Ephraim Kingsbury Avery - A War For Public Opinion

A War For Public Opinion

There were a great deal of external concerns interested in the case of the young Methodist girl who had been employed at the Fall River Manufactory. For one, New England Protestantism was suspicious of the encroachment of the comparatively new sect of Methodism, and the trial seemed to confirm their worst fears. Another was the 19th century American industrialists whose cotton mills relied on the labor of young, newly independent women. The case of Sarah Cornell cast into doubt the industrialists' assertion that women would be as safe in the factories as they were working at home with their families.

It was therefore in the interest of the factory-owners to keep Cornell from being smeared in the press, and to push for the arrest and conviction of her murderer. Conversely, the Methodist Church wanted to earn respectability and make converts, and wanted to avoid at all costs a criminal and sexual scandal involving one of its own ministers. Consequently, both of these groups contributed a great deal of effort, money and publicity to the trial, for either the prosecution's side or the defense.

Read more about this topic:  Ephraim Kingsbury Avery

Famous quotes containing the words war, public and/or opinion:

    Stiller ... took part in the Spanish Civil War ... It is not clear what impelled him to this military gesture. Probably many factors were combined—a rather romantic Communism, such as was common among bourgeois intellectuals at that time.
    Max Frisch (1911–1991)

    Bryan is the least of a liar I know in public life. I have always found him direct and honest, and he never goes back on what he has said to me in private—a rare thing, if found, in public men. I found him purely frank.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes.
    Max Lerner (b. 1902)