Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

by John A. Farrell

  10. In the fall, Darrow wavered between the populist Tom Watson and the socialist Eugene Debs, who were on the ballot as minor-party candidates. Schilling to Charles Riefler, June 11 and 13, George Schilling papers, University of Chicago; Paul Darrow interview with Stone, CD-LOC; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 21, 1903, Mar. 28, June 15, July 9, Oct. 13, 28, Nov. 11, 1904; Washington Post, July 9, 1904; New York Times, June 21, July 4, 6, 8, 10, 1904; Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1958); Champ Clark, My Quarter Century of American Politics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920); Ben Procter, William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Alfred P. Dennis, “The Anomaly of Our National Convention,” Political Science Quarterly, June 1905.

  11. New York Times, Oct. 8, 1904, Sept. 13, 1905; Chicago Tribune, Apr. 24, Oct. 1, 1904, Oct. 14, 1905; Howells to Darrow, Nov. 20, 1903, Howells to Darrow, with rejection note, Jan. 21, 1904, CD-UML; Hamlin Garland, Companions on the Trail (New York: Macmillan, 1931); Darrow, Farmington and An Eye for an Eye (Girard, KS: Haleman-Julius, 1905).

  12. Yerkes was backed by transit barons Peter Widener and William Elkins of Philadelphia. Stead died on the Titanic, and so did Widener’s son George and grandson Harry. Stead, If Christ Came; Harrison, Stormy Years and Growing Up.

  13. Altgeld wasn’t looking for a fight with Yerkes, and offered to appoint a commission to study the franchise matter. Yerkes sighed. It would only mean more palms to grease, he told the governor, and “we are taking care of too many now.” Schilling to Dunne, Apr. 28, 1905, George Schilling papers, University of Chicago; Steffens, “Chicago: Half Free”; Stead, If Christ Came; Darrow, Story of My Life; Charles Merriam, Chicago: A More Intimate View of Urban Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1929); John Franch, Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Harrison, Stormy Years and Growing Up; New York Times, Dec. 12, 14, 1898.

  14. Yerkes had, at various times, employed Darrow’s former legal associates Goudy and Goodrich as lobbyists, but Darrow himself steered clear of the baron. Sunset Club proceedings, Jan. 17, 1901; Lloyd to Parsons, Mar. 17, 1897, HDL; Chester M. Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1963); Lincoln Steffens, “Enemies of the Republic,” McClure’s, Aug. 1904; Tarbell, “Chicago Is Finding Herself”; Ginger, Altgeld’s America; Steffens, “Chicago: Half Free”; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 29, 1897, Dec. 2, 1898, Apr. 22–May 3, 1903; New York Times, July 4, 1897; Chicago Daily News, Apr. 23, 24, 1903.

  15. The council ultimately approved twenty-year franchises that would ease the city toward municipal ownership. Darrow, “Mark Tapley Dunne,” signed manuscript, CD-LOC; Henry Webster, “From Yerkes to Dunne,” American Illustrated Magazine, Apr. 1906; Tarbell, “Chicago Is Finding Herself”; New York Times, May 4, 5, June 13, July 8, Oct. 29, Nov. 14, 1905, Mar. 13, Apr. 4, 5, 1906, Apr. 3, 19, 1907; Chicago Tribune, May 18, 19, June 8, June 30, Aug. 24, Sept. 2, 22, 23, 1905; Mar. 17, Apr. 2, 1907; Darrow to Dunne, June 19, 1905, CD-LOC; Darrow to Whitlock, Oct. 16, 1905, Apr. 8, 1907, BW; Austin W. Wright to C. E. S. Wood, Jan. 12, 1904, and May 23, 1907, CESW-HL; Blair v. City of Chicago, 201 U.S. 400; Steffens, Autobiography.

  16. Darrow ultimately dropped the City company as a client, when asked to defend the firm against the lawsuits filed by those injured by its streetcars. Instead, in 1902 and 1905 Darrow’s law firm carried lawsuits against the transit firm, involving the death and maiming of young boys run down by its cars, to the Illinois Supreme Court, winning one and losing the other. Chicago Tribune, Mar. 8, 10, 1896; Feb. 13, 1897; New York Times, June 27, 1897; see Chicago City Railway Co. v. Tuohy, 196 Ill. 410 and Chicago City Railway Co. v. Jordan, 215 Ill. 390, and Leeming note, Stone papers, CD-LOC; for International Harvester controversy, see footnote 4 in Chapter 12.

  17. In Darrow’s defense, it should be noted that others found the politics of the reform era as complicated. As Theodore Roosevelt told a friend: “I have had on occasions to fight bosses and rings and machines; and have had to get along as best I could with bosses and rings and machines when the conditions were different … I have seen reform movements that failed and reform movements that succeeded and have taken part in both, and have also taken part in opposing fool reform movements which it would be a misfortune to have succeed.” See Roosevelt to Lorimer, May 12, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress. In the otherwise excellent Altgeld’s America, Ray Ginger mistakingly attributes the “Dear Miss S” episode to the jury-bribing case. Masters, Across Spoon River, “My Youth,” and other unpublished manuscripts, ELM; Chicago Tribune, May 3, June 14, 18, 21, 27, 28, 29, July 25, Sept. 16, 1902, Nov. 24, 1903; Wright to Wood, Jan. 12, 1904, CESW-HL; Hapgood, Spirit of Labor.

  18. Darrow’s role in revealing Smith’s dealings in the bank was beyond reproach; even Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, no fan of Darrow, praised his actions. “I do not think that I shall sit here and listen to any criticism of Mr. Darrow,” said Landis, who was described as “trembling in anger” at the lawyers for Smith’s cronies. “Mr. Darrow has done something in this case that few officers of a bank would undertake to do.” Masters and Darrow tried for years to wring money from the bank’s assets and, for leverage or in spite, opposed Smith’s pleas for clemency. Chicago Tribune, Feb. 16, 17, 20, 1906, Apr. 7, 13, 16, 18, 20, 1907, Apr. 28, 1908, May 1, 16, June 2, 3, 13, 1909, July 13, 1910; Chicago Daily News, Feb. 16, 17, 19, 1906; New York Times, Feb. 16, 1906, Apr. 7, 1907; Chicago Daily Journal, Feb. 16, 1906; Darrow testimony, Commission of Industrial Relations, 1915; Masters, Across Spoon River and unpublished manuscripts, ELM; Hubbard, The Philistine, June–November 1906; Garland, Companions on the Trail.

  CHAPTER 8: INDUSTRIAL WARFARE

  1. Steunenberg family correspondence, Dec. 31, 1905, to Jan. 13, 1906, Frank Steunenberg family papers, Albertson College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho; Confession of Harry Orchard, PP.

  2. William Hard, “The Western Federation of Miners,” Outlook, May 19, 1906.

  3. Lloyd, notebook, Darrow to Caro Lloyd, no date, HDL. The rosewater quote, by Honoré Mirabeau, a French revolutionary figure, is taken from Darrow, Story of My Life; Ray Stannard Baker, “The Reign of Lawlessness,” McClure’s, May 1904; Steffens to Laura Steffens, June 25, 1912, Lincoln Steffens papers, Columbia University.

  4. James Hawley, “Steve Adams’ Confession and the State’s Case against Bill Haywood,” Idaho Yesterdays, winter 1963/1964; Melvyn Dubofsky, “James H. Hawley and the Origins of the Haywood Case,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Jan. 1967.

  5. A. K. Steunenberg, quoted in Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).

  6. Abbot to Lloyd, Dec. 1899, HDL; U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Military Affairs, Coeur D’Alene Labor Troubles (1900); William Gaboury, “From State-house to Bull Pen,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Jan. 1967.

  7. Theodore Roosevelt to Calvin Cobb, June 16, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress; Baker, “Reign of Lawlessness”; AFL Circular, June 20, 1904, Samuel Gompers papers, Library of Congress; Philip S. Foner, The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor, 1900-1909 (New York: International, 1964).

  8. Baker, “Reign of Lawlessness”; Darrow, Story of My Life; George Kibbe Turner, “The Actors and Victims in the Tragedies,” McClure’s, Sept. 1907; George Kibbe Turner, “Introductory Note to the Confession and Autobiography of Harry Orchard,” McClure’s, July 1907.

  9. Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917 (New York: International, 1965).

  10. Pinkerton papers, HIS; Pinkerton papers, PP; Steunenberg correspondence, Frank Steunenberg family papers, Albertson College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho; Idaho Daily Statesman, Dec. 31, 1905, Jan. 1–11, 1906; Luke Grant, “The Haywood Trial: A Review,” Outlook, Aug. 24, 1907; U.S. v. Barber Lumber Co., 194 Federal Reporter, 1912.

  11. Idaho Daily Statesman, June 24, 1907.

  12. McParland reports to Gooding, Orchard confession, Hassen to
McParland, Apr. 2, 1908, Thiele memo, IHS; McParland reports, PP; Steunenberg correspondence, Frank Steunenberg family papers, Albertson College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho; Idaho Daily Statesman, Dec. 31, 1905, Jan. 1–5, 1906, June 14, 1907; Lukas, Big Trouble; Baker, “Reign of Lawlessness”; Debs, Appeal to Reason, Mar. 10, 1906; Darrow, Story of My Life.

  13. Theodore Roosevelt to William H. Moody, Mar. 26, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress; Darrow to Caro Lloyd, Dec. 8, 1910, HDL; Darrow to Mitchell, Mar. 13, 1906, and Mitchell to Darrow, Mar. 14, 1906, John Mitchell papers, Catholic University; Dubofsky, “Hawley and the Origins”; Pettibone v. Nichols, 203 U.S. 192 (1906); Idaho Daily Statesman, May 30, June 1, 1906.

  14. McParland later told Gooding of a “rumor” that Adams and his uncle received $75,000—a titanic sum—to go over to the defense. The Statesman reported, citing no sources, that the defense had bribed Lillard through “the use of large amounts.” McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense.

  15. Darrow was not operating alone. Richardson and Nugent accompanied him on his visits to Lillard and would have had to agree to the deal. Though the WFM received contributions from other organizations, it is difficult to see it raising $75,000—more than a million dollars by today’s standards—for the Adams family. And, of course, the source must be considered. The Pinkertons spread cash around and presumed that the other side had its own “slush fund” to buy jurors, as detective Charles Siringo put it. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; Charles Siringo, A Cowboy Detective (Chicago: Conkey, 1912).

  16. Idaho Daily Statesman, Daily Idaho Press, and the Wallace, Idaho Times, Feb. 7–Mar. 8, 1907; McParland reports, IHS; McParland reports, PP; Darrow, Story of My Life; Arthur Weinberg, Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957).

  17. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP. Adams took the news philosophically. He would have preferred to be acquitted, he told a deputy, but “it’s better to hang the jury, than to hang the prisoner.”

  18. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; Idaho Daily Statesman, July 7, 1907.

  19. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP.

  20. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; Roosevelt to Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, Mar. 26, 1906, Roosevelt to Calvin Cobb, June 16, 20, 1906, Roosevelt to James Sherman, Oct. 8, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress; New York Times, May 5, 1907; Idaho Daily Statesman, May 5, 1907; Lukas, Big Trouble.

  21. Lukas, Big Trouble.

  22. Roosevelt was lobbied by Gooding, Cobb, Borah, and others, including prominent journalists like William Allen White, to drop the case. “I cannot help feeling some indignation at this desire of persons who profess to be friends … to have you … relieve Borah,” Attorney General Bonaparte warned the president. “Most of the employees, both of my Department and that of the Interior, who have been engaged in the prosecution of land frauds in that region … are generally convinced of Borah’s guilt.” But Roosevelt contrived to pressure the leader of the investigation, U.S. attorney Norman Ruick, to resign, and Borah was then acquitted. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; B. F. Cash to Bonaparte, Mar. 23, 1907, Bonaparte to Roosevelt, Mar. 29, 1907, Norman Ruick to Bonaparte, Mar. 29, 1907, Gooding to Roosevelt, Apr. 10, 15, 1907, Cobb to Gifford Pinchot, Apr. 13, 1907, Hawley to Roosevelt, Apr. 18, 1907, Borah to Roosevelt, Apr. 24, 1907, William A. White to Roosevelt, July 26, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress; Bonaparte to Roosevelt, Aug. 1, 7, 10, 15, and Sept. 1, 1907, Ruick to Treasury, Aug. 12, 1907, U.S. Department of Justice records, National Archive.

  23. There was talk from one Idaho defense attorney, said Operative 21, about bribing the Haywood jurors. Such allegations made their way to the press and were repeated over the years, tarnishing Darrow’s performance in Idaho. (“The newspaper grape vine is that Darrow bribed the Steunenberg jury,” Edgar Lee Masters wrote, thirty years later.) But if an actual attempt was made to corrupt the jurors, it is likely that Operative 21 would have known about it, and that McParland would have exposed it.

  24. Mirror, May 16, 1907; New York Times, May 17, 1907; Boston Globe, May 17, 1907; Denver Post, May 7, 1907.

  CHAPTER 9: BIG BILL

  1. The description of the Haywood trial is drawn from the trial transcript, available at the Idaho Historical Society, the Idaho Daily Statesman, New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Sun, and the Associated Press, May 9, 1907–July 29, 1907. See Boston Globe, June 3, 1906; Ethel Barrymore, Memories: An Autobiography (New York: Harper, 1955); William Haywood, Bill Haywood’s Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (New York: International, 1929).

  2. Ruby Darrow to Stone, CD-LOC; Darrow to Whitlock, Apr. 8, 1907, BW; Darrow, Story of My Life; see New York Sun, May 9, 19 and June 3, 1907.

  3. See New York Times, May 9, 16, 1907. The prosecution was incensed at Wilson’s perfidy, and Cobb took revenge by informing Roosevelt, who was weighing candidates for a federal judgeship, that Wilson was given to “brutal and disreputable” drunken “sprees.”

  4. See November 1906 Darrow–Richardson exchange, CD-UML, and Darrow to the defendants, CD-LOC; Harper’s Weekly, June 2, 1906. Richardson and John Murphy were the WFM’s regular lawyers. Darrow brought in Peter Breen, a radical from Montana. Fred Miller of Spokane and young Leon Whitsell had represented the miners in the Coeur d’Alenes; John Nugent was a friend of Haywood from Idaho, and there were others with local insight or connections carried on the payroll.

  5. Idaho Daily Statesman, June 2, 1907. The paper called the attack “neuralgia.” In Roughneck, Haywood biographer Peter Carlson says physicians later identified it as a stomach ulcer.

  6. McParland had tried to get Adams to write a narrative as well. “Orchard having written this biography it will simply be impossible for any counsel to shake his testimony,” the detective told Gooding. But “Adams as we are all aware has a poor memory” and “will not make a first class witness.” Like Orchard, Adams should write it all down and “read it over time and time again so that everything connected with this case and with his life will be freshly impressed and stamped upon his memory,” the detective said. McParland reports, HIS; McParland reports, PP; Darrow, Story of My Life; Ruby to Stone, CD-LOC; Haywood, Autobiography.

  7. See New York Times, June 6, 7, 9, 12, 1907.

  8. Hawley remarks in “Arguments Presented in Favor of Commutation” at the Idaho pardon board hearing on Harry Orchard, Nov. 13, 1922; Pinkerton letter, Nov. 16, 1920, PP.

  9. There was also testimony about an unsigned letter to Orchard that arrived in Caldwell after his arrest. He swore it was from Pettibone, assuring him that money was on the way. Yet the letter itself had been destroyed, and the Caldwell sheriff later denied, under oath, that it was Pettibone’s handwriting. Hawley in “Arguments Presented”; Denver Post, June 17, 1907; Idaho Daily Statesman, June 22, 1907; Boston Globe, Dec. 28, 1907.

  10. Boston Globe, June 15, 1907; Idaho Daily Statesman, June 22, 1907.

  11. Idaho Daily Statesman, June 25, 1907; New York Sun, June 25, 1907; New York Times, June 25, 1907; Chicago Record-Herald, June 25, 1907; Chicago Examiner, June 25, 1907; New York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1907; Fremont Wood, The Introductory Chapter to the History of the Trials of Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, and Harry Orchard (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1931).

  12. Boston Globe, July 13, 1907; Haywood, Autobiography; New York Times, July 12, 1907; Idaho Daily Statesman, July 12, 1907; Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1907; Chicago Daily News, July 12, 1907.

  13. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 3, 1907.

  14. Idaho Daily Statesman, July 25, 1907; Boston Globe, July 25, 1907; Idaho Evening Capital, July 25, 1907; New York Times, July 25, 1907.

  15. New York Times, July 26, 1907; New York Sun, July 26, 1907; Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1907; Idaho Daily Statesman, July 26, 1907; Haywood, Autobiography.

  16. Jess Hawley, “Notes on Haywood,” quoted in
David Grover, Debaters and Dynamiters (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1964).

  17. Haywood, Autobiography; McParland reports, IHS; Statement of Anton Johannsen, CD-CHI.

  18. Darrow, Story of My Life; Stone interview with Otto Peterson, clerk of court; Ruby Darrow to Stone, CD-LOC; New York Herald, July 29, 1907; New York American, July 29, 1907; Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, July 29, 1907; Haywood, Autobiography.

  19. The journalist Mark Sullivan suggested that an old Scottish verdict—“not proven”—best described the outcome of the Haywood case. It remains an American mystery. There are surely assassins (John Wilkes Booth) who work within conspiracies. But it is possible that Darrow and Richardson had it right, and that Orchard, like most American assassins (Eugene Prendergast, Lee Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, and many others), bore some crazed grudge against Steunenberg and acted without specific direction, hoping to be hailed as a savior when the deed was done. Orchard was certainly not an efficient conspirator. He was broke, thieving, gambling, and clumsy, called attention to himself, and appears to have made no plan to escape or to hide the incriminating evidence contained in his luggage.

  Haywood went on to a militant career with the Wobblies, grew even more radical, and died a revolutionary—yet no other Harry Orchard ever surfaced in his life, or that of Moyer. If there was a union conspiracy, it may have stopped at Orchard and Simpkins or reached only as far as Pettibone, the happy tinker of death. Yet anything short of Haywood and Moyer would have left the union leadership intact, and that was not what McParland, Hawley, and the others were aiming for.