Decency Squabble

Scores of spectators crowded into the Senate galleries last week all prepared to be shocked and-scandalized by a public reading of obscene literature. On the floor Senators braced themselves for a stirring day. Stacked on the desk of Utah's tall, leathery-faced Reed Smoot were such volumes as David Herbert Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover,* George Moore's Story Teller's Holiday, Frank Harris's My Life and Loves, Honore de Balzac's Droll Tales, the Kama Sutra, Robert Burns's, unexpurgated Poems, Joseph Moncure March's The Wild Party, Casanova's Memoirs.

Aflame with zeal, Senator Smoot was about to ask the Senate to reverse itself on Customs censorship of obscene books.

Last autumn the Senate adopted an amendment to the tariff bill, offered by New Mexico's Bronson Murray Cutting, to discard the present system whereunder Treasury agents on steamship docks seize and destroy imported books which they judge obscene or immoral (TIME. Oct. 21). Appalled at the prospect of a flood of dirty foreign literature washing up on clean U. S. shores, Senator Smoot made a collection of volumes recently seized by the Customs agents and during his Christmas holiday pored over improper paragraphs to amass arguments for the retention of censorship (TIME, Jan. 6). His threat to read aloud blush-provoking passages, if necessary, helped to pack the Senate galleries last week. After twelve hours' fervent debate the Senate did reverse its position, did reimpose a modified form of Customs censorship, but without a public smut-reading by Senator Smoot or anyone else. Instead of obscenities, the gallerites heard a long, sprawly, not altogether coherent debate on decency, morals and literature, foreign and domestic.

Three Plans were before the Senate: 1) Censorship of foreign books, as at present, by U. S. Customs agents whom Senator Smoot called "men of education and broad information, with a knowledge of the world," but whose "knowledge of the world," according to Senator Cutting, "is how to get from the Bowery to the Hudson River piers and open trunks and leave them in confusion." 2) No censorship, leaving control of obscene books entirely to the States. 3) Censorship by the U. S. courts, as a body of intelligence and literary discrimination above that of Customs agents.

Through its protagonists the censorship conflict threw into relief two phases of western culture--the Old West, personified by Senator Smoot, Utah-born. Mormon-educated, moral, righteous; and the New West, personified by Senator Cutting, New York-born, Harvard-educated, "sophisti-cated," broadminded.

Senator Smoot began the debate with a thoroughgoing outburst of indignation. Cried he:

"This question is one that strikes at the morals of every young boy and girl in the U. S. . . . I did not believe there were such books printed in the world. They are lower than the beasts! ... If I were a Customs inspector, this obscene literature would only be admitted over my dead body. ... If a Customs inspector, with his knowledge of the world, regards a book as obscene, it is about the nearest approach to a jury trial that can be had. ... I'd rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books. I'd rather keep out a thousand than have one mistake made. . . . Here are the books imported into the U. S.--How to Seduce Young Girls, How Young Girls Can Seduce Boys. . . ."

Cool, composed, glancingly satirical was Senator Cutting's plea against censorship. With a faint lisp, he cited eminent authorities from Tacitus to President William Allan Neilson of Smith College to support his position. Declared he:

"This is not a question of indecent literature; it is a question of freedom of speech and freedom of thought. . . . The first page of King Lear is grossly indecent; the love-making of Hamlet and Ophelia is coarse and obscene; in Romeo and Juliet the remarks of Mercutio and the nurse are extremely improper. . . . There may be people whose downfall and degeneration in life have been due to reading Boccaccio but I do not know who they are. ... I do not think foreign countries have very much on us in the way of indecent literature. From a railway bookstall in Chicago I purchased these important works which I now exhibit:

"Joy Stories, Paris Nights, Hot Dog, Hot Lines for Flaming Youth, Jim Jam Gems, Whiz Bang. I'm not going to circulate these books. I don't think any risk should be run of corruption of the morals of the members of this honorable body. . . ."

Gallery folk were much less interested in the academic issue of a free literature than they were in Senator Cutting's taunting, tormenting thrusts at Senator Smoot. He charged that by publicizing his objections to Lady Chatterley's Lover, Senator Smoot had given it a tremendous vogue, made it a "classic." His smooth insinuations at length brought Senator Smoot to his feet in a fresh burst of rage:

"I resent the statement the Senator has just made that Lady Chatterley's Lover is my favorite book! . . . I have not read it. It was so disgusting, so dirty and vile that the reading of one page was enough for me. . I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"*

South Carolina's Senator Coleman Livingston Blease soon took the opportunity to declaim:

"I'd rather see the democratic and republican form of government forever destroyed if necessary to protect the virtue of the womanhood of America. . . . The virtue of one little 16-year-old girl is worth more to America than every book that ever came into it from any other country. . . . I love womanhood. Take from a government the purity of its womanhood and that government will be destroyed. . . ."

Net Result of the great Decency Debate, achieved without a roll-call vote, was to take literary censorship away from the Customs agents and put it in the hands of the U. S. District Courts. The Customs agent would seize the volume but only a judge and jury could pass upon its obscenity, order its destruction. The book importer would have all the privileges of appeal to the highest court. Senator Cutting declared himself satisfied with this liberalizing compromise, predicted that Customs agents would not be so reckless in seizing books if their opinions had to go before a court. Senator Smoot, happy that censorship had been restored, felt that the country had been saved.

*Lady Chatterley's Lover, with long, minutely anatomical discussions of sex between Lady Chatterley and her husband's game keeper, bootlegs for from $15 to $30 in the U. S. where surreptitious editions have been made. In 1928 Publisher Horace Liveright in New York, without official interference, put out a two-volume subscription edition of Story Tetter's Holiday for $20. My Life and Loves, with no unexpurgated U. S. edition, bootlegs for $25 and up. All other books named have appeared in regular U. S. editions, purchasable at reputable booksellers. *Author David Herbert Lawrence died last month.

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