REVOLUTIONARY
REMARKS

by

Todd S. Parkhurst

Presented to the
Chicago Literary Club
December 4, 2000

Copyright 2000 Todd S. Parkhurst

Tonight's paper is a biographical sketch of a Chicagoan. He was an outspoken revolutionary. Some of his revolutionary ideas have been rejected; a few of his ideas have been accepted; and, like most people, many of his ideas have simply been forgotten. He was a practicing philosopher, a student of society, and of crime. Almost 100 years ago, he spoke to the inmates of The Cook County Jail. He said:

I really do not in the least believe in crime. There is no such thing as a crime as the word is generally understood. I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral conditions of the people in and the people out of jail. One is just as good as the other. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible. Good people outside this jail will say that I am teaching you things that are calculated to injure society, but it's worthwhile now and then to hear something different from what you ordinarily get from preachers and the like. These other people will tell you that you should be good and then you will get rich and be happy. You know and I know that people do not get rich by being good, and that is the reason why so many of you people here in jail have tried to get rich some other way, only you do not understand how to do it quite as well as the people outside. There ought to be no jails; and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with the people on the inside, there would be no such institution as jails.

I do not want you to believe that I think all you people here are angels. I do not think that. Your are people of all kinds, and all of you are doing the best you can -- and that is evidently not very well. We all do the best we can under the circumstances.

Let us see whether there is any connection between the crimes of respectable people and your presence in this jail. Many of you are in jail because you have really committed burglary, or murder, or some other crime. I think I know why you did these things. Every one of you did these things because you are bound to do them. If you look at these things deeply enough and carefully enough you will see that there were circumstances that drove you to do exactly the things which you did. The reformers who tell you to be good and you will be happy, and the people on the outside, have property to protect -- they think that the only way to do it is by building jails and locking you up in cells on weekdays and praying for you on Sundays.

Some of you ply the trade, the profession, which is called burglary. No one in his right senses will go into a strange house in the dead of night and prowl around with a flashlight in unfamiliar rooms and take chances of his life, if he has plenty of the good things of the world in his own home. If you have clothes in your closet and food in your pantry and money in the bank, you would not navigate around nights in houses where you know nothing about the premises whatever.

If every man and woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent, fair, honest living, there would be no jails and no lawyers and no courts. There might be some persons here or there with some peculiar formation of their brain, like Rockefeller, who would do these things simply to be doing them; but they would be very few, and those should be sent to a hospital and treated, and not sent to jail. Nine - tenths of you who got caught are in jail because you did not have a good lawyer and, of course, you did not have a good lawyer because you did not have enough money to pay a good lawyer. There is no very great danger of a rich man going to jail.

I will guarantee to take from this jail, or any jail in the world, 500 men and 500 women, and I will take them to somewhere where there is plenty of land, and will give them a chance to make a living, and they will be as good people as the average in the community.

The only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to make fair conditions of life. Abolish the right of private ownership of land, abolish monopoly, make the world partners in production, partners in the good things of life."

After the speech, a prisoner was asked for his reaction to it. "Too radical," he said.

A few weeks thereafter, the author prepared it in pamphlet form and provided this introduction: Realizing the force of the suggestions that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way in the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it." The pamphlet sold for 5 cents.

Clarence Darrow was born on April 18, 1857 near Kinsman Ohio. That was the year in which President - elect James Buchanan condemned slavery agitation, and the United States Supreme Court decreed, in its Dred Scott decision that Congress had no power under the Constitution to prohibit slavery. He died in 1938, the year Germany annexed Austria and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed peace in our time. America changed a lot during his lifetime, and he was involved -- passionately involved -- in those changes. He was a good friend of Lincoln Steffens, and a law partner of Edgar Lee Masters.

His father Amirus Darrow and his mother Emily Eddy married shortly after graduating from the Amboy school in 1844. Amirus was a singularly impractical man whose extraordinary devotion to learning left him little time for earning a living. One of the earliest recollections of young Clarence was of the books in the family home. They were in bookcases, on tables, in chairs, and on the floor.

When Clarence was but a year old, his father entered Allegheny College, to study to become a Methodist minister. To support himself and his family, he worked a the furniture - making shop while attending college, but was soon expelled for having misused the key to the debating society hall. By the time he was reinstated, Amirus had suffered months of indignity, and he refused to accept the reinstatement. He enrolled instead in the new Unitarian seminary, and successfully completed his theological classes. He might have made his living as a minister but his graduation coincided with a loss of faith, from which he never recovered. To feed his growing family and pay for the books he always craved, he opened a small furniture and cabinetmaking shop. Like many furniture and cabinetmakers of the time, he developed a side business of making caskets. Because he had been trained as a minister, his side business extended to undertaking.

Amirus and Emily were freethinkers. Clarence later said, "My father was the village infidel, and gradually came to glory in his reputation. I cannot remember that I ever had any doubt that he was right." Clarence Darrow's suspicion of popular opinion, his attraction to heresy, and his dislike of established authority were all derived from his father. Clarence learned to be steadfast and open on all subjects, never concealing his point of view even when it was manifestly unpopular. He soon became able to stand up to the crowd. He also learned the charm of argument, and of contrariness. From his early days, Clarence Darrow was able to present his unpopular points of view in ways which won the respect, if not the acceptance, of those he addressed.

Young Clarence's is two great loves were disputation and baseball. One afternoon, when the Kinsman team was down by one run in the last inning, Clarence came to bat. "I swung the club just at the right time and place and with tremendous force. The ball went flying over the roof of the dry goods store, and rolled down to the riverbank on the other side. I had run almost clear around the bases before anyone got near the ball. I can never forget the wild ovation when I stepped on home plate, and the game was over." He later recorded as his greatest regret at growing old that he had to give up playing baseball. He never forgot, and never stopped trying to repeat, the triumph when he knocked the ball over the dry goods store and won the game.

In 1873 Clarence left the local school and was sent away to the preparatory department of Allegheny College. He did poorly, and when The Panic of 1873 affected his father, he left the school after one year. His appraisal of what he had learned at college coincided with the estimate of his professors: "I came back a better ballplayer for my higher education." His father set him to work on the hottest summer day I can ever remember hoeing potatoes, and after I had worked hard for a few hours, I ran away from that hard work, went into the practice of law, and have not done any work since."

Young Darrow (no one called him Clarence anymore) became a young schoolteacher, "and every Monday morning, as I started off to teach my school, I took a law book with me, and having a good deal of time on my hands, I improved that time fairly well." After three years of teaching and reading, his brother and sister enrolled young Darrow at the University of Michigan law school at their expense, and he entered in 1877. Darrow followed the precedent he had set at Allegheny College by matriculating but not graduating. After one year he left the law school to prepare for the bar examinations by studying at a lawyer's office. His generation still regarded clerking in a law office as the proper preparation for practice at the bar, and his withdrawal from school eased the financial burden on his brother and sister.

After some months of study Darrow presented himself to a committee of lawyers who were entrusted with the job of orally testing applicants. "The bar examiners were all good fellows and wanted to help us through," and everyone who presented himself passed. Clarence Darrow was admitted to the bar at the age 21. It was quite clear to young Darrow that the road to success was through public speaking. He began to speak at fairs and other public gatherings, and soon developed a small country lawyer practice. He married Jesse Ohl, moved to Ashtabula Ohio, and extended his practice. He became so prosperous that he was able to offer $500 as a down payment on a house. The seller refused to close the deal, however, because his wife did not think Darrow could make the installment payments. Darrow met with the wife and asked her to reconsider. She refused. In a fit of anger, Darrow announced that he did not want to house anyway, because -- because -- because he was moving to Chicago to try a big case. The next day he took the early train to the big city.

"I had to. If that woman had seen me on the Ashtabula streets, she would have told the whole town I was a liar -- which I was."

Darrow and his wife arrived in Chicago just as the Haymarket riot "martyrdom" gave impetus to the liberal and reforming elements of Chicago citizenry. Waves of radical causes rose and fell in the wake of the Haymarket trials and convictions: The American Railway Union strike against Pullman; the trial and conviction of Prendergast, Carter Harrison's assassin; and the Democratic National Convention of 1896. Darrow rented a small office at 94 North LaSalle Street, and, although a late arrival, he plunged into the controversies. He began to develop his stands against capital punishment; against the police; and against the criminal law of conspiracy. Like many another young lawyer before and since, Darrow soon realized that it was necessary to know people, so that those people in turn knew him. He embarked upon an intensive program of self -- marketing, appearing and speaking at numerous meetings and public occasions. He sought out radicals such as Henry Demarist Lloyd, Henry George, Robert Ingersoll, and, perhaps most importantly, John Peter Altgeld. Darrow and Altgeld became friends and colleagues in social protest and dissent.

He became active in the Cook County Democratic Party, and joined DeWitt C. Krieger's campaign for mayor of the city of Chicago on the Democratic ticket. The day after Krieger's election, Darrow was invited to become special assessment attorney for the city.

German born John Peter Altgeld had come to the United States with his parents at the age of three months. Like Darrow, Altgeld grew up on a farm in Ohio. John Peter left home at an early age to work as a laborer and field hand. The self-educated young man taught school, then read law and began his practice in Missouri. He then came to Chicago and prospered both in his law practice and in real estate investments. In 1886 Altgeld was elected a judge in Chicago. By 1892, he obtained the Democratic nomination for governor of Illinois. The Democratic Party needed the German vote, and he was of German extraction. The party wanted a candidate who was a friend of labor, and he had long and strong sympathy for labor. Moreover, Altgeld was wealthy and could make a substantial contribution to his own campaign fund. He easily won the nomination and the election, Darrow serving as a sort of campaign manager. With the help of Altgeld, Darrow soon became Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago.

After several years, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company offered him the job of corporation counsel at a much higher salary. He took the job, and to his surprise, he discovered that he enjoyed corporate law. His employer recognized his anti -- railroad and pro -- labor bias, but the Company trusted his legal abilities. During those days in Chicago, railroad trains injured over 400 people per year, and with the aid of the Company's general claims agent, Ralph C. Richards, he helped many of these injured people without hurting the Company financially.

But Darrow had not worked for the railroad for very long before the great Pullman strike occurred. Even though these events occurred in 1894, the facts are still debatable. Descendants of the central figures in this conflict belonged, and belong, to our club, and may be present here tonight. Simply put, George Mortimer Pullman invented the Pullman Car, and developed a large manufacturing enterprise to make these extraordinary vehicles. He was a great believer in a proper and undistracted lifestyle for his many workers, and so he built not only the great Pullman Works, but also the Town of Pullman on the far southeast side. He and his companies owned not only the factory, but the town and all the buildings in it By some calculations, the wages he paid pretty nearly equaled the cost of a meager living, and he deducted the rent for the living quarters in Pullman from his workers' wages. When a recession occurred, he laid off some and reduced the wages of other workers but did not reduce the rents for his worker's homes. The workers formed a bargaining committee.

Unions had begun to form in America, and an important young leader of the union movement was Eugene V. Debs. Young Debs grew up in Terre Haute Indiana, and soon went to work for the railroads. He extensively educated himself by reading, and he became active in the community. In fact, he became president of the Terre Haute Literary Club. (That club operated somewhat differently from ours; Debs brought James Whitcomb Riley, the poet; Wendell Phillips, the reformer; Robert Ingersoll, the agnostic; and Susan B. Anthony, the firebrand suffragette, to read papers to his club.) When a locomotive fireman turned up drunk one night, the locomotive engineer asked Debs to act as fireman, and soon Debs was a regular part of train crews. Soon he was speaking and organizing railroad men all over the United States.

The American Railway Union had helped organize the Pullman shops. When the Pullman workers found it impossible to live on the wages being paid, the union urged arbitration. Pullman refused. Against the advice of the union, the Pullman workers struck. Pullman and the Railway General Managers Association obtained federal injunctions against the strike, and against urging workers to strike. Railroad cars were burned; trains were halted; and President Cleveland ordered 3600 troops into Chicago to keep order. Eugene Debs and seven others were arrested and indicted for conspiracy.

Darrow was hired to defend. He subpoenaed George Pullman to testify at the trial, so that he could juxtapose the wealth of Pullman and the Pullman Company with the plight of the workers. But Pullman departed for Europe before the subpoena could be served. Darrow argued to the jury that:

.....if a boy should steal a dime, a small fine would cover the offense. He could not be sent to the penitentiary. But if two boys plot to steal a dime -- but do not do it -- then both of them could be sent to the penitentiary as conspirators. Not only could they be sent to jail, but people are constantly being sent under similar circumstances.

This is an historic case, which will count much for liberty or against liberty. Conspiracy, from the days of tyranny in England down to today, has been the favorite weapon of every tyrant. It is an effort to punish the crime of thought. If there are any citizens here interested in protecting human liberty, let them study the conspiracy laws of the United States which have grown until today no one's liberty is safe.

There is a conspiracy here, dark and damnable, and I want to say boldly to you that someone is guilty of one of the foulest conspiracies that ever disgraced a free nation. If my clients are innocent, other men are guilty of entering the temple of justice and using the law, which is made to guard and protect and shelter you and me and these defendants, for the purpose of hounding innocent men to a prison cell. This is not the first time that evil men men who are themselves criminals have conspired to use the law for the purpose of bringing righteous ones to death or to jail!

Debs was sentenced to six months in the McHenry jail in Woodstock.

After the Debs trial, Darrow left the Chicago and NorthWestern Railway and worked for many years as a labor lawyer for the union sides. During this time he continued to speak and write on behalf of liberal causes at Chicago's Hull House and many other venues. He, better than almost anyone, knew the difference between speaking and writing; between reading and hearing. "For years, before juries, on the platform, in conversation, I have first of all tried to know what I was talking about, and then to make my statements clear and simple, and the sentences short. I am not at all sure that there is one best method for both writing and speaking. The reader has time to consider, and go over the pages if he will; if he misses a word or does not understand one, or even an idea, he can look things up in the dictionary or encyclopedia. But the listener has but one chance, and that chance arises as the information or opinion hastens along; so the words must not be too long, or too unfamiliar, nor spoken too rapidly for assimilation. Some grasp spoken matter quickly, and some need time to catch what they are not accustomed to hear. The speaker must aim to reach practically every person in his audience; therefore he must not speak too fast or use too many uncommon words."

Darrow had a lifelong interest in literature and in publication. Many of his speeches and arguments were published as tracts for as little as five cents a copy, shortly after they were delivered.

Darrow's increasingly busy life and law practice took a toll on his marriage, and on his relations with Paul, his only child, who was just entering his teens .He was increasingly absent from his home on Vincennes Avenue, and on March 12, 1897, he was divorced from Jesse. He soon moved into the Langdon Cooperative Living Club on Des Plaines Avenue near Hull House. This organization was believed by many to be socialist in nature, and a free love colony, and for a time Darrow edited a supporting magazine called Tomorrow.

More cases came, many involving criminal defense work for union leaders. Darrow first met Thomas I. Kidd, leader of the Woodworkers Union in 1894 during the Pullman strike. In 1898, the union went out on strike against the Paine Lumber Co. in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Kidd and two others were accused of criminal conspiracy to injure the business of the Paine Lumber Co., in violation of the Sherman antitrust act. In encouraging, if not urging, the union members to strike, Kidd and the others had conspired to restrain the trade of the Paine lumber Co. -- or so the State's theory went. Darrow believed that Mr. Paine, the company owner, had persuaded the State's Attorney to bring the case in the criminal courts. Darrow cross-examined Mr. Paine and elicited useful testimony from Mr. Paine about his attitude toward unions and labor in general. In his closing, Darrow argued:

The defendants in this case are on trial charged with a conspiracy to injure the business of the Paine Lumber Co., by means of a strike. This is really not a criminal case. It is but an episode in the great battle for human liberty, a battle which was commenced under tyranny and oppression, and which shall not end until the father of one child shall not be compelled to toil to support the children of another in luxurious ease. The Paine Lumber Co. may hire its lawyers and import its leprous detectives into your peaceful community; it may send these defendants to jail; but so long as injustice and inhumanity exist, so long as employers grow fat and rich and powerful through their robbery and greed, so long as they build their palaces from the unjust labor of their serfs, so long as they rob childhood of its life and sunshine and joy, you will find other conspirators, thank God, that will take the place of these as fast as the doors of the jail shall close upon them. The only difference that I can see between the state's prison and George M. Paine's factory is that Paine's men are not allowed to sleep on the premises. American citizens do not exactly relish the idea of being locked out, even in the factory; they have inherited certain foolish traditions of liberty that makes them object, but they doubtless get over these prejudices in time.

There is a conspiracy, dark and damnable, and I want to say boldly, that somebody is guilty of one of the foulest conspiracies that ever disgraced a free nation. If my clients here are innocent, and you know they are, and these prosecutors know they are -- if my clients are innocent, then George M. Paine and his son and others are guilty of entering the temple of justice and using the law, which is made to guard and protect and shelter you and me and these defendants, for the purpose of hounding innocent man to their death or to a prison cell. Someone is guilty, and before a just Judge, and in the presence of honest men George Paine and his son will stand before these accused, as men who conspired to send their fellow man to jail without cause, simply because the defendants were in their way. It was an ancient law that a man who conspired to use the courts to destroy his fellow man was guilty of treason to the state. When he assaulted the freedom of one man he assaulted the liberty of every other subject of the state. And when George Paine raised his hand to strike a blow against the liberty of Thomas Kidd, he raised his hand to strike a blow at your freedom and mine, and he conspired to destroy the institutions under which we live. If there is a book where the deeds of man are recorded by a Judge who can look beneath the hollow pretenses of hollow hearts, upon that record George M. Paine's name in his son's name are written down as men who conspired against the liberty of their fellows and against the country in which they live.

Gentleman, the world is dark; but it is not hopeless. Here and there throughout the past, some man has always arisen, some man like Thomas I. Kidd, willing to give the devotion of his great soul to humanities' cause. Here, as in the past, these men have come, and through the future they will come again. They will come to move the world onward and upward; they will come back and invite their fellow man to follow in their lead. They will point to a sunrise faraway, so distant that the ordinary mortals cannot see but which is clear to their prophetic eye.
Tis coming up the step of Time,
And this old world is growing brighter,
We may not see it's dawn sublime
Yet high hopes make a heart throb lighter.
We may be sleeping on the ground,
When it awakes the world in wonder,
But we have felt it gathering round,
And heard its voice of living thunder.

The trial lasted three weeks. Darrow's summation took two days. The jury was out 50 minutes, took two ballots, and voted Not Guilty. For his work in this case, Darrow received $250.

Other labor cases came, many involving conspiracy or capital crime charges, and Darrow won them all. Then came the McNamara case. At 1:00 in the morning of October 1, 1910, the downtown printing plant of the Los Angeles Times was rocked by an enormous explosion. Twenty men died. Harrison Grey Otis, the paper owner, was rabidly anti-union. In the socialist periodical Appeal to Reason, Eugene Debs immediately denied complicity of any working man in the explosion. He charged that Otis was himself the instigator of the crime. Debs had no information or evidence to support his position.

Darrow was hired to defend the McNamaras. He immediately began an extremely thorough investigation of the alibis of his clients at the expense of the AF of L and the McNamara's union. They denied any part in the crime, and denied they were present in Los Angeles at the time of the explosion. Darrow prepared his defense on that basis. But during the next few weeks, Ortie McManigal, who had been arrested with the McNamaras, turned state's evidence with a detailed confession that implicated the McNamaras not only in the bombing of the newspaper but in the bombing of other industrial plants throughout the nation. Even worse, McManigal told prosecutors that corroborating evidence was preserved in the records of the Ironworkers Union in Indianapolis. The prosecution approached President Taft, who ordered federal authorities to seize the records of that union. The records corroborated everything McManigal had said. It was completely impossible to discredit McManigal as a liar. His confession, given before the documents were seized, tallied exactly with those records. Convinced of his clients' guilt, Darrow suddenly pled his clients guilty, and argued that they should not be hung. He won that battle; the McNamaras went to jail, but the were not hung. None of Darrow's clients ever were executed.

Eugene Debs and thousands of union members were outraged. Samuel Jumpers ceased all communications with the McNamaras -- and with Darrow. In his autobiography, Gompers never even mentions labor's greatest legal defender.

But Darrow's misfortunes did not end there. Shortly after the McNamara trial preparation ended, Darrow himself was indicted for attempting to bribe a prospective juror in the McNamara case. A first trial resulted in an acquittal, but three months later the prosecution again indicted Darrow on a second charge of attempted jury bribery. Darrow took a leading role in the presentation of his own defense, and that second trial resulted in a hung jury. The prosecution did not pursue the matter further.

Darrow returned to Chicago, and attempted to pick up the pieces of his life and law practice. He defended Frank Lloyd Wright when Wright was prosecuted for violation of the Mann act, which makes it a federal offense for a man to cross state or national boundaries with a woman for an immoral purpose. Darrow's practice gradually became more routine and less sensational.

On June 2, 1924, Darrow was awakened by the family of Richard Loeb, son of a vice president of Sears Roebuck & Co. Loeb and his friend Nathan Leopold Jr. had confessed to the crime of kidnapping and killing young Bobby Franks. These rich young students at the University of Chicago had committed a crime incomprehensible to their families, and to students of criminal minds. The prosecution demanded the death penalty, and Darrow saw the case as an opportunity to present his views on capital punishment in an effective setting. In his closing argument to the judge, Darrow said:

We are here with the lives of two boys imperiled, and with the public aroused. Why? Because, unfortunately, the parents have money. Nothing else. Never has there been a case in Chicago where, on a plea of guilty, a boy under 25 has been sentenced to death. And yet this court is urged that it must hang two boys, contrary to these precedents, and contrary to the acts of every Judge who ever held court in the state. But what is the public necessity for this? Why needs the State's Attorney to ask for something that never before has been demanded?

Was this the most dastardly act in the annals of crime? Let us see how we should measure it. Poor little Bobby Franks suffered very little. There is no excuse for his killing. If killing these two boys would bring him back to life, I would say let the m hang, and I believe their parents would say so too. But
The moving finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
Was this the act of two boys which showed wicked, malignant and abandoned hearts beyond those of anybody else who ever lived? That is foolish. This was a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys. There was not a particle of hate, or malice, or cruelty, except as death is cruel -- and death is cruel. There is absolutely no purpose in it at all, no reason and no motive for it. These boys were mentally diseased. Everyone associated with this case knows that. There is no one on earth who can explain any purpose for this act, or the reason for it, at all. These boys killed Bobby Franks because they were made that way. Somewhere in the making up of these boys, something slipped, and those unfortunate lads are forced to sit here, hated, despised, outcast, with the community shouting for their blood. You cannot cure them by hanging them.

Your honor stands between the past and future. If you hang these boys, you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who, in ignorance and in darkness, must grope his way through the mazes which only adolescence knows. But you may save them and make it easier for every child that some time may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration, and a vision, and a fate. I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of man, when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and say that all of life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man."

The judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb to life in prison.

Loeb was stabbed to death on January 28, 1936 in prison.

As many of you know, our late member Elmer Gertz was able to obtain a commutation of Richard Leopold's sentence many years later. Leopold went to Puerto Rico, where he worked as an aide in a leper colony. Some regard Elmer Gertz as the professional heir of Clarence Darrow.

As his life wore on, Darrow had other trials of national and international note. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee. His cross-examination of opposing counsel William Jennings Bryan was avidly followed by millions around the world. Media, including H. L. Mencken, reported every word. But few today understand that the case was, to a considerable extent, of no real consequence. Although Tennessee had a law barring the teaching of evolution in its schools, no one had ever been prosecuted under that statute, and the state attorney general had stated that no one ever would be so prosecuted. Mr. Scopes had to be coaxed into becoming the plaintiff by the American Civil Liberties Union. Bryan believed that every word in the Bible was literally true, and consented to be cross-examined by Darrow. The famous results were relatively easily obtained. Brian died six days after the trial was completed.

Thereafter Darrow began to withdraw from the publicity and pressure of a full trial practice, but other famous and important cases demanded his attention. The 1919 Sweet trials in Detroit involved an African-American family who had moved into a modest home in an all- white neighborhood. The next day, a crowd gathered, and stones were thrown. When Dr. Sweet's brother arrived at the house, a crowd surged forward. Shots were fired from the Sweet house into the crowd, ands one man died. Everyone in the house was indicted, including Dr. Sweet's wife. Darrow's summary, a variant of his conspiracy arguments, resulted in a hung jury and, eventually, acquittal.

Darrow spent much of the 1920s and early 1930s on the lecture circuit. He had invested much of his money in his son Paul's company and that company suffered greatly during the Depression, like many others. Thus, when Darrow was invited to become the chairman of the National Recovery Review Board in Washington in 1934, it was a financial godsend. The National Recovery Administration faced mounting criticism from Congress and elsewhere, and president Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped that Darrow's review and investigation of the Administration would calm at least some of the criticism. But the cantankerous old radical was totally out of tune with New Deal ideology. The NRA had been subjected to criticism for its apparently pro-business actions, and Darrow had made a life of his anti- business views and his fiercely independent opinions. His fear of too much government was greater than that of too little. Darrow's report was never published, but the report would have had no significance in any event, because the Supreme Court declared the NRA legislation unconstitutional.

In early 1935, Darrow's health began to fail. He spent more and more time in the modest apartment he and Ruby, his second wife, had occupied for 35 years near the campus of the University of Chicago. When the end came, on March 13, 1938, it was a release and a relief for his family and friends. The memorial service was held in the Bond Chapel at the University Of Chicago. The eulogist used the text of the funeral oration that Darrow himself had given nearly 40 years before at the grave of his friend John Peter Altgeld. Thus, Darrow had the privilege of writing his own funeral speech.

But perhaps the best, last word came from Ruby. She said, "Mr. Darrow always maintained that he didn't care whether he went to heaven or hell, because he had so many good friends in both places."

Bibliography:

Rintels, David, Clarence Darrow: a One-Man Play, New York:Samuel French, Inc., 1975

Stone, Irving, Clarence Darrow for the Defense, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1941 KF 373 .D35 S7

Tierney, Kevin, Darrow: a Biography, New York: Crowell Publishers, 1979 KF 373 .D35 T53

Weinberg, Arthur, Attorney for the Damned, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957 KF 213 .D3 W4

Weinberg, Arthur and Lila, Clarence Darrow: a Sentimental Rebel, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1980 KF 373 .D35 W44

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