Word: smoot
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...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...
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...
Aflame with zeal, Senator Smoot was about to ask the Senate to reverse itself on Customs censorship of obscene books...
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...