In Europe especially, it was predictably greeted with a mixture of condescension, ridicule, bemusement, and head shaking incredulity.
When the Gods Trembled
As always, a detour down memory lane is timely at this point. The Butler Act was the first legislative success of the then anti-evolution lobby operating under the auspices of the Anti-Evolution League and various Bible Belt Christian fundamentalist groups, of which there was no shortage at the time (nor now one suspects). For its part, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) -- in league with some citizens in the town of Dayton, Tennessee -- spearheaded a no holds barred attempt to challenge the Act before the ink was even dry. They roped in a local, and not entirely unwilling, science teacher named John Scopes who at their behest intentionally and provocatively violated the Act by agreeing to teach his kids the Theory of Evolution outlined in Darwin's opus On the Origin of Species.
As for the trial, those prototypically American abstractions of celebrity, opportunism, showmanship, notoriety, and self promotion went hand in hand throughout. Indeed, the legal furore sparked by the aforementioned Dayton townsfolk was motivated less by their fervent, lofty desire to challenge the new statute for its own sake than it was by the less lofty ambition to stem the tide of folks departing the town for more attractive climes, with the scheme being concocted in of all places, the local drugstore.
Now history does not record if these folks were 'inspired' to do so after indulging in some of the store's 'produce'. Either way, one of America's most infamous and iconic trials was the result of a cheap publicity stunt cooked up in the local drugstore in order to attract "attention", and presumably give Dayton folks thinking of leaving, second thoughts about 'abandoning ship'. By the time it was done and dusted though, doubtless many of the more sensible townsfolk who weren't contemplating moving before the trial would surely have considered doing so after it out of sheer embarrassment.
All of which is to say, whether this "attention" in the final analysis left most townsfolk with a sense of pride and place is not known, as the city became something of a laughing stock especially amongst those not enamoured of creationism. Whilst the trial cemented Dayton's place in the psyche of most Americans at the time and eventually in the firmament of the modern American narrative, it may not have been for reasons the more sober minded townsfolk and their descendants might have fully appreciated nor welcomed.
As for those remaining, one suspects they would've sought a measure of solace by imbibing in large, frequent doses of the merchandise from the aforementioned medicinal emporium. And as far as the instigators and their motives were concerned, to the extent that the trial attracted this much-desired "publicity", it worked a treat, well beyond their wildest dreams and even well beyond the borders of the continental United States. At the same time it underscored the folly, absurdity, inanity and sheer futility of the exercise. It certainly made for good copy at the time, and it would be hard to overstate the significance of the trial and the degree of public attention its proceedings received.
In his 2004 commentary on the trial, Douglas Linder, professor of law at University of Missouri, Kansas City, after noting the "... carnival atmosphere [in] Dayton as the opening of the trial approached..." described the pre-trial milieu:
"....Banners decorated the streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a sideshow on Main Street. Anti-Evolution League members sold copies of T. T. (Thomas) Martin's book Hell and the High School. Holy rollers rolled in the surrounding hills and riverbanks."
As for Martin himself, he was the head of the aforementioned Anti-Evolution League, and his 1922 book Hell and the High School, attacked evolution and its teaching in schools as "the greatest curse that ever fell upon this earth." In Martin's earnest, presumably heart-felt view this was an even greater sin than the time the evil Hun "lethally contaminated water wells" and "gave poisoned candy to children" during The Great War a few years earlier, one of the early, dubious achievements of the pioneering practitioners of public relations and a narrative explicitly concocted to fuel anti-German fervour in the U.S. prior to her belated entry into that war.
American Monkey Good, Other Monkey Bad
And of the many head-spinning anecdotes that derived from the trial proceedings, the following must have given the Europeans -- and to be fair, more sensible, down to earth Americans -- much to dine out on forever and a day after. As one might expect, along with the trial's main legal argument, much of the public debate and controversy centred around the notional (albeit simplistic), popular premise underpinning evolution theory, that we are 'descended' from monkeys or apes. For its part Bryan's legal attack made much of the suggestion that evolution purported to teach children that Homo Sap was but one of thousands of different types of mammals and rejected the notion that human beings were descended "Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys"!
Now with this in mind, there is no record of Bryan himself acknowledging in the trial proceedings -- or indeed privately -- whether he may have been more comfortable with evolution theory if Darwin had stipulated we had in fact descended from American monkeys, and/or what might have been the purported difference between American and non-American members of the simian genus and how we might for that matter determine which is which. It is instructive to note here though that history does not record if the prosecution -- or anyone else for that matter -- ruminated on the fact America itself wasn't even 'around' at the time of man's purported 'conversion' from monkey to ape. (Which in more ways than one would truly make America "exceptional".)
Either way, with this in mind, one must recall one of Henry Louis (HL) Mencken's droll observations about the whole saga, that being:
"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man."
Mencken himself -- arguably America's sharpest, most acerbic social and political commentator, columnist and preeminent journalist of the era, and who was in Dayton covering the trial for the Baltimore Sun -- to the delight of non-believers, heathens, infidels and aficionados of human folly everywhere dined out on the proceedings throughout in his regular column. The following summed up The Sage of Baltimore's attitude towards Christian fundamentalism in general, and the 'God made man in his own image' delusion in particular:
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