The Trial of Mrs. Dennett
Keyes, Edward L.
74 THE COMMONWEAL May 22, 1929 THE TRIAL OF MRS. DENNETT By EDWARD L. KEYES (The following comment is introduced editorially on page 64 of this issue.—The Editors.) MRS. MARY WARE DENNETT...
...Dennett's pamphlet down a point or two for the benefit of the United States mails (which apparently it was) any city editor of any New York newspaper could have done more in three minutes than the absurd courts of this country did in hours of shameful wrangling in the presence of twelve men who were supposed to be pure because they hadn't read H. L. Mencken...
...This committee, constituted to form a larger and more general committee, national in scope, is resolved to support this principle as well as to assist with the prosecution of Mrs...
...But surely this is not to be expected...
...Dennett has stood by her guns, and if her appeal fails of success she is said to purpose electing 300 days in jail rather than a $300 fine...
...If it was a question of editing Mrs...
...There has been some outcry as to the danger that the distribution of any pamphlet for the education of sex might be interfered with by this verdict...
...As a result, a copy fell into an unsympathetic hand...
...Objection is made to her approval of birth control, her minimizing the evil effects of autoerotic practices and her description of what the French term the "oeuvre de chair," especially since she grants that pleasure accompanies such acts...
...It is quite probable that court action could have been eluded by a lighter touch upon these topics...
...Dennett's counsel, to serve without fee...
...But if juries are to wield an editorial pencil over the literature of this country, there should be devised some way of rendering editorial decisions other than the stupid, bungling, discouraging practice of convicting a lady of high crime simply because, in the opinion of the jury, she overwrites...
...Complaint and then trial followed, and finally conviction of obscenity...
...The committee is convinced that the defense of Mrs...
...There has been wringing of hands over the fate of the poor old widow but we are given to understand that the widow herself is not in sympathy with this morbid point of view...
...The difference between God and man is that God made man—and made him free...
...The pamphlet is said to have been used as a text for some ten years in certain public schools and theological seminaries, and many copies of it have been distributed by branches of the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A...
...We have read the pamphlet and we agree with the jury, in part...
...There is scarcely any need to make much of all this...
...Mary Ware Dennett from her conviction in the United States Court for sending her pamphlet of sex instruction through the mail...
...Dennett must be carried through the courts by orderly judicial procedure and that every recourse to law must be exhausted on her behalf...
...Wideeyed youngsters have had their curiosity stimulated for a day and portly old pragmatists have had their chuckle for an evening...
...Funds are now and will be necessary to carry on the legal contest...
...The jurors shied mainly at one paragraph in the disputed sex pamphlet...
...The committee has issued the following statement: "The purpose of this committee is to support the appeal of Mrs...
...The offense, if any, was not criminal but editorial...
...they thought it should have been omitted or reworded...
...Dennett's intention as to the morals of children, when she wrote this pamphlet for them, was entirely honorable...
...The outlay is, fortunately, reduced to only the barest expenses by the offer of Morris L. Ernst, Mrs...
...This flurry is but another instance of an eternal truth...
...Meanwhile the New Republic has published all the matter in the pamphlet excepting the anatomical illustrations and those few paragraphs upon which the legal stigma of obscenity has been placed...
...A permanent defense committee is now announced with various well-known names upon it and the American Civil Liberties Union on the outskirts...
...With publication came approval...
...Curiously enough, the May 22, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 75 most human and judicial newspaper comment upon the trial seems to have been that of the New Yorker which said in part: "The question was not of obscenity but of expediency...
...Its duty, therefore, and that of the committee which shall supersede it, is to raise funds for the actual contest in the law courts and by dignified and restrained publicity to bring in, on the side of liberality and honest education, many thousands of American citizens, who, the committee believes, hold the same views...
...The effect upon the boys is not related, but it seems that she consulted various persons and by them was urged to publish the pamphlet on the score that it was an excellent presentation of the subject...
...Dennett's appeal...
...If she had restricted the publication to a small audience, even those descriptions of physiological processes which have been objected to could at most have been classified as indiscreet...
...We consider that the principle at issue is that instruction of this type, conducted in a scientific and dignified manner, is not obscene and should be both permitted and encouraged...
...and similar organizations...
...MARY WARE DENNETT has been convicted by a New York jury of obscenity for sending through the mails a pamphlet which she had prepared twelve years ago for what she conceived to be the proper education in sex of her two fatherless boys...
...Perusal of this expurgated document should satisfy anyone that Mrs...
...Now the newspapers have turned to other themes and in a few days we shall have forgotten that The Sex Side of Life was prohibited the mails just as we have forgotten the condemnation of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 3
