligence of Tennessee than any bill ever passed." But the majority of Tennessee legislators were neither tired nor ashamed. They voted down the anti-evolution repealer 58-to-14.

Six years ago a high-school instructor named John Thomas Scopes ambled into the drugstore at Dayton. Tenn. There he met his friend George W. Rappelyea, chemist and coal man. Outside a rickety old Ford rattled down the dusty main street of the village (pop. 1705). The Cumberland hills beyond drew a green circle around Dayton's early summer stagnation. Perched on soda fountain stools, Rappelyea and Scopes discussed the State's month-old law against teaching evolution. They both believed in the theory, loudly agreed the new statute was ''damn nonsense." Lounging oldsters pricked up their ears when Teacher Scopes declared he was still using a biology text-book which explained the theory of evolution and which the State had not recalled. Chemist Rappelyea was sure the law, if taken to court, could be reduced to an absurdity, pitched into oblivion. Teacher Scopes guessed it could, too. A bargain was struck: Chemist Rappelyea would swear out a warrant against his friend for violating the anti-evolution law and thus force a test of the question. Arm in arm they left the drugstore with a plan which was, in a few weeks, to develop into one of the most amazing trials in U. S. history (TIME, May 18, 1925 et seq.).

After his conviction for violating Tennessee's "monkey law" and his $100 fine, young Scopes went to the University of Chicago on funds raised for him by sympathetic scientists. He specialized in biology and geology. He joined the Venezuela Gulf Oil Co., went deep into remote South American Oil fields, married a fellow employee last year. After a serious tropical illness he returned to Chicago to study for a Ph.D. William Jennings Bryan sleeps on a Virginia hillside overlooking the Potomac while Dayton has long since relapsed to sultry stagnation.

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