Joyce’s book went on Customs’ banned list. The case was taken to court and the judge wrote a blistering opinion against censorship. The court held that the book had to be viewed as a whole, and that one could not judge it by picking out isolated passages from the text; when the book was viewed in its entirety, it was not obscene.
About this time, also, Customs found itself in hot water because an examiner refused entry for a shipment of photographs of sculptures of nude men and women. The examiner took one look at the photographs and ruled that they were pornographic. The trouble was that the pictures were photographs of sculpture in the Vatican—a point which did not seem to impress the examiner but which was noted acidly in the protest against his ruling.
This combination of events, among others, persuaded Secretary Morgenthau to look for someone who could bring the situation under reasonable control. As Cairns tells the story: “Of course, I don’t know what went on in the Treasury or why they turned to me, except that I had beaten the government in the Baltimore case. I had been writing on books for the Baltimore papers for a number of years and Eli Frank, the chief counsel of Customs, knew about my work and my interests. The story I heard was that after the chain of adverse publicity, Secretary Morgenthau called on his counsel, Herman Oliphant, and said, ‘Find me a lawyer who has read a book.’ So Oliphant called up the chief counsel of Customs and passed on the word, ‘Find a lawyer who has read a book.’ That is how I got into it.”
Before “getting into it” Cairns decided to make a trip to New York to interview those who had had a voice in banning the controversial works. He wanted to know the Customs procedures and how those involved arrived at their decisions. He decided the best starting point would be to interview one of the Customs employees engaged in opening and examining packages from overseas.
Cairns opened the interview by saying, “Tell me on what grounds you act when you refuse entry for an item.”
The clerk replied, “Well, if I see a book with a naked woman in it, a photograph, I hold it up.”
“I can understand that,” Cairns said, “but tell me about some other cases that are not so clear-cut as a book having a picture of a nude in it.”
“Well, did you ever hear of this Ulysses case?”
“Yes,” Cairns said, “I have heard of that case. Did you handle the book when it arrived?”
The man nodded. “Yes, I did. What happened was that when the book came in I admitted it. There was another shipment and I admitted it. There was a third shipment which I admitted, too. Then I began to get suspicious. Here’s a book bound in paper and it was selling for fifteen dollars. So I said to myself, it must be a dirty book. So I got my knife and cut the pages. I cut the pages and when I got to the end of the book, I saw the dirtiest words I had ever seen in my life. So I held it up.”