Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/89

 taught unless it is first ascertained that it agrees with the Scriptures; certainly they cannot say that.

But this is passed under the police power. Let me call your honor's attention to this. This is a criminal statute, nothing else. It is not any amendment to the school law of the state. It makes it a crime in the caption to teach evolution and in the body of the act to teach something else, purely and simply a criminal statute.

There is no doubt about the law in this state. Show me that Barber's case will you? (Taking book from counsel.)

There isn't the slightest doubt about it, or in any other state. Your honor, I have got a case there, but I have not got my glasses.

Associate Counsel—Here they are.

Mr. Darrow—Thank you.

There isn't the slightest doubt about it. Can you pass a law under the police powers of the state; that a thing cannot be done in Dayton, but they can do it down in Chattanooga? Oh, no. What is good for Chattanooga is good for Dayton; I would not be sure that what is good for Dayton is good for Chattanooga, but I will put it the other way.

Any law passed under the police power must be uniform in its application; must be uniform. What do you mean by a police law? Well, your honor, that calls up visions of policemen and grand juries and jails and penitentiaries and electrocutionary establishments, and all that, and wickedness of heart; that is police power. True, it may extend to public health and public morals, and a few other things. I do not imagine evolution hurts the health of anyone, and probably not the morals, excepting as all enlightment may and the ignorant think, of course, that it does, but it is not passed for them, your honor, oh, no. It is not passed because it is best for the public morals, that they shall not know anything about evolution, but because it is contrary to the divine account contained in Genesis, that is all, that is the basis of it.

Now let me see about that. Any police statute must rest directly upon crime, or what is analagous to it; it has that smack, anyhow. Talk about the police power and the policemen and all the rest of them with their clubs and so on, you shudder and wonder what you have been doing, and that is the police power.

Now, any such law must be uniform in its application, there cannot be any doubt about that, not the slightest. Here, for instance, the good people of—well, I guess these are good people, Nashville, wasn't it? Whether the common people down there—

Mr. Neal—That is a Tennessee case.

Mr. Darrow—Anyhow, it is a Tennessee case. Good people stirred up the community, by somebody, I don't know who, passed a law which said it was a misdemeanor to carry on barbering on Sunday, and that it should be a misdemeanor for anyone engaged in the business of barbering to shave, shampoo and cut hair or to keep open the bath rooms on Sunday.

(Laughter in courtroom.)

Mr. Darrow—Well, of course, I suppose it would be wicked to take a bath on Sunday, I don't know, but that was not the trouble with this statute. It would have been all right to forbid the good people of Tennessee from taking a bath on Sunday, but that was not the trouble. A barber could not give a bath on Sunday, anybody else could. No barber shall be permitted to give a bath on Sunday, and the supreme court seemed to take judicial notice of the fact that people take a bath on Sunday just the same as any other day. Foreigners come in there in the habit of bathing on Sundays just as any other time, and they could keep shops open, but a barber shop, no. The supreme court said that would not do, you could not let a hotel get away with what a barber shop can't. (Laughter.)

And so they held that this law was unconstitutional, under the pro-