Bruce writes:

> Some of the _Times_ coverage included verbatim transcripts of portions of
>  the testimony. I was surprised to learn thereby that the play _Inherit
>  the Wind_ (which became a controversial but successful film starring
>  Spencer Tracy -- see
>  <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6302120624>), which dramatized
>  the trial, was very accurate, at least in terms of the interplay between
>  Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. I recommend the film.

If there is any inaccuracy in the film & play, it's that it makes Bryan come
across as a buffoon. He wasn't that. He had a world view that made him
susceptible to that characterization, but he was consistent to his views
until his death, just a week after the Scopes trial.

Bryan was a Nebraskan populist, "The Great Commoner". While populism often
bounces just two or three degrees above demagoguery, Bryan instead was an
intelligent and thoughtful person, one who adopted and spoke for the
optimistic view of theology that characterized at the time the great
percentage of the American Protestant church. Bryan argued tirelessly for
women's right to vote as a national issue, for the US's minimization in the
affairs of the European nations and their constant wars, the institution of a
national minimum wage, and most especially for the regulation of monolopies
in the US. The level of corruption during Bryan's time makes the boys at
Enron and Worldcom look like pikers.

His primary connection to Darwinism had little to do with evolutionary
biology. Rather he was totally opposed to the "social Darwinism" that was
advocated by the English philosopher, Henry Spencer. Social Darwinism was
used by the elite to justify robber-baron capitialism in the US, the social
class structure in England, eugenics and racial superiority in an
increasingly nationalist Germany, and in a contrary manner the revolution of
the proletariat in Russia. In response to these grand excesses, George
Bernard Shaw said that, "Darwin had the good luck to be useful to anyone who
had an axe to grind." But the excesses in the US ran completely afoul of
Bryan's sensibilities, and he ran for President of the US three times on the
Democratic ticket, basically winning the first time, Al Gore-like, trying to
restore some sense of social justice to a system of laissez-fair capitalism
run amuck.

A very nice, short summary of William Jennings Bryan appears at -- quite
reasonably -- a farm organization's website:

     http://www.agribusinesscouncil.org/bryan.htm

Wirt Atmar

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