University of Virginia Library

'Hatrack': A Smut hound Bites The Dust

By LAWRENCE WHITE

It was April of 1926, and America
was about to witness one of the most
important court cases in which any
journalist would ever be involved.

The case itself began the day H.L.
Mencken, the Baltimore
newspaperman whose blasts at the
mock-pieties of American life had
made him the devil-hero of the
nation's reading public, stood on
Boston Common and sold a
purportedly "obscene" copy of his
magazine,The American Mercury, to
the Rev. J. Franklin Chase, one of
Boston's chief smut hounds and a
recent target of the magazine's barbs.

A large, bespectacled man the Rev.
Chase was Secretary of the Boston
Watch and Ward Society, one of New
England's soul-guarding organizations.
Ten years earlier, a Massachusetts
paper had accused him of less than
Christian conduct(he professed to
collect and revel in pornography, and
wrote smutty odes to Boston's night
life), but he still retained enough
influence in high circles to make
effective his huge anti-smut campaigns
in the Boston area.

He met little opposition in his
crusade to put Boston's book and
magazine outlets under the rule of
Puritan censors, for the Boston
churches supported him, and the
newspapers were (for the most part)
either his open allies or afraid to speak
out against him.

For Chase had immense power in
legal circles. When the overbearing
prude hinted at legal action to a
bookseller whose wares he felt
contained "obscene" passages, the
merchant usually raised the white flag
and took the "offensive" tomes from
his shelves.

Because Chase shunned publicity,
writers and publishers of condemned
books were never able to publicly state
a case against him. Thus J. Franklin's
reign remained secure, and some of the
most gifted writers of the twenties,
Huxley and Dreiser among them, were
all but nonpersons in Boston.

For some time Mencken had been
girding for war with Chase. As a
champion of First Amendment rights,
Mencken thought the Watch and Ward
Secretary's reign of terror a sin against
the Constitution. Furthermore,
Mencken hated Puritanism and all
Puritans, and his plump face reddened
as he watched the progress of Chase's
assault on "obscenity."

CD/ David Ritchie

Mencken: Three Cheers for the First Amendment

Mencken saw in Chase's brand of
vice-crusading an effort by
"scoundrels" and "second-rate men" –
in this case, the bluenoses of Boston –
to force their own notions of proper
conduct down the throat of America's
"civilized minority." Mencken
considered himself a part of that
minority, who saw that references to
sex in print were not necessarily
pornography, and who realized that
sex could have eminent value in
literature.

So, starting in the September 1925
Mercury, Mencken printed a series of
articles (in which Chase figured
ostentatiously) bemoaning the
Bible-thumpers' tyranny over the arts
in Boston.

Chase was furious. He vowed trouble
for the Mercury, and that trouble was
short in coming.

In March 1926, the Reverend told the
Massachusetts Magazine Committee
that he found "objectionable"   the
April American Mercury. The issue
carried a biting piece about Chase, but
that was not the article he cited.
Instead, he pointed to a story called
"Hatrack," in which a New York
Herald Tribune reporter named Francis
Asbury had maligned the churches.

"Hatrack" dealt with a small-town
hooker who was locked in her metier
by the ill opinion of the town's
corn-fed faithful. While in itself an
inoffensive tale, it was bound to put
the heathen reader's sympathies with
the prostitute, and that made it a more
than handy target for the fanatical
Chase.

Chase pulled strings, and all over
New England magazine vendors began
dumping their copies of the Mercury.

Mencken saw the huge stakes
involved in the "Hatrack" controversy.
If Chase succeeded in suppressing
"Hatrack," he would simply go on
extending his dictatorship over writers
and publishers, and maybe encourage
other smut hounds in the Midwest and
South to start aping him.

On the other hand, thought
Mencken while chewing his cigar, if he
could manage to be arrested for selling
a copy of the proscribed Mercury in
Boston, then oppose Chase in court, he
stood a good chance of winning the
case – if not in straight-laced Boston,
then on appeal in Federal court.

And if he lost? "Two years in
prison," said the lawyers. But after his
wife Sara's recent death, even the
prospect of jail failed to cow the
disheartened Mencken. A jail cell
without Sara was as good as the house
without Sara.

Mencken decided to go to Boston.

April 5, 1926: Mencken and
several friends planted themselves at
Brimstone Corner on Boston Common,
copies of the April Mercury in hand.
Their plan: to sell a copy, if possible,
to Chase himself.

A crowd formed around the
chubby journalist and his associates.
Shortly, through the crowd came
Chase, formidable as a fullback. Chase
identified himself, then handed
Mencken a half dollar for a copy of the
magazine.

Mencken, to make sure the coin
was genuine, bit it.

As Mencken had anticipated, the big
clergyman ordered him arrested. Police
escorted Mencken, followed by the
crowd, to police headquarters, where
he was booked on the double charge of
"possessing and selling obscene
literature." When arraigned, Mencken
pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trial
was scheduled for the following day,
and he was freed on his own
recognizance.

Messages of support from friends
encouraged Mencken, but he still grew
depressed at the prospect of his trial.
Chase's influence with the judiciary
would probably land him a hostile
judge. Nor was a jury trial likely to go
any better for him. On top of
everything else, the papers, whether
honestly incensed or merely scared of
Chase, condemned Mencken's action in
sulfurous prose.