Faux moral outrage over a slug of metal

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One of my favorite coins is the Standing Liberty Quarter, which enjoyed a run from 1916 to 1930, only to be supplanted by the ever popular Washington Quarter. Here’s the Standing Liberty:

standing_liberty_quarter

As a kid, I possessed a low grade Standing Liberty, one so worn I could only make out Liberty’s silhouette and the general outlines of the obverse. To me, it looked like Liberty was hitchhiking out on Main Street, or perhaps trying to pull tricks. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw a high grade 1917 Standing Liberty and realized she was showing a wee bit of boob.

liberty_the_amazon

With a jeweler’s loupe, you can make out the vaguest hint of nipple. Her breast looks well suckled, certainly not one of the pert silicone boobs we’ve come to expect in the last 40 years. She’s undeniably 100% woman (which is more than I can say for a lot of Liberties over the years — check out Barber’s Liberty, for example). And she was too much women for some Americans of the time.

Religious leaders had a Holy Cow, calling the coin “filthy” and “obscene” and whipping their flocks into a frenzy. Heaven help us all if little Jimmy got hold of both a quarter and a jeweler’s loupe. Organized protests of the immoral bit of metal forced Congress to commission a change in the, um, change. Designer Hermon A. MacNeil obliged.