Contradictory History

Myth gathers quickly around fabulous events, and already newspaper myths are gathering around the origin of the first newspaper appearance of the famed Scopes case (see EDUCATION).

At first, it was labeled as a press-agent stunt for Dayton, Tenn., but that theory seems to have been disregarded. Last week Editor and Publisher and The Fourth Estate, two trade journals of the newspaper world, printed diverse accounts of the origin of the Scopes story in the press.

Editor and Publisher Version: When Scopes was arrested, a lawyer, Wallace Haggard, said to E. F. Robinson (proprietor of the drug store where Scopes was arrested, President of the Dayton School Board, and correspondent in Dayton for The Chattanooga Times and Nashville Banner):

"Let's telephone the story to the Times."

Robinson refused to waste 30-c-, so Haggard made the call. Next morning a three-inch item appeared in the Chattanooga paper--and then the news spread, and more and bigger stories were demanded.

The Fourth Estate Version: The American Civil Liberties Union, an organization fighting illegal arrest and other invasions of civil liberty, sends out from time to time a bulletin containing a score or more of mimeographed items, three or four lines long, telling about cases that interest it. These bulletins go to newspaper offices where many of similar kind are received and cast on the floor. One of the bulletins contained the story of Scopes' arrest. In the Manhattan office of the Universal Service (a press association), an editor who happened to be a Tennesseean picked up this bulletin from the floor. He knew about the Tennessee anti-evolution law, and from the little item in the bulletin wrote the first story to go out on the wires of a national press service. Next morning, it appeared on the first page of The New York American (Hearst). Universal Service sent out stories on the case for four days before other national press services decided the case was worth taking up.