University of Minnesota Law Library Clarence Darrow Timeline

Clarence Darrow 
Timeline of His Life and Legal Career 
Michael Hannon (2010) 
Clarence Seward Darrow was born on April 18, 1857 in Farmdale, Ohio. Farmdale is a 
small community in southwestern Kinsman which is one of twenty-four townships in 
Trumbull County, Ohio. His parents were Ammirus Darrow 1 and Emily (Eddy) 
Darrow. He spent most of his childhood in Kinsman. His mother chose the name 
Clarence. It was an early example of the work of fate that he could not control:  
Where they found the name to which I have answered so many years I never 
knew. Perhaps my mother read a story where a minor character was called 
Clarence, but I fancy I have not turned out to be anything like him. The one 
satisfaction I have had in connection with this cross was that the boys never could 
think up any nickname half so inane as the real one my parents adorned me with.2 
Darrow’s parents so admired Senator William H. Seward of New York, an outspoken 
abolitionist, that they gave him the middle name “Seward.”  
The first of the Darrow line in America was a Darrow who left England along with 
fifteen other men and sailed to New London, Connecticut a century before the 
Revolutionary War.  They had a land grant from the King of England for the town of 
New London. This early Darrow was an undertaker which prompted his descendant to 
write this “shows that he had some appreciation of a good business, and so chose a 
profession where the demand for his services would be fairly steady. One could imagine 
a more pleasant means of livelihood, but, almost any trade is bearable if the customers 
are sure.”
3 Despite the land grant, the Darrows owed no loyalty to the King and some 
from later generations participated in the Revolutionary War. 
The Darrows living in Connecticut moved to Boonville, New York in 1795. Clarence 
Darrow’s father Ammirus was born in Henrietta, New York on November 17, 1818. In 
1824 the Darrow clan moved by horse and wagon to Trumbull County, Ohio. The Eddys, 
Darrow’s maternal ancestors, were farmers in Connecticut.  Emily Eddy, Clarence’s 
1 Some sources spell his name as Amirus. 
2 CLARENCE DARROW, THE STORY OF MY LIFE 11 (1932) [hereinafter THE STORY OF MY LIFE].
3 Id. at 2.

mother, was born in Willington, Connecticut on November 13, 1823. The Eddys later 
moved to what would become Windsor, Ohio.   
The Darrow Family 
Clarence’s parents moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania soon after they were married so 
Ammirus could attend Allegheny College a Methodist institution.  Ammirus graduated 
from Allegheny College. He planned to become a minister so he attended and later 
graduated from Meadville Theological School which was founded by Unitarians.  Before 
Clarence was born the Darrow family had moved to Kinsman located in Trumbull 
County, Ohio. Kinsman was a small village with a population of about 400 people. By 
the time the Darrow’s had settled in Kinsman, Ammirus had given up the goal of being a 
preacher because he found orthodox religion, even the milder Unitarian version, not to 
his liking. Instead he earned a living as the village undertaker, selling coffins and making 
and selling furniture. 
There were eight children in the Darrow family. Clarence had five brothers and two 
sisters. 
Children of Ammirus Darrow and Emily Eddy: 
Edward Everett Darrow (1846-1927) 
Channing Darrow (1849-1910) 
Mary Elizabeth Darrow (1852-1909) 
Herbert Eddy Darrow (1854 -1857) (Herbert died shortly after Clarence was born). 
Clarence Seward Darrow (1857-1938) 
Hubert Darrow (1860-1905) 
Herman C. Darrow (1863-1933) 
Jennie Darrow (1866-1955) 
Ammirus Darrow 
Ammirus Darrow was a very important influence on his son Clarence. Ammirus was an 
iconoclast who publicly expressed atheistic views and abolitionist beliefs which deeply 
influenced and had a lasting impact on the young Clarence Darrow. Clarence would early 
on learn to be an iconoclast and even relish the role of the person who would upset 
conventional society. The legacy of Ammirus would lead Darrow to reject the majority 
stance on many issues and to defy conventional religious views that were much more 
prominent in the later half of the 1800s and early 1900s than they are today:  
I had little respect for the opinion of the crowd. My instinct was to doubt the 
majority view. My father had directed my thought and reading. He had taught me 
to question rather than accept. He never thought that the fear of God was the 
beginning of wisdom. I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, 
and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.4 
4 Id. at 32. 
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Capital Punishment 
Clarence Darrow came to abhor capital punishment, which he viewed as premeditated 
murder by the state. He saw it as not only morally wrong but also futile because it did not 
deter crime, nor did it address what he believed to be the underlying root causes of crime 
such as poverty, inequality, and human beings being driven by emotions they could not 
control. Darrow remained consistent in  his opposition to capital punishment throughout 
his life. His life-long aversion to capital punishment came from his father:  
So far as I can remember, I got my first impression of capital punishment from 
my father when I was very young, probably not over seven or eight years old. He 
told me about a murder that was committed when he was a young man, which 
happened in the town adjoining the one where he lived. In those days the 
murderer was hanged outdoors in broad daylight, and every one was invited to see 
the act and all the grewsome details that went with it. It was an eager, boisterous 
and anxious assembly, each pushing and crowding to be in at the moment of the 
death. My father managed to get well in front where he could watch the spectacle; 
but, he told me, when he saw the rope adjusted around the man's neck and the 
black cap pulled over his head, he could stand no more. My father turned away 
his head and felt humiliated and ashamed for the rest of his life to think that he 
could have had that much of a hand in killing a fellow man.5 
Abolition 
Darrow was also greatly influenced by his father’s abolitionist views. Clarence would 
champion the rights of blacks throughout his life and legal career.  Darrow wrote in his 
1904 book Farmington: 
As a little child, I heard my father tell of Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, 
Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, and the rest of that advance army of reformers, 
black and white, who went up and down the land arousing the dulled conscience 
of the people to a sense of justice to the slave. They used to make my father's 
home their stopping-place, and any sort of vacant room was the forum where they 
told of the black man's wrongs.6 
Early Myth 
Ammirus Darrow’s strong abolitionist beliefs and their influence on Clarence later helped 
to create a myth that the abolitionist John Brown one time laid his hand on the then five 
year old Clarence and told him “The Negro has too few friends; you and I must never 
desert him.”7 This cannot be true because Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859 when 
5 Id. at 361. 
6 CLARENCE DARROW, FARMINGTON 212-13 (1904) [hereinafter FARMINGTON]. 
7 IRVING STONE, CLARENCE DARROW FOR THE DEFENSE 470 (1941) [hereinafter FOR THE DEFENSE]. 
Stone’s biography is one of the primary sources for this myth. 
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Clarence was not yet two and a half years old. However, it is possible that Ammirus 
Darrow could have met John Brown at some point. One of Darrow’s biographers states 
that “The underground railroad took its course directly through the area in which the 
Darrows lived. To a man, the citizenry was abolitionist in sentiment.”8  Furthermore it 
was in West Andover Ohio, just fifteen miles from Kinsman that John Brown used as a 
staging area to get his men ready for the raid on Harpers Ferry. Regardless of the myth, 
Clarence Darrow greatly admired John Brown throughout his life and would later give 
speeches about the famous abolitionist. 
Early on Darrow strongly identified with the suffering of others. Later he exhibited this 
trait when he identified so strongly with his clients facing legal problems and with the 
downtrodden of society. He could not help but identify with others facing hardship: 
I had a strongly emotional nature which has caused me boundless joy and infinite pain. I 
had a vivid imagination. Not only could I put myself in the other person's place, but I 
could not avoid doing so. My sympathies always went out to the weak, the suffering, and 
the poor. Realizing their sorrows I tried to relieve them in order that I myself might be 
relieved.9 
Ammirus also gave Clarence a great love of books, reading and learning. Ammirus 
influenced his son to read the works of iconoclasts such as Voltaire and Thomas Paine.  
Less is known about the influence Darrow’s mother had on him. She died of cancer in 
1872 when Clarence was fifteen years old. 
Baseball 
Although Clarence, by his own admission, disliked physical work, he did engage in one 
physically demanding activity. As a boy he came to love playing baseball: 
It seems to me that one unalloyed joy in life, whether in school or vacation time, 
was baseball. The noon time gave us a fairly good game each day. The long 
summer evenings were often utilized as well, but Saturday afternoon furnished the 
only perfect pleasure we ever knew. Whether we grew proficient in our studies or 
not, we enjoyed renown in our community for our skill in playing ball. Saturday 
afternoons permitted us to visit neighboring towns to play match games, and be 
visited by other teams in return. 
I have snatched my share of joys from the grudging hand of Fate as I have jogged 
along, but never has life held for me anything quite so entrancing as baseball; and 
this, at least, I learned at district school. When we heard of the professional game 
in which men cared nothing whatever for patriotism but only for money--games in 
which rival towns would hire the best players from a natural enemy--we could 
scarcely believe the tale was true. No Kinsman boy would any more give aid and 
8 KEVIN TIERNEY, DARROW: A BIOGRAPHY 8 (1979). 
9 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 32. 
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comfort to a rival town than would a loyal soldier open a gate in the wall to let an 
enemy march in.10 
Darrow was a lifelong baseball fan and a loyal Chicago Cubs fan; as an adult he would 
read the baseball scores before moving on to other stories in the newspapers.11 Later he 
would say that after baseball the next game that fascinated him was poker. 
Politics 
Darrow became interested in politics as early as age fifteen when his father 
enthusiastically supported Horace Greeley for president in 1872.  In the 1876 race his 
family supported Samuel J. Tilden while most of their neighbors supported Rutherford B. 
Hays. The Tilden campaign prompted the young Darrow to become knowledge about 
political issues. His considerable reading on history and political economy lead him to 
believe that states’ rights and free trade were “both sound doctrines. . . . [a]s political 
questions have come and gone I have clung in my political allegiances to the doctrines of 
states’ rights and free trade.”12 
Law 
Clarence would soon show a preference for reading, studying, debating and teaching over 
physical work, although he loved playing baseball and would play hard even during the 
heat of summer.  In 1873, at age 16, he began teaching school in Kinsman and he would 
continue this for three years. It was around this time that he began studying law on his 
own under the direction of a lawyer. But the most famous lawyer in the history of the 
United States was not sure why he became interested in the law: 
During my teaching days I began the study of law. I am not sure what influenced 
me to make this choice. I knew that I never intended to work with my hands, and 
no doubt I was attracted by the show of the legal profession. When I was still 
quite young the lawyers from the county seat always visited our town on all 
public occasions. On the Fourth of July and on Decoration Day, in political 
campaigns and on all holidays, they made speeches and were altogether the most 
conspicuous of the locality. Then, too, we lived across the street from a tin-shop, 
and the tinner was the justice of the peace, and I never missed a chance to go over 
to his shop when a case was on trial. I enjoyed the way the pettifoggers abused 
each other, and as I grew toward maturity I developed a desire to be a lawyer, too. 
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 improved it fairly well. 
Debater 
10 Id. at 17-18. 
11 ARTHUR WEINBERG & LILA SHAFFER WEINBERG, CLARENCE DARROW: A SENTIMENTAL REBEL 23 
(1980) [hereinafter SENTIMENTAL REBEL].
12 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 40-41. 
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Early in his life he became interested in debating. He loved verbally sparring with 
someone in front of a crowd. He also liked to shock the crowd by saying something 
unexpected that went against conventional wisdom or societal norms. An early influence 
was Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899), a Civil War veteran, noted orator, 
political leader, and forceful defender of agnosticism. Darrow had seen Ingersoll speak 
two times and early on Darrow tried to emulate Ingersoll who he held in high regard. But 
later he decided: “I made up my mind that I could not be Ingersoll and had no right to try, 
and did not want to try; that the best I could do was to be myself.”13 
Enters Law School 
In 1872 Clarence attended Allegheny College where his father and his older sister had 
graduated. He spent one year at Allegheny. His younger sister would later attend the 
same college. In 1877, at the insistence of his father, 20-year old Clarence attended the 
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) Law department. He left law school after one year 
because it was too expensive for his family and he was also sure he could study on his 
own to become a lawyer. The next year Darrow began working in a Youngstown, Ohio 
law office and continued studying law. Darrow recounted, “My law education came from 
a year's study at a good law school and from a year's reading under a lawyer's 
direction.”14 It was common before and during this time period and for many years after 
for a person to become a lawyer by studying under the direction of a lawyer instead of 
attending law school. Currently about seven states still allow this self study approach 
although very few become lawyers without attending law school.15 
Darrow studied law at a time when there were none of the formal educational and testing 
requirements that are mandatory now. He was critical of the bar requirements that sprung 
up after he became an attorney: 
In those days a committee of lawyers were chosen to examine applicants. They 
were all good fellows and wanted to help us through. The bar association of to-
day lay down every conceivable condition; they require a longer preliminary 
study, and exact a college education and long courses in law schools, to keep new 
members out of the closed circle. The Lawyers' Union is about as anxious to 
encourage competition as the Plumbers' Union is, or the United States Steel Co., 
or the American Medical Association.16 
Becomes a Lawyer and Starts a Family 
In 1879 at age 22 Darrow was admitted to the Ohio bar and started to practice law in 
Youngstown, about twenty miles from where he was born. On May 15, 1880 Darrow 
married Jessie Ohl. The Darrow and the Ohls had been neighbors. The young family later 
13 Id. at 381. 
14 Id. at 31. 
15 See Martha Neil, Abe Lincoln’s Self-Study Route to Law Practice a Vanishing Option, A.B.A. J., Jan. 22, 
2008,http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/abe_lincolns_route_to_law_practice_a_vanishing_option/.
16 STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 29. 
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moved to Andover, Ohio, about ten miles from Kinsman. Prior to moving to Andover, 
Darrow had contemplated moving to McPherson, Kansas, and had even rented an office 
there, but he changed his mind.  
The 1880 Census for Ashtabula County, Ohio shows an entry for Clarence Darrow and 
his wife Jessie. Darrow's occupation is listed as "lawyer" and Jessie’s occupation is listed 
as "keeping house." 
In 1883 Darrow’s only child Paul was born. Th e next year the Darrow family moved to 
Ashtabula, Ohio. Darrow continued to practice law and delved into politics; he was 
elected to the part-time position of City Solicitor. As City Solicitor he was paid seventy-
five dollars a month and could take any cases he wanted in his law practice. 
Early Influences 
It was during his time in Ashtabula that Darrow came to be influenced by two other men 
indirectly through books they had written: 
Strange as it may seem, a banker in Ashtabula, Amos Hubbard, was the first man 
to give me some insight into radical political doctrines. He, like many others in 
that period, had been greatly influenced by Henry George's “Progress and 
Poverty.” On his advice I read the book and felt that I had found a new political 
gospel that bade fair to bring about the social equality and opportunity that has 
always been the dream of the idealist. While Mr. Hubbard gave me a first insight 
into advanced political economy, Judge Richards, a police judge in Ashtabula, 
gave me my first sane idea of crime and criminals. He gave me a little book, “Our 
Penal Code and Its Victims,” by Judge John P. Altgeld, of Chicago, which was a 
revelation to me. This book and the author came to have a marked influence upon 
me and my future.17 
Haymarket 
While Darrow was living in Ohio, an event occurred in Chicago that would greatly 
influence the young attorney. It began on May 4, 1886 at a rally in support of striking 
workers at Haymarket square in Chicago. While police moved in to disperse the crowd, 
an unknown person threw a bomb at the police. The explosion killed at least one police 
officer and in the ensuing confusion seven other police officers died and police gunfire 
killed and wounded an unknown number of civilians in the crowd. In a controversial 
investigation eight anarchists were soon rounded up. They were convicted of murder; 
seven were sentenced to death and the others to 15 years in prison. Four were hanged, 
and one committed suicide in prison. The trial and death sentences were viewed by many 
as serious miscarriages of justice. The executed men became martyrs to many and 
Haymarket became a rallying cry for many on the political left. Darrow followed the 
17 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 41. The full title of Altgeld’s book, published in 1884, is 
actually OUR PENAL MACHINERY AND ITS VICTIMS. 
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controversy and he always regretted he was not able to participate in defending the 
Haymarket defendants.  
Early Case 
The earliest published appellate decision from a case that Clarence Darrow worked on 
during his practice in Ohio is a case titled Brockway v. Jewell. 18 Darrow’s client, a boy, 
received a harness worth fifteen dollars for attending a wealthy man who was a habitual 
drunkard and was ill. The man failed to pay for the harness and the creditor wanted it 
back. The litigation in the case began around April 1887. The litigation went through two 
trials and three appellate court decisions over seven years before it ended.  Darrow was 
initially paid five dollars but that was all his client could afford so Darrow provided most 
of his services for free. 
Chicago 
In 1887 at age 30, Darrow and his family moved to Chicago. The decision to move to 
Chicago played a pivotal role in his legal career because Darrow made political and legal 
connections in Chicago that would not have been possible in Ohio. Clarence Darrow 
would likely never have become a world-famous lawyer had he not made the move to 
Chicago. 
Darrow later recounted that the reason he moved to Chicago was because of a failed deal 
to buy a house. While living in Ashtabula, the Darrows decided to buy a house for $3,500 
dollars. Darrow was to put $500 dollars down and pay the remainder in installments. But 
when the seller arrived to deliver the deed, he told Darrow that his wife refused to sign 
the document so he could not sell it. The seller’s wife did not think Darrow could make 
the payments. This angered Darrow and he told the man he did not want the house 
anyway because he was going to move. His brother Everett was teaching in Chicago and 
Darrow believed this had some influence on his decision to move to there. His sister 
Mary also lived in Chicago. The move to Chicago changed Darrow’s life: “‘If I had 
stayed I might have been in the graveyard or jail. I don’t know where I would have been, 
but it would not have been the same life.’”19 
John Peter Altgeld’s book Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims fundamentally changed 
how Darrow viewed crime and criminals. Prior to reading it he viewed criminals as 
different and evil because they chose to commit crimes. Darrow would never again look 
at defendants and convicted criminals the same way. The book so influenced Darrow that 
sometime after arriving in Chicago the young lawyer sought out Altgeld. Darrow and 
Altgeld, who was at this time a judge, quickly became very good friends and Darrow saw 
Altgeld as a mentor. Darrow looked up to Altgeld perhaps more than any other person in 
his life.  
John Peter Altgeld 
18 Brockway v. Jewell, 39 N.E. 470 (Ohio 1894). 
19 SENTIMENTAL REBEL, supra note 11, at 29. 
8

John Peter Altgeld was born in Nassau, Germany on December 30, 1847. His family 
moved to the United States when Altgeld was just a few months old and settled near 
Mansfield, Ohio. During the Civil War, Altgeld joined the Union Army at the age of 
sixteen and fought in an infantry unit until the end of the war. During the war he 
contracted a fever and nearly died. 
After the war, Altgeld attended a seminary in Ohio for a brief period but left and walked 
from Ohio to Missouri. In Missouri, he studied law and became a lawyer in 1869 and was 
elected the state’s attorney for Andrew County, Missouri in 1874. In 1875 Altgeld moved 
to Chicago and set up a prominent law practice. He also made successful real estate deals 
and ten years later his wealth was estimated at $1,000,000.  In 1886 Altgeld was elected 
to the superior court bench as a Democrat and eventually served as chief justice. In 1893, 
he was elected Governor of Illinois. He was the first foreign-born governor of the state. 
Darrow’s close association with Altgeld immersed him in political and legal power in 
Chicago and Illinois. In Altgeld, Darrow not only found a mentor but also a political 
infighter with radical political ideals: “In throwing in his lot with Altgeld, Darrow 
plunged into the mire of Chicago and Illinois politics at the deep end. Altgeld belonged to 
the most radical wing of the Democratic Party, aligned with the most extreme elements in 
the city.”20 
Single Tax Club 
As he was making important connections in politics and the legal profession, Darrow also 
became involved in labor support, social issues and economic issues such as tariff reform. 
He became an ardent supporter of Henry George and his “single tax” policy. In 1879, 
George published his most influential work Progress and Poverty which made him 
famous and started a political movement in the United States built around his work. 
George believed government should be funded only from a “single tax” levied on the 
unimproved value of land. This would be the value of the land in its natural state without 
any manmade improvements such as buildings.  This was not an entirely new concept as 
George borrowed from the works of David Ricardo, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. 
After his single tax theory gained followers George ran for and nearly won election as 
mayor of New York. George was enormously popular in Britain. Darrow joined the 
Single Tax Club soon after arriving in Chicago. In 1888 Darrow spoke after Henry 
George at a “Free Trade Convention” in Chicago. Darrow apparently spoke very well and 
even Henry George congratulated him. 
1889 
In 1889 when he was 32 years old, Darrow moved his law office into the historic 
Montauk building in Chicago. Built in 1882, it was considered the world’s first 
skyscraper. It was demolished in 1902.  
20 TIERNEY, supra note 8, at 42. 
9

Darrow Gets Surprise Call from Mayor of Chicago 
In 1889 the newly-elected mayor of Chicago DeWitt C. Cregier sent Darrow a message 
asking to see him. Darrow rushed over to the mayor’s office. Cregier, whom Darrow had 
never met, surprised Darrow by offering him the position of Special Assessment Attorney 
with an annual salary of three thousand dollars. Darrow accepted the position and after a 
few months he was offered the position of Assistant Corporation Counsel for the city of 
Chicago. He accepted the new job and a salary of five thousand dollars a year. He served 
in this position for three years. Later the Corporation Counsel had to resign because of ill 
health and Darrow moved up to assume that position. 
Darrow often met with Cregier as part of his job and at one point he asked the mayor why 
he had offered him a job even though he had never met him. Cregier replied, “‘Don't you 
know? Why, I heard you make that speech that night with Henry George.’”21 Darrow 
found out later that Altgeld, who had campaigned for Cregier, had urged the mayor to 
appoint Darrow to the position.  According to a Darrow biographer “Cregier had come to 
office entirely as the result of Altgeld’s remarkable manipulation of the city election of 
1889.”22 
1890 
As early as 1890 Darrow was a member, along with John Peter Altgeld, of the Iroquois 
Club in Chicago. It was formed to create “a substantial society in the form of a social 
club that should be representative of progressive democratic principles . . . .”23 Other 
members included DeWitt C. Cregier and Stephen S. Gregory, known as “S.S.” Gregory, 
he was one time president of the American Bar Association.  
Darrow wrote a short article titled “Women” in which he criticized discrimination against 
women that was published in the July issue of Belfords’ Magazine. 
1891 
Sunset Club 
Darrow also joined the Sunset Club in Chicago which was created to “foster rational 
good fellowship and tolerant discussion among business and professional men of all 
classes.” Membership was open to “[a]ny genial and tolerant fellow . . . on approval of 
the executive committee.” It met at a dinner once a month on a Thursday evening to hear 
short talks on topics selected by the secretary. Darrow became a member of the executive 
committee. 
The Sunset Club’s membership reflected a wide variety of political views, with anarchists 
and socialists sitting down to dinner with Republican businessmen. Darrow was a 
21 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 51. 
22 TIERNEY, supra note 8, at 51. 
23 ALFRED THEODORE ANDREAS, 3 HISTORY OF CHICAGO 401 (1886). 
10

member as early as 1891 when he gave a talk called The State; Its Functions and Duties. 
On October 22, 1891 he participated in discussion of the question “Shall the World’s Fair 
be Open on Sunday?”  On November 5, 1891 he gave an address on the subject of 
“Woman Suffrage.” Darrow argued in favor of granting suffrage to women. On 
December 17, 1891 Darrow participated in a discussion on the subject “The Eight-Hour 
Day.” 
The Sunset Club became an important forum for Darrow to express his views and also to 
meet with prominent men who would become important to his career, such as S.S. 
Gregory and Henry Demarest Lloyd.  
Also in 1891 Darrow accepted a part-time position in the legal department of the Chicago 
& Northwestern Railway Company. The general counsel for the railroad was William C. 
Goudy, a prominent Democrat in Illinois. Darrow also became one of John Peter 
Altgeld’s chief managers and strategists when Altgeld decided to run for governor of 
Illinois. Altgeld won the election in 1892. 
1893 
In 1893 Darrow and several prominent Chicago attorneys formed the law firm of Collins, 
Goodrich, Darrow & Vincent. Their law office was in the famous Rookery Building, a 
historic landmark located in the Loop community area of Chicago. The building is 
considered a masterpiece of Burnham and Root, one of the most famous architectural 
firms of the nineteenth century. 
Darrow and Others Pressure Altgeld to Pardon Haymarket Defendants 
Darrow arrived in Chicago just about a year after the infamous Haymarket trial. After the 
remaining defendants exhausted their appeals to the Illinois Supreme Court and the 
United States Supreme Court, Republican Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted 
their sentences to life in prison. After Altgeld assumed the governorship in 1893 he faced 
considerable pressure from the political left to pardon the remaining Haymarket 
defendants. Darrow personally pressured Altgeld numerous times to issue a pardon. Once 
Darrow, growing impatient, went to see Altgeld about the matter. Altgeld told Darrow: 
“Go tell your friends that when I am ready I will act. I don't know how I will act, 
but I will do what I think is right.” Then turning to me he added: “We have been 
friends for a long time. You seem impatient; of course I know how you feel; I 
don't want to offend you or lose your friendship, but this responsibility is mine, 
and I shall shoulder it. I have not yet examined the record. I have no opinion 
about it. It is a big job. When I do examine it I will do what I believe to be right, 
no matter what that is. But don't deceive yourself: If I conclude to pardon those 
men it will not meet with the approval that you expect; let me tell you that from 
that day I will be a dead man.”
24 
24 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 100-101. 
11

Altgeld took his time and reviewed all the evidence from the trial because he knew that 
pardoning the Haymarket defendants, while popular with the left, would arouse 
indignation from many people in Illinois and the whole country. Eventually Altgeld 
decided to pardon the defendants which he did on June 26, 1893. But instead of giving a 
brief explanation justifying the pardon, Altgeld issued a sixty page report in which he 
sharply criticized Judge Gary who presided over the Haymarket defendants’ criminal 
trial. Altgeld went so far as to state: “the trial judge was either so prejudiced against the 
defendants or else so determined to win the applause of a certain class in the community, 
that he could not and did not grant a fair trial.”25 
While Darrow was convinced the pardon was proper and necessary, he disagreed with 
Altgeld’s justification. He felt that “Altgeld was wrong in laying all the blame to Judge 
Gary, the trial judge. Undoubtedly his rulings were biased and unfair, but where is the 
man who, under the lashing of the crowd, is not biased and unfair?”26 Darrow believed 
that the Supreme Court of Illinois was more to blame. 
Pardon Backlash 
Altgeld’s pardon, and his vilification of Judge Gary, unleashed a firestorm of protest. The 
press criticized him relentlessly.  As he predicted it ruined his political career. It also 
ruined him financially. In 1891 Altgeld had put most of his wealth into building the 16-
story Unity Building in Chicago. He then rented or leased space in the building for 
offices. Many of the tenants in the Unity Building were angered enough about the pardon 
to leave. This was financially devastati ng because Altgeld’s wealth was tied to the 
building. According to Darrow: 
“When he pardoned the anarchists many of his best tenants of the big ‘Unity’ left the 
building, and it was refilled by young lawyers, radicals and idealists, many of whom 
could not pay their rent. Any one not able to pay office rent moved to the Unity Building. 
So Altgeld was obliged to default in his interest, and the bondholders showed him no 
mercy. In fact, they wanted him to fail. It would be a fine lesson in showing the 
punishment of evil and the triumph of virtue.”27 
On November 23 Darrow participated in a discussion of the subject “The Tyranny of 
Public Opinion” at the Sunset Club. 
1894 
In March 1894 Darrow became involved in political battle in Chicago. Darrow and other 
lawyers represented Billy "The Clock" Skakel who was trying to defeat his boss 
"Bathhouse" John Coughlin in an election for alderman in Chicago's First Ward. The 
25 JOHN PETER ALTGELD, THE CHICAGO MARTYRS: THE FAMOUS SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT ANARCHISTS IN 
JUDGE GARY'S COURT, OCTOBER 7, 8, 9, 1886, AND REASONS FOR PARDONING FIELDEN, NEEBE AND 
SCHWAB 132 (1899). 
26 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 102. 
27 Id. at 105. 
12

First Ward was notorious for corruption. When Skakel looked like he had a chance to 
win, Coughlin got the election board, controlled Mayor Hopkins' people, to remove 
Skakel's name from the ballot without granting him a hearing.  The board removed 
Skakel because he had been arrested and fined some years previously for gambling. 
Darrow and the other lawyers went before a judge to argue that removing Skakel from 
the ballot was illegal. The judge agreed and Skakel was put back on the ballot. Coughlin 
ended up winning the election that was held on April 3, 1894.  Coughlin (1860 - 1938) 
was an alderman in Chicago's First Ward from 1892 or 1893 until he died in 1938.   
Darrow wrote an article titled “Free Trade or Protection” that was published in Current 
Topics in April.  Darrow wrote “Protectionism appeals to the meanest sentiments of man, 
to the narrowest selfishness and the most sordid greed. It teaches that nations should be 
enemies instead of friends, and that the good of one may be promoted by the disaster and 
misfortune of the rest.” 
In May Darrow was one of several speakers who gave a eulogy at the service of Matthew 
Mark Trumbull who died on May 10. Trumbull was born in London in 1826 and 
immigrated to the United States when he was twenty. He was a "Chartist" or a proponent 
of "Chartism" which was a political and social reform movement in the United Kingdom 
between 1838 and 1848. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. When he 
arrived in America he worked as a laborer and later he became a lawyer in Butler County, 
Iowa. He was elected to the state legislature. Trumbull also served as a captain in the 
Union Army. By the end of the Civil War, he had been promoted to brevet brigadier 
general. In his later years he was an author and lecturer. 
Pullman Strike 
On May 11, 1894, about 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company went on 
strike. Many of the strikers were members of the American Railway Union (ARU), led by 
Eugene V. Debs. The ARU supported the strike by launching a boycott in which ARU 
union members refused to run trains with Pullman cars. The boycott started on June 26 
and within four days, about 125,000 railroad workers walked off the job. This caused 
severe disruption of railway service and mail delivery and generated a great deal of 
violence. It would become one of the most  significant labor struggles in United States 
history. President Cleveland sent in 12,000 Un ited States Army soldiers and they, along 
with numerous United States marshals, broke up the strike. Debs was charged with 
conspiracy to obstruct the U.S. mail and contempt of court for disobeying a court 
injunction. Darrow was soon called upon to represent Debs. 
A federal court held Debs and the other defendants in contempt and they received jail 
sentences ranging from three to six months. In 1895, Darrow and his co-counsel, 
including Stephen S. Gregory, defended Debs and other defendants on criminal charges 
for conspiracy to obstruct the U.S. mail. They mounted an aggressive defense and made 
the prosecution’s case seem weak. When a juror became sick, Darrow, who sensed that 
the defense would prevail, offered to proceed with eleven jurors, but the prosecution 
dropped the case. In March Darrow and his co-counsel argued a habeas corpus petition 
13

1896 
on the defendants’ behalf before the United States Supreme Court, but the Court 
unanimously upheld the contempt citation.  
The defense of Debs and the other defendants was the most important case up to this 
point in Darrow’s career. 
Prendergast Case 
Also in 1894 Darrow took on a controversial case when he worked with several other 
attorneys to try and save Patrick Eugene Prendergast from being executed for the 
assassination of Chicago Mayor Carter H. Harrison, Sr. Prendergast went to Carter’s 
home on the evening of October 28, 1893 and shot the mayor several times; he soon 
afterwards turned himself into the police. Prendergast was clearly mentally ill but he was 
easily convicted and sentenced to death. Da rrow volunteered to assist S.S. Gregory and 
another attorney to try and block the execution. The legal team used an Illinois statute 
that required a jury hearing if a defendant appeared to became insane after being 
sentenced, but before the sentence was carried out. Darrow and James S. Harlan argued 
before this second jury to spare Prendergast while several prosecution attorneys argued 
for the death penalty to be carried out. Harlan was the son of United States Supreme 
Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. The jury found Prendergast to be sane and he was 
hanged in the Cook County jail. 
On October 25 Darrow, Henry D. Lloyd and others participated in discussion about 
strikes and injunctions at the Sunset Club.  
Darrow wrote an article titled “Realism in Art and Literature” that was published in the 
December issue of Arena. 
1895 
On November 23, 1895 Darrow gave an address titled The Rights and Wrongs of Ireland 
at the Central Music Hall, Chicago. The address was given on the anniversary of the 
execution of the “Manchester Martyrs”—William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin, and 
Michael O'Brien—who were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood hanged in 
Salford, England on November 23, 1867. 
On July 14 at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Illinois State Bar Association, Darrow was 
one of numerous attorneys recommended for membership by the committee on 
admissions. Others also recommended included Edgar Lee Masters, Frank O. Lowden, 
and Kenesaw Mountain Landis. 
1896 Election 
14

Governor Altgeld was running for re-election and he persuaded a reluctant Darrow to run 
for Congress during the historic 1896 election. 
Darrow first met William Jennings Bryan when the former Nebraska congressman came 
to Chicago to attend the Democratic National Convention at the Chicago Coliseum. At 
the time, Bryan was 36 years old and Darrow was 39. At the convention on July 9, 1896, 
with Darrow looking on, Bryan delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, which is 
considered by many to be the most famous political speech in the history of the United 
States. Darrow wrote, “I have enjoyed a great many addresses, some of which I have 
delivered myself, but I never listened to one that affected and moved an audience as did 
that.”
28 The electrifying speech won Bryan the nomination of his party for President. 
Darrow said that it produced “the greatest ovation that I had ever witnessed.”29 
Darrow did not actively campaign for his own election because it was thought the seat he 
was running for was safely Democratic. Instead he traveled to other districts to campaign 
for other Democratic candidates. Darrow recounted that the “district was overwhelmingly 
Democratic, and I felt sure that with Bryan for president and Altgeld for governor there 
would be no doubt of my election.”
30 However, after the ballots were counted, Bryan lost 
the election to McKinley, Altgeld lost the governorship and Darrow lost his race. Darrow 
wrote in his autobiography that he lost by about one hundred votes.  The official vote was 
22,075 votes for the Republican Hugh Reid Belknap and 21,485 votes for Darrow. 
Bryan was also the Democratic nominee for the 1900 presidential election and Darrow 
campaigned for him again. But Bryan again lost to McKinley. Bryan was not nominated 
in 1904 but in the 1908 election he was again nominated by the Democratic Party. Bryan 
asked Darrow to campaign for him by giving some speeches, but Darrow declined.   
1897 
On January 30 Darrow was one of several speakers including Charles H. Aldrich, former 
Solicitor General of the United States, at the Commercial Club dinner in Chicago. They 
spoke on the subject “The Supreme Court of the United States—its place and function in 
the government. Its permanence and independence are essential to the existence of the 
Republic.”
31 
Divorce 
Clarence and Jessie divorced in 1897 after nineteen years of marriage. Darrow was then 
40 years old. It appears that it was Darrow’s idea to get divorced. A biographer wrote that 
during this time, divorces were much rarer and it could hurt Darrow’s career if his wife 
initiated the divorce proceedings, so she suggested he file the papers.
32 The petition 
28 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 91. 
29 Id. at 91. 
30 Id. at 92. 
31 3 MICH. ALUMNUS 125 (1897). 
32 SENTIMENTAL REBEL, supra note 11, at 71. 
15

Darrow filed stated in part that his wife Jessie “‘wilfuly deserted and absented herself 
from [C.D.] without any reasonable cause, for the space of two years and upwards, and 
has since continued and yet continues to absent herself.’”33 The petition for divorce was 
not true, as Jessie was a dutiful wife who was content to stay at home and take care of 
their son Paul. It was Darrow who was restless and felt he needed freedom. Darrow 
agreed to give Jessie the house free of encumbrances and not less than $150 per month 
during her life. Darrow recalled that the divorce was not contentious: “This was done 
without contest or disagreement and without any bitterness on either side, and our son has 
always been attached to both of us, and she and I have always had full confidence and 
respect toward each other.”34 
Jessie later told Darrow’s biographer Irving Stone that about a year after the divorce “a 
tearful Clarence came to her lamenting that the divorce had been a mistake.”35 But it was 
final and Jessie later married Judge Brownlee of Ashtabula, Ohio. Darrow had tried some 
cases before this same judge. 
Darrow attended the Illinois State Bar Association meeting held at the Chicago Beach 
Hotel on July 1 and 2. 
1898 
On February 3 Darrow gave an address on the topic “The Annexation of Hawaii” at the 
Sunset Club. Darrow argu ed against annexation. 
Oshkosh Woodworkers Strike 
Also in 1898, the 41-year-old Darrow became involved in the second big labor case of 
this early stage of his career. He was hired to defend Thomas I. Kidd, General Secretary 
of the Amalgamated Woodworkers International Union, and two other union members 
after a very contentious strike by woodworkers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The workers in 
several large factories that made sashes, doors, and blinds staged a strike when repeated 
demands for a wage increase were ignored. The three defendants were charged with 
criminal and civil conspiracy. A jury acquitted all three defendants. Darrow’s closing 
argument was regarded as a classic and is published and sold in pamphlet form.  
Darrow’s father, Ammirus, married Katherine Donahue in Wisconsin on September 8, 
1898. 
1899 
In 1899 Darrow published his first book, A Persian Pearl and Other Essays. The book 
contains five essays including A Persian Pearl an examination of one of Darrow’s 
favorite works, the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”  Other essays include “Realism in 
33 Id. 
34 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 33. 
35 Id. 
16

Literature and Art,” “Robert Burns,” and “Walt Whitman.”  The last essay called “The 
Skeleton in the Closest” was described by a reviewer: “The skeleton is an uncomfortable 
combination of desecrated ideals and a bad conscience, with an insistent plea for the 
betterment of character almost insistently disregarded by its possessor.”36 
Darrow’s book was published by Elbert Hubbard, the operator of The Roycroft Shop of 
East Aurora, New York. Darrow would become friends with Hubbard. The book was 
received favorably by some reviewers: “To follow the thought of Mr. Clarence S. Darrow 
through the five essays which make up the book named from first of them ‘A Persian 
Pearl’ . . . is to find the critical faculty of the lawyer at its best.”37 
Darrow spoke at a memorial for Robert Ingersoll in Chicago in the summer of 1899. 
Darrow said of Ingersoll: 
Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man; a wonderful intellect; a great soul of 
matchless courage; one of the great men of the earth . . . . Robert G. Ingersoll 
gave his life, his splendid energy, his matchless eloquence, to the cause of 
humanity. From the beginning he was the friend of human liberty. Whether on the 
field of battle fighting against the slavery of the black man or on the rostrum 
pleading for the right to think, to act, to live, he was always the friend of human 
liberty. . . . it will be written of him that more than any other man, perhaps, that 
ever lived, he refused to use his splendid powers for any cause in which he did not 
believe. We cannot measure the influence of Robert Ingersoll. His life and work 
will remain to liberate mankind and to benefit you and me.38 
On December 22, 1898, Thomas G. Crosby, a 13-year-old boy shot and killed a deputy 
sheriff who was trying to evict him and his 66-year-old mother by adoption from their 
home in Chicago. Darrow and another attorney defended the Crosbys in a trial widely 
followed in Chicago. The boy was acquitted but his mother was convicted of 
manslaughter. Darrow and William Prentiss represented her in 1901 on an appeal before 
the Supreme Court of Illinois. The court reversed the conviction and remanded the case 
because there was insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction for manslaughter.39 
1900 
Darrow continued to give speeches and participate in debates about political and social 
issues. Darrow was a sharp critic of conspiracy laws and injunctions because of how they 
were used against Eugene Debs in the 1884 Pullman strike and Thomas Kidd in the 1898 
woodworkers strike. In March he testified before the House of Representatives on a bill 
that would limit the meaning of the word “conspiracy” and would help labor by putting 
restrictions on the use of injunctions and restraining orders during labor strikes.  
36 Briefs on New Books, 27 DIAL: A SEMI-MONTHLY J. LITERARY CRITICISM, DISCUSSION, AND INFO. 54 
(1899). 
37 Id. 
38 Chicago’s Tribute to Ingersoll, 17 FREE THOUGHT MAG., 520, 523-24 (1899). 
39 Crosby v. People, 59 N.E. 546 (Ill. 1901). 
17

Miss Nellie Carlin, a graduate of the Chicago College of Law and admitted to practice in 
1896, did some legal work for Darrow, Thomas & Thompson. According to a 1900 
article, “During her practice Miss Carlin has been connected with the firm of Darrow, 
Thomas & Thompson, who speak in the highest praise of her ability.”40 According to 
another source, Carlin practiced law with Darrow’s firms from 1895 to 1910.41 
Nellie Carlin went on to hold several prominent positions. At one time she became the 
second president of the Women's Bar Association of Illinois.  In 1915 she was appointed 
Public Guardian of Cook County for children. She ran for municipal judge in 1914 and in 
1917 she was appointed an assistant state's attorney. 
The Chicago American, founded by William Randolph Hearst, printed its first edition on 
July 4, 1900. Darrow and Altgeld’s firm were hired to help incorporate Hearst’s new 
paper. Darrow would help represent Hearst’s newspapers for several years. 
1901 
On May 19, 1901 Darrow gave a speech to a black audience at the Men’s Club in 
Chicago titled The Problem of the Negro. Darrow was characteristically pessimistic about 
race relations. He also made remarks that were very controversial at the time when he 
discussed interracial marriage. He believed it was the “final question of the race problem” 
and he asked “Is there any reason why a white girl should not marry a man with African 
blood in his veins, or is there any reason why a white man should not marry a colored 
girl? If there is, then they are right and I am wrong.”
42 As with many of his speeches and 
presentations this one was published. 
After the 1896 election and the financial disaster with the Unity building, Altgeld had to 
return to the practice of law. Following the Debs trial, Darrow had formed a very 
successful law partnership with William O. Thompson. Darrow convinced Altgeld to join 
the firm. In July 1901 it was announced in the Chicago legal news that the partnership 
had been formed. Out of respect they named the firm Altgeld, Darrow & Thompson. 
Unger Case 
Darrow participated in a sensational case in Chicago in 1901 called People v. Unger. 43 
Dr. August M. Unger was a medical doctor who concocted a plan with one of his 
patients, Marie Defenbach, to defraud insurance companies. Ms. Defenbach would take 
out large life insurance policies on herself and Unger would give her a drug that would 
make her lapse into a coma and she would be declared dead.  Another body would be 
secured and quickly cremated. But something went very wrong and Defenbach died on 
August 25, 1900 under suspicious circumstances. Unger and two other conspirators, 
40 THE WOMAN’S JOURNAL: BOSTON, Jan. 27, 1900. 
41 SENTIMENTAL REBEL, supra note 11, at 36. 
42 The Problem of the Negro, 2 INT’L SOCIALIST REV. 321, 325 (1901). 
43 People v. Unger, Criminal Court of Cook County, Ill., No. 61606-A (1901). 
18

Francis W. Brown and Frank H. Smiley, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to 
defraud various insurance companies. During the investigation it was discovered that 
Doctor Unger’s brother died in New York in September, 1899 under circumstances 
similar to the death of Marie Defenbach. Darrow was hired to defend Brown. Despite 
Darrow’s efforts, the defendants were convicted on June 10, 1901 and sentenced to an 
indeterminate sentence.  But Darrow convinced the judge that Unger was much more 
culpable and with the consent of the state’s attorney, the verdict against Brown was set 
aside, and instead he was sentenced to pay a fine of $2,000. 
In 1901 Darrow and several other attorneys represented two editors of the Chicago 
American newspaper after they were jailed for contempt of court by a judge who was 
angry because the paper criticized a court decision he made.  The contempt decision was 
appealed to Judge Edward F. Dunne on a writ of habeas corpus. In December Judge 
Dunne held that no contempt had been committed.  
Darrow wrote an article titled Conduct and Profession that was published in The Rubric. 
1902 
Darrow wrote an essay about Leo Tolstoy titled “Tolstoi.”44 
1902 was an especially important and tough year for Clarence Darrow. He was deeply 
saddened when his mentor John Peter Altgeld died on March 12, 1902. Altgeld was just 
finishing a speech at a pro-Boer mass meeting in Joliet, Illinois when he became dizzy 
and had to be assisted from the stage. He was taken to a hotel and his condition did not 
appear to be too serious, but shortly before midnight he became unconscious and later 
died from a cerebral hemorrhage. Upon hearing the news, Darrow raced to Joliet. He told 
news reporters that the governor died as he had lived, pleading the cause of the lowly. 
Darrow gave a eulogy at Altgeld’s funeral. He clearly felt the loss of his friend: 
My dear, dead friend, long and well have we known you, devotedly have we 
followed you, implicitly have we trusted you, fondly have we loved you. Beside 
your bier we now must say farewell. The heartless call has come, and we must 
stagger on the best we can alone. In the darkest hours we will look in vain for 
your loved form, we will listen hopelessly for your devoted, fearless voice. But, 
though we lay you in the grave and hide you from the sight of man, your brave 
words will speak for the poor, the oppressed, the captive and the weak; and your 
devoted life inspire countless souls to do and dare in the holy cause for which you 
lived and died.45 
Darrow continued to pursue writing. He wrote a series of articles for Hearst's Chicago 
American newspaper called Easy Lessons in Law. He used this publishing opportunity to 
44 Clarence Darrow, Tolstoi, 1 RUBRIC, 21-38 (Jan. 1902). 
45 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 457 (citing Clarence Darrow, Remarks at the Funeral of John P. 
Altgeld (Mar. 14, 1902)). 
19

illustrate two shortcomings in the law that he wanted reformed: the Doctrine of the 
Fellow Servants and the Doctrine of Assumed Risk.  
On February 28, 1902 in Chicago, a pedestrian named Mary E. Spiss was walking on a 
sidewalk near a very large sign for Hearst’s Chicago American newspaper when a heavy 
wind hit the sign pulling some stone away from the building which hit Ms. Spiss.  She 
suffered serious injuries including a broken thigh and arm.  The Chicago city council had 
granted Hearst permission to put up the sign even though it violated a city ordinance.   
Darrow helped defend the Chicago American in a personal injury action. The jury found 
Hearst’s paper liable and awarded the plaintiff $8,000. Darrow also helped represent 
Hearst’s paper when it appealed the judgment to the Illinois Court of Appeals but the 
court affirmed the judgment and the amount of damages.46 
In June Darrow helped defend three lawyers indicted for conspiracy for bribing jurors to 
return favorable verdicts for the Chicago Union Traction Company.  All the defendants 
were convicted although several defendants successfully appealed.
47 
Darrow Again Runs For Political Office 
Altgeld had been a passionate advocate for municipal or public ownership of utilities, and 
Darrow also believed in this cause. After Altgeld’s death, a group was formed to help 
elect politicians to the Illinois legislature who believed in public ownership of utilities. 
The group was first called the Public Ownership Party, but changed its name to the Public 
Ownership League. The League chose the 45-year-old Darrow to run in Chicago’s 
Seventeenth District for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.  According to a 
1905 source the 17th district was “largely populated by Russian Jews.”48 The League was 
dissatisfied with Democratic politicians it believed were too cozy with corporations, and 
thus not sufficiently anti-monopoly. 
Darrow ran on a platform of public ownership of utilities, home rule for municipalities, 
support of initiatives and referendum and nomination by direct vote of the people. He 
was endorsed by the Chicago Daily News. Darrow won the election in November 1902, 
although he could not take his seat for several weeks because he was working on behalf 
of the coal miners before the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission. 
Darrow only introduced one bill while he served in the Illinois Legislature. The bill, 
which passed, raised the limit for recovery for negligent death from five thousand dollars 
to ten thousand dollars. 
46 Hearst's Chicago American v. Spiss, 117 Ill. App. 436 (Ill. App. Ct.-1st 1904). 
47 O'Donnell v. People, 110 Ill. App. 250 (Ill. App. Ct. 1st 1903); Gallagher v. People, 71 N.E. 842 (Ill. 
1904). 
48 CHARLES SELIGMAN BERNHEIMER, THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES: STUDIES OF SOCIAL 
CONDITIONS IN NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA AND CHICAGO, WITH A DESCRIPTION OF RURAL SETTLEMENTS 
278 (1905). 
20

Darrow showed a great deal of integrity when he voted against a bill that would have 
appropriated $5,000 for the widow of former Governor Altgeld. Darrow explained his 
opposition to the bill: 
No man ever lived whom I respected and loved outside my blood relations as I 
did John P. Altgeld. There is no woman more worthy of respect than the woman 
who is to be relieved in this bill. I know, and we all know, what John P. Altgeld 
sacrificed for the State of Illinois and for his devotion to duty as he saw it and as 
he believed it to be; and no man ever followed his duty more devotedly than did 
John P. Altgeld. A few weeks ago I voted against a bill to erect a monument to the 
memory of a good and great woman who lived and died in Illinois (Frances E. 
Willard). I voted against the appropriation to give $5,000 to the Swedes and Finns 
who doubtless were in need. I do not intend to vote against all appropriations. . . . 
But I do not see how we have the right to vote the money that must be paid by the 
property holders of this State, great and small, to any private individual, no matter 
how much I respect them, no matter how high they stand in the common esteem. 
Much as I regret it, I believe that this sort of legislation is not proper legislation 
and that there is nothing for me, at least, to do but to vote no on this bill.49 
Darrow served with several members of the Illinois Legislature who would later be 
important players in Illinois and Chicago politics. One was Anton (Tony) Joseph Cermak. 
Cermak would later run for mayor of Chicago and be elected in 1931 ending the 
Republican Party’s power in Chicago. On February 15, 1933, while Cermak was 
standing near President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt just after a speech in Miami, Florida, 
an assassin named Giuseppe Zangara tried to shoot Roosevelt but he shot Cermak 
instead. Cermak was hit in the lung and seriously wounded.  Several other people besides 
Cermak were also wounded. Accounts vary with some saying a woman died but others 
saying she was seriously wounded but survived.  Cermak died on March 6. Zangara was 
later tried, convicted and executed. 
It was not in Darrow’s nature to be a politician and he would serve just one term in the 
Illinois Legislature. 
Anthracite Strike of 1902 
In May 1902 one of the most important labor strikes in the history of the United States 
began when nearly 150,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) 
went on strike in the Anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. The strike led to shortages 
of coal as well as much higher prices and the situation became very serious when winter 
approached. President Theodore Roosevelt became very concerned and tried to get both 
sides to negotiate. Eventually both sides agreed to let President Roosevelt choose an 
arbitration commission and to be bound by the commission’s findings. This led to the 
UMW ending the strike on October 23, 1902 after 163 days. John Mitchell, the president 
of the UMW, asked Darrow to represent the union and Darrow became the lead union 
attorney before the commission. Although not all of the miners’ demands were met, the 
49 The Public, at 3 (No. 262) (April 11, 1903). 
21

strike was considered a success and further enhanced Darrow’s reputation as a labor 
attorney. 
In December 1902 Darrow published The Breaker Boy as an Easy Lesson on the Law 
story in the Chicago American. The short story told a tale of child labor in anthracite coal 
mines through the example of 11-year-old Johnny McCaffery, who had to go work in the 
coal mines after his father was killed in a mine accident.  
Tolstoy 
Darrow came to be deeply influenced by the non-resistance philosophy of Leo Tolstoy.50 
In 1902 Darrow published Resist Not Evil. He explained in the preface to this work: “It is 
not claimed that the following pages contain any new ideas. They were inspired by the 
writings of Tolstoy, who was the first, and in fact the only, author of my acquaintance 
who every seemed to me to place the doctrine of non-resistance upon a substantial basis.” 
Darrow was increasingly gaining fame as a writer and speaker on social issues. A 1903 
review stated: 
No recent sociological work by an American writer has excited more comment 
and discussion than ‘Resist Not Evil,’ by Clarence S. Darrow. Mr. Darrow has 
something to say, he is not afraid to say it, and he writes delightful English, 
making it a pleasure to read anything from his pen.51 
Controversial Prison Speech 
Darrow gave a controversial address to prisoners in the Cook County jail in Chicago in 
1902. A stenographic copy of his talk was published in Crime & Criminals: Address To 
The Prisoners In The Cook County Jail & Other Writings On Crime & Punishment. 
Darrow conveyed to the prisoners his belief that free will was a myth and criminals were 
not to blame for their circumstances. Darrow’s beliefs were so radical that in the preface 
Darrow wrote: 
Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should 
not have given them to the inmates of a jail. Realizing the force of the suggestion 
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 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. 
He began by telling the prisoners: 
50 Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. 
51 Darrow’s “Resist Not Evil”, 3 INT’L SOCIALIST REV.: MONTHLY J. INT’L SOCIALIST THOUGHT 573 
(1903). 
22

If I looked at jails and crime and prisoners in the way the ordinary person does, I 
should not speak on this subject to you. The reason I talk to you on the question of 
crime, its cause and cure, is because 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 an sort of distinction between the real moral condition of the 
people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no 
more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. 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.  
Darrow ended his speech by blaming those on the outside for prisoners being in jail: 
There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to 
accomplish. If you would wipe them out, there would be no more criminals than 
now. They are a blot upon civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of 
charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the 
victims of their greed. 
Both Resist Not Evil and Address To The Prisoners In The Cook County Jail were 
published by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company,52 a publisher still in existence, that 
proudly boasts of being a publisher for radical, socialist and labor history works. 
Darrow had a short bio published in the 1901-02 Who's Who in America. This 
biographical source was just two years old, having been founded in 1899. 
1903 
Not much is known about the lives of Darrow’s brothers and sisters. In the 1903 edition 
of the Yearbook and List of Active Members of the National Education Association, his 
sister Jennie Darrow Moore was listed as a Teacher in First Grade at the McCosh School 
in Chicago. His older sister Mary Darrow Olson was listed as the Principal of McCosh 
School. Mary had begun teaching in Chicago in 1884.   
Darrow spoke out against anti-Semitism after brutal crimes were committed during a 
pogrom against Jews in Kishinev, Russia on April 6 & 7, 1903. Over the course of three 
days, a mob attacked Jews, committing rapes and murder including the murder of babies. 
The local government not only failed to protect the victims but some of the leaders of the 
mob were government officials. Between 45 and 60 people were murdered, over 600 
injured, over 1500 shops destroyed, 12,000 homes damaged and about 2000 families left 
homeless. Darrow joined Jane Addams and Peter Sissman as speakers denouncing the 
atrocities at the Star Theater in Chicago on April 18.  
In November 1903 Darrow represented a labor union during the Chicago City Railway 
strike. 
52 See Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, http://www.charleshkerr.net (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
23

Ruby Hammerstrom 
After a speech he gave in 1899, Darrow spoke with his friend John R. Gregg and his 
wife. Gregg was the creator of the Gregg Shorthand system in 1888. With the Greggs that 
day was a woman named Ruby Hammerstrom who was 16 years younger than Darrow. 
Ruby was an aspiring journalist in Chicago. He was attracted to Ms. Hammerstrom and 
they eventually began dating. 
Ruby and Clarence Darrow were married on July 16, 1903 by Judge Edward Dunne, a 
friend of Darrow, who would later become the mayor of Chicago and Governor of 
Illinois. For their honeymoon they went first to Canada and then to Europe, visiting 
several countries before returning almost three months later.  
Edgar Lee Masters 
In 1897 Darrow met Edgar Lee Masters when Masters, a poet and attorney, sent a case to 
Darrow’s firm. In 1898, Darrow offered Masters a position in his firm but Masters turned 
the offer down. In 1903 Masters reconsidered Darrow’s offer and they formed a law 
partnership. Darrow and Masters had a stormy relationship, but the partnership lasted 
until 1911. 
According to a biography of Masters, he resented Darrow because Darrow did not pull 
his weight in the work that needed to be done outside of the court room and even more so 
because Darrow failed to put some client payments into the firm’s general account.
53 
Masters became even angrier at Darrow in 1905 when Masters, Darrow and his son Paul 
Darrow became involved in a banking scheme and Masters lost $5,000.54 
Another source of contention between Darrows and Masters was that shortly after 
Masters joined the firm, Darrow hired Cyrus Simon, a disgraced attorney who had been 
convicted for jury bribery in 1902 when he worked as a lawyer for the Chicago Union 
Traction Company. Darrow had wanted to bring Simon in as a full partner but Masters 
objected. Apparently Masters was especially  against adding Simon to the firm’s name. 
Simon was also Jewish and at this time Jews were effectively barred from many 
established Chicago law firms. Darrow and his partners compromised and Simon was 
brought in as a junior partner but his name was not added to the firm nor on its stationary. 
Simon acted in the capacity of a claims agent by collecting on overdue bills owed to the 
firm. Eventually the firm discovered Simon was pocketing money and some of the 
partners wanted to prosecute him but Darrow let him resign without publicity. 
Their relationship would become more strained in 1906 when Darrow went to Idaho to 
defend William D. Haywood and several other defendants charged with the murder of the 
former governor of Idaho. Darrow spent about two years on the case while Masters had to 
run the Chicago firm. Darrow supposedly earned a fee of $50,000 but only $14,000 was 
deposited in the account for Darrow, Masters and Wilson. Masters could see from the 
53 HERBERT K. RUSSELL, EDGAR LEE MASTERS: A BIOGRAPHY 50 (2005). 
54 Id. 
24

firm’s financial records that Darrow was withholding money from the Haywood case, 
and he contacted the labor union that was paying for Haywood’s legal defense to have 
them send the money to the Chicago law firm instead of directly to Darrow.55 Darrow 
threatened to quit his partnership with Masters and refused to give up all the Haywood 
defense money. Masters never managed to account for the money and this “helped create 
an enmity with Darrow” that was never resolved.
56 
In 1915, Masters published Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poem “epitaphs” for 
over 200 citizens of fictional Spoon River, Illinois who had died. The work established 
Master as a gifted writer. 
Darrow Declines Running for Mayor of Chicago 
The Chicago mayoral election was scheduled for April 1903 and the Union Labor Party 
and asked Darrow to run for mayor.57 There was a great deal of discussion about 
Darrow’s potential candidacy in the newspapers but Darrow declined to run because he 
thought it would split the progressive vote and allow a Republican to win.  
In December 1903 Darrow published a story of fiction titled Little Louis Epstine in the 
magazine The Pilgrim. Louis was nine years old, poor and Jewish.  He had lost one hand 
in an accident when he was much younger.  One day in the winter he stayed out in the 
cold selling newspapers because he wanted to earn enough money to buy a small 
Christmas present for his mother. This lead to frostbite and he had to have his remaining 
hand amputated. Darrow wrote it as a sad reality check on the traditional cheery 
Christmas tale.  
1904 
Iroquois Theater Fire 
On the afternoon of December 30, 1903 a fire tore through the supposedly “fire-proof” 
Iroquois Theater in downtown Chicago during a play. Within minutes about 575 people, 
mostly women and children, were dead. Many of the badly injured would soon die 
bringing the final death toll to 602. The horrific death toll led to the indictment of several 
people for manslaughter and some for malfeasance. 
Darrow helped several of the defendants as he “worked behind the scenes to find ways to 
quash the indictments and, as far as it can be determined, never appeared personally in 
court.”
58 None of the defendants were convicted. The Iroquois Theater Company faced as 
many as 272 lawsuits but the company was insolvent and the relatives of the victims went 
uncompensated. Darrow also helped defend the producers of the musical comedy that 
was showing when the fire started. The company that built the Iroquois Theater paid a 
55 Id. 
56 Id. at 51. 
57 Some sources refer to it as the Independent Labor Party. 
58 NAT BRANDT, CHICAGO DEATH TRAP: THE IROQUOIS THEATRE FIRE OF 1903, 129 (2003). 
25

settlement of $29,750 and this was the only civil defendant to pay any compensation to 
the victims’ relatives. 
Farmington 
Ammirus Darrow died at age 86 on April 24, 1904 in Chicago.  Later in the same year, 
Darrow’s semi-autobiographical novel titled Farmington was published. He had actually 
completed Farmington while on his honeymoon trip to Europe. In it, the author “John 
Smith” writes about his father and memories from his boyhood. Farmington was first 
published by A. C. McClurg & Co., a publisher in Chicago made famous by their original 
publishing of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, including his Tarzan of the Apes 
novels. Darrow’s book would eventually go through seven editions by five different 
publishers. 
Darrow wrote a note for the second edition in which he attempted to answer a question 
asked by many who read his book: “From both the old neighbors and the new have come 
the query as to whether I am not John Smith. If these companions do not know, how is it 
possible for me to tell?”59 
Some critics of Farmington believed it was a cynical portrayal of small town life and 
how parents raise their children. In his note on the second edition, Darrow seemed to be 
surprised at some of the criticism: “I cannot withhold an expression of my satisfaction for 
the kind reception of this little book, and still now and then critics have found traces of a 
cynicism and pessimism that I did not know were there.”60 
Darrow had first tried to publish Farmington with the title The Story of My Life. William 
Dean Howells had sent the manuscript to Harper & Brothers, but they turned it down. 
Howell sent their rejection letter to Darrow which stated in part:  
“We regret to say that after due consideration, we are unable to reach a favorable decision 
in the matter of publishing the ‘Story of my Life’ by Mr. Darrow, the manuscript of 
which was kindly submitted by you. Our readers speak of it as well written, marked by 
really good workmanship; the pictures are vivid, scenes of life and character admirable, 
the humor delightful; but that it is cold and depressing, contains unnecessary 
philosophizing, and the general effect is disheartening. We doubt, therefore, if it would 
have a sale that would justify the expense of publication.”
61 
At the Democratic Convention held in Saint Louis in July 1904 there was nearly 
universal support for Alton B. Parker, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, to 
be nominated for president. The only opposition came from William Randolph Hearst 
and his supporters. Darrow seconded Hearst ’s nomination on behalf of the Illinois 
delegation to the convention. However, Parker was nominated on the first ballot. 
59 FARMINGTON, supra note 6, at v. 
60 Id. at vii. 
61 Letter from William Dean Howells to Clarence Darrow (Jan. 21, 1904) (on file with the University of 
Minnesota Law Library). 
26

Turner v. Williams 
In 1903 and 1904 Darrow and Masters worked on their most significant case, United 
States ex rel. Turner v. Williams. 62 John Turner was an English anarchist and union 
organizer who came to the United States in 1903 to give speeches and gather information 
on trade unionism. Turner was arrested in New York City on October 23, 1903 after he 
gave a speech at a mass labor meeting. He was arrested pursuant to a warrant issued by 
the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor of the United States.  At the 
Ellis Island immigration station a board of special inquiry found Turner to be an alien 
anarchist and by a unanimous decision ordered him to be deported from the country. The 
legal authority to deport Turner came from a federal statute enacted on March 3, 1903 in 
response to the assassination of President McKinley.63 The act authorized the exclusion 
of “anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence 
of the government of the United States or of all government or of all forms of law, or the 
assassination of public officials.”64 Turner’s arrest and deportation proceedings generated 
protests in several cities. Turner’s appeal to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor was 
dismissed and he appealed to the United States Supreme Court. 
Darrow and Masters submitted a 187-page written brief and both gave oral arguments 
before the Court in Turner’s appeal. They were opposed by Assistant Attorney General 
James Clark McReynolds, who in 1914 became a Justice on the United States Supreme 
Court. McReynolds served on the Court until 1941 and he gained a reputation as one of 
the most ardent opponents of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.  
Darrow and Masters tried to show that Tuner was a philosophical anarchist and was not 
the type of person the statute was enacted to exclude. They also argued that the statute 
was unconstitutional on several grounds, including that it violated the First Amendment.  
But the Court disagreed. Turner v. Williams is still good law. 
1905 
In September 1905 Darrow was approached by Upton Sinclair, who wanted legal advice 
about whether his book The Jungle, which he was preparing to publish, would subject 
him to libel charges. The book, about the extremely unsanitary and dangerous conditions 
and corruption in Chicago’s meat slaughtering and processing plants, was published in 
1906. Sinclair had originally intended the book to expose the harsh and unfair working 
conditions endured by the poor, especially immigrants. But the general public found the 
exposure of the unsanitary and dangerous food handling practices even more sensational 
and disgusting. The book was so influential it is credited with leading to passage of the 
federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which led to the 
establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. 
62 United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904). 
63 Immigration Act of March 3, 1903, ch. 1012, § 2, 32 Stat. 1213, 1214. 
64 Id. 
27

In 1905 Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, William English Walling, and other 
socialists formed the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. In 1921 the organization changed 
its name to the League for Industrial Democracy. Later the youth wing of this group 
became the Students for a Democratic Society. 
While vacationing in Colorado, Darrow wrote his only novel, a short book called An Eye 
for an Eye.  The story is about Jim Jackson, who while losing a struggle with poverty and 
harsh circumstances, murdered his wife in a fit of rage by hitting her with a fire poker. 
Darrow incorporated his themes of man’s lack of free will and the futility and cruelty of 
capital punishment. Jackson was convicted and sentenced to death. When his execution 
neared, Jackson reflected that “If ther'd been forty scaffolds right before my eyes, I'd 
have brought down the poker just the same.” A later reviewer of An Eye for an Eye 
believed it deserved a “trophy not only for sociological veracity but also for genuine 
literary achievement.”65 
Mayor Edward Dunne, who as a judge had married Clarence and Ruby in 1903, 
appointed Darrow as special counsel for traction affairs for the city of Chicago. Both 
Dunne and Darrow favored municipal ownership of the Chicago street railway system. In 
October 1905 Darrow wrote an article titled The Chicago Traction Question that was 
published in The International Quarterly. The article advocated municipal control of the 
street railways in Chicago.  Darrow also criticized a very powerful financier, Charles 
Yerkes, who controlled much of the streetcar system in Chicago. Darrow explained the 
financing and profits of the streetcar companies: 
These companies are in the daily receipt of $50,000. Everybody familiar with 
legal affairs understands that a good many high-priced lawyers can be employed 
from such receipts. Everybody is also wise enough to understand that under the 
complex administration of law by our courts high-priced lawyers can make plenty 
of trouble upon almost any proposition.66 
Darrow was already well-known enough that in July 1905 he participated as a speaker in 
Venice California at the “Venice Assembly” a two month series of educational 
presentations given by eminent men and women.  Earl Rogers, a famous criminal defense 
lawyer in California who would help defend Darrow in 1912 and 1913 against charges of 
jury bribery, also participated in the speaking series in Venice. 
In 1905 Darrow became associated with TO-MORROW magazine which styled itself as a 
magazine “For People Who Think.” In its first edition in January 1905 the magazine 
stated that “Clarence S. Darrow will contribute an article each month on vital topics of 
general interest.” Darrow wrote an article titled "Literary Style” for the magazine that 
was published in 1905. The managing editor was Parker H. Sercombe who was rather 
notorious as a proponent of free love.    
65 ABE C. RAVITZ, CLARENCE DARROW AND THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITION 85 (1962). 
66 Clarence S. Darrow, The Chicago Traction Question, 12 INT’L Q. 13, 20 (1905-1906). 
28

Darrow’s oldest sibling, Edward Everett Darrow retired in 1905 after teaching high 
school in Chicago for 30 years. 
1906 
In January 1906 Darrow, as special counsel for traction affairs, and several other 
attorneys represented the city of Chicago in an appeal before the United States Supreme 
Court. The controversy involved whether an amended Illinois law gave an irrevocable 
grant from the state to two railway companies of the right to use city streets for street 
railway purposes for a term of ninety-nine years. The Court decided in favor of the 
railway companies on the issues involving the constitutionality of the law and the 
jurisdiction of the Federal Court but the merits of the case were decided in favor of the 
city.
67 
Sometime in 1906 Darrow met and became very good friends with George Burman 
Foster a professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Chicago from 1905 until 
his death in 1918.  Darrow considered Foster, a famous theologian during his time, one of 
the most learned men he had ever met. 
Haywood Trial 
On December 30, 1905 the former governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg, was 
assassinated when a bomb exploded as he opened the gate to his yard. The Western 
Federation of Miners (WFM) was quickly blamed for the assassination because in 1899 
Governor Steunenberg had declared martial law during a wave of labor violence. After an 
investigation, three members of the WFM, William “Big Bill” Haywood, Charles H. 
Moyer, and George Pettibone, were arrested in February 1906 in Colorado and extradited 
under legally dubious proceedings to Idaho to stand trial for murder.  Darrow and another 
lawyer were hired to defend the men.  Darrow and his co-counsel unsuccessfully argued 
before the United States Supreme Court that the arrest and extradition of the defendants 
to Idaho was illegal.
68 Darrow then traveled to Idaho to prepare for several murder trials. 
1907 
Darrow also defended Steve Adams, a self-confessed assassin for the WFM, during two 
murder trials in Idaho related to the Steunenberg assassination. The prosecution wanted 
to pressure Adams to corroborate the confession of the main witness against Haywood 
and the other defendants. Somehow Darrow got Adams to stand firm. Haywood was 
acquitted. Pettibone was tried next and he too was acquitted. The prosecution then 
dropped the charges against Moyer. Both of Steve Adams’ murder trials ended in 
mistrials. 
Darrow Becomes Seriously Ill 
67 Blair v. City of Chicago, 201 U.S. 400 (1906). 
68 Pettibone v. Nichols, 203 U.S. 192 (1906). 
29

Just before the start of Steve Adams’ second trial in October, Darrow developed a very 
painful problem with his inner ear. He sought local medical attention, but none of the 
doctors could diagnose the problem. Mastoiditis was suspected but Darrow lacked two 
key symptoms – swelling and fever. His condition worsened and he eventually had to 
remove himself from the Pettibone trial and seek medical care.  For a time the illness was 
considered life threatening. Darrow traveled to California for treatment and was operated 
on in early January 1908 for mastoiditis and he made a successful recovery. 
The Haywood murder trial was the most sensational in Darrow’s career up to this point. 
Although he was increasingly well-known because of the 1894 Pullman Strike, the 1902 
Anthracite Strike and the resulting arbitration commission hearings, and through his 
public speaking and writings, it was the Haywood and related trials that launched Darrow 
into the national spotlight. The Haywood trial was even followed overseas.  
Also in 1907 Darrow caused a controversy in the state of Washington: “Clarence S. 
Darrow, the well-known Socialist lawyer of Chicago, created considerable comment 
recently when he refused to rise in his seat while ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was being 
sung in the Silver Grill restaurant of the leading hotel in Spokane, Wash.”69 
It was reported that the other guests were greatly incensed over Darrow’s defiance. 
1908 
Mary Field Parton 
In 1908 Darrow met a young woman named Mary Field who was a Hull House social 
worker. Mary Field was born in Kentucky in 1878 and her family later moved to Detroit. 
She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1900; soon after she worked in several 
slum settlement houses in Chicago. Their friendship soon blossomed and for a time they 
carried on an affair. In 1911 Mary fell in love with a San Francisco newspaperman named 
Lemuel Parton and they were married in 1913. Darrow and Mary Field Parton would 
remain friends for the rest of Darrow’s life. Darrow’s relationship with Mary Field Parton 
was known to Ruby and it pained her throughout their marriage.  
On June 10 Darrow spoke at an anti-prohibition and pro-union rally in Sedalia Missouri 
that was organized by the Sedalia Federation of Labor. 
On October 31 Darrow and Mayor David S. Rose of Milwaukee gave speeches at a large 
anti-prohibition meeting in Cincinnati.   
Christian Ansoff Rudowitz 
A legal case with international importance arose in 1908 when the Russian consul in 
Chicago requested the extradition of a Russian refugee named Christian Ansoff 
69 VICTOR L. BERGER, BERGER'S BROADSIDES 97 (1912) (quoting the Milwaukee Sentinel). 
30

Rudowitz70 who was living in Chicago. The Russians alleged that Rudowitz was wanted 
for murder, arson, burglary, robbery and larceny that occurred in a village in a Baltic 
province during the winter of 1905-06.  This was part of a wave of political terrorism, 
strikes, peasant unrest, and mutinies that is referred to as the 1905 Russian Revolution. 
The 35 year-old Rudowitz admitted to joining the Russian Social Democratic party in 
1905. He participated in raids to acquire arms for the coming revolution. The Russians 
requested Rudowitz be turned over under the extradition clause of the 1907 treaty 
between Russia and the United States. 
Extradition hearings were held before United States Commissioner Mark A. Foote in 
Chicago. The case was closely followed by the political left in Chicago, and news 
coverage carried the story to other parts of the country and even overseas. Darrow, Peter 
Sissman, Northwestern University Professor Charles C. Hyde, and Isaac A. Horwich 
represented Rudowitz before Foote without charge. Rudowitz’s supporters were 
concerned for his welfare but also worried his deportation would endanger political 
asylum in the United States. 
Foote listened to two weeks of testimony and on December 7 ruled that Rudowitz could 
be extradited. The decision was roundly denounced by radical newspapers.  Darrow and 
Hyde sought a meeting with Secretary of State Elihu Root. Root declined to meet with 
them because the State Department did not hear oral arguments in extradition cases; 
however, it would read a written brief. The defense sent Root their brief and another brief 
submitted by John H. Wigmore, dean of Northwestern University Law School. On 
January 26, 1909 Secretary Root decided that Rudowitz’s crimes were political in nature 
and he was therefore not extraditable under the treaty between the United States and 
Russia. 
An article about Chicago written in 1908 mentioned that Darrow got into quarrel with 
Mayor Dunne and Darrow resigned his position as special traction counsel. Darrow 
resigned on November 7, 1908. 
Paul Darrow 
Paul Darrow was far different in personality than his famous father. After he graduated 
from Dartmouth, Paul decided against becoming a lawyer or getting involved in politics. 
Instead he chose a much more private life and went into business. Paul married Lillian 
Anderson whom he had met when she worked as a secretary in his father’s law office. 
Paul and his wife moved to Estes Park, Colorado in 1908 where they had three daughters 
Jessie, Mary and Blanche. While in Colorado, Paul successfully managed the Greeley 
Gas & Fuel Company in which both he and his father had a financial involvement. It was 
a small company with about sixteen employees which provided gas to the city of Greeley.  
Paul and his family moved back to Chicago in 1930.  
Darrow gave a speech at a 1908 Labor Day celebration in New York City on the open 
shop versus closed shop controversy. In a closed shop the employer agrees to only hire 
70 Some sources spell his name as Rudovitz. 
31

union members, and employees have to stay in the union to remain employed. Darrow 
had publicly supported the closed shop for several years. 
1909 
Darrow published an article called “The Holdup Man” in February 1909 in the 
International Socialist Review. The article illustrates Darrow ’s views about the causes of 
crime and the futility of criminal punishment. 
Early Opponent of Prohibition 
Darrow hated prohibition because it went so thoroughly against his libertarian instincts.  
Well before federal prohibition was enacted there had been a growing movement to 
prohibit the sale of alcohol. Darrow saw the movement gaining steam and he began to 
publicly speak out against it. Over the years he protested against prohibition both in his 
speeches and in his writings. 
On May 2 Darrow gave a speech about prohibition at the Opera House in Youngstown 
Ohio. Darrow told the audience: “Now, I have practiced law a good many years, and have 
helped to pick out a good many juries. Anybody can try a case, but you must have a good 
jury. If I had to defend a criminal case I would never let a prohibitionist on the jury, not if 
I could help it. A lawyer who would let one of them on a jury, if he could avoid it would 
be guilty of malpractice.” 
On November 14 Darrow’s older sister Mary Darrow Olson died in Chicago at age 58.  
Mary had begun teaching in Chicago in 1884 and served as principal of the McCosh 
school for 25 years.
71 
On December 4 Darrow delivered an address called “Liberty vs. Prohibition” in New 
Bedford, Massachusetts. Darrow spoke shortly before the town was to vote on a law 
prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. The address was later published in pamphlet 
form and the introduction to the pamphlet states that “This city, with Worcester and 
others, changed from ‘dry’ to ‘wet’ by a large majority in the election held a fortnight 
later.” 
1910 
Darrow debated Arthur M. Lewis on the topic "The Theory of Non-resistance" on 
February 6, 1910. The debate was later published as a pamphlet. 
NAACP 
Because of his advocacy of equal rights for blacks, Darrow was invited to speak at the 
second annual National Negro Conference held in New York from May 12 to 14, 1910. 
71 HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, HARRY GARDNER CUTLER, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE, VOLUME 1, at 
221 (1910). 
32

At this meeting the National Negro Conference adopted a plan of permanent organization 
and became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).   
During the conference Darrow caused a great deal of controversy when he advocated 
interracial marriage.  He also stirred up controversy with other things he said: 
The efforts which the National Negro Committee, including in its membership 
many of the most prominent clergymen and sociologists of this city, made 
yesterday afternoon and evening to urge the negroes of this country to develop 
themselves through industrial education, were rudely interrupted in the 
conference’s session last night in Cooper Union. 
Clarence Darrow, who was counsel for Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, the 
Colorado dynamiters, did the interrupting. When it came to be his turn to speak, 
Mr. Darrow coolly advised the seven or eight hundred negroes who had crowded 
into Cooper Union to hear the speeches that the best way for them to better their 
condition in the South and the country was to “stop working.”72 
Darrow told the crowd, “‘What the South wants by its acts of disenfranchisement is not to 
make the negro leave the South, but to make the negro keep his place.’”73 Darrow 
continued: 
“If I were going to advise the negroes of this country what to do. I would advise them to 
follow the example of the whites and get along without working. Why do you go to the 
industrial schools? Do you want more work?  . . . You won’t get more wages for it. The 
whites won’t give you any more wages. They don’t give more wages to horses.”74 
Darrow’s comments: 
were received with increasing whoops of laughter from the younger of the 800 
negroes and with blinking surprise by the older and more staid. To the clergymen 
and sociologists on the platform, however, many of whom had in speeches 
immediately preceding Mr. Darrow’s, advised the negroes that the solution of the 
race problem would come about gradually if both races were patient and tried to 
learn to understand each other, this new tone was in the nature of a bombshell.75 
The NAACP was incorporated on May 25, 1911. In the September 1911 issue of the 
NAACP’s official magazine The Crisis Darrow is listed as a member of its General 
Committee.  Beginning in 1912 it appears that this committee was changed to the 
NAACP’s Advisory Committee and Darrow was named as a member in subsequent years 
beginning as early as February 1912. 
72 Socialist Advises Negroes to Strike; Speech by Clarence Darrow Stirs Sociologists in Cooper Union to 
Warm Protest, N.Y. TIMES, May 13, 1910, at 2. 
73 Id. 
74 Id. 
75 Id. 
33

Darrow and several other attorneys represented Fred D. Warren during an appeal to the 
Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit. Warren, a well-known socialist, was convicted 
for sending “nonmailable matter” through the mail because he sent an envelope which 
displayed writing that was of a “scurrilous, defamatory, and threatening character.” 
Warren was sentenced to six months hard labor and a $1,500 fine. The Eighth Circuit 
upheld the conviction.76 
1911 
In 1910 about 40,000 clothing workers in Chicago’s men’s clothing industry went on 
strike for nineteen weeks. The focus of the strike was Hart, Schaffner and Marx, the 
largest company that refused to join the Chicago Wholesale Clothiers Association (an 
organization of large firms). An agreement was reached by representatives of the workers 
and Hart, Schaffner and Marx on March 13, 1911. The agreement setup an arbitration 
board to rule on shop grievances. The arbitration board consisted of Clarence Darrow 
who represented the workers and Carl Meyer who represented the company. The clothing 
workers strike led to the formation in 1914 of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of 
America.  
Darrow’s article "Why Men Fight for the Closed Shop" is published in September.
77 
Bombing of the Los Angeles Times 
On October 1, 1910 the Los Angeles Times building was destroyed by dynamite, killing 
twenty employees. Eventually several union members were arrested and charged with the 
crime.  Sometime around May 1911 Darrow reluctantly agreed to defend two brothers, 
John J. McNamara and James McNamara, who were accused of the bombing.  Darrow 
and his co-counsel eventually came to the conclusion that the McNamaras were guilty 
and the prosecution had built an overwhelming case. In a shock to labor supporters 
Darrow and the defense had their clients plead guilty in a plea deal so that James, who 
actually planted the dynamite, would escape the death penalty.  Darrow would come to 
regret taking the case, because it ended with his indictment for jury bribery. 
When labor supporters of the McNamara brothers asked Darrow to defend the accused he 
was arguing a case involving Charles H. Myerhoff v. Kankakee Manufacturing 
Company.  Myerhoff was an elderly Civil War veteran who invested most of his life 
savings with the defendants. Myerhoff, and numerous other small businesses and 
individuals, had been persuaded to invest by slick and deceptive brochures that made 
false claims about the company’s assets.  Myerhoff lost his entire investment and sued 
the company’s board for fraud.  Myerhoff claimed they had defrauded him of $5,000.  
Darrow defended Kankakee Manufacturing’s board. A jury found for Myerhoff and 
assessed his damages at $7,475. The defendants appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court.  
76 Warren v. United States, 183 Fed. 718 (8th Cir. 1910). 
77 Clarence Darrow, Why Men Fight for the Closed Shop, 72 AM. MAG., 545-51 (1911). 
34

Darrow helped represent the defendants on appeal but the court found no reversible error 
and affirmed the judgment.78 
1912 
On January 29 Darrow was indicted for jury bribery in Los Angeles. In May 1912 
Darrow was tried in the first of two trials for allegedly bribing a juror in the McNamara 
case. Darrow hired Los Angeles-based Earl Rogers, one of the best criminal defense 
attorneys in the country. Darrow was acquitted. 
On September 12 Darrow gave a lecture on Industrial Conspiracies in Portland Oregon.  
His speech was later published. In December Darrow gave an address about the 
abolitionist John Brown at the Radical Club in San Francisco.  
1913 
Darrow faced a second bribery trial which began on January 20. He turned again to Earl 
Rogers but Rogers, an alcoholic, had to pull out of the case early on because he was ill. 
Darrow was forced to conduct much of his own defense work. He hired O.W. Powers, a 
former judge from Utah, to help in his defense. Without Rogers to dissuade him during 
his closing argument to the jury, Darrow tried to defend or at least explain why the Los 
Angeles Times building was bombed and why labor supporters turned to violence. This 
was a mistake and Darrow came closer to being convicted in this trial. The trial ended on 
March 8, 1913 with a hung jury voting 8 to 4 for conviction and the judge declared a 
mistrial.   
On March 27th Darrow gave an address "On Land and Labor” at a Single Tax League 
mass meeting in Los Angeles. In June the address was published in the Everyman. 
The McNamara case and the Harriman run for mayor influenced Frank Wolfe, a member 
of the McNamara defense team, to produce a movie released in September 1913. Titled 
“From Dusk to Dawn” Clarence Darrow has a prominent role playing an attorney who 
defends a union member charged with conspiracy.  The film was a commercial success.  
Darrow Returns to Chicago 
Darrow could still face a third bribery trial but eventually the prosecutor decided to drop 
the charges if Darrow agreed to leave Los Angeles and not return.  Darrow returned to 
Chicago with his legal career in shambles; he had spent all the money he earned in the 
McNamara case in defending himself in the two bribery trials. He formed a new law 
partnership with Peter Sissman, a Jewish Russian immigrant and socialist. They would 
remain law partners for twelve years. 
Darrow also began giving speeches at Chautauqua meetings. Chautauqua was an adult 
education movement in the United States. The lecture series was very popular in the late 
78 Myerhoff v. Tinslar, 175 Ill. App. 29 (Ill. App.-2nd 1912). 
35

19th and early 20th centuries. Darrow would co me to rely on Chautauqua lecture fees in 
the years to come. 
After Darrow returned to Chicago, the first important case he worked on was the defense 
of Isaac Bond, a black man accused of killing a white woman.  Bond was convicted but 
the jury rejected the prosecution’s demand for the death penalty and Bond was sentenced 
to life in prison.  Darrow helped Bond appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1917 but 
the court affirmed the conviction.79 Several years later Darrow unsuccessfully took up 
Bond’s case with the pardon board. 
Darrow defended a suspect accused with several others of committing arson for purposes 
of insurance fraud. The defendants were convicted by a jury in August and sentenced to 
the Joliet penitentiary. Their convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court of Illinois in 
1914.80 
In September Darrow and Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, 
called on Governor Ferris of Michigan to help settle a strike in the Michigan Copper 
District by arbitration. 
Darrow gave an address about Henry George at the Henry George Anniversary Dinner of 
the Single Tax Club in Chicago on September 19th. His address was later published. 
Also in 1913 Darrow and Francis S. Wilson participated in a wrongful death action 
against the city of Chicago.
81 The case arose in 1904 from a tragic accident in which a 
boiler near a city street, managed and controlled by the city of Chicago, rolled over and 
killed a child six years old. 
1914 
On January 11 Darrow gave an address on Voltaire to the Chicago Society of 
Rationalism. His address was published in Everyman magazine.  Darrow wrote that in his 
preparation for the address he drew freely from the biography The Friends of Voltaire 
written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall using the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre.  Published in 1906 
Darrow called it “one of the greatest biographies ever written.” 
Darrow and Charles Erbstein helped defend Louise Van Keuren who was charged with 
murder for killing her estranged husband on June 4, 1913 after he tried to break into her 
apartment. On March 14, 1914 Mrs. Van Keuren was found not guilty by the jury after 
less than an hour of deliberation. 
On May 4 Darrow spoke at a meeting of the Cooper Union on the tenth anniversary of 
the organization of the New York Woman’s Trade Union League. Among his remarks 
79 People v. Bond 118 N.E. 14 (Ill. 1917). 
80 People v. Covitz, 104 N.E. 887 (Ill. 1914). 
81 Carlin v. City of Chicago, 177 Ill. App. 89 (App. Ct. 1913). 
36

Darrow told the crowd that the war between capital and labor was “a war in which it is 
worth while to sacrifice anything, even life.”82 
In June 1914 the warden at Joliet Prison in Illinois invited Darrow to speak to the 
prisoners. 
Darrow Quickly Changes from Pacifist to War Supporter 
World War I dramatically and rapidly changed part of Darrow’s political and social 
philosophy: 
When, in violation of their express treaty, Germany sent her great army into 
Belgium, I at once felt that the whole world should help drive her back to her own 
land. Up to this time I had believed in pacifism. Not only because I never wanted 
to fight, but because I considered it a sound philosophical doctrine that should 
rule men and states. For many years I had been an ardent reader of Tolstoy, and 
regarded myself as one of his disciples. When Germany invaded Belgium I 
recovered from my pacifism in the twinkling of an eye.
83 
Darrow’s sharp turn away from pacifism and his embrace of military might to defeat 
Germany alienated him from many on the left. 
In 1914 Darrow wrote a short article titled “The Cost of War” in which he explained his 
view that the destruction of private property caused by the war would benefit the working 
class.84 Darrow believed that the rebuilding would employ people and raise wages. 
Darrow began his article by stating: 
“A long with the many other regrets over the ravages of war is the sorrow for the 
destruction of property. As usual, those who have nothing to lose join in the general 
lamentation. There is enough to mourn about in the great European Holocaust without 
conjuring up imaginary woes. So far as the vast majority of people are concerned, the 
destruction of property is not an evil but a good.”85 
On June 14 Darrow delivered the Baccalaureate Address to the graduating law students 
of Valparaiso University. Darrow spoke in his typical blunt style and talked about his 
social philosophy, his views about the professional life of lawyers and about the 
American legal system.   
In December Darrow was hired to represent Carleton Hudson, a wealthy resident of 
Chicago, who was arrested at the request of the New York police as a fugitive from 
82 1,000 Shout in Dark in Cooper Union Row, N.Y. TIMES, May 5, 1914, at 3. 
83 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 210. 
84 Clarence Darrow, The Cost of War, 15 INT’L SOCIALIST REV. 361-62 (1914). 
85 Id. at 361. 
37

justice for committing forgery in New York nearly twenty years before.86 In New York 
Hudson had used the name Carleton H. Betts.87 
1915 
Darrow wrote an article titled "If Man Had Opportunity" that was published in the 
January-February edition of Everyman. 
In March Darrow and another attorney represented Newton C. Dougherty in a request for 
a pardon before Illinois Governor Dunne. Dougherty had spent seven years in prison after 
being convicted of forgery committed while he was the Superintendent of Schools for 
Peoria County. Governor Dunne granted the pardon. 
Around May 1915, Darrow and several other attorneys successfully represented a 
corporation in a lawsuit over a $100,000 promissory note before the Supreme Court of 
California.88 
In 1915 William Hale Thompson (1869  - 1944) was elected mayor of Chicago and 
served until 1923. Known as “Big Bill” his administration became notorious for 
corruption. He would also be elected mayor again in 1927 and serve until 1931. Darrow 
would defend several members of the Thompson administration who faced criminal 
charges. Thompson was the last Republican to be elected mayor of Chicago. 
Darrow and other lawyers offered to defend Margaret Sanger who was under federal 
indictment for violating postal regulations by advocating birth control in her magazine 
Woman Rebel. But Sanger turned them down because “I was convinced that the quibbles 
of lawyers inevitably beclouded the fundamental issues; I had to move people and 
persuade them emotionally.”
89 
Pethick Trial 
On May 6, 1915 a 22 year old man named William Russell Pethick90 was working as a 
deliveryman in Chicago when he delivered groceries to the Coppersmith family. At the 
home were Ella Coppersmith, age 28, and her 2 year old son Jack. Ella attempted to pay 
Pethick with a ten dollar bill and a dispute arose over the change. At one point Pethick 
reached for Ella’s blouse and she hit him in the face. Pethick grabbed a butcher knife and 
stabbed her repeatedly. He also fractured her skull with a hammer. As she lay dying her 2 
year old son came into the kitchen. Pethick, thinking the boy could identify him, slashed 
his throat killing him. He then sexually abused the body of Ella Coppersmith.  
86 Twenty Years a Fugitive.; Betts, Rich Chicagoan, Arrested on Old New York Warrant., 
N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 4, 1914, at 1. 
87 Betts Admits Identity; But Chicagoan Held as Fugitive Says His Real Name Is Hudson., N.Y. TIMES, 
Dec. 5, 1914, at 15. 
88 California-Calaveras Mining Co. v. Walls, 170 Cal. 285 (1915). 
89 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARGARET SANGER 185 (2004). 
90 At least one source spells his name Pethrick. 
38

Darrow followed the news about the murders and was fascinated by the case. He was 
convinced that Pethick was mentally ill. He offered to defend the accused and Pethick’s 
father gladly accepted.  Darrow knew that a jury would likely convict his client instead of 
finding him not guilty by reason of insanity.  Darrow surprised the prosecution by having 
Pethick plead guilty on the first day of trial. Darrow then pleaded with the judge to take 
into account Pethick’s mental defects to mitigate punishment.  He hired experts to testify 
about Pethick’s mental problems. In the end the judge sentenced Pethick to life in Joliet 
prison instead of the death penalty. 
Eastland Disaster 
Early on the morning of July 24, 1915 the third worst disaster in U.S. maritime history 
occurred when the passenger ship Eastland overturned in about twenty feet of water next 
to the dock on the Chicago River. The ship, which had a reputation for being unstable, 
had about 2,500 on board and about 844 people died.  The enormous loss of life led to 
federal and state criminal charges including criminal conspiracy and resulted in civil 
litigation. Darrow defended the ship’s Chief Engineer, Joseph Erickson. Darrow’s 
defense was based on the theory that the ship must have been resting on an underwater 
obstruction. During the course of the federal trial this was proven not to be true.  In 
February 1916 a federal judge found the defendants not guilty of criminal conspiracy to 
operate an unsafe ship. Erickson died in April 1919 before he could face state criminal 
charges. Civil litigation dragged on for twenty years before the final lawsuit was decided 
in 1935. 
In 1915 Darrow and another attorney assisted the Northern California Branch of the 
NAACP in an unsuccessful effort to suppress the showing of the racist movie The Birth 
of a Nation in Los Angeles. At these early screenings the movie was titled The Clansman 
because it was based on the novel The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux 
Klan, written by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. and published in 1905.  
On May 17 Darrow testified before Commission on Industrial Relations which was setup 
in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Times bombing. The purpose of the commission was 
to investigate the conflict between labor and business that led to the bombing and other 
violence. The commission held 154 days of hearings involving hundreds of witnesses. 
Darrow and many others were named as Honorary Vice-Presidents for the Exhibition and 
Celebration to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negro 
which was held at the Coliseum in Chicago from August 22 to September 16th, 1915.
91 
Around 1915, Darrow and a group of friends formed the “Biology Group” which met 
once a week to listen to lectures on various scientific and other topics. The group met 
many times in Darrow’s apartment near the University of Chicago. Many of the lecturers 
were professors at the university. The group stayed in existence until at least 1925. 
91 HISTORY AND REPORT OF THE EXHIBITION AND CELEBRATION TO COMMEMORATE THE FIFTIETH 
ANNIVERSARY OF THE EMANCIPATION OF THE NEGRO: HELD AT THE COLISEUM, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 
AUGUST 22ND TO SEPTEMBER 16TH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN (1915). 
39

1916 
Darrow wrote an article titled "An Appeal for the Despoiled" that was published in 
Everyman in January. 
On February 16 Darrow was one of the speakers at the annual banquet of the Women’s 
Bar Association of Illinois. 
On April 30 Darrow delivered an address at the Open Meeting of Railroad Men in 
Chicago. Extracts of his speech were published in June under the title "Straight Talk to 
the Rails" in the International Socialist Review. 
Darrow Defends Gangster 
In 1916 Darrow defended Jacob “Mont” Tennes, “a particularly violent Chicago 
gangster”92 who was being investigated for illegal gambling activities related to 
transmitting the results of horse races. Tennes’ wire service, which transmitted the race 
results to bookies in Illinois, was so profitable that it prompted Judge Kenesaw Mountain 
Landis of the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, to launch an 
investigation.  On October 2, 1916 Tennes, without a subpoena, was surrendered by his 
special counsel, Clarence Darrow. Tennes took Darrow’s advice and refused to answer 
incriminating questions. Judge Landis ended the investigation when he concluded local 
gambling was not within the jurisdiction of the federal courts and the interstate 
transmission of sporting news was not a crime. In 1921 Judge Landis was appointed to be 
the first commissioner of Major League Baseball and he served as commissioner until 
1944. 
John Howard Moore 
Darrow was devastated when his brother-in-law John Howard Moore committed suicide 
on June 17, 1916 in Chicago. Moore was married to Darrow’s sister Jennie. Moore, who 
was born in 1862, was a high school teacher and also a prolific writer of some renown on 
the subjects of evolutionary biology and ethics.  His most important books were The 
Universal Kinship (1906) and The New Ethics (1907). Darrow was very fond of Moore 
and delivered a eulogy at his funeral that was later published.   
Darrow wrote an article titled "Nietzsche" that was published in the June-July issue of 
Athena. 
Darrow wrote a short article titled “Punishment” for The Chrysalis a publication by 
inmates of state and federal institutions. 
92 WILLIAM POUNDSTONE, FORTUNE'S FORMULA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC BETTING SYSTEM 
THAT BEAT THE CASINOS AND WALL STREET 4 (2006). 
40

Darrow’s article "Crime and Economic Conditions" was published in the International 
Socialist Review in October. 
In November 1916 Darrow argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of 
Charles H. Ramsay.  Ramsay had previously traveled from Colorado to Illinois to testify 
as a witness in a case. A few minutes after Ramsay testified, an individual named Stewart 
served process on Ramsay for an unrelated matter. Darrow successfully argued that 
process could not be served in this manner because a witness coming from another state 
or jurisdiction, is exempt from the service of civil process while in attendance upon court, 
and during a reasonable time in coming and going.
93 Stewart v. Ramsay is still good law. 
1917 
On January 7 Darrow debated Professor Scott Nearing on the question "Will Democracy 
Cure the Social Ills of the World?" Darrow argued in the negative.  Scott Nearing (1883 -
1983) was a radical economist, writer, educator and political activist. 
Darrow became increasingly vocal in his belief that America should enter World War I. 
He gave speeches and wrote in support of the Allies and the need to defeat Germany. 
A letter Darrow wrote to his friend Daniel Kiefer on June 28, 1917 was published in The 
Liberal Review.  Kiefer had criticized Darrow for turning away from pacifism and 
supporting America’s involvement in World War I. Darrow wrote in reply to Kiefer’s 
criticism: 
I did write a book advocating non-resistance. Most of the things I said in that 
book, I still believe. I hated war then and I do today. My error, then, as I see it 
now, was the belief that you could make a general rule of life that would cover 
every case. This, I belie ve, is the fundamental error of the pacifist.94 
Oscar DePriest 
In 1917 Maclay Hoyne, Illinois State Attorney for Cook County, began investigating 
corruption in Chicago. Because of H oyne’s investigation, Oscar DePriest,95 a black 
alderman from Chicago’s Second Ward, and a strong supporter of Mayor Thompson, was 
indicted on conspiracy charges for protecting illegal gambling and prostitution 
operations.96 DePriest, born in Alabama in 1871 to former slaves, was Chicago’s first 
black alderman.  Darrow worked with Edward H. Morris, a prominent black attorney in 
Chicago, to defend DePriest.  Morris, born the son of a slave in Kentucky in 1859, was 
the fifth black to pass the Illinois bar. Darrow was able to persuade the all-white jury to 
acquit 
93 Stewart v. Ramsay, 242 U.S. 128 (1916). 
94 Clarence Darrow, Brief for the War, LIBERAL REV., July, 1917. 
95 DePriest’s last name is often spelled De Priest.  He used the spelling DePriest in a letter he wrote to 
Darrow in 1931. 
96 SENTIMENTAL REBEL, supra note 11, at 272-73. 
41

DePriest. In 1928 DePriest was elected to Congress as a member of the Republican Party. 
He was the first black elected to Congress since Reconstruction. 
On March 11 Darrow debated his good friend George Burman Foster at the Garrick 
Theater on the topic “Is Life Worth Living?” Foster argued that it was while Darrow took 
the negative side. 
Darrow’s article "Schopenhauer” was published in the Liberal Review in March. 
Although Darrow fully supported America’s involvement in World War I he protested 
against the suppression of anti-war and socialist literature by the U.S. Postal Service.  
Albert Sidney Burleson was appointed Postmaster General by Woodrow Wilson in 1913. 
During World War I Burleson strongly enforced the Espionage Act by ordering local 
postmasters to remove and send to him any illegal or suspicious material such as radical 
publications which included socialist material. Anti-war material was banned from 
delivery. In July 1917 Darrow, representing the Socialist Party, and several others 
including Frank P. Walsh, Morris Hillquit, Seymour Stedman and Amos Pinchot went to 
Washington D.C. to meet with Postmaster Burleson to discuss the matter. Despite their 
pleas they were unable to persuade Burleson to remove the ban on what he considered 
subversive literature. Darrow complained to President Wilson who wrote a letter to 
Darrow on August 9, 1917 in which he told Darrow “You may be sure I will try to work 
out with the Postmaster General some course with regard to the circulation of the 
Socialistic papers that will be in conformity with the law and good sense.” 
On September 15 Darrow spoke at the first meeting of the American Alliance for Labor 
and Democracy held at Madison Square Garden in New York.  The group, headed by 
Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, was formed to 
campaign “against pacifist propaganda in the United States.”97  Darrow told those in 
attendance: 
If President Wilson had not defied Germany he would have been a traitor, and any 
man who refuses to back the President in this crisis is worse than a traitor. . . . 
Before this country declared war the pacifists complained that we should not have 
sold ammunition to the allies. I agree with them. They are correct. We should not 
have sold ammunition to the allies. We should have given it away. The United 
States was slow to enter this war. . . . But now that she is in she will remain until 
German autocracy has been destroyed. . . . Our friends, the pacifists, tell us that 
this war is the creation of Wall Street; in other words, that it is a rich man’s war. 
How any sane man can make such a claim as this, I do not see.98 
The investigations of Maclay Hoyne, Illinois State Attorney for Cook County, led to the 
indictment of Charles C. Healey,99 chief of the Chicago Police, who was indicted on 
charges of malfeasance in office and as a conspirator in a plot to nullify anti-gambling 
97 Charges Traitors In America Are Disrupting Russia, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 16, 1917 at 1. 
98 Id. at 3. 
99 Sometimes spelled Healy. 
42

laws. Others were also indicted includi ng an underworld bail bondsman named Billy 
Skidmore.  Darrow and Charles Erbstein defended both Healey and Skidmore during 
their trial in October.  To the surprise of many Healey and the others were acquitted.  
In October former Populist Senator Richard F. Pettigrew of South Dakota was indicted 
for violating the Espionage Act because of anti-war comments made to a reporter.  
Darrow assisted Charles O. Bailey100(1860 - 1928) in the defense of Pettigrew.  After 
much legal maneuvering, the case against Pettigrew was dropped in November 1919. 
On November 1 Darrow gave an address in Chicago titled “The War” under the auspices 
of the National Security League. This was a public service organization founded in 1914 
to lobby for increased and improved preparation for America's defense against enemies at 
home and abroad. Most of Darrow’s speeches supporting America’s entry into World 
War I were made under the auspices of the National Security League. As he did in all his 
speeches about the war, Darrow spoke in strong terms about the need to fight and win: 
“Although we were slow and reluctant to do our part, still, America has drawn the sword, 
and that sword will not be sheathed until Prussian militarism shall be destroyed.” 
One of Darrow’s biographers believes that Darrow’s strong showing of patriotism and his 
very vocal support of the war did more than anything else to repair his reputation from 
the damage inflicted by being accused and tried for jury bribery: “The war was 
momentous for Darrow personally, for it not only hastened his reputation’s rehabilitation, 
but propelled him into eminent circles in which he had never before been welcome.”101 
The war thrust Darrow the radical into a very unlikely position: 
As Darrow stomped the country making pro-war speeches, he became a 
spokesman for government policy. By 1918 he had even become a part of the 
government’s propaganda machine, in the most curious turn of his career. He was 
the darling of the establishment, courted by high government officials and by the 
President of the United States himself, with whom he had a private meeting on 
August 1, 1917, less than one month after America entered the war.102 
1918 
At least as early as 1918 Darrow brought William H. Holly into his law firm. They 
practiced law together in the firm of Darrow, Sissman, Holly & Carlin. Holly would 
become one of Darrow’s closest friends. 
Darrow gave an address about “Voltaire” on February 3 in the Cort Theater. 
100 See Woods Fuller Shultz & Smith P.C., Our Founding Partners, 
http://www.woodsfuller.com/about/partners.cfm (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
101 TIERNEY, supra note 8, at 291. 
102 Id. at 292. 
43

In March Darrow participated in a series of “patriotic education lectures” for public 
school teachers in New York.103  The same lecture series was given in Chicago and “All 
the teachers of the two cities are required to attend and [a] record of their presence will be 
kept as for their usual classes.”104 The speakers in New York were sent from Chicago and 
the speakers in Chicago came from New York. The lecture series was arranged by the 
Chicago and New York Boards of Education. 
In April Darrow defended Professor William Isaac Thomas who had been arrested for 
disorderly conduct because he was found in a hotel room with the much younger wife of 
an army officer who had left in February to fight in Europe. Darrow successfully argued 
before the Morals Court that although the two were found in a hotel room together it did 
not constitute disorderly conduct. Thomas was a pioneer in the field of sociology. He was 
a professor at the University of Chicago from 1897 until he was fired in 1918 after his 
arrest. In 1927 he served as President of the American Sociological Society. 
A private dinner party was given in Darrow’s honor on April 18 to celebrate his 61
st 
birthday. Darrow gave an address at the party and, as usual, he did not let festivities 
brighten his pessimistic views. He told those present:  
The one thing that gets me, perhaps more than anything else, is the terrible cruelty 
of man. . . . The thing I see everywhere present is the cruelty of man. . . . We seem 
to get pleasure in torturing our fellow-men. And here with you, who I am sure are 
higher intellectually than the average people, or you wouldn’t be my friends and 
appreciate me—even here I venture to say that most of you enjoy telling or 
hearing some disagreeable thing about your fellow-men. Why is it?105 
On June 14 Darrow gave an address at a Flag Day celebration. The event commemorates 
the adoption of the flag of the United States. 
Travels to Europe to Support Allies 
So prominent was Darrow in advocating for the Allies in World War I that in 1918, when 
the British government asked for the names of prominent Americans to travel to Europe 
to speak in favor of the war, Darrow’s name was put forward. Darrow accepted the 
invitation and on July 21, 1918 he set sail for Europe. He said before he left: 
I shall tell the people over there that while America was very slow in getting into 
the war there were a great many people here, outside of those who were 
hereditary friends of the Central Powers or enemies of England, who had always 
been with the Allies, and who were impatient to get into the war earlier. I believe 
we should have gone in when Belgium was invaded. . . . Americans feel almost as 
strong for the French and English, to say nothing of the others, as for themselves. 
103 Lectures for Teachers; Patriotic Series Starts Today Here and in Chicago, 
N.Y. TIMES, Mar, 18, 1918, at 11. 
104 Id. 
105 CLARENCE DARROW VERDICTS OUT OF COURT 274-75 (Arthur and Lila Weinberg, eds.) (1963).  
44

They are resolute, determined, and never leave a job unfinished. And no matter 
how long it takes this country will never stop until Prussian militarism has been 
destroyed.106 
Darrow spent three months in Europe. An important result of the trip was that Darrow 
came to believe that the British and French governments had deliberately spread 
propaganda by claiming repeatedly that the German military committed war crimes. This 
was later found to be the case as Germany had been repeatedly accused of committing 
war crimes against Belgium children as well as others.  Darrow wrote in his 
autobiography: 
I discredited the stories told of outrages by the Germans, suspecting them of being 
manufactured to create public opinion, and I never hesitated to say so. Later on, 
when I visited the warring countries at the height of the conflict, I was confident 
that they were not true. 
Reading and experience have taught me that when governments prepare for war 
the first unit they mobilize is the liars' brigade. One celebrated Eastern divine 
went up and down the land exhibiting moving-pictures of German atrocities. He 
must have known that they were faked; the audience must have believed that the 
Germans, just before cutting off the Belgian children's hands, called in the 
photographers to witness and kodak the deeds. I did not tell these tales in my 
speeches. Reports of the presence of mutilated Belgian children then living in 
Chicago were constantly coming to my ears. I always offered a hundred dollars if 
the informant would bring one to my office or take me to see one. No one ever 
came back for the reward.107 
Although Darrow became increasingly disillusioned by what he perceived as war  
propaganda he did not have to publicly change his position about the war because it 
ended a few months after he returned to the United States. 
In July Darrow was appointed to serve on the State Constitution Committee as part of the 
Illinois State Bar Association Committees for 1918-1919. 
On August 17, 1918 after a 4 month trial, 100 members of the Industrial Workers of the 
World (IWW), including Big Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John, were convicted for 
violating the Espionage Act.108 Haywood was sentenced to 20 years in Leavenworth 
Prison and fined $20,000. St. John was sentenced to ten years. Darrow represented St. 
John on several appeals before the Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit in 1918 and 
1920.109 St. John served two and a half years in prison before receiving executive 
106 To Tell our War Ideals; Clarence Darrow to Make Speaking Tour of England and France, N.Y. TIMES, 
July 22, 1918, at 10. 
107 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 213. 
108 Haywood v. United States, 268 Fed. 795 (7th Cir. 1920). 
109 United States v. St. John, 254 Fed. 794 (7th Cir. 1918); St. John v. United States, 268 Fed. 808 (7th Cir. 
1920). 
45

clemency on June 27, 1922. Haywood served a year at Leavenworth, but while out on 
appeal in 1921, he jumped bond and fled to the Soviet Union, where he remained until his 
death in 1928. 
Darrow debated Professor John C. Kennedy on the question “Are Internationalism and 
the League of Nations Practical and Desirable Schemes for Ending War?” The debate 
was later published as a pamphlet.  
Darrow’s good friend George Burman Foster died on December 22, 1918. Darrow spoke 
at a memorial service held for Foster at the Garrick Theater on January 12, 1919.  
Darrow’s strongly held view that human beings do not have free will or control over their 
lives influenced his comments about his friend: “He and I debated the meaning of life. I 
remember hearing him say on this platform, in almost a burst of frenzy: ‘I am the captain 
of my soul!’ But, George Burman Foster is dead! No man is captain of his soul; he is not 
even a deck hand on a rudderless ship; he is a bubble cast up for an instant on an angry 
sea, then lost in the air and waves, to be seen no more.”  Darrow and Foster had been 
scheduled to debate “Is There Immortality” the following week. 
On December 30 it was announced that Darrow was one of several people appointed to a 
Citizen’s Commission created by the Board of Education in Chicago.  
1919 
At age 62, Darrow had another very busy year. On January 26 he debated Professor John 
C. Kennedy on the topic “Will Socialism Save the World?” in Chicago. Darrow argued 
that it would not. Kennedy was at various times a professor of economics at Cornell 
University and the University of Chicago and a housing investigator for the Chicago 
Association of Commerce, Secretary of the Socialist Party of Illinois, and an alderman in 
Chicago. 
On March 2 Darrow was one of the speakers at the annual banquet of the Judea Woman’s 
Club. 
In March, Darrow and Peter Sissman worked on the appeal of eleven Italian immigrants, 
who held anarchist views, and who had been convicted in Wisconsin for assault and 
being armed with a loaded revolver with intent to commit murder. In September 1917 
they had been arrested after an altercation with a minister who was holding a meeting in 
Milwaukee to support the United States war effort. When the police intervened shots 
were fired and two of the demonstrators were killed.  On November 24th, four days 
before their trial was to begin, a suspicious package was found outside the minister’s 
church. It was taken to the police station and about ten minutes later it exploded killing 
nine police officers and one civilian. Two of the police officers who were killed had been 
involved in the arrest of the eleven defendants. 
The defendants were denied a change of venue despite the heavy newspaper coverage of 
the bombing and the general belief that it was related to the dispute with the minister. All 
46

eleven defendants were convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor.  
Darrow and Sissman submitted a written brief and argued before the Wisconsin Supreme 
Court. The court held that there was not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy among 
the defendants. The court reversed the convictions of nine of the defendants and affirmed 
the convictions of two defendants who were found to have firearms when they were 
arrested.110 
After his 1895 speech The Rights and Wrongs of Ireland and its publication in pamphlet 
form, Darrow was viewed as being sympathetic to the Irish cause of independence from 
Britain. Eamon de Valera (1882 – 1975), an Ir ish politician and patriot born in America, 
consulted with Darrow in Chicago just a few weeks after he escaped from Britain’s 
Lincoln Jail on February 3, 1919. Éamon de Vale ra was an important figure in the Easter 
Rising, the Irish War for Independence from Britain, and the Irish Civil War. He later 
became Prime Minister (Taoiseach) of Ireland from 1951 to 1959 and President from 
1959 to 1973. 
Darrow was drawn into another sensational murder trial in Chicago when he defended 
Emma Simpson who shot and killed her husband in April 1919 in a crowded Chicago 
courtroom during alimony proceedings. During the trial Darrow told the all-male jury 
“You’ve been asked to treat a man and a woman the same – but you can’t. No manly man 
can.” The jury deliberated for half an hour before finding Emma Simpson insane. 
Victor L. Berger 
In 1919 a case with interesting political ramifications drew Darrow’s attention. The case 
involved Victor L. Berger, a Socialist politician from Wisconsin, and four other Socialists 
who were indicted under the Espionage Act in February 1918. Berger was a founding 
member of the Socialist Party of America and an influential Socialist journalist. In 1910, 
he became the first Socialist elected to the U.S. House of Representatives when 
Milwaukee voters elected him. 
In 1918 while under federal indictment, Milwaukee voters again elected Berger to the 
House of Representatives. In February 1919 Berger and the other four defendants were 
convicted of violating the Espionage Act because of their opposition to the entry of the 
United States into World War I.  Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis presided over the trial 
and he sentenced Berger to 20 years in federal prison.  
In June of 1919 Darrow testified on Berger’s behalf before a special committee of the 
House of Representatives.
111 On November 10, 1919, the House of Representatives 
declared Berger was not eligible to take the oath of office or to hold a seat as a 
Representative because he was a convicted felon and war opponent. In response, 
Wisconsin held a special election to fill the vacant seat, and on December 19, 1919 
110 Bianchi v. State, 171 N.W. 639 (Wis. 1919). 
111 Victor L. Berger: Hearings Before the Special Committee Appointed Under the Authority of House 
Resolution No. 6 Concerning the Right of Victor L. Berger to be Sworn in as a Member of the Sixty-sixth 
Congress (1919). 
47

Berger was elected. On January 10, 1920, the House again refused to seat him and the 
seat remained open until Republican William H. Stafford defeated Berger in the 1920 
general election. In 1921 the United States  Supreme Court overturned the convictions 
because Judge Landis should have recused himself because of his prejudice against 
Germans.112  Berger ran again for Congress and defeated Stafford in 1922 and was 
reelected in 1924 and 1926. 
Darrow Justifies Constitutional Violations During War 
On November 9, 1919 Darrow gave a speech titled “War Prisoners” in Chicago. Perhaps 
surprisingly Darrow defended the prosecution of individuals who tried to interfere with 
the United State’s military effort in World War I. Darrow justified the prosecutions as 
necessary in a time of war: 
I have heard many men, and women, for whom I have a high regard, complain of 
the violation of “Constitutional rights” during the war. Now, I try to be honest 
with myself, at least. I have no doubt but what constitutional rights were violated 
over and over again during the war, and since—and before. In the main, I, as one 
individual, was willing to see constitutional rights violated during the war. I 
would have hoped, and did wish that there might be fewer of those violations; that 
the barbarous and medieval penalties might be less severe, and of course that all 
the people I know would escape—but that is a personal emotion. At the same 
time, believing as I did in this war, that it was just and necessary, that the first law 
of individuals and nations is self-preservation, I did not worry so much about the 
means of self-preservation. 
Typhoid Jennie 
In December 1919 it was announced by the American Medical Liberty League that a 65 
year old woman in Chicago named Jennie Barmore had been identified as a carrier of 
typhoid. Barmore, who had a disabled husband, was quarantined in her house and 
prohibited from cooking or serving food to anyone even though she made a living by 
taking in boarders. Barmore and the American Medical Liberty League decided to fight 
the order of the health officer and Darrow agreed to take the case. A judge heard the case 
and in November 1920 declared that Barmore was a menace to the health of Chicago and 
quarantine was necessary. In June 1921 her defense filed an application for a writ of 
habeas corpus, claiming she was unlawfully restrained of her liberty at her home by the 
commissioner of health, and an epidemiologist of the department of health. But the 
Supreme Court of Illinois ruled against her.
113 
1920 
Darrow the Pessimist 
112 Berger v. United States, 255 U.S. 22 (1921). 
113 People ex rel. Barmore v. Robertson, 134 N.E. 815 (Ill. 1922). 
48

On January 11 Darrow gave a lecture titled “The Consolations of Pessimism” to the 
Rationalist Educational Society in Chicago. A pessimist for a good deal of his life, 
Darrow was well-versed in the benefits of holding this view point. He told the audience 
“The pessimist takes life as he finds it, without the glamour that false creeds and false 
teachers and foolish people have thrown about it.”  Towards the end of his talk he said: 
“The pessimist expects nothing. He is prepared for the worst. It is something like getting 
vaccinated so you will not get the small-pox. If you are well vaccinated with pessimism, 
nothing much troubles you. You say, ‘Oh, well, it might be worse.’ Whenever the 
pessimist is disappointed, he is happy, for it is better than he thought.” 
On February 8 Darrow debated Professor Frederick Starr on the question “Is the Human 
Race Getting Anywhere?”  Professor Starr was an Anthropologist at the University of 
Chicago. 
On March 28 Darrow debated Professor Starr on the question “Is Life Worth Living?” in 
Chicago. Darrow argued in the negative. In hi s introduction the chairman stated that the 
topic of the debate is “the great philosophy of pessimism, of which Mr. Clarence Darrow 
is the greatest living exponent.” 
On May 3 Darrow spoke at a convention of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ 
Union in Chicago. Darrow denounced Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer for 
trying to discredit organized labor by issuing reports such as his “May Day scare, which 
had no foundation in fact.” Palmer had predicted that Communists would try to 
overthrow the United States government on May Day 1920.  Palmer issued his prediction 
because the previous year a series of bombings had been perpetrated by sending bombs 
through the U.S. mail to be delivered on May Day 1919. Palmer’s prediction led to the 
mobilization of the National Guard and the New York City Police Department.  Palmer 
was ridiculed when May Day 1920 passed without the predicted violence. 
Palmer was understandably worried about potential bombings because on June 2, 1919, 
several bombs were detonated by anarchists in eight American cities. One of the bombs 
seriously damaged Palmer’s own home. 
Darrow gave an address to the Rationalist Society of Chicago called “Insects and Men: 
Instinct and Reason” that was published by Haldeman-Julius. 
On November 28 Darrow and Professor Frederick Starr debated the topic “Is Civilization 
a Failure?” This was one of the rare debates when Darrow argued in the affirmative. The 
debate was held under the Auspices of the Workers University Society 
Prohibition 
By 1916 nineteen states had laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic 
beverages. Pressure grew to enact a federal prohibition. The movement gained strength 
during World War I because many breweries were owned by German-Americans. Wayne 
49

Wheeler, general counsel and lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League, lobbied the federal 
government to investigate the large number of breweries owned by alien enemies.    
Congress passed the 18th Amendment in December 1917. It banned the manufacture and 
sale of “intoxicating liquors” but it did not ban the possession, consumption or 
transportation of the same. A partial ban was instituted to save grain for the war effort. 
This limited production to seventy percent of the year before, and the alcohol content of 
beer was limited to 2.75 percent. But the anti-alcohol forces were not satisfied and a year 
later Congress enacted the Volstead Act. This defined an intoxicating beverage as 
anything stronger than 0.5 percent alcohol. This effectively banned the sale of alcoholic 
beverages such as wine, beer, and whiskey. At midnight on January 16, 1920 the federal 
prohibition law went into effect. Darrow continued to write and speak out in protest 
against prohibition. 
Red Scare 
Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the end of World War I in 
November 1918, a “Red Scare” took place in the United States.  Communists, socialists 
and anarchists were viewed as threats capable of inciting the overthrow of the United 
States government.  This was the first Red Scare period, which is distinct from the 
McCarthy period in the 1940s and 1950s. 
On June 2, 1919 two people were killed when bombs were set off simultaneously in eight 
cities across the country. One of the bombs partially destroyed the home of Attorney 
General Palmer.  This attack and other bombings were attributed to anarchists. Foreigners 
were viewed with suspicion and many aliens were deported during these years of unrest. 
Darrow became very worried that hysteria was leading to civil liberties violations. He 
was especially concerned about the violations of free speech because many of the arrests 
were based on public demonstrations or on revolutionary publications which should have 
been protected speech under the First Amendment. 
Benjamin Gitlow 
Benjamin Gitlow was a member of the Left Wing faction of the Socialist Party. In 1918, 
that faction was expelled from Socialist Party and Gitlow, John Reed, and James Larkin 
established the Communist Labor Party. In November 1919 Gitlow and Larkin were 
arrested and charged with violating the New York State Criminal Anarchy Act for 
publishing the Left Wing Manifesto in the July 5, 1919 issue of the Revolutionary Age. 
The government alleged the manifesto called for the overthrow of the United States 
government by force, violence and illegal means.  
According to Gitlow, the Communist Party executive committee decided to hire Clarence 
Darrow to defend him.  Darrow took the case without even meeting Gitlow. Darrow was 
assisted by Charles Recht. Despite the efforts of the defense, Gitlow was convicted and 
sentenced to five to ten years at hard labor in Sing Sing prison.  
50

Darrow did not work on any of Gitlow’s appeals. Other attorneys filed several appeals 
and the Gitlow case went to several higher courts and eventually to the United States 
Supreme Court. The Court affirmed Gitlow's conviction but the case is significant 
because it is considered the first decision announcing the incorporation doctrine under 
which some protections under the Bill of Rights also apply to the states.114 
Gitlow eventually denounced Communism and published a book I Confess: The Truth 
About American Communism. He became a popular anti-Communist writer and lecturer 
during the 1940s and 1950s.  
Darrow defended Arthur Person in April 1920 in Rockford Illinois.  Person, born in 
Sweden, was charged with violating an Illinois law that prohibited joining an 
organization that called for the violent overthrow of the government. Person was 
acquitted in a jury trial. 
People v. Lloyd 
Several months after the Person trial, Darrow and several other attorneys defended 
twenty members of the Communist Labor party arrested and charged in Illinois with 
violating an Illinois statute that made it unlawful to advocate reformation or overthrow 
of the existing form of government by violence or other unlawful means.
115  They were 
convicted and sentenced to various terms of one to two years and fined. Darrow and co-
counsel appealed the case to the Illinois Supreme Court but the court upheld the 
convictions.
116  On November 29, 1922, Illinois Governor Len Small pardoned the 
defendants. 
1921 
On January 16 a statement denouncing anti-Semitism titled “The Peril of Racial 
Prejudice: A Statement to the Public” was published in newspapers across the United 
States. The statement was signed by more than one hundred prominent citizens of 
“Gentile extraction and Christian faith” including William Howard Taft, Woodrow 
Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Clarence Darrow. 
Darrow gave a speech before the third annual meeting of the American Liberty League. 
The speech was published in 1921 with the title “How Liberty Is Lost.” 
Eugene Debs 
Eugene Debs was convicted in 1918 for violating the Espionage Act because of an anti-
war speech he gave in Canton, Ohio in June 1918 and for interfering with military 
recruitment.”
117 Debs was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. Debs appealed his case 
114 Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, (1925). 
115 1919 Ill. Laws 420, S.H.A. ch. 38, §§ 558-564. 
116 People v. Lloyd, 136 N.E. 505 (Ill. 1922). 
117 Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211, (1919). 
51

up to the United States Supreme Court but in an opinion by Justice Holmes, the Court 
affirmed the verdict.118 
Darrow had written to Debs offering to help but Debs declined the offer because he was 
angered by Darrow’s support of America’s involvement in World War 1. But Darrow 
later worked to get Debs pardoned or have his sentence commuted. He visited Debs in the 
penitentiary in Atlanta. Darrow also traveled to Washington D.C. to appeal to President 
Wilson and Attorney General Palmer on Debs’ behalf. Both Wilson and Palmer, who 
were Democrats, refused to help Debs. Later to Darrow’s surprise Republican President 
Warren G. Harding commuted Debs' sentence to time served and he was released on 
December 25, 1921. Darrow later wrote about Harding and his Attorney General Harry 
M. Dougherty: 
I had always admired Woodrow Wilson and distrusted Harding. Doubtless my 
opinions about both in relation to affairs of government were measurably correct; 
still, Mr. Wilson, a scholar and an idealist, and Mr. Palmer, a Quaker, kept Debs 
in prison; and Mr. Harding and Mr. Dougherty unlocked the door. I know at least 
two men who understood this: Lincoln Steffens and Fremont Older. So far as I am 
concerned, I never think of either Harding or Dougherty without saying to myself: 
“Well, they pardoned Debs!”119 
Darrow and co-counsel defended several bank robbers charged with murder after a 
shootout with local towns people following a botched robbery in Kosciusko County, 
Indiana.120  The robbery and shootout occurred on December 29, 1920 and one of the 
towns people wounded in the shootout later died.  The defendants were convicted but 
they avoided the death penalty and received life sentences.  Darrow participated in the 
defendants’ appeal but their convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court of Indiana.121 
Darrow defended several labor leaders charged with instigating violence during a strike 
in Chicago by local members of the International Upholsterers and Trimmer’s Union. 
The strike began in August 1919 and ended in 1920. Darrow helped defend Edwin E. 
Graves, the International union’s vice president, and Roy Hull, business agent for Local 
111. On May 10, 1921 Graves and Hull were found guilty and sentenced to one to five 
years in prison and fined $2,000 each. Prior to the trial Graves unsuccessfully fought 
extradition from Massachusetts.122 
In the fall of 1921 Darrow and another attorney represented a practitioner of naprapathy 
before the Supreme Court of Nebraska.  Doctors of naprapathy are connective tissue 
specialists that evaluate and treat neuro-musculoskeletal conditions but they are not 
118 Id. 
119 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 73. 
120 Florence S. Stauffer, Darrow Defends Bank Bandits Here in 1921, 
http://yesteryear.clunette.com/darrow.html (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
121 Burns v. State, 136 N.E. 857 (Ind. 1922). 
122 Ex parte Graves, 128 N.E. 867 (Mass. 1920). 
52

medical doctors. The practitioner was convicted for the illegal practice of medicine and 
the Supreme Court of Nebraska affirmed the conviction.123 
Darrow worked with two other lawyers including George A. Cooke, former Chief Justice 
of the Illinois Supreme Court, in a high-profile divorce case. They represented Harold F. 
McCormick, President of the International Harvester Company, in divorce proceedings 
with his wife Edith Rockefeller McCormick, the daughter of John D. Rockefeller. The 
couple divorced on December 28, 1921. 
1922 
At age 65 Darrow's book Crime: Its Cause and Treatment was published. The book 
presents Darrow’s mechanistic views about human behavior and refutes free will. 
Darrow also wrote about the relatively new medical science of endocrinology that he 
believed offered insights into how secretions of ductless glands in the body affect human 
behavior. 
At the annual meeting of the Illinois State Bar Association in 1922 a group debated the 
question of whether Illinois should adopt the American Bar Association’s Standards of 
Education. Speakers representing the supreme judicial districts in the state were 
“unanimously in favor of the recommended standard,” yet “considerable opposition 
developed, led by O.D. Mann, Henry Fitts, Clarence Darrow, Dean Lee, and others. The 
opposition, in the main, did not question the value to the individual of pursuing the 
standards referred to, but doubted the wisdom and justice of prescribing them as a 
requirement.”
124 
Darrow gave a talk at the Fifth Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing 
Workers of America held May 8 - 13 in Chicago. Darrow was introduced by the group’s 
president Sidney Hillman who told the audience “It gives me great pleasure now to 
introduce a man who is known to all of you, no matter from what part of the country you 
come—the counsel of our organization in this city, Clarence Darrow.” 
Around 1918 Darrow expanded his law firm by bringing in another lawyer named 
George Popham who had previously been an assistant state’s attorney in Illinois. 
Sometime in 1922, while working in Darrow’s firm, Popham forged a will for a client. 
An opposing attorney called Peter Sissman to inform him but Sissman could not believe 
it so he did not tell Darrow. Later Darrow went to court in the matter and the forgery 
came to light creating a scandal that greatly upset Darrow.  According to Irving Stone in 
his biography of Darrow, Popham called another attorney to his office, showed him a 
revolver he had in his desk and asked the attorney to testify on his behalf or Popham said 
he would “blow my brains out.”
125 When informed of this, Darrow said “‘You go back 
and tell Popham that’s the best thing to do but not to do it in the office; he’s made 
enough mess around here.’”126 The startled attorney was afraid to do that but Darrow told 
him 123 Carpenter v. State, 106 Neb. 742 (1921). 
124 Activities of State Bar Associations, 8 A.B.A J. 445, 446 (1922). 
125 FOR THE DEFENSE, supra note 7, at 364. 
126 Id. 
53

“‘I’ve had a hundred in here threatening to do that; when they talk about it they never do 
it.’”127 
In January 1920 a constitutional convention was assembled to draft a new Illinois 
constitution. The convention worked until September 12, 1922. Among the issues raised, 
the new constitution would have given the city of Chicago the power to frame its own 
charter and the powers of municipal home rule. But Cook County which had 47 per cent 
of the population had only 37 per cent of the representation in the two houses. Under the 
proposed constitution Cook County representation was to be permanently limited to one-
third in the state senate. In future constitutional conventions Cook County was to be 
limited to 45 out of 121 members in the Illinois House of Representatives. Opposition to 
the proposed constitution organized. On November 22, 1922 the People's Protective 
League was formed and chose Harold Ickes as president.  Progressives joined including 
former Governor Edward Dunne and Clarence Darrow. Members of the league actively 
campaigned against the new constitution by creating and distributing pamphlets and 
making speeches against its adoption. On December 12, 1922 over a million votes were 
cast and the new constitution was soundly rejected by a vote of 921,398 against and 
185,298 for. Outside Cook County the vote was more than two to one against the new 
constitution and in Cook County the vote was nearly twenty to one against it. 
1923 
On August 1922 a secret convention of the Communist Party of America being held in 
the woods in Bridgman Michigan was raided by federal and state law enforcement agents 
and members were charged with violating Michigan’s criminal syndicalist law. It was 
reported in January 1923 that Clarence Darrow and Frank Walsh would head their 
defense.
128 
Fred Lundin 
In 1923 Darrow battled prosecutor Robert Crowe in a large graft and corruption scandal 
involving the finances of the Chicago public schools. Fred Lundin, a close associate of 
Mayor Thompson, and twenty-three others were accused of graft for stealing more than a 
million dollars from the schools. There appeared to be overwhelming evidence of guilt 
but Darrow and his co-counsel convinced the jury to acquit Lundin and the others.  
During the Lundin investigation Mayor Thompson decided not to run for re-election. But 
the not guilty verdicts allowed Thompson and his administration to escape without any 
convictions. This allowed Thompson to be elected mayor in 1927 because of Al 
Capone's support. This last Thompson administration was more corrupt than his previous 
administration and Thompson is widely viewed as one of the most corrupt mayors in the 
history of the United States.  
In 1923 a committee of the Chicago Bar Association issued a report on judicial 
candidates in which it said Edward H. Morris was not fit for the bench and also 
127 Id. 
128 Aid Communists' Defense, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 21, 1923, at 21. 
54

mentioned that he was colored. Darrow was a friend of Morris and he worked with 
Morris in 1917 to defend Oscar DePriest. In November 1923 Darrow wrote a letter to the 
editor of The BROAD AX, a black Chicago newspaper, in which he accused the Chicago 
Bar Association and its committee of discriminating against Morris because of his race.  
1924 
In February and March 1924, Darrow helped defend Michael Faherty, president of the 
Board of Local Improvements in the Thompson administration. Faherty was accused of 
paying a $28,000 bribe during the construction of the Michigan Boulevard Bridge in 
Chicago. Faherty was found not guilty. 
In early March Darrow and Charles Windle participated in a debate against 
representatives of the Anti-Saloon League. The debate was broadcast over the radio and 
listeners could pay to vote in a straw poll for the wet or dry side.  More than 47,000 
listeners voted with the wet side getting the overwhelming number of votes.
129 
Leopold and Loeb 
On May 21, 1924 Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb kidnapped and murdered 
fourteen year old Bobby Franks in Chicago. They were soon arrested and confessed. 
Their families hired Darrow to try and save them from execution. Darrow and his co-
counsel shocked the court and the nation when they had their clients plead guilty. Darrow 
realized there was overwhelming evidence against Leopold and Loeb and if they faced a 
trial they would be convicted and very likely executed.  The defense strategy was to plead 
them guilty and then try to convince the judge to sentence them to life in prison instead of 
to death. The subsequent sentencing hearing involved a great deal of psychological, 
psychiatric and mental health testimony and evidence. Ultimately the defense was able to 
convince the judge that Leopold and Loeb should not be executed because of their age. It 
was Darrow’s most sensational and famous case up to this point. 
The Leopold and Loeb case and Darrow’s defense were very controversial. When it 
concluded Darrow had publicly expressed hope that the case would prompt further 
research into the psychology of crime and maybe lead to the creation of neuropathic 
hospitals to treat criminals. Judge Talley, on the New York Court of General Sessions, 
responded “It is not the criminals, actual or potential, that need a neuropathic hospital, it 
is the people who slobber over them in an effort to find excuses for their crimes. . . . 
There are lots of sick people who concern themselves with crime, but the criminals are 
not numbered among them.”
130 This lead to a debate between Darrow and Judge Talley 
on the topic “Resolved: That Capital Punishment is a Wise Public Policy” at the 
Manhattan Opera House in New York on October 26, 1924. 
129 Radio Straw Vote Overwhelmingly 'Wet', N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 11, 1924, at 4. 
130 Attacks Darrow's View of Criminals, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 23, 1924, at 25. 
55

Darrow wrote an article “The Ordeal of Prohibition” that was published in the American 
Mercury in August.131 
On December 23 Darrow debated his friend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the 
Community Church in New York. The debated was titled Resolved: That the United 
States Continue the Policy of Prohibition as Defined in the Eighteenth Amendment. 
During the debate Darrow told the audience: 
Take out of this world the men who have drank, down through the past, and you 
would take away all the poetry and literature and practically all the works of 
genius that the world has produced. What kind of poem do you suppose you 
would get out of a glass of ice-water? 
1925 
Haldeman-Julius 
In 1925 Darrow renewed his friendship with Emanuel Haldeman-Julius founder of the 
Haldeman-Julius publishing company in Girard, Kansas.  Haldeman-Julius had first met 
Darrow in 1913 when Darrow was facing bribery charges in California. Emanuel, whose 
last name was originally Julius, ran the publishing company with his wife Anna Marcet 
Haldeman, a feminist, playwright, editor, author, and bank president. After they were 
married they adopted the last name Haldeman-Julius. The Haldeman-Julius publishing 
company was noted for its small, very inexpensive, staple-bound books known as Little 
Blue Books. It is estimated that the company published over 500 million copies of the 
Little Blue Books’ thousands of titles. They were inexpensive so that working and middle 
class Americans could purchase them. Some sold for five cents and they were small 
enough to fit in a pocket. The company became a very significant venue for publishing 
some of Darrow’s writings, speeches and trial arguments. Haldeman-Julius published 
twenty-two Little Blue Books containing writings or speeches by Clarence Darrow. 
Marcet Haldeman-Julius became one of the principle writers about some of Darrow’s 
trials for the Little Blue Book series and wrote about both the Scopes trial and Sweet 
Trial.
132 
Darrow co-wrote with Horace J. Bridges an article titled "Crime and Punishment: The 
Responsibility of Criminals and the Purpose of Punishment" that was published in the 
March issue of Century Magazine. 
In May Darrow became a founding member of the American League to Abolish Capital 
Punishment. Another founding member was Darrow’s good friend Lewis E. Lawes, a 
reform minded warden of Sing Sing prison. It was the first organization to support 
statewide efforts to ban the death penalty and the main source of agitation against capital 
punishment over the next several decades. In December 1925 the organization announced 
131 Clarence Darrow, The Ordeal of Prohibition, AM. MERCURY, Aug. 1924, at 419. 
132 MARCET HALDEMAN-JULIUS, CLARENCE DARROW’S TWO GREAT TRIALS: REPORTS OF THE SCOPES 
ANTI-EVOLUTION CASE AND THE DR. SWEET NEGRO TRIAL 3, 14 (E. Haldeman-Julius ed., 1927). 
56

that Lawes would become chairman and Darrow and numerous others including Dudley 
Field Malone would serve on the executive committee. In 1927, the organization received 
its biggest boost in membership because of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Arthur Garfield 
Hays wrote in his autobiography: 
Experience in a courtroom, waiting for the verdict in a capital case, knowing that 
the word ‘guilty’ leads to the electric chair, while acquittal means immediate 
freedom, with the realization that the result may depend upon the turn of a hair, 
upon the predispositions, emotions, or prejudice of the jury, explains Darrow’s 
opposition to capital punishment.133 
Scopes Trial 
Darrow made headlines around the world when he helped defend John Scopes in Dayton 
Tennessee in the summer of 1925. Scopes was charged with violating a newly enacted 
Tennessee statute prohibiting teaching the theory of evolution in public schools. The trial 
began on July 10, 1925. Assisting the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, one of 
the leading religious leaders in the fight to prohibit public schools from teaching 
Darwin’s theory of evolution. The trial is famous for Bryan taking the stand as an expert 
on the bible and being sharply questioned by Darrow. During the trial Darrow becomes 
friends with other defense lawyers, including Dudley Field Malone and Arthur Garfield 
Hays of the ACLU. Hays would work with Darrow on other cases in the future.  
Sweet Trials 
In November 1925 Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays traveled to Detroit to defend 
several black defendants, including Dr. Ossian Sweet and his wife Gladys, who were 
arrested for shooting and killing a white man after a mob of whites tried to drive the 
Sweets from their home in a white neighborhood. In the first of two trials, Darrow and 
Hays defended all the defendants in a single trial. The defense was fortunate to have a 
very sympathetic judge Frank Murphy who allowed in evidence of past discrimination 
and violence against blacks so the defense could show the shooting was an act of self 
defense based on fear. An all white jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.  
On June 16 a passenger train derailed in a storm at Rockport, New Jersey killing 50 
people. It was reported in July that several relatives of the victims had signed a joint 
agreement to retain Clarence Darrow to represent them in filing claims with the 
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. 
On July 17 the Liberal Church of Denver elected Darrow to honorary church membership 
because of his role in the Scopes trial. 
Darrow wrote an article titled “Salesmanship” that was published in August in the 
American Mercury. 
133 ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS, CITY LAWYER: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A LAW PRACTICE 212 (1942). 
57

In August William D. Upshaw, a congressman from Georgia, suggested that the “Wets” 
(those opposed to prohibition) form a national party and that Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, 
president of Columbia University, run as their candidate for President and Clarence 
Darrow run for Vice President. Upshaw was one of the most dedicated prohibitionists in 
the country. 
On August 27 Carrington T. Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, 
during remarks at the swearing in ceremony for new lawyers, sharply criticized Darrow’s 
actions in the Scopes trial: 
The law of that case was plain and simple. Neither the indictment nor the statute 
under which the indictment was framed, contained any mention of evolution. . . . 
That the forbidden doctrines were taught was freely admitted by the defendant. 
No defense was therefore open except that of the constitutional validity of the law 
itself. And yet Darrow sought to browbeat and to bluff the judge into admitting 
expert evidence upon the soundness of the theory of evolution. And upon refusal 
he became abusive, highly disrespectful and contemptuous in his conduct toward 
the court. He had no purpose or motive except publicity and notoriety. After he 
had been cited for contempt and when faced with the probability of paying a fine, 
he made the most humble and abject apology. The character of Darrow is again 
shown by a recent public statement made by him that “courts are cockpits in 
which lawyers may fight."134 
The next day Darrow replied to Marshall’s criticism: “Judge Marshall would have done 
well to read at least the caption of the Tennessee law, before basing a speech on it.”135 
The Scopes case was under appeal to the Supreme Court of Tennessee so Darrow asked 
“What about the ethics of the Chief Justice of another State giving his opinion on the case 
when he obviously knows nothing about it?”136 Darrow denied he ever said that “courts 
are cockpits” but clarified that many times he had said that “courts should have facilities 
to investigate both law and facts, instead of depending entirely on lawyers, which makes 
courts largely an arena for fighting over evidence and law.”137 
In October 1925 Darrow took on the issue of eugenics in an article he wrote titled The 
Edwardses and the Jukeses.138 The Jukes was a pseudonym for a family from the lower 
class of society used by eugenics to illustrate a genetic disposition for anti-social 
behavior or low intelligence and in the case of the Jukes for inherited criminality. The 
example of the Jukes originally began with Richard L. Dugdale’s The Jukes: A Study in 
Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity published in 1877.  The Edwardses refers to 
Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758) a fire and brimstone preacher in early America. Darrow 
wrote that he would rather live next to a member of the Jukes clan than next to a 
134 Law: Darrow Flayed, TIME, Sept. 14, 1925, available at 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,721080,00.html (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
135 Darrow Replies to Ohio Jurist, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 29, 1925, at 11. 
136 Id. 
137 Id. 
138 Clarence Darrow, The Edwardses and the Jukeses, 6 AM. MERCURY, 147-57 (1925). 
58

descendant of Jonathan Edwards who in his most famous sermon preached that “[t]he 
God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider over the fire, abhors 
you, and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns . . . .”139 
In 1925 Clarence Darrow formed a law partnership with Bert Cronson and two other 
lawyers who had all been on the prosecution team during the Leopold and Loeb case. The 
firm was titled Darrow, Smith, Cronson & Smith and had its offices in the Chicago 
Temple Building. Cronson was an assistant to Robert Crowe, the State Attorney for 
Illinois, during the Leopold and Loeb case. 
On November 8 Darrow gave a speech to a black audience at the negro branch of the 
Y.M.C.A in Detroit. Darrow commented on the race problem and also criticized 
prohibition. He told the audience “I used to drink before prohibition—moderately. I still 
drink. The Volstead act hasn’t seemed to have the slightest effect on my appetite.”
140 
On December 10 Darrow debated Henry Sloane Coffin (1877 – 1954) a well-known 
minister and president of the Union Theological Seminary and Moderator of the 
Presbyterian Church. Darrow and Sloan debated the topic of whether man was a machine. 
The debate was part of a dinner given under the auspices of The Nation. 
On December 11 Darrow debated Wisconsin senator Irvine Lenroot about whether the 
United States should join the World Court.  During the debate at Princeton University 
Darrow “ridiculed the World Court as an institution without power, with no way of 
enforcing its decrees, of no value anyway and an inevitable step toward the participation 
of this country in the League of Nations.”141 Lenroot later served as a judge of the U.S. 
Court of Customs and Patent Appeals from 1929 to 1944. 
Darrow and James Schermerhorn, founder and president of the Detroit Times, debated 
prohibition sometime in 1925. Schermerhorn wrote an article about the debate titled  
“Darrow Debates Like a Wet Lamb” that was published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn 
Independent Magazine in the January 2, 1926 edition. 
1926 
In January Darrow wrote a review of Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy for 
the New York Evening Post Literary Review. 
On January 31 Darrow, Kathleen Norris, a novelist, Lewis Lawes, warden of Sing Sing 
prison and Dudley Field Malone spoke out against capital punishment at Wallack’s 
Theatre in New York. The speeches coincided with the New York Legislature debating 
legislation to abolish capital punishment. 
139 This is from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards’ most famous sermon. 
140 Darrow Ridicules the Volstead Act, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 1925, at 6. 
141 Collegians Demand We Enter the Court, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 11, 1925, at 19. 
59

On February 2 Darrow debated the socialist leader Morris Hillquit on whether the United 
States should join the League of Nations. Darrow opposed joining. 
Darrow and others wrote as part of a symposium titled "Where Are the Pre-War 
Radicals?” that was published in the Survey Graphic in February. 
In February Darrow testified during hearings held by the Subcommittee on the Judiciary 
of the House Committee for the District of Columbia to abolish capital punishment in 
the District of Columbia.  Darrow was asked: 
You have tried a great many criminal cases, have you not? 
Mr. DARROW. Oh, I suppose 40 or 50.  
Mr. REID. And, of course, you haven't ever had any of your clients hang? 
Mr. DARROW. Not yet. And I do not think there is much danger in the future, 
because I will die probably first now. 
Later Darrow told those present: 
If a man can think of how often he has been a murderer himself, he would have 
some sympathy with other fellows who are legally killed; and, of course, we are 
all murderers at heart—that is, I never killed anybody, but I often read an obituary 
notice with great satisfaction [laughter], which means that I approve of it alright, 
and everybody else does the same. Good people get a great kick out of hanging; 
they always approve of that death. And there you are. It is in all of us; it is only a 
question of terms and conditions under which it comes out. If we realize it, we are 
probably a little sorry for the other fellows, whom we know perfectly well were 
governed by circumstances just as well as we are. 
On March 27 Darrow debated Wayne B. Wheeler, general counsel for the Anti-Saloon 
League, in a one hour radio debate. The debate was aired by WGN, the radio station of 
the Chicago Tribune. 
In April Darrow and Dudley Field Malone represented Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. who was 
trying to raise money to save three newspapers he owned. Vanderbilt’s father had refused 
to give his son any more money for the papers. 
In April and May, Darrow, and a new co-counsel, defended Henry Sweet the first black 
defendant to be retried for killing a white man in Detroit. Darrow and his co-counsel were 
even more aggressive in this trial and Darrow gave one of the best closing arguments of 
his career. Henry Sweet was found not guilty by an all white jury and the prosecution 
eventually decided not to try the other defendants. Darrow considered the Sweet trials to 
be perhaps the most important of his career. The Sweet trials helped create the NAACP 
legal defense fund and the leaders of the NAACP, including James Weldon Johnson, who 
became good friends with Darrow, consider the Sweet trials, especially the acquittal of 
Henry Sweet, to be some of the most important cases in the history of black Americans.   
60

In June Darrow wrote another criticism of eugenics titled The Eugenics Cult. 142 In this 
article he forcefully argued that eugenics is based on bad science and threatens civil 
liberties.  
Darrow and co-counsel appealed John Scopes conviction before the Supreme Court of 
Tennessee in June. The court rejected the defense arguments in a decision issued in 
January 1927.143 
In the summer of 1926, Darrow and another Chicago attorney appealed a murder 
conviction before the Wisconsin Supreme Court but the conviction was affirmed.
144 
Darrow Slows Down 
According to one of his biographers, Darrow’s health became more of a concern after the 
second Sweet trial than at any time since he survived mastoiditis in 1907.145 In October 
1926 Darrow’s doctor ordered him to rest more. Darrow’s health did improve but “1926 
was the last year in which he could be regarded as being in the practice of law in any 
regular way. Darrow placed his formal retirement in 1928, but he had been winding down 
for the two years before that, devoting more time to other pursuits.”
146 
However, Darrow continued to write and to speak in public forums. He wrote an article 
published in October by Harper’s titled Crime and the Alarmists. 147 In the article, 
Darrow railed against crime reports that led to hysteria, tougher legislation and increased 
prosecutions. Darrow focused particularly on how the reports of the Chicago Crime 
Commission were interpreted and reported. 
On November 1 Darrow spoke at a meeting organized by the American Civil Liberties 
Union. The meeting was held to make plans to test an injunction restraining striking 
garment workers from picketing. On December 8 he spoke to undergraduates at Princeton 
University with his main topic being crime but he also criticized prohibition. 
In December Darrow gave an address titled What to Do About Crime before the Nebraska 
Bar Association. A stenographic copy of his address was published in the Nebraska Law 
Bulletin. Darrow stayed true to his core beliefs that people are not free-will actors, crime 
is caused by factors beyond the individual’s control and punishment is not the answer: 
I am much more interested in this subject than in any other. I am interested in it 
because I am interested in all the people who live. I know there isn't any man in 
the world wise enough to tell his fellow men just what they should do. The 
principal thing to remember is that we are all the products of heredity and 
142 Clarence Darrow, The Eugenics Cult 7 AM. MERCURY, 129-37 (1926). 
143 Scopes v. State, 289 S.W. 363 (Tenn. 1927). 
144 Eckman v. State, 191 Wis. 63 (1926). 
145 TIERNEY, supra note 8, at 386. 
146 Id. 
147 Clarence Darrow, Crime and the Alarmists, 153 HARPER'S 535 (Oct. 1926). 
61

environment; that we have  little or no control, as individuals, over ourselves, and 
that criminals are like the rest of us in that regard. Life is not an unmixed good. 
For many, perhaps for most, it is hard-terribly and tragically hard, and there is 
pain enough in it without our trying to add to the total. Punishment in itself never 
will help us or the world in general. The way to make this world better is to make 
it kinder. The only way to cure its evils is to bury hatred. That is an old 
philosophy, which many repeat on the ends of their tongues, but which few 
follow. When we learn to understand each other and put some faith in each other, 
the relationships of men with each other will be more humane. If we are ever to 
solve the problem of crime and its punishment, we shall have to discard the idea 
of vengeance, and adopt the scientific method of following effects back to their 
causes. The individual criminal is only a by-product. The causes of his being a 
criminal are social and economic, and go to the foundations of our whole way of 
living. Until they are found and removed, the effort to prevent crime will remain 
just as useless in the future as it has been in the past.
148 
Late in December Justice William Harman Black of the Supreme Court of New York 
responded to critical comments Darrow made about Justice Black’s suggestion that 
criminal cases be decided by two-thirds vote of a jury instead of requiring unanimous 
juries. Darrow had described Black’s suggestion as “hysterical.” 
1927 
On January 10 Eugene Victor Sterry, an atheist and a founding members of the 
Rationalist Society of Canada, was arrested in Toronto by officers of the Morality Office 
on charges that his newspaper, the Christian Inquirer, was blasphemous. Within days of 
the arrest there were reports that Sterry’s supporters wanted to hire Darrow to defend 
Sterry. On January 27 it was reported that Sterry’s attorney had received a telegram from 
New York indicating a fund of $10,000 was available to hire Darrow. On March 12 the 
Toronto Daily Star reported that Darrow was ill and would not be coming to attend 
Sterry’s blasphemy trial. 
The NAACP reported that in December 1926 Arthur Garfield Hays filed a lawsuit on 
behalf of Blanche S. Brookins, a black woman, against the Pullman Company and the 
Atlantic Coast Line Railway for damages of $25,000.
149  Mrs. Brookins, who lived in 
Orlando and reportedly was wealthy, was traveling to New York and riding in a Pullman 
birth on the Atlantic Railway line. When she got to Jacksonville on July 1, 1926 she was 
informed that she would have to give up the Pullman car and go to a “Jim Crow” car. 
When she refused, the conductor called ahead to authorities in Palatka, Florida and when 
the train arrived there she was removed and put in jail for the night. The next day she was 
brought before a judge and fined $500 and court costs. The NAACP also reported in 
February 1927 that Clarence Darrow would help represent Mrs. Brookins. According to 
one source she was awarded $2,750 from the Atlantic Coast Line in 1928. 
148 Clarence Darrow, What to Do About Crime, 6 NEB. L. BULL. 117, 133-34 (1927-1928). 
149 Inter-State “Jim Crow,” 33 CRISIS 194 (1927). 
62

Darrow wrote an article titled The Foreign Debt and America that was published in 
Vanity Fair in February.  In the article Darrow called for the United States to cancel the 
debt incurred by European countries to fight World War I. 
Francesco Caruso 
On February 13, 1927, Francesco Caruso, a 35-year old Sicilian immigrant living in New 
York, murdered a doctor named Casper Pendola. Caruso blamed Pendola for the death of 
his son 6 year old Joey Caruso.150 Dr. Pendola had tried to treat the boy when he fell ill. 
In April Caruso was tried and convicted of murder in the first degree which automatically 
resulted in a death sentence and he was sent to Sing Sing prison to await execution. 
Italian Americans launched a campaign to help Caruso appeal his conviction and death 
sentence. In May they succeeded in getting Clarence Darrow to help with the appeal.  
In November 1927 the Court of Appeals of New York reversed the conviction and 
ordered a new trial. When the case was called for retrial, Caruso pled guilty to 
manslaughter in the first degree. He was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence, with a 
minimum of five years and a maximum of ten years, and an additional five to ten years 
under section 1944 of the Penal Law.151 In November 1928 the Court of Appeals of New 
York affirmed Caruso’s conviction for first degree manslaughter.152 Caruso served 6 
years in prison before being released. He would later have another son. In 1952 
Francesco Caruso told his 16 year old son Dominic that Dr. Pendola was not the first man 
he had murdered.  He then confessed that for many years he had been an enforcer for the 
Sicilian Mafia, specifically for Salvatore D’Aquila, an associate of Al Capone.153 
In 1927 Darrow wrote Tyranny and the Volstead Act for Vanity Fair. 154 Also in 1927, 
Darrow and Victor S. Yarros wrote a book titled The Prohibition Mania: a Reply to 
Professor Irving Fisher and Others. They wrote the book to refute Prohibition at Its 
Worst, a book written by a leading prohibitionist, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale 
University. Fisher was an economist, health  campaigner, and eugenicist. He was one of 
the most prominent and celebrated economists in America during the early part of the 
twentieth century. He is credited with pioneering many of the principles that are the 
foundation of central bank policy. He was financially wiped out during the Great 
Depression. Fisher was also th e inventor of the Rolodex. 
Fairhope 
Clarence Darrow stayed in Fairhope Alabama on a number of occasions where he gave 
lectures. Fairhope began as a utopian community founded in 1894 by followers of Henry 
George and his Single Tax theory. For this reason it was also called “The Single Tax 
Colony.” According to legend, one of original community members said they came 
150 People v. Caruso, 159 N.E. 390 (N.Y. 1927). 
151 People v. Caruso, 164 N.E. 106 (N.Y. 1928). 
152 Id. 
153 DOMINIC CARUSO, NO MORE TOMORROWS (2008). 
154 Clarence Darrow, Tyranny and the Volstead Act, 28 VANITY FAIR 45 (1927). 
63

together with a "fair hope of success." The city of Fairhope was established in 1908 when 
it had about 500 residents. It is located on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay in southern 
Alabama. A legacy entity, the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation, is still in existence.155 
Darrow went to Fairhope in 1927 because of his health. While staying in Fairhope he 
traveled to Mobile Alabama and gave two talks on race relations. Darrow spoke to a 
black audience at the Industrial School for Negroes at Daphne, Alabama on February 
10th. According to some news accounts Darrow was sharply critical of how whites 
treated blacks. It was reported that private detectives were guarding Darrow in Mobile 
and circulars were distributed after his talk at the schools charging Darrow with “‘inciting 
ill feeling between negroes and whites.’”156 It was also reported that Darrow left to return 
to Chicago on March 7th. Another account says that  on March 14 Darrow stopped in 
Chattanooga and publicly denied that he was forced to leave Mobile under police 
protection.157 
On March 16 Darrow debated Dr. Clifton Gray, president of Bates College, in Boston’s 
Symphony Hall on the topic “What and Why is Man?” The moderator was Professor 
Kirtland Mather of Harvard. Darrow argued that man was like a machine. On March 23 
Darrow gave a lecture on “Criminal Law and the Criminal” at the New School for Social 
Research in New York. According to an account of his talk Darrow said that “juries were 
more often than not composed of twelve unintelligent men who were called upon to 
decide whether or not a thirteenth man was worse or better than he.”158 On March 26 
Darrow spoke again at the New School for Social Research on the same topic but this 
time condemned the public school system, poverty and subnormal mentality as the causes 
of crime. Darrow argued that instead of every student being taught reading, writing and 
arithmetic a trade school system should be setup so students can learn a trade they can 
use. 
On March 28 Darrow declared his support for Al Smith for president. He also stated that 
Smith’s being a Catholic should not be an issue when the Democratic National 
Convention nominated a candidate. 
On April 13 Darrow announced that he would retire from the practice of law on April 
18th his 70th birthday. Darrow stated that he would devote his time to writing and 
speaking but expected to participate in cases when his sympathies demanded it. Darrow 
also said that he defended the oppressed as a way of attaining happiness “‘To some, the 
grief of others gives discomfort. Some of us feel better if we try to do something about 
oppression. I’ve tried.’”159 
155 See Fairhope Single Tax Corporation, http://www.fairhopesingletax.com/ (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
156 Darrow Guarded in Mobile; Circulars Charge He Incited Ill Feeling Between Races, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 
9, 1927, at 8. 
157 Darrow Denies That He Was Threatened, N.Y. AMSTERDAM NEWS, Mar. 16, 1927, at  3. 
158 Darrow Belittles Juries' Intelligence, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 24, 1927, at 5. 
159 Darrow Plans to Retire, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 14, 1927, at 6. 
64

On April 17 the American Forum, which was planning a debate about prohibition 
between Darrow and Wayne B. Wheeler, then General Counsel and Legislative 
Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, announced that the debate would not be 
broadcast by radio because it was too controversial.  
On April 18, 1927 a dinner was held in Darrow’s honor at the Palmer House in Chicago 
to celebrate his 70th birthday. 
On April 19 Wayne B. Wheeler announced that his debate with Darrow, to be held in 
Carnegie Hall, would be a fight “without gloves.” On April 21, Mayor Walker, who was 
chairman of the debate, asked the newspapers to inform the public that City Hall was not 
selling tickets. On April 23 Wheeler and Darrow debated before an audience of 2,500 on 
the topic “Resolved: That the Prohibition of the Beverage Liquor Traffic is Detrimental 
to the Public Welfare.” Ticket prices for the debate ranged from $1.65 to $3.30.  Darrow 
argued in the affirmative. No one was declared the winner but the audience was clearly 
more enthusiastic about Darrow’s remarks. 
In April 1927 Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which was published in 1925, 
was banned in Boston on the grounds that it was obscene. This led to an obscenity trial 
during which Darrow testified as witness for the defense and also assisted the defense 
team. An assistant editor for the publisher was convicted of obscenity for “selling an 
obscene, indecent, and impure book.” The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts 
upheld the conviction.160 
On April 29 Darrow gave a lecture to undergraduates at Harvard University on the topic 
of crime and punishment. Darrow told the students that “Ninety per cent. of criminals 
are poor, eighty per cent. are uneducated and half are morons.”161 
On May 9 Darrow was elected as a director of the NAACP. For many years Darrow had 
been elected to leadership positions in the NAACP. 
In May 1927 Darrow debated Will Durant on the question “Is Man a Machine?” Darrow 
argued in the affirmative.  
In June it was reported in the news that Darrow would not be participating in the defense 
of Earle Nelson, a serial killer, captured in Canada. Nelson was eventually suspected of 
killing more than 20 people in the United States and Canada. 
On June 25 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled that playing baseball on Sunday 
violated a statute enacted in 1794 that prohibited any person from performing “any 
worldly employment or business whatsoever on the Lord's day.”162 On July 5 it was 
announced that the National Association Opposed to Blue Laws, with Clarence Darrow 
160 Commonwealth v. Friede, 171 N.E. 472 (Mass. 1930). 
161 Urges New Methods to Prevent Crime, N.Y. TIMES, May 1, 1927, at 21. 
162 Commonwealth  ex rel. Woodruff v. Am. Baseball Club of Phila., 138 A. 497 (Pa. 1927). 
65

as its chief legal counsel, had offered its services to help the American Baseball Club of 
Philadelphia fight the ban on Sunday baseball in Pennsylvania. 
Walter White was the assistant secretary of the NAACP during the Sweet trials and later 
served as executive secretary of the NAACP from 1931 to 1955. White and Clarence 
Darrow were good friends. Before White and his wife Gladys had a son in 1927, 
Clarence and Ruby Darrow told the Whites that they wanted the baby to be their 
namesake. The Whites agreed and when the baby was born in June he was given the 
name Walter Carl Darrow White - a combination of names from his father, Clarence 
Darrow and Carl Van Vechten, a white literary critic, novelist and patron of the Harlem 
Renaissance. Years later, after a falling out with his father, the son changed his name to 
just Carl Darrow. Carl Darrow was commonly called “Pidge.” 
Darrow wrote an article titled The Divorce Problem that was published in Vanity Fair in 
August.  In the article Darrow argued for laws making it easier to obtain a divorce: “The 
people who have always protested against individual freedom have done much to make 
divorce laws crude, tyrannical and barbarous. Marriage is the only contract that the courts 
will not annul on the request of both parties to the agreement.”  
In early August Clarence and Ruby traveled to Europe and returned in mid-October.   
On September 28 Edward Everett Darrow, Clarence’s oldest sibling, died at the home of 
his son Karl Kelchner Darrow, a renowned physicist. 
During the 1927 mayoral election in Chicago former mayor Thompson was making a 
comeback and launched an “America First” movement as part of his run for mayor.  
Thompson engaged in anti-British propaganda and attacked what he perceived to be pro-
British books used in schools and libraries. Thompson went so far as saying that if King 
George ever dared to come to Chicago, he would “punch him in the snout.”  
On October 24, Darrow, who had just returned from a trip to Europe, said “Why, it is the 
craziest thing I ever heard of. How far does Mayor Thompson propose to go? When he 
gets through with throwing out . . . books written with a bias in favor of England, he can 
start with an endless chain favoring France, Germany, even the Turk . . . . In the end he 
will have nothing left but fairy tales.”163 
A few days later the New York Times reported that Darrow’s comments seriously 
damaged Thompson’s standing as a national political figure and Thompson had “suffered 
a fearful wallop in the solar plexus.”164 
On October 24 Darrow debated Rabbi Stephen S. Wise over the issue “Is Zionism a 
Progressive Policy for Israel and America?” Rabbi Wise argued in the affirmative and 
Darrow argued in the negative during the debate held at the Sinai Temple in Chicago.  
Darrow had many Jewish friends and denounced anti-Semitism but he never supported a 
separate homeland for Jewish people.  
163 Sue to Bar Burning of Chicago Books, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 25, 1927, at 1. 
164 Nation's Ridicule Hits Thompson's Ambition, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 28, 1927, at 3. 
66

Rabbi Wise (1874 - 1949) was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He 
would become one of the most important Jewish leaders of the 20th Century. Among his 
many activities, Wise served as the vice president of the Zionist Organization of America 
from 1918 to 1920 and president from 1936 to 1938. In addition, Wise was one of the 
signatories on a letter written in 1909 calling for the establishment of the National 
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 
Darrow discussed the failings of human beings in an article titled “Is Man Fundamentally 
Dishonest?” published in The Forum in December. Darrow wrote that “It is probably safe 
to say that man is fundamentally both honest and dishonest.” 
George Remus 
In December Darrow testified as a character witness for George Remus (1876 – 1952) 
formerly a well-known Chicago lawyer.  Remus was born in Germany and his family 
emigrated to Chicago when he was 5.  He started working in a pharmacy when he was 
age 14 and became a lawyer at age 24.  He became a very successful criminal defense 
attorney in Chicago. After national prohibi tion was enacted in 1920 Remus noticed that 
some of his clients were making a lot of money through illegal alcohol. Remus decided to 
get in on the action and soon became one of the most successful bootleggers in the United 
States. 
Known as the “The King of the Bootleggers” Remus was eventually convicted and 
sentenced to two years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. His wife then took up with a 
prohibition agent and the two looted Remus’s fortune, selling his assets and hiding the 
money. His wife filed for divorce. On October 6, 1927 in Cincinnati, while she and her 
daughter were riding in a cab to court to finalize the divorce, Remus instructed his driver 
to chase the cab and force it off the road. Remus then accosted his wife and shot and 
killed her. Remus turned himself into the police an hour later.  
Remus was charged with first degree murder. He went on trial in November and the 
prosecutor in the case was Charles Taft, the 30 year-old son of Chief Justice and former 
President William Howard Taft.  The trial drew nationwide and even international public 
interest. Remus hired several high priced defense attorneys but he also participated in his 
own defense. Remus claimed temporary in sanity caused by his wife’s persecution. On 
December 27, after 19 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Remus not guilty on the 
sole ground of insanity. Remus was committed to a mental hospital because of the 
insanity finding but in March 1928 he was found not insane and discharged.
165 Some 
sources speculate that Remus was the inspiration for Jay Gatsby, the title character in F. 
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. 
Carillo and Greco 
165 Ex parte Remus, 162 N.E. 740 (Ohio 1928). 
67

In November it was announced that Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays would help defend 
Donato Carillo and Cologero Greco, well-known anti-fascists, who were accused of 
murdering two Italian Fascists in the Bronx on May 30, 1927. Pressure was put on the 
police and prosecution to solve the murders when the Italian ambassador attended the 
funeral for the victims and Mussolini and others in the Italian government made the two 
victims into martyrs. Support for the defendants was headed by Carlo Tresca a well-
known Italian-American editor and anarchist. Arthur Garfield Hays was hired to defend 
the two men and he asked that Darrow be hired as lead counsel.  The trial was delayed a 
few times and began around December 9. The jury acquitted both defendants on 
December 23. 
On December 28 a dinner was given in Darrow’s honor in New York to recognize his 
work in defending Greco and Carillo. The dinner was arranged by the staff of II Martello, 
a liberal newspaper edited by Carlo Tresca. 
On December 29 Darrow spoke at a lunch hosted by the New York Rotary Club at the 
Waldorf. Darrow spoke about crime and punishment and denounced the current penal 
system. 
On December 30 it was announced that a tax appraisal of the estate of Albert Loeb, father 
Richard Loeb, showed he left an estate of $1,612,817. The records also showed that 
Clarence Darrow had been paid $27,000 to defend Richard Loeb in 1924. Darrow’s co-
counsel Benjamin Bachrach received $15,000 and Walter Bachrach received $10,000. 
1928 
On February 19 Darrow attended another luncheon to celebrate the acquittal of Greco and 
Carrillo in New York. Darrow spoke at the lunch and told the audience that he defended 
the two men because he detested Mussolini and because of the rush to judgment that led 
to the Sacco and Vanzetti case.  Darrow also said he did not believe Greco and Carrillo 
were victims of a frame-up. 
Also on February 19 Darrow, along with Frank P. Walsh and Warden Lewis Lawes, 
spoke at a meeting held in New York by the League to Abolish Capital Punishment. The 
meeting adopted resolutions favoring the abolition of capital punishment and called on 
the New York Legislature to amend its Penal code to abolish capital punishment. 
On February 22 Darrow debated Reverend Alfred Wesley Wishart on the topic 
“Concerning a General Purpose in the Universe.” The debate was held at the Fountain 
Street Baptist Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 
Darrow wrote an article critical of prohibition for Vanity Fair, called Our Growing 
Tyranny. 
166 
166 Clarence Darrow, Our Growing Tyranny, 29 VANITY FAIR 39, 104 (1928). 
68

Darrow wrote an article titled “The Lord's Day Alliance” that was published in Plain 
Talk in March. The Lord's Day Alliance of the United States (LDA) was founded in 1888 
when representatives from six major Protestant denominations met in Washington, D.C. 
to organize the American Sabbath Union. The name was later changed to The Lord's Day 
Alliance of the United States. Still active, the LDA describes itself as “the one national 
organization whose sole purpose is to maintain and cultivate the first day of the week as a 
time for rest, worship, Christian education and spiritual renewal.”167 Darrow was sharply 
critical of the LDA: 
Among the various societies that are engaged in the business of killing pleasure, 
the Lord's Day Alliance of New York deserves a place of honor. If any poor 
mortal is caught enjoying life on Sunday its agents gleefully hie themselves to the 
nearest legislature and urge a law to stop the fun. Their literature and periodicals 
tell very plainly the kind of business they are in. This association of crape-hangers 
seems to be especially interested in the State of New York, which contains about 
one-tenth of the population of the Union, and among them an unusually large 
number of foreigners and other heathen who have not been taught the proper 
regard for the sanctity of the Sabbath.
168 
Reportedly, H. L. Mencken reluctantly declined to publish the article in his American 
Mercury because he thought it was too harsh although he agreed with Darrow’s points.  
In April it was publicly revealed that the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) 
circulated a list of what it termed “Doubtful Speakers” that it wanted to bar from 
speaking at D.A.R. events. Darrow made the list because he was considered a "Socialist." 
There were many others on the list including, Arthur Garfield Hays, Benjamin Gitlow, 
Dudley Field Malone, William Allen White, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter at 
Harvard law School, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, and Harry 
Emerson Fosdick. There were also many organizations on the list. The D.A.R. did not 
actually draw up the list, this was done by other individuals and organizations, but several 
of those on the list attacked the D.A.R. 
Darrow wrote an article titled Frank Lowden, the Farmer's Friend that was published in 
Scribner's Magazine in April. Frank Orren Lowden (1861 - 1943) was Governor of 
Illinois from 1917 to 1921.  
Winters Case 
In May 1927 Darrow went to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire to deliver 
a lecture against capital punishment. At some point during his time at the school, an 
elderly cleaning lady at the school showed him a note that had been given to her twenty-
three years earlier by Darrow’s son Paul when he was a student at Dartmouth.  One day 
in June 1904 Paul was riding in a horse drawn carriage near Hanover when the horse 
167 Lord's Day Alliance of the United States, http://www.ldausa.org/LDA_about.html (last visited Mar. 16, 
2010). 
168 Clarence Darrow, The Lord's Day Alliance, 2 PLAIN TALK 257 (1928). 
69

became frightened by the sound of a train and bolted and killed a four-year old child.169 
Paul Darrow gave the note to the child's mother telling her that if any member of the 
Darrow family could help in the future she should show the note. The mother who had 
lost her son in 1904 now told Clarence Darrow that her nephew, John Winters, had been 
convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to the electric chair in Vermont. Darrow, 
who was unaware of the accident or his son Paul's promise, agreed to help on Winters' 
appeal. Winters had been convicted of murdering 40-year old Cecelia S. Gullivan, a 
resident of Windsor Vermont. Gullivan was found bludgeoned to death on November 8, 
1926. 
In January 1928 Darrow and co-counsel appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court. Before 
the court could render a decision one of the judges was appointed to a federal court so 
Darrow went back to Vermont in March 1929 to re-argue before the court. About a week 
later the court issued its decision. The court upheld the trial judge’s rulings except the 
exclusion from the trial of the defense’s explanation of how blood stains could have 
gotten on the defendant's clothing prior to the homicide. Because the blood evidence was 
erroneously excluded, the Vermont Supreme Court set the verdict aside and granted a 
new trial.170 
Darrow did not participate in Winters’ second murder trial. Some sources say that 
Winters was again convicted and sentenced to life in prison instead of death.  Another 
source states that he pled guilty to second degree murder and received a life sentence. 
Winters was paroled in 1949 because he had tuberculosis.171 
In 1928 Darrow and his son Paul sold their stock in Greeley Gas & Fuel Company and 
made a large profit. Darrow believed that he and his wife were now financially secure 
and could enjoy a good retirement. Both son and father invested their profits in the stock 
market. Thinking he was financially secure for life, Darrow arranged for a portion of his 
lecture fees to go to the NAACP and a smaller percent to go towards a monument to the 
abolitionist John Brown. Darrow’s gift to the NAACP was substantial since he was 
popular enough as a speaker to command $500 to $1,000 per program.172 But Darrow’s 
retirement plans would suffer financial catastrophe in 1929. 
On February 9 Darrow debated Rabbi Barnet R. Brickner on the question "Is Man a 
Machine? Darrow debated the same question with two other rabbis—Rabbi Tarshish in 
late April and Rabbi I. E. Philo on May 3. 
James Munsene Trials 
169 There are several different accounts of the accident. One account says that Paul was riding a horse that 
became uncontrollable and killed a five-year-old child. 
170 State v. Winters, 145 A. 413 (1929). 
171 JOHN STARK BELLAMY II, VINTAGE VERMONT VILLAINIES: TRUE TALES OF MURDER & MYSTERY FROM 
THE 19TH AND 20
TH 
CENTURIES 129 (2007). 
172 TIERNEY, supra note 8, at 398. 
70

In 1928 Darrow returned to Ohio to practice law in his home county of Ashtabula one 
more time before he retired. Darrow went to Ohio to defend James Munsene173 who was 
facing a third trial for attempting to bribe a county sheriff. Facts for the following 
description of the Munsene trials are from a 2007 thesis by Jonathan A. Kinser.174 
Munsene wanted to open a gambling establishment in Warren Ohio and the bribe would 
keep the sheriff away. The initial bribe was for $500 and came with a promise to pay that 
much or more each month. Munsene was tried and convicted twice but he successfully 
appealed both convictions. He hired Darrow to defend him in the third trial. Several other 
high profile local attorneys assisted Darrow. The trial began on May 6.  
While he was in Ashtabula for the Munsene trial, Darrow spoke at the Kiwanis club on 
May 8. He told the estimated 500 club members in attendance and their wives how 
getting turned down when he tried to buy a house in Ashtabula many years ago led him to 
move to Chicago. 
The Munsene trial ended in a hung jury on May 12 and was set for retrial the following 
month. Darrow again helped defend Munsene in his fourth trial which began on May 20, 
1929. The jury deliberated for ten hours before announcing that they were deadlocked. 
The prosecution decided to try Munsene in a fifth trial which was to take place on 
October 28, 1929. But the defense filed a continuance because Darrow was in Europe. 
After the stock market crash which began on October 29 the government reviewed how 
much the previous trials had cost and eventually both the prosecution and defense agreed 
to a plea bargain. Munsene agreed to plead guilty and be sentenced to a year of probation 
and pay a fine. 
The 2007 thesis about the case argues that “Darrow’s defense of James Munsene 
unintentionally launched the young businessman-racketeer’s career to unparalleled 
heights and firmly established him as the ‘Bootleg King of Warren,’ and allowed for the 
expansion of his criminal operations.”175 This eventually led to organized crime 
dominating Warren, Ohio for decades.  James Munsene and his nephew, who was also a 
business partner, were murdered in their own restaurant on the evening of March 24, 
1941. It appeared to be a planned hit by the Cleveland mob. Two men were eventually 
arrested but only one was tried and convicted of the murders.176 
On April 20, 1928 Darrow gave an address at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the American 
Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington D.C. Darrow had to talk extemporaneously 
because he was not given the topic until just before his address. When Darrow asked 
what they wanted him to talk about he was told “They want you to abuse the 
newspapers.” So Darrow gave a talk about “This is what I don’t like about the 
newspapers.” 
173 There is some discrepancy concerning Munsene’s name.  Court documents refer to him as James 
Mancini. 
174 Jonathan A. Kinser, The Racketeer and the Reformer: How James Munsene Used Clarence Darrow to 
Become the Bootleg King of Warren, Ohio (Aug. 2007) (unpublished M.A. thesis, Youngstown State 
University), available at http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=ysu1198268853. 
175 Id. 
176 State v. Viola, 82 N.E.2d 306 (Ohio Ct. App. 1947). 
71

Darrow wrote an article titled "Women and Justice: Are Women Fit to Judge Guilt?” that 
was published in McCall's in June. 
On July 13 Darrow called on Governor Al Smith at his suite in the Biltmore Hotel. 
Darrow pledged his support and said he would play an active role in Smith’s candidacy 
for president. Significantly for Darrow, Smith was against prohibition. 
Darrow wrote an article titled "The Futility of the Death Penalty" which was published in 
The Forum in September. He explained that the purpose of the article was to prove “first, 
that capital punishment is no deterrent to crime; and second, that the state continues to 
kill its victims, not so much to defend society against them—for it could do that equally 
well by imprisonment—but to appease the mob’s emotions of hatred and revenge.” 
On September 1 it was announced that experts in crime and punishment would meet in 
Kansas City for the 58th annual congress of the American Prison Association from 
October 5 – 11. Clarence Darrow was i nvited to give the closing address. 
On September 1 a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting a musicians union from 
calling a strike in Chicago. The union released a statement setting forth an opinion issued 
by Clarence Darrow, Donald Richberg and David E. Lilienthal that the individual 
members whose contracts expired could cease working without violating the injunction. 
This led to a walkout and left about 300 Chicago theaters operating without music. A 
settlement was reached on September 7 after both sides made concessions.  
Darrow wrote an article for Vanity Fair titled Prohibition Cowardice that was published 
in September.177 
On September 22 Senator William Cabell Bruce, Democrat from Maryland, publicly 
announced at a Democratic rally that the Republican Presidential nominee, Herbert 
Hoover and his Vice Presidential nominee Senator Curtis, were hypocrites for supporting 
prohibition. Bruce related that Clarence Darrow had told him that he was surprised that 
Hoover supported prohibition because Darrow had had several drinks with Hoover 
himself. Darrow publicly denied telling this to Bruce. Bruce later clarified that he was 
referring to a news article that reported Darrow had drinks with Hoover. For a few weeks 
the controversy was heavily reported. 
Darrow wrote an article titled Why Was God So Hard on Women and Snakes? that was 
published in September by Haldeman-Julius. 
On October 22 Darrow participated in a symposium with several religious leaders at the 
Sinai temple. The other speakers were Bishop Francis J. McConnell of New York and 
Rabbi Dr. Louis L. Mann. Darrow told the audience that he was an agnostic but he 
preferred the term skeptic.  
177 Clarence Darrow, Prohibition Cowardice, 31VANITY FAIR 53, 100 (1928). 
72

On October 24 Darrow spoke at a meeting held by the Progressive League for Alfred E. 
Smith in the Mecca Temple. Darrow sharply criticized Hoover who he said believed in 
socialism for the rich but not the poor. 
Darrow wrote an article titled The Myth of the Soul that was published in The Forum in 
October. 
Darrow gave a lecture titled Personal Liberty at The New School for Social Research that 
was later published along with other lectures in Freedom in the Modern World. 178 
Darrow wrote an article titled “Absurdities of the Bible” that was published by 
Haldeman-Julius. 
1929 
In February Darrow was nominated for chairman of the League to Abolish Capital 
Punishment. 
Darrow and Wallace Rice compiled and edited Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic's 
Anthology. The compilation includes works by both Rice and Darrow and also an excerpt 
from Darrow’s plea on behalf of Leopold and Loeb. Wallace Rice (1859 - 1939) was an 
author, lecturer, and poet. He became a lawyer in 1884 but showed little interest in the 
law and instead turned to writing and theater. Rice also designed the Chicago Municipal 
flag, adopted in 1917, and the Illinois Centennial flag.  
On March 12 Darrow participated in a symposium with a rabbi, a Protestant bishop and a 
Catholic judge in Columbus Ohio. Darrow’s address titled “Why I am an Agnostic” was 
later published. 
In 1929 Darrow debated Dr. Lothrop Stoddard on the issue “Is the U.S. Immigration Law 
Beneficial?”  Stoddard argued in the affirmative and Darrow argued in the negative on 
the resolution: “That the Immigration Law discriminating in favor of the races of 
Northern Europe as opposed to those of Southern Europe is an advantage to the United 
States.” Stoddard was a political scientist, historian, writer, and anthropologist. His anti-
immigration beliefs and his advocacy of eugenics were a form of scientific racism. One 
of his most well-known works is a 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White 
World-Supremacy. Despite its title, Stoddard also cr iticized white nations for invading 
nations of other races. During the debate Darrow ended his remarks with “Who am I to 
say that my kind alone shall come to America and all the rest must stay away? I believe 
this earth is big enough for the human race. When it gets so crowded that they can’t all 
live, if I am here I will be willing to cast lots to decide who shall die and who shall stay, 
and give everybody an even break.” 
178 HORACE MEYER KALLEN, FREEDOM IN THE MODERN WORLD (1928). 
73

Darrow gave a lecture about Omar Khayyam and A.E. Housman titled “Facing Life 
Fearlessly” that was later published as a pamphlet.  In Khayyam and Housman Darrow 
found kindred spirits who, like him, did not believe in free will. In the lecture he said: 
Neither one of these eminent men, Omar or Housman, believed in free will. There 
is eight hundred years between Omar and Housman, and yet their philosophy is 
wondrously alike. It is not a strange and unusual philosophy, except in churches 
and Rotary Clubs and places like that. It is not strange in places where people 
think, or try to, and where they do not undertake to fool themselves. 
Darrow played an unusual and unintended role in a murder case in Iowa.  A defendant 
named Frank Bittner and another defendant were charged with murder for hiring a 
“professional gunman” to kill someone. The defendants and the victim were described as 
“professional gamblers and bootleggers.” While Bittner was in the county jail, Darrow 
traveled to Ft. Dodge Iowa on business. Bittner's mother learned that Darrow was coming 
to Iowa and asked him to talk to her son. Darrow did go to the jail to speak with Bittner.  
Their conversation was overheard by a deputy. Later Bittner was convicted of murder in 
the first degree and sentenced to life in prison.  He appealed and one of his points on 
appeal was that the conversation he had with Darrow while in jail was confidential. The 
Supreme Court of Iowa ruled the conversation was not a “confidential communication. 
There is no basis in the record for such a claim. Darrow was not Bittner's attorney, and it 
is obvious that he visited the defendant in a friendly way and on account of the request 
made by the mother.”179 
On June 5 in Washington Darrow debated Dr. Clarence True Wilson on the subject of 
prohibition. In 1910, Clarence True Wilson was appointed General Secretary of the 
Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals (MBTP). He served in 
this position for twenty-five years. During Prohibition, the MBTP was an official agency 
of the northern Methodist Episcopal Church. According to one source, from 1925 to 1935 
Darrow and Wilson held forty-six debates.180 During the course of their debates and time 
together Darrow and Wilson became very good friends. 
In July Darrow and his wife Ruby traveled to Europe and visited France, Switzerland, 
England, Scotland and Wales. They stayed in Europe until March 1930. While in France 
Darrow gave a talk during a luncheon held at the American Club of Paris. While visiting 
Charles Edward Russell and his wife at Montreux, a resort on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, 
Darrow began to write his autobiography.    
Darrow wrote an article published in The Saturday Evening Post in July titled “What Life 
Means to Me at Seventy-two.” It was later reprinted by Haldeman-Julius.  In the article 
Darrow wrote: 
179 State v. Bittner, 227 N.W. 601 (Iowa 1929). 
180 ROBERT DEAN MCNEIL, CLARENCE DARROW’S UNLIKELY FRIEND: CLARENCE TRUE WILSON: 
DEBATERS BUT ALWAYS FRIENDS 199 (2007). 
74

“As a propagandist, I see no chance to grow weary of life. I am interested in too many 
questions that concern the existence and activity of the human race. Not only am I 
interested in these questions but, for some reason or other, I almost always find myself 
disagreeing with the crowd.” 
Great Depression 
Darrow and his family suffered great financial losses in the 1929 stock market crash and 
subsequent economic depression.  Clarence and his wife Ruby were in Europe when the 
initial stock market crash occurred on Thursday, October 24, 1929. On October 28, called 
"Black Monday" the market closed down 12.8 percent. October 29 is known as "Black 
Tuesday" because on that day the United States market completely collapsed. The Dow 
opened that day at 299.6 but then lost 23 percent of its value as it crashed 68.9 points to 
close at 230.7. This ended the era of prosperity known as the “Roaring '20s” and ushered 
in the Great Depression.   
Darrow and his son Paul, like many who had money invested in the U.S. stock market, 
suffered tremendous losses. In letters to his son Paul before the crash, Darrow expressed 
concern that the market had become too overvalued but he was shocked when it 
occurred. At one point, Paul and his father had stock worth an estimated $300,000 that 
was reduced to about $10,000. 
In November Darrow’s article Combating Crime was published in The Forum: The 
Magazine of Controversy. 
Darrow wrote an introduction for The Best of All Possible Worlds: Romances and Tales 
by Voltaire that was published in 1929. 
Also in 1929 Darrow debated Clarence True Wilson on the topic “Should the 18th 
Amendment Be Repealed? Yes, Clarence Darrow; No, Clarence True Wilson.”  
1930 
On February 3 the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, with Darrow as 
president, announced the start of a nationwide campaign. The league asked the New York 
Legislature to grant a public hearing on a bill that was introduced to end capital 
punishment in New York. The league was also going to call on New York Governor 
Franklin D. Roosevelt. 
Darrows Return from Europe 
Clarence and Ruby Darrow returned from Europe in March after a nine month trip 
abroad. Darrow viewed the stock market co llapse as he did other tragedies that befall 
human beings. He wrote in his autobiography that as he returned from Europe: 
75

I approached New York as I have done before with mixed feelings of depression 
and exaltation. I had been away for a long time, and much might have happened 
while I was gone. In this instance an unheard-of panic had stricken America. 
Many of my friends had lost all they had. I myself had suffered severely. This 
might interfere with my plans to give up the practice of law. At any rate, I was 
apprehensive of the news I should receive on landing, even though it might be 
both good and bad. As Bret Harte said: "The only thing sure about luck is that it 
will change." I never believed that man had any control over his destiny. To me 
life has been a series of optimistic and pessimistic emotions and outlets. On the 
whole I have deemed it wise to prepare for the worst.181 
The Darrows stopped on the East Coast and Darrow participated in several debates. On 
March 19 Darrow debated Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart (1869 - 1944) of Iowa on 
the topic of prohibition. The debate took place in the Mecca Temple in New York.  The 
audience was overwhelmingly wet and Brookhart was subjected to many boos and lots of 
heckling from the crowd. Earlier in the afternoon Darrow and Brookhart held an informal 
debate at the Hotel Belmont during a photography session. 
Darrow wrote an article titled “The Most Cruel Nation on Earth” that was published in 
the March 1930 edition of the Island Lantern a prison publication at the U.S. 
Penitentiary, McNeil Island, Washington. In the article Darrow sharply criticized the 
criminal sentencing policies in the United States. 
Darrow was nearly drawn into another sensational murder case in 1930. On March 7, 
1930 the wife of Henri Marchand, a talented French sculptor, was murdered. Henri did 
projects for the Buffalo Natural History Museum, and as part of this work, he traveled to 
Indian reservations to make sculpture of Indian life. After the police interviewed Henri, 
suspicion fell on a 36 year old Cayuga Indian woman named Lila Jimerson. Jimerson was 
arrested a few hours later and she quickly implicated Nancy Bowen an elderly Cayuga 
traditional healer who was also arrested.  Both women confessed within a few hours.  
Jimerson was indicted for first degree murder on March 10, 1930. Marchand had known 
Jimerson for several years through his work sculpting Indian life for the museum. 
Jimerson had posed partially nude for his Iroquois village scenes. It would soon be 
revealed that Marchand had been having an affair with Jimerson. 
The case was widely followed and the press dubbed Jimerson the “Red Lilac of the 
Cayugas.” On April 1, 1930, during her trial, Jimerson, who had a history of pulmonary 
tuberculosis, either became ill or feigned illness.182 The court declared a mistrial due to 
her ill health. While she was in the hospital she withdrew her not guilty plea and pled 
guilty to second degree murder. She faced a sentence of twenty years to life.  She later 
withdrew her guilty plea; but this meant she would be tried again for first degree murder. 
Because Jimerson lived on the reservation of the Seneca Indian Nation, representatives 
from that nation asked Clarence Darrow to aid in her defense. Darrow conferred with 
181 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 329-30. 
182 People ex rel. Jimerson v. Freiberg, 243 N.Y.S. 590 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1930). 
76

Jimerson’s attorneys on April 29 in Buffalo. After the meeting Darrow issued a formal 
statement that he would not be participating in the defense. Darrow explained that it was 
a serious responsibility for a lawyer to imperil a client’s life in the hopes of getting a 
better verdict.  
During the second Jimerson murder trial, Nancy Bowen, who admitted to murdering Mrs. 
Marchand, testified for the prosecution. She related a tale that involved pagan beliefs in 
witchcraft and she claimed that Jimerson urged her to kill the “white witch” Mrs. 
Marchand. On February 28, 1931 Jimerson was found not guilty. Bowen, who had been 
sentenced to one to ten years, was freed on March 13, 1931 because she had already 
served the minimum. 
On April 2 Darrow publicly predicted that prohibition would end within four years with 
the Volstead Act repealed and the 18th Amendment dead. 
On May 2 the Freethinkers of America filed a court petition to enjoin the New York 
Board of Education from permitting the reading of the Bible and singing hymns in public 
schools. Joseph Lewis, president of the group, filed the petition as a taxpayer. He was 
represented by Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Joseph Wheless and Stephen Vreeland. 
In June 1930 a woman wrote a letter to Darrow asking him to take her husband’s case to 
the United States Supreme Court in a final appeal to save his life.183 Her husband, Ralph 
Fleagle and several others in the “Fleagle Gang,” were tried, convicted and sentenced to 
hang for the murder of the president of the First National Bank of Lamar, Colorado 
during a bank robbery on May 23, 1928.184 During the robbery the bank president’s son 
was also shot and killed before the gang got away with $219,564 mostly in cash and 
some in bonds. The robbery and murders prompted an extensive manhunt that lasted 15 
months before all of the suspects were captured and one was killed. The crime and 
manhunt was precedent setting for several reasons. It was the first robbery solved by the 
Department of Justice’s Central Bureau of Identification (which later became the FBI) on 
the basis of a single fingerprint, the first time a criminal defendant was transported across 
country by airplane and the first bank robbery in that part of the country that involved the 
use of airplanes to try and apprehend the suspects.185 Darrow did not take the case 
because according to his secretary he was practically retired. Ralph Fleagle and the other 
defendants were hanged in July 1930. 
In July Darrow and Dr. Clarence True Wilson traveled to Toronto to conduct a joint study 
of Ontario’s government liquor control. They had been sent by Collier’s Weekly 
magazine. Darrow and Wilson were to interview George Howard Ferguson the Premier 
of Ontario and the chairman of the Liquor Control Board. On September 19 Darrow and 
Wilson issued a joint statement to Collier’s Weekly about their trip to Ontario. They 
acknowledged that wets and drys, including themselves, are hopelessly at odds about 
prohibition. 
183 N. T. BETZ, THE FLEAGLE GANG 245 (2005) [hereinafter FLEAGLE GANG].
184 Fleagle v. People, 289 P. 1078 (Colo. 1930). 
185 FLEAGLE GANG, supra note 183, at 5. 
77

1931 
Darrow and Wilson wrote an article titled "Lawful Liquor" published in Collier’s Weekly 
on September 27. 
In early October a judge in Chicago issued vagrancy warrants for the arrest of 26 
notorious gangsters. The warrants were based on a “public enemies” list created by 
Colonel Robert Isham Randolph, president of the Chicago Association of Commerce. In 
September a grand jury used an old vagrancy law to indict the men. The list included 
Alphonse "Scarface Al" Capone, George "Bugs" Moran, and Joseph "Joe" Aiello.  
Darrow announced he was coming out of retirement to help defend the men because they 
were being unfairly given high bonds under the vagrancy law. Darrow appeared as 
counsel for two of the men George "Red" Barker and William "Three-fingered Jack" 
White.  
On October 16 it was revealed that Abbe Ernest Dimnet, a noted French priest, author 
and lecturer, had been forbidden by the chancery of the Roman Catholic Diocese of New 
York from debating Clarence Darrow on the subject “Is Religion Necessary?” The debate 
had been scheduled for November 15 at the Mecca Temple. It was also announced that 
the debate would take place with a non-Catholic in place of Dimnet. 
Darrow wrote an article titled Let No Man Therefore Judge You in Meat or in Drink that 
was published in Collier’s Weekly on October 11. 
On November 10 Judge Harold B. Wells of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals 
gave an address in which he sharply criticized Darrow for telling school and college 
students that those who do not believe in the law should disregard it. Wells called 
Darrow’s views “anarchy.” 
On November 15 Darrow debated Dr. Nathan Krass, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, on the 
question “Is Religion Necessary?” All 3,800 seats in the Mecca Temple were filled and 
about 500 people sat in the basement where amplifiers were setup so they could hear the 
debate. Police patrolled outside the building because it was expected that overflow 
crowds would block the sidewalks which happened during prior debates. Darrow argued 
in the negative and at one point asked, “Where did the universe come from? God made it. 
Who made God? He made himself. Plain nonsense!” 
On November 27 numerous Chicago residents who had been branded as dangerous 
radicals by the American Vigilance and Intelligence Federation attended a “blacklist” 
dinner at Chicago’s City Club.  Darrow, who was on the list, attended the dinner along 
with others on the list such as Jane Addams, William H. Holly and Arthur Fisher, 
chairman of the Chicago branch of the ACLU. 
78

Gilbert Keith Chesterton 
On January 15 Darrow debated Reverend Dr. Robert MacGowan, minister of Bellefield 
Presbyterian Church, in Pittsburgh. The debate, which took place in the Carnegie Music 
Hall in Pittsburgh, was titled “Is Religion Necessary?” Darrow argued in the negative. 
On January 18 Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Darrow debated religion and evolution at the 
Mecca Temple in New York City.  The debate titled "Will the World Return to 
Religion?" was highly anticipated and drew about 4,000 people. At one point the power 
failed or the microphones went out and Darrow sat back waiting until they could be fixed. 
But Chesterton jumped up and told the audience “Science, you see, is not infallible!” 
Several commentators believed that Chesterton won the debate. At least one source says 
there are no transcripts of the debate. A vote was taken afterwards with 2,359 voting that 
Chesterton had won and 1,022 for Darrow.
186 Chesterton later said he felt “as if Darrow 
had been arguing all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and simply kept sparring 
with a dummy of his mental making.”
187 
Largely unknown today, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936) is considered one of the 
most influential English writers of the 20th century. He was incredibly prolific having 
written 100 books, 200 short stories, and over 4,000 newspaper essays. His friend George 
Bernard Shaw referred to the 300 pound Chesterton as a “colossal genius.” Chesterton is 
credited with converting several famous people to Catholicism including C.S. Lewis and 
Evelyn Waugh.  His writing is also said to have helped inspire Mohandas Gandhi to lead 
a movement to end British colonial rule in India.  
On January 30 Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays debated Norman Thomas and Heywood 
Broun on the benefits of joining the Socialist party. Darrow and Hays argued against 
joining during the debate at the Mecca Temple. 
In March Darrow participated as defense counsel in a mock trial of Benedict Arnold. The 
prosecutor was played by James M. Beck (1861 - 1936) a highly regarded lawyer and 
politician from Philadelphia. Beck was a member of the Republican Party and served as 
U.S. Solicitor General and U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania.  A group of eminent 
men and women were enlisted as a “radio jury” and listened to the trial over the radio and 
rendered a guilty verdict by telegraph. The trial was produced by the National Dairy 
Products Corporation and was broadcast over numerous radio stations on March 22nd and 
29th . 
On March 1 the Victor L. Berger National Foundation was founded in Washington D.C.  
Clarence Darrow accepted the position as the foundation’s first president. 
On April 14 Darrow debated John Haynes Holmes on the topic “Shall Zionism Succeed 
or Fail?” The debate at the Mecca Temple was arranged by the Avukah American 
Student Zionist Federation. Darrow argued in the negative. The debate was chaired by 
186 JOSEPH PEARCE, LITERARY GIANTS, LITERARY CATHOLICS 212 (2005). 
187 MAISIE WARD, GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON 497 (2006). 
79

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Darrow, who had previously spent two days in Palestine, 
reiterated his view that the area was desolate and not suitable for a homeland. Darrow 
told the audience that Palestine was a country where “nobody eats anything, nobody 
wears anything and the sole transportation is a jackass.” Darrow also said England had 
done what it could in the area, but “[t]ake the hand of England off Palestine, and every 
jew there will have his throat cut by the Arabs.” 
On May 6 many prominent people from the literary, scientific and educational fields 
gathered at the Ritz in New York to honor Sigmund Freud on his 75th birthday. Freud was 
in Vienna and those gathered sent a cablegram congratulating him. Darrow was one of 
the speakers at the event.  The event was presided over by Dr. William A. White who 
worked for the defense in the Leopold and Loeb case in 1924. 
In the June issue of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, Darrow participated 
in a written debate with Bishop Robert E. Jones. The debate was titled: “A Discussion: Is 
Religion Reasonable?: Mr. Clarence Darrow says NO and to the Black Man it is Self-
stultification: Bishop Jones says YES it is the Universal Ground of Hope: A Challenge by 
Dr. DuBois, editor of The Crisis: The Challenge Met by George Frazier Miller.” 
On June 11 a book was published by Simon and Schuster under the name “MacSimon 
and MacSchuster” called Scotch; or, It's Smart to be Thrifty, A volume of the best Scotch 
Jokes.  Sinclair Lewis and Clarence Darrow were two of the many contributors. 
On June 18 Darrow and another attorney appeared in a federal court in Chicago 
defending Joe Grein, a shop keeper, whose malt and hop shop was raided on May 8, 1930 
by prohibition agents. The raid resulted in the seizure of $25,000 worth of merchandise 
from Grein’s shop and was seen as a test case by the government in its campaign against 
sellers of ingredients and paraphernalia for making home brew.  Darrow and his co-
counsel convinced the judge to quash the search warrant because it was issued without 
probable cause. 
On June 21 Bishop W.J. Walls of Chicago, a prominent Zion prelate, spoke in New York 
at the A.M.E. Zion conference in which he sharply criticized Clarence Darrow’s attacks 
on the religious beliefs of negroes. Bishop Walls said “We must stop making Darrow our 
ideal” and “it is time that the Negro stop listening to these antagonists against the religion 
of the Negro.” 
On June 30 Darrow and four other well-known speakers discussed the topic “Race 
Prejudice—What Can I do About it?” at the first meeting of the new South Parkway 
Fellowship of Faiths in Chicago. 
Darrow attended and spoke at the 22nd annual conference of the NAACP in Pittsburgh 
which was held June 30 – July 5. Darrow spoke on July 5 along with Joel Springarn, 
president of the NAACP, and Walter White. Darrow was characteristically blunt. He told 
the audience ,“White people of the North have practically deserted the Negro. From this 
time on anything done for the Negro must be done by himself.” The Pittsburg branch paid 
80

Darrow in Evolution Film 
$300 to broadcast one hour of the speeches over the radio station of KDKA. Darrow and 
Springarn’s addresses were broadcast. 
In 1931 Darrow narrated and appeared in a film about evolution titled the Mystery of Life. 
The film also featured Howard Madison Parshley, a professor at Smith College from 
1917 until 1952, and who was for many years chairman of its Zoology Department. 
Smith wrote the screenplay and during the movie explained scientific and biological 
concepts and Darrow would then add his own remarks. The movie was popular and 
favorably reviewed although some found it controversial. 
According to Time in a July 1931 article, the idea for the movie came about a year 
previously when Samuel Cummins, president of Classic Productions, had taken parts of a 
movie based on The Lost World, a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 
and parts of other sources and approached Darrow about doing a movie based on 
evolution. The Mystery of Life was completed in mid-July 1931 but then had to be 
reviewed by Dr. James Wingate's New York State Board of Censors before it could be 
shown in Manhattan. According to Time, Wingate’s “predominantly feminine” board 
issued explicit instructions to Cummins: 
Eliminate all views of snails on actual cross fertilization. . . . Eliminate . . . 'Here 
are two single celled animals in conjugation. Notice that the protoplasm, the 
living substance, is flowing from one to another.' . . . Eliminate all views of 
embryo . . . actual copulation of female mantis . . . views of spiders actually 
mating . . . views of child at mother's breast and view of bare breast . . . view of 
children where sex is exposed. . . . Reason: INDECENT.
188 
Cummins and Darrow were greatly angered by the censorship and Darrow protested in 
writing: 
Absurd and the censors know it. . . . Pictures of the Holy Mother nursing her 
infant abound all over the world. . . . The story of the praying mantis is published 
everywhere. . . . The human embryo is in any number of textbooks. . . . Can't you 
argue with them? If not, my personal inclinations would be for a fight.
189 
After an appeal the censored parts were reinstated except for some parts of the film 
dealing with snails and spiders that were considered obscene. The film was distributed by 
Universal Pictures Corporation.   
D. C. Stephenson 
188 Education: Mr. Darrow Presents, TIME, July 20, 1931, available at 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742088,00.html. 
189 Id. 
81

In all of the historical or contemporary accounts of Darrow’s legal career there is hardly 
any mention of one of Darrow’s most notorious clients: David Curtiss (“D. C.”) 
Stephenson (1891 – 1966), former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan and 22 
other northern states.190 As leader of the Klan, Stephenson had become very politically 
and financially powerful. On the evening of March 15, 1925 Stephenson had some of his 
henchmen kidnap Madge Oberholtzer, a 28 year-old schoolteacher, whom Stephenson 
had occasionally dated during the preceeding two months.191  Oberholtzer was made to 
drink whiskey and forced onto a train to Chicago where, in a private train car, she was 
brutally raped and bitten all over her body by a drunk and demented Stephenson.  She 
was held captive in a hotel for nearly two days during which she attempted suicide twice, 
once with a gun and once by ingesting Bichloride of mercury. When Oberholtzer became 
very ill her kidnappers decided to drive her back to Indianapolis. At one point 
Oberholtzer threatened Stephenson with arrest at which he allegedly laughed and told her 
“I am the law.” Oberholtzer was eventually taken to her home and sought medical 
attention. But her condition worsened and on March 28 she described the crime she 
suffered at the hands of Stephenson. She died on April 14 from infection and kidney 
failure due to mercury poisoning.  
Stephenson was arrested, tried and on November 16, 1925 he was convicted of murder in 
the second degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 1932 the Supreme 
Court of Indiana affirmed Stephenson’s murder conviction.192 The kidnapping and 
murder of Oberholtzer was so shocking it helped end the rise of the KKK in Indiana. 
Stephenson and Darrow corresponded by letter between 1928 and 1931 while Stephenson 
was incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana. Newspapers 
reported that on July 7, 1931 Darrow had joined Stephenson’s defense.193 The story noted 
that Darrow’s appearance before the Indiana Supreme Court was prevented when the 
attorneys agreed to file written briefs instead of oral arguments.  
Stephenson was paroled on March 23, 1950, but violated parole by disappearing around 
September 1950.  Stephenson moved to Robbinsdale, Minnesota where he was arrested 
on November 11, 1950.  Stephenson fought extradition to Indiana but the Supreme Court 
of Minnesota ruled against him in November 1951.194 In 1951 he was sentenced to serve 
another 10 years in prison. On December 21, 1956, Stephenson was given a Christmas 
clemency with dozens of other prisoners but this was conditioned on his leaving Indiana 
and never returning. In 1961 he was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a sixteen-
year-old girl in Missouri. Sources differ with some saying the charges were dropped, 
some saying he was fined and others saying he was sent to prison but was paroled in 
November 1961. 
190 Darrow Joins Staff of Lawyers to Fight to Free Stephenson, CHI. DAILY TRIB., July 8, 1931, at 13. 
191 Prior to the crime she was employed by the state as the manager of the Young People's Reading Circle. 
192 Stephenson v. State, 179 N.E. 633 (Ind. 1932). 
193 Darrow Joins Staff of Lawyers to Fight to Free Stephenson, supra note 190. 
194 State ex rel. Stephenson v. Ryan, 50 N.W.2d 259 (Minn. 1951). 
82

On September 6 Darrow predicted that if the country had an extreme winter it would 
suffer the most wide-spread crime wave in its history. He believed the crime wave would 
be the result of the great lack of opportunity. Darrow’s comments were a prelude to a 
possible movie he was contemplating making about the causes of crime. Darrow did 
appear in a short film about crime that was likely produced in 1931. In the film Darrow 
explains to an interviewer his beliefs that crime is caused by poverty, ignorance and bad 
luck. 
On October 12 Darrow and several religious figures spoke about religion in New York. 
The other speakers were John A. Lapp of Marquette University, Charles W. Gilkey, dean 
of the University of Chicago chapel, and Solomon Goldman, a rabbi. 
Darrow wrote an article for Vanity Fair titled “Why the 19th Amendment Cannot Be 
Repealed” that was published in November. 
On December 21 Time reported that “Lawyer Clarence Darrow, professional agnostic, 
has appeared in some 30 forums on religion throughout the U. S. this year, all of them 
under the management of his old friend George G. Whitehead . . . .”
195 
1932 
On February 5 Darrow’s autobiography The Story of My Life went on sale. The book, 
published by Charles Scribner's Sons, was advertised at $3.50 and became a best seller. 
Numerous reviews of the book mentioned Darrow’s 1904 book Farmington which led to 
another edition of that book being published. 
Darrow’s autobiography was published a year before ratification of the 21st Amendment 
on December 5, 1933 which ended prohibition, so he was very pessimistic about this 
restriction on liberty: 
Personally, I never cared much for intoxicating liquor. I never drank to excess. I 
have occasionally taken wine or whiskey, but never regularly or in any way that 
could possibly be called a habit. So far as I personally was concerned, the use of 
liquor in any form would never have influenced or affected me, but in prohibition 
I saw a grievous and far-reaching menace to the right of the individual. I knew it 
was supported by all the forces that were hostile to human freedom. I foresaw that 
it meant a fanaticism and intolerance that would hesitate at nothing to force its 
wishes and ways of life upon the world. The line between what should be the 
rights of the individual and the power of the state has never been clearly drawn; in 
fact, no one can set down a hard and fast rule for settling the limitations with any 
certainty. Still, broadly speaking, humans are divided into two classes; one of 
these is always urging more laws and stricter rules for each and all; the other 
faction is ever doubtful and distrustful of authority, and does not believe in the 
wisdom of the mob. These thoughtful, inquiring ones fear the majority. They 
know how tyrannical and unscrupulous the majority has always been; they know 
195 Religion: Darrow Forums, TIME, Dec. 21, 1931. 
83

the conceit of the ignorant, the intolerance of the bigot, and they instinctively 
fight for the rights of the individual against the crowd. In this contest I am, and 
always have been, with the individual battling for the right to express himself in 
his own life regardless of the mob. . . . 
Long before the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, I 
did everything in my power with addresses in public and articles in periodicals to 
protest against the rising danger.196 
Darrow wrote an article titled "Who Knows Justice?" that is published in Scribner's 
Magazine in February. 
Russell McWilliams 
Darrow came out of retirement to defend a seventeen year old named Russell 
McWilliams who was charged with first-degree murder for killing a street car conductor. 
McWilliams was seventeen years and eleven days old on August 29, 1931, the date of the 
homicide. He pled guilty on October 26, 1931 and two days later was sentenced to death.  
The defense twice got the conviction reversed and remanded. Darrow, William H. Holly, 
and other attorneys represented McWilliams during his second appeal. Darrow argued 
before the Illinois Supreme Court on February 16, 1932. The defense successfully argued 
that the trial court erred when it denied a change of venue and the court reversed and 
remanded the case.
197 Darrow then helped defend McWilliams during his third murder 
trial. McWilliams was again convicted and despite Darrow’s pleas for mercy he was 
again sentenced to death. Darrow later traveled to Springfield to plead before the Illinois 
State Board of Pardons and Parole to recommend clemency before the Governor. In April 
1933, Illinois Governor Henry Horner commuted McWilliams’ sentence to 99 years in 
prison. The governor announced his decision on April 18, Darrow’s birthday. 
McWilliams was released on parole in 1951.  
The Scottsboro Case 
One of the most notorious cases involving racial prejudice in the history of the United 
States was the legal travesty inflicted on the “Scottsboro boys,” the name given to nine 
young blacks accused of raping two white women on a freight train in Alabama on March 
25, 1931. While in jail, the defendants were nearly lynched by an angry crowd.  They 
were indicted for rape and went on trial just twelve days after being arrested. All but one 
defendant was convicted, and sentenced to death.  The trial of one defendant, who was 
only age twelve or thirteen when arrested, ended in a mistrial because some jurors held 
out for the death sentence despite the prosecution’s request for life imprisonment due to 
the defendant’s age. 
It soon became apparent to many observers, largely in the North, that the victims were 
lying and the prosecution was based on the defendants’ race. The convictions were 
196 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 284-85. 
197 People v. McWilliams, 183 N.E. 582 (Ill. 1932). 
84

Clarence Darrow and the Scottsboro Boys 
appealed and the legal odyssey would drag on for years. The NAACP was reluctant to get 
involved at first because the charge of raping white women was so explosive that if the 
charges were true, it would damage the NAACP’s standing among whites. Eventually, 
the NAACP decided to help the defendants but this created a battle between the NAACP 
and the International Labor Defense (ILD) for the right to represent the Scottsboro 
defendants. The ILD was the legal arm of the Communist Party of the United States of 
America. 
The NAACP hired Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays and Roderick Beddow, a 
Birmingham lawyer, to appeal the defendants’ convictions before the Alabama Supreme 
Court. Darrow and Hays traveled to Birmingham in early 1932. But the Communist 
party, acting through the ILD, desperately wanted to represent the Scottsboro defendants 
because the case fit with their ideological struggle against capitalism and the United 
States. The ILD wanted to use the case to embarrass the United States. Darrow and Hays 
were informed by telegram that the defendants wanted the ILD to defend them but if 
Darrow and Hays would work under the ILD they could help in the defense. 
Darrow and Hays met with several lawyers representing the ILD about the case. The ILD 
informed them that they would be glad to have them work on the case but only if Darrow 
and Hays repudiated the NAACP and left the trial tactics up to the ILD. Darrow and Hays 
could not remain in the case with the ILD’s conditions so they withdrew. 
According to one of his biographers, the Scottsboro defense was the only case Darrow 
withdrew from in his career. The Scottsboro case would result in numerous reversals, 
convictions, and retrials and the case would eventually be argued before the United States 
Supreme Court several times. Although none of the defendants were executed, they spent 
many years in prison and it was not until 1950 that the last defendant was paroled.  
Massie Case 
After his autobiography was published Darrow was hired for the last sensational trial of 
his career. The Massie affair, set in Hawaii, would turn out to be one of the most 
controversial criminal cases in Darrow’s long legal career. In contrast to his other famous 
cases, in this case, for a substantial fee, Darrow was on the side of the powerful, 
defending four whites, including a member of an elite family, who had basically lynched 
a nineteen-year-old Hawaiian youth named Joseph Kahahawai. The victim and four other 
minority youths were falsely accused of assaulting and raping the wife of a junior Navy 
officer in September 1931. The alleged attack on the white wife of a military officer by 
brown skinned Hawaiians and Asian defendants produced immediate and sustained 
hysteria within the white community in Hawaii and on the mainland. Careless rumors and 
false information about the safety of white women in Hawaii made it seem like Hawaii, 
especially Honolulu, was a dangerous locale with native sexual predators roaming and 
attacking white women at will. The truth was actually the opposite, with white women 
much safer in Hawaii than in many cities on the mainland. The case soon became a 
85

political firestorm as members of Congress and whites on the mainland clamored for 
political and legal changes in Hawaii.  
After some negotiations Darrow decided to take the case and he and his wife and another 
attorney boarded a ship for Hawaii on March 24. Darrow was 74 years old and would 
turn 75 during the trial. There was overwhelming evidence of guilt, one of the defendants 
basically admitted firing the gun that killed the youth, but Darrow and the defense argued 
it was justified under the “unwritten law”—a defense usually used by a husband who kills 
a man immediately after catching him having relations with his wife or raping her. The 
defense was shocked when the jury returned a guilty verdict for manslaughter for each 
defendant. They were sentenced to ten years hard labor, but the jury had recommended 
leniency and, due to overwhelming pressure from the mainland, from Congress, and 
powerful whites in Hawaii, the defendants never served their sentence. In a legal travesty, 
the governor of Hawaii commuted their sentence to just one hour and they were released.  
Darrow would later write a chapter about the Massie trial which was published in reprints 
of his autobiography. The Massie case was one of the most sensational stories in the 
United States in 1932. It was only eclipsed by the kidnapping and murder of 20-month-
old Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the son of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. The boy was 
kidnapped on March 1, 1932 and he was found murdered on May 12, 1932. 
On June 29 Darrow said a few remarks at the Democratic National Convention in 
Chicago. Darrow spoke after Amos and Andy and former heavyweight boxing champ 
Gene Tunney. 
On September 18 it was announced that Darrow had joined the First Unitarian Society of 
Minneapolis. The organization is still in existence.198 Shortly after this announcement 
Darrow wrote a letter to the Associated Press stating that he had not joined any church 
and had no intention of doing so. 
In September Darrow gave an address at the Mahoning County Bar Association in Ohio. 
On October 14 a manifesto letter condemning British rule in India and supporting the 
non-violence movement for independence was sent by the American League for India’s 
Freedom to civic organizations around the United States. The letter was signed by several 
prominent people including Clarence Darrow. 
On December 12 Darrow debated Michael A. Musmanno in Pennsylvania on the issue of 
the immortality of the human soul in “Does Man Live Again?”  Michael Angelo 
Musmanno (1897 - 1968) was a United States Naval officer and a Justice of the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court and politician in the Pennsylvania legislature.  Musmanno 
rose to the rank of Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy and at the end of World War II served 
on the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. He also led the 
investigation to determine if Adolf Hitler died at the end of the war. He later served as an 
198 See First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, http://www.firstunitariansociety.org/ (last visited Mar. 16, 
2010). 
86

appellate attorney for Sacco and Vanzetti. Musmanno was also a staunch anti-communist. 
In 1961 he was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Adolf Eichmann.  
Musmanno’s gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery contains his final words from 
the debate with Clarence Darrow: 
There is an eternal justice and an eternal order, there is a wise, merciful and 
omnipotent God. My friends, have no fear of the night or death. It is the 
forerunner of dawn, a glowing resplendent dawn, whose iridescent rays will write 
across the pink sky in unmistakable language - Man Does Live Again. 
1933 
On March 14 Albert Einstein spoke in Chicago. Illinois Governor Horner read a message 
of greeting to Einstein which was signed by several prominent individuals including 
Clarence Darrow. 
On March 25 Darrow gave a testimonial address during a dinner in honor of George A. 
Schilling held by the Biology Group. Shilling was a prominent labor advocate and at one 
time Secretary of the Illinois State Board of Labor Commissioners. Darrow met Shilling 
in 1888 at a single tax club meeting and they became lifelong friends. In his 
autobiography Darrow wrote "Mr. Shilling was about the first man I met when I came to 
Chicago, and he has been a close friend ever since.”199 
On May 28 Clarence’s brother Herman C. Darrow died in Chicago at age 68. For the 
previous nine years Herman was a proofreader for the Chicago Tribune. He was married 
and had two sons, Max and Elmer, and one daughter, Marguerite. 
Darrow wrote an article titled “Capital Punishment? No” that was published in the 
Rotarian Magazine in November.  Henry Barrett Chamberlin, chairman of the Chicago 
Crime Commission, countered with an article in favor of capital punishment in the same 
issue. 
Darrow’s good friend and former law partner William Holly was appointed as a federal 
judge for the Northern District of Illinois in 1933. He was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s 
first judicial appointments. Darrow and Holly were very close. Darrow wrote in his 
autobiography: 
Each day is lived for itself, and even now I have my joys. To-night my friend, 
William Holly, is coming to dine and spend the evening in my home. He is wise, 
and kindly, and dear to me. I am sure that we shall have a most companionable 
evening together, discussing the ignorance and inhumanity of the world, the men 
that we admire and approve, and those whom we disagree with and dislike.
200 
1934 
199 THE STORY OF MY LIFE, supra note 2, at 103. 
200 Id. at 451. 
87

On January 19 Darrow debated John Hayne Holmes on the topic “Can Civilization be 
Saved?” at the Mecca Temple in New York. Darrow told the audience of about 2,000 that 
“civilization has been destroyed by those who own it, by the people who have the vast 
wealth, the masters of the world who will not permit a fair distribution of its products.” 
Proceeds from ticket sales went to the Rand School of Social Science. 
Luke Lea was a United States Senator from Tennessee and the founder of the Nashville 
Tennessean and its first editor and publisher. During the 1920s, he became a major 
stockholder in numerous banks, all of which failed during the Great Depression. Lea and 
several others, including his son, were charged in North Carolina with conspiracy to 
commit bank fraud. They were convicted on several counts in August 1931 and Luke Lea 
was sentence to 6 to 10 years in prison. Lea was allowed out on bond but when his 
appeal was unsuccessful he did not return to North Carolina. Instead he traveled around 
Tennessee in an unsuccessful search for a judge who would grant a writ of habeas 
corpus. The Supreme Court of Tennessee ruled that North Carolina could extradite him 
as a fugitive from justice.
201
Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays and several co-counsel petitioned for a Writ of 
Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court on Lea’s behalf which was denied on April 
30, 1934.202 Ten days later Luke Lea and his son reported for imprisonment at Raleigh, 
North Carolina. Luke Lea was paroled in April 1936 and pardoned on June 15, 1937.  
Darrow Hopes Hitler is Murdered 
Darrow participated as chairman of the American Inquiry Commission, an unofficial 
body, on the present conditions in Germany. The group held hearings at the New York 
County Lawyers Association on July 2 and 3. Other members included Senator William 
Costigan, Arthur Garfield Hays and Dudley Field Malone. The commission was 
constituted as the American branch of the Lord Marley Committee and tasked with 
gathering evidence and hearing testimony about the Nazi regime in Germany. The 
commission heard testimony from numerous witnesses who described murder and 
imprisonment in concentration camps and other violations of civil rights. During a 
luncheon recess on July 2 the commission visited New York Mayor LaGuardia at City 
Hall. During the visit Darrow made the news when he publically stated: “If there are any 
more murders tomorrow I hope it will end in the killing of Hitler.  I think Hitler is a very 
dangerous man and should be destroyed.”
203 On July 3 the commission issued a plea for 
Ernst Thaelmann, a German Communist leader, facing trial for high treason in Germany. 
Thaelmann was never tried but was held in solitary confinement for eleven years before 
being shot in Buchenwald on Hitler's orders in 1944. 
Also in July Darrow publicly called for New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman to grant 
clemency to a twenty eight year old woman named Anna Antonio who was facing 
201 State ex rel. Lea v. Brown, 64 S.W.2d 841 (Tenn. 1933). 
202 Tennessee ex rel Lea v. Brown, 292 U.S. 638 (1934). 
203 Exile Asks World to End Nazi Terror, N.Y. TIMES, July 3, 1934, at 5. 
88

execution for having her husband murdered on Easter Sunday 1932. She was accused of 
having her husband killed for life insurance money but some accounts describe Antonio 
as a battered wife who simply wanted him killed to avoid more abuse. Her execution had 
been delayed numerous times and Darrow’s involvement garnered more support for 
Antonio. Despite the numerous pleas on her behalf, Antonio was executed by electric 
chair at Sing Sing prison on August 9, 1934. 
National Recovery Review Board 
The last major activity of Darrow’s professional life would bring him into conflict with 
the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  On June 16, 1933 President 
Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law.204 The act was 
supposed to facilitate cooperation between the federal government and the business 
sector and this hopefully would stimulate the economy and pull the country out of the 
Great Depression. Under NIRA business competitors met to develop and propose 
business “codes of fair competition” that would govern prices charged for goods and 
services, wages paid to labor, and business practices.  NIRA created the National 
Recovery Administration (NRA) and Roosevelt appointed Hugh S. Johnson as Director 
of the NRA to administer the code-writing process and enforce what would become a 
huge bureaucracy of codes. 
The fair competition code process and the resulting bureaucracy it created were heavily 
criticized and by 1934 the NRA and its code program was clearly in trouble. It was 
frequently criticized for promoting monopolies that harmed small businesses. On March 
7, 1934 President Roosevelt created the National Recovery Review Board by executive 
order and gave the board the responsibility to review the codes and report its findings to 
the president.  Roosevelt picked Clarence Darrow to chair the board.  Over the course of 
nearly four months the review board held 57 public hearings, reviewed 3,375 complaints, 
and investigated thirty-four codes. Darrow’s board issued very critical reports about the 
codes and Darrow publicly clashed with Hugh S. Johnson. Darrow and the board also 
antagonized President Roosevelt. On June 30, 1934 President Roosevelt issued another 
executive order abolishing the National Recovery Review Board. 
Darrow wrote an article sharply critical of the NRA codes published in The Rotarian in 
November 1934 titled “NRA and ‘Fair Competition.”  
On October 20 Darrow confirmed reports that he was actively engaged in trying to secure 
parole for John Haefner, age 65. Haefner was convicted in 1925 for manslaughter in the 
death of his wife and sentenced to the Columbus Ohio Penitentiary.  Fifty years 
previously Darrow had known Haefner’s father who was a shoemaker in Kinsman Ohio. 
On November 12, while in Atlantic City, Darrow gave an interview in which he 
expressed doubts about the evidence against Bruno Hauptmann who was awaiting trial 
for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son. Some of the strongest evidence against 
204 National Industrial Recovery Act, ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195 (1933). 
89

1935 
Hauptmann was that ransom money was found in his possession. Darrow said this did not 
prove he was the murderer because the money could have come from extortion. 
In 1934 Darrow was included in the book The Red Network: A Who’s Who and 
Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots by Elizabeth Dilling Stokes, a dedicated anti-
communist. The book purports to be an exposé of communist front activity in the United 
States. Many of Darrow’s friends and acquaintances were also included. 
Darrow wrote an article titled "Many Faults in NRA" that was published in the  
Commercial Bulletin and Apparel Merchant in February. 
The controversy created by the NRA and the National Recovery Review Board prompted 
the Senate Committee on Finance to undertake an investigation. The committee began 
holding hearings on March 7. Darrow testified on March 20 and the hearings concluded 
on April 18, 1935. 
On May 27, 1935 the United States Supreme Court held the National Recovery Act 
invalid because it unconstitutionally regulated intrastate commerce and it was an 
impermissible delegation of legislative authority to the president.205 
Darrow publicly commented on the death of Huey Long who died on September 10. 
Long, nicknamed “The Kingfish,” served as the Governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 
1932 and as a U.S. senator from 1932 to 1935.  On September 8 Long was either shot by 
an assassin, medical doctor Carl Austin Weiss, or accidently shot by one of his 
bodyguards after Weiss punched Long.  Long died two days later. Weiss was shot an 
estimated 60 times by Long’s bodyguards and died. It was reported that Darrow referred 
to Long as a “valuable liberal” and commented: “I admired Huey Long in many ways, . . 
. . I knew him and liked him. He stood for what was right in political life.”
206 
1936 
On January 11 Darrow was re-elected as president of the American League to Abolish 
Capital Punishment at the group’s annual meeting.  
On January 28 Richard Loeb was slashed to death with a razor by another prisoner in 
Stateville prison in Illinois. Darrow said that he was “very sorry to hear of” Loeb’s death 
but: “I had always hoped that both would live long enough to get out of prison. I’m glad 
he’s dead just the same. Death is the easier sentence compared with a life behind the 
walls of a prison. He is better off than Leopold—better off dead.”207 
205 Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935); See also Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 
293 U.S. 388 (1935) (declaring as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power the National 
Industrial Recovery Act, ch. 90, § 9(c), 48 Stat. 195, 200 (1933)). 
206 Darrow Mourns "Valuable Liberal.", N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 11, 1935, at 15. 
207 Convict Kills Loeb, Franks Boy Slayer, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 29, 1936, at 2. 
90

On March 30 Darrow, accompanied by the Reverend Joseph Eckert, a Catholic priest, 
and two nuns, appeared before the Illinois State Parole Board to plead for the release of 
71 year-old Jesse Binga. Eckert presented a petition signed by 10,000 blacks in support of 
Binga. Binga was a prominent black banker in Chicago who lost everything due to the 
Great Depression and a conviction for embezzlement. In 1933 Binga was convicted of 
embezzling $22,000 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Darrow knew Binga for about 
thirty years. It was not until 1938 that the work of Darrow and other Binga supporters 
gained Binga’s release. Binga lived twelve  more years, eking out an existence as a 
janitor. 
On April 1 Darrow sent a telegram to New Jersey Governor Hoffman and the New Jersey 
Court of Pardons urging that Bruno Hauptmann, convicted and sentenced to death for the 
kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son, be given a new trial. Hauptmann was 
executed two days later. 
On his 79th birthday on April 18 Darrow was interviewed. Among his remarks he said the 
law was a “horrible business” and “There was no such thing as justice—in or out of 
court.”208 
At age 79 Darrow was still speaking his mind through writing. In 1936 he wrote an 
article title “Attorney for the Defense” that was published in the May edition of Esquire. 
Darrow was very progressive but he was also a product of his times. In the article he 
wrote things that are now politically incorrect. He described how to pick a jury and the 
reasons for seating or rejecting prospective jurors based on ethnicity, class and religious 
beliefs. 
Darrow’s 1936 article in Esquire was the focus of an FBI memo which is part of a small 
FBI file on Darrow.209  The memo states that: 
This article appears to be a rather frank discussion of the interworkings of the 
minds of criminal lawyers as exemplified by Clarence Darrow. It is thought that 
possibly portions of this article might be helpful to the Director in making future 
addresses, at which time he might desire to point out how unscrupulous criminal 
lawyers stimulate disrespect for law and influence crime conditions. 
Darrow’s Esquire article was later cited in the appeal of a 1978 criminal trial that has 
been described as the first fully anonymous jury empanelled in the United States. This 
was the federal trial of a drug kingpin named Leroy “Nicky” Barnes and other defendants 
in New York City. The court believed that Barnes and the other ten defendants presented 
an unusually dangerous risk to the jurors and it took the extraordinary measure of hiding 
their identities. The defendants were convicted and on appeal they argued they were 
denied due process because: 
208 LAW IS 'HORRIBLE,' SAYS DARROW, 79, N.Y. Times, Apr. 19, 1936. p. 24. 
209 Federal Bureau of Information, Clarence Seward Darrow, File No. 62-45014, available at 
http://foia.fbi.gov/darrow/darrow1.pdf (last visited Mar. 16, 2010). 
91

The district court's refusal to disclose petit jurors' identities, residence locales or 
ethnic backgrounds and the court's restrictive voir dire denied defendants due 
process. They also assert as reversible error the court's failure to inquire into the 
religion of each prospective juror. Using as their authority Clarence Darrow, who 
believed that a juror's “nationality, his business, religion, politics, social standing, 
family ties, friends, habits of life and thought; the books and newspapers he likes 
and reads . . . (even to his) method of speech, the kind of clothes he wears, the 
style of haircut . . .”, were important subjects for questioning, they contended that 
the court's inquiry was unduly (to the point of reversal) restrictive. (Quoting 
Darrow, Attorney for the Defense, Esquire Magazine, May 1936).210 
Barnes was sentenced to life in prison but after he cooperated with the government this 
was reduced to 35 years and he was released from prison in 1998. Before his conviction 
Barnes was referred to as “Mr. Untouchable” and in 2007 he co-wrote his autobiography 
with that title.  
On September 6 it was announced by Mrs. Elinore M. Herrick that a petition had been 
sent to California governor Merriam requesting he pardon James B. McNamara and 
Matthew A. Schimdt who were both serving life sentences for the bombing of the Los 
Angeles Times that killed twenty people.211  Mrs. Herrick stated that Clarence Darrow 
and Lincoln Steffens assisted her in circulating the petition. Mrs. Herrick served for a 
time as a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. 
On September 27 the ACLU released a letter signed by 41 attorneys, writers and 
educators including Darrow asking the presidential and vice presidential nominees from 
all of the parties running for election to make at least one public comment about various 
civil liberties issues. 
On September 28 it was announced that Senator Neye of North Dakota, Senator Benson 
of Minnesota, Clarence Darrow and several other prominent people had agreed to serve 
on the Non-Partisan Committee for the re-election of Representative Vito Marcantonio, 
an Italian-American, who represented East Harlem. Marcantonio, a lawyer and politician, 
was one of the more radical members of Congress. 
Darrow worked with several other attorneys on the appeal of 30 year old Joseph 
Rappaport, the son of a rabbi, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for 
killing a government informant in a narcotics case. The Supreme Court of Illinois 
affirmed the conviction and sentence.212 His execution was delayed numerous times by 
Governor Horner. The day before the latest execution date, Governor Horner announced 
that he would consider a further reprieve if Rappaport submitted to a polygraph test 
which Horner placed great faith in. On March 2, 1937, just hours before Rappaport was 
to be executed, a polygraph machine was taken to his death cell. It was administered by 
210 United States v. Barnes, 604 F.2d 121, 134 (2nd Cir. 1979). 
211 Pardon of M'Namara Sought in Petition, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 6, 1936, at N8. 
212 People v. Rappaport, 4 N.E.2d 106 (Ill. 1936). 
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1938 
Leonarde Keeler, co-inventor of the polygraph and the first full-time professional 
polygraph examiner. Keeler was also a friend of Governor Horner.  Keeler announced 
that Rappaport had failed the test and he was executed in the electric chair two hours 
later. 
Darrow wrote a piece just before Christmas for the Chicago Daily Times in which he 
stated: 
I don't know what Christmas is all about anyhow. I think it is a humbug. . . . As a 
holiday the Fourth of July had it beat a mile. On the Fourth I used to get up right 
after midnight to shoot off anvils. It made a loud sound. It was a lot of fun. 
Nobody knows why we celebrate Christmas—to keep up the old bunk I suppose. 
Some religious people think it is the day Christ was born. They don't know any 
more about it than a woodchuck.213 
1937 
Darrow was interviewed on his 80th birthday on April 18. When asked if he felt 
differently towards a future life he responded “no” and said “‘Nobody has ever been able 
to give me proof that there is another life, and I don’t know’—his voice sank to a 
growl—‘that I would want it if there were.’”214 
On May 9 a written plea was sent to numerous religious, educational, political, civic, and 
professional leaders protesting the April 26 bombing of the city of Guernica in Spain by 
Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. At the time it was an estimated that 800 people were killed. 
The plea, sent in the name of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, 
claimed that “10,000 men, women and children were bombed and machine-gunned.” 
Many prominent people signed the appeal including Albert Einstein and Clarence 
Darrow. Pablo Picasso painted his famous "Guernica" work to commemorate the 
bombing. 
In January 1938 the NAACP Committee on Nominations nominated Clarence Darrow as 
a National Officer in the position of one of its Vice Presidents.215 
Clarence Darrow Dies 
As his health deteriorated in early 1938 Darrow was confined to bed. He remained bed-
ridden for two months until he died on Sunday, March 13, 1938 at his home in Chicago. 
With him was his wife Ruby, son Paul and his sister Jennie Moore.  His good friend, 
Judge William Holly arrived at the Darrow home and later publicly announced that 
Darrow had died. 
213 Clarence Darrow, "It's a Humbug!," CHI. DAILY TIMES, Dec. 22, 1936, Christmas Battle Page. 
214 DARROW--A PESIMIST WITH HOPE--IS EIGHTY, N.Y. Times, Apr 18, 1937. p. 129. 
215 Notice of Nominations, 45 CRISIS 11 (1938). 
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Later Darrow’s body lay in state at a Chicago funeral parlor. Thousands came to mourn 
him. On Tuesday March 15 his body was taken to Bond Chapel at the University of 
Chicago for a memorial service. Judge Holly gave the eulogy.  Darrow and Holly had 
made an agreement that whoever outlived the other would speak at the funeral. Darrow 
said of his friend “Let Judge Holly speak at my funeral. He knows everything there is to 
know about me, and he has sense enough not to tell it.”216 Instead of writing a eulogy, 
Judge Holly read from the eulogy that Darrow had written for the funeral of his friend 
John Peter Altgeld in 1902. 
Darrow had requested that he be cremated and on March 19, George Whitehead, his 
friend and lecture manager, and three male nurses that had attended him, went to 
Oakwoods Cemetery to witness the cremation.217 Later that day the four, joined by Paul 
Darrow, went to the bridge over the Jackson Park lagoon and spread Clarence Darrow’s 
ashes into the wind. Darrow used to look at this area from his apartment window and 
declared it “the prettiest spot on earth.”218 In 1957 the bridge was dedicated as the 
Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge.  
Word of Darrow’s death prompted comments from many who knew him. Senator 
William Borah, whom Darrow faced during the Haywood trial in Idaho, said the world 
had lost a “humanitarian.” 
Dr. Clarence True Wilson, his unlikely religious and temperance leader friend, said “I 
feel lonely to think he is gone” because “He was a kind, considerate friend, and I had a 
great love for him.” Wilson conceded “Before I knew him well, I used to think he was the 
worst type of man we had in our nation, a defender of crime, but I learned to know 
differently.” 219 
Dudley Field Malone said of his friend: 
In universality of information, quality of mind, great heart, honesty, courage and 
character, Clarence Darrow was the most distinguished human being I’ve ever 
known. My service with him in many cases and causes will always be my most 
precious professional memory.220 
Unity magazine devoted a memorial to Darrow in its May 16, 1938 edition.  Comments 
included in the memorial issue came from: William H. Holly, Francis McConnell, James 
Weldon Johnson, John Haynes Holmes, Arthur Garfield Hays, Victor S. Yarros, Harry 
Elmer Barnes, Clarence True Wilson and Eliot White. 
216 RICHARD CAHAN, A COURT THAT SHAPED AMERICA: CHICAGO'S FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT FROM ABE 
LINCOLN TO ABBIE HOFFMAN 101 (2002). 
217 SENTIMENTAL REBEL, supra note 11, at 382. 
218 Darrow's Ashes Strewn, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 20, 1938, at 9. 
219 Clarence Darrow is Dead in Chicago, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 14, 1938, at 15. 
220 Id. 
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James Weldon Johnson, former general secretary of the NAACP, said of Darrow: 
 “I admired Clarence Darrow as a great American and a great advocate.  I revered him as 
a wise philosopher and a broad humanist. I, and the members of my race, feel grateful for 
his courage and willingness to stand always as the champion of fair play and justice for 
the Negro. And I loved him for all his high and true qualities as a friend.”221 
Ruby Darrow died on July 6, 1957. 
221 James Weldon Johnson, Clarence Darrow—As I Knew Him, UNITY, May 16, 1938, at 88. 
95