Cairns nodded. “Who was the book addressed to?”
“It was addressed to an actress. She came down to see me and said, ‘I want my Ulysses.’ I said, ‘Lady, I ain’t going to give it to you. It’s a dirty book.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least let me look at it.’ I looked at her and said, ‘Lady, are you married?’ She said, ‘No, I am not married.’ And then I said, ‘Well, lady, I ain’t even going to let you see it.’”
After this revealing interview, Cairns decided to work with the Treasury and Customs in an advisory capacity. A procedure was set up whereby questionable items were forwarded to him at Baltimore for his recommendation before the Bureau made any formal ruling. The procedure worked so well that it was continued through the years.
Cairns left Baltimore to join the Treasury in 1937 as the Senior Assistant General Counsel. He remained with the Treasury until December, 1942, when he came to the National Gallery in his present post. Over the years, Cairns’ work as a “censor” has become less difficult as the courts have become more liberal in their interpretations of what constitutes obscenity and what does not. Cairns now receives only about 5 to 7 per cent of the questionable imports and he does not consider them to be difficult cases.
More than 90 per cent of the questionable items are what Cairns refers to as “junk,” and “hard core” pornography. There never is any question about the hard-core pornography. It consists of filthy pictures and objects obviously manufactured with a lascivious and lewd intent. Customs examiners have learned over the years to recognize such shipments almost immediately by the wrapping of the packages, the names of the shipping companies, and the countries of origin. For a time France was the source of most of the pornographic material. Then it was Italy. Then the source shifted again back to France. Then to India. For a time Japan was the major supplier of pornography, and at present Sweden is a leader in this field.
In some cases, Cairns advised test cases so that the court might decide the issue and establish a legal precedent. One such case involved the importation of birth control items by a doctor in seeming violation of the law banning “any article whatever for the prevention of conception.” Did the statute mean such items could not be imported for medical purposes? Cairns thought it a point for the court to decide—and the decision was that the statute was not intended to exclude such imports by a medical practitioner.
Another such case involved the importation of acknowledged hard-core pornography in 1950 by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, the Indiana University professor whose controversial “Kinsey Report” on human sexual behavior created a stir in the late 1940s.
The Kinsey case developed when Dr. Kinsey had shipped from Europe to the Institute of Sex Research of Indiana University a case filled with pornographic books, sailors’ postcards, and photographs of males and females in the sexual act. Customs previously had banned such items with no voice raised in objection. But a nationwide interest was aroused when Collector of Customs Alden H. Baker at Indianapolis took one look at the Kinsey material and declared it “damned dirty stuff.”
Baker refused to release the shipment to Dr. Kinsey and defended his position by saying, “There is nothing scientific about it.... If you saw some of these pictures, you wouldn’t think they were scientific.” He shipped the material to Washington, where Customs officials—and Cairns—agreed with the collector that it was unadulterated pornography specifically banned by law.
Kinsey protested the material was necessary to his research and that since it was for scientific study the government had no right to withhold it from him and from his colleagues at the Institute. He issued a statement saying, “You can use the Bible or almost anything for obscene purposes. Any material you can think of can be made obscene by perverting it to erotic stimulations.... The Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University considers this issue is one that concerns all scholars the world over who need access to so-called obscene materials for scientific investigations which in the long run may contribute immeasurably to human welfare.”