1925 Society (2)

Society

1925. The Scopes "Monkey Trial" makes headlines in July as Dayton, Tenn., schoolteacher John T. Scopes, 25, goes on trial for violating a March 13 law against teaching evolution in the state's public schools.

1925. Bennington College for Women is founded at Bennington, Vt.

1925. The Supreme Court upholds the conviction of a man under the New York Criminal Anarchy Act of 1902. Benjamin Gitlow's pamphlet "The Left Wing Manifesto" called for "mass strikes," "expropriation of the bourgeoisie" and the establishment of a "dictatorship of the proletariat." The Court rules that this "is the language of direct incitement," but Justice Holmes observes that "every idea is an incitement" and Justice Brandeis joins in the dissent.

1925. The New Yorker begins publication in February, edited by journalist Harold W Ross, a weekly magazine of satire, fiction, social commentary and criticism. Humorist James Grover Thurber, 30, will become a New Yorker regular after receiving rejection slips for his first 20 submissions.

1925. Collier's editor William Ludlow Cheney sends three staff writers on a nationwide tour to report on Prohibition. They find a breakdown in law enforcement of all kinds and Collier's becomes the first major magazine to call for a repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment that has been in effect since January 1920. The magazine loses 3,000 readers but gains 4000,000 new ones.

1925. "The Charleston" is introduced to Paris by "Bricktop," a red-headed American who arrived penniless from her native Harlem last year and has become hostess of a Place Pigalle nightclub.