Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

by John A. Farrell

  18. Darrow, Story of My Life; transcript, People v. Darrow; New York Times, Dec. 3, 1911; see also Darrow to his brother-in-law, Howard Moore (“I wish it was over—it doesn’t look good to me”), Oct. 6, 1911, CD-UML.

  19. Steffens showed his eagerness when, while strolling on the beach in Santa Monica with Johannsen, he wished aloud that the union leader would be indicted. “I could get rich men who are interested in the social problems to finance the case,” Steffens said. “The defense would be emotional insanity … all the sufferings and ill-being of Labor during your lifetime could be introduced as testimony … the whole social system would be exposed.” Johannsen “might get hung,” Steffens conceded, “but it would make a hell of a good story.” Anton Johannsen, “Statement,” CD-CHI; Steffens, Autobiography; Steffens to Suggetts, July 3, 1911, Steffens to his father, Nov. 3, 1911, Lincoln Steffens papers, Columbia University.

  20. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Scripps to Cochran, Nov. 20, 1911, Scripps to Ben Lindsey, Sept. 7, 1911, E. W. Scripps papers, Ohio University; Lincoln Steffens, “Explosion of the McNamara Cases,” New York Globe (reprint of dispatches by Steffens); Drew to James Hunter, Nov. 25, 1911, Drew to Fredericks, Nov. 25, 1911, WD.

  21. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Los Angeles Tribune, Nov. 23, 1911; Los Angeles Herald, Dec. 4, 1911; Steffens, “Explosion.”

  22. Franklin was not known to Darrow when he joined the defense, but the local U.S. attorney and others had vouched for him. Laborites given to conspiracy theories cited the suspicious number of Darrow’s accusers who, like Franklin and Lockwood, had ties to the district attorney’s office. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1911, New York Times, Nov. 29, 1911.

  23. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Fay Lewis to Irving Stone, Aug. 8, 1940, CD-LOC; J. B. McNamara to William Foster, Feb. 1, 1935, James and John McNamara papers, University of Cincinnati; Joseph Scott letter to C. J. Hyans, Sept. 6, 1950, California State Federation of Labor, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; fragments of second trial transcript, WD; Los Angeles Record, Nov. 29, 1911.

  24. Sara Field oral history, University of California, Berkeley. A few liberal jurists endorsed Darrow’s actions. “The unions … are to be congratulated on the wise and courageous action of Clarence S. Darrow,” Louis Brandeis told the Boston Globe. “Unionism … would undoubtedly have suffered greatly from the prejudice created … by a continued contest which must have resulted in a verdict of guilty.”

  25. Emma Goldman called Darrow and Steffens “timid … infants” and concluded that “the collapse of the trial disclosed the appalling hollowness of radicalism … and the craven spirit of so many of those who presume to plead its cause.” Maybe. But it should be noted that both Schmitt and Caplan were ultimately convicted and imprisoned on the evidence that Fredericks was prepared to present against James McNamara. Darrow probably saved his life. Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1931); Job Harriman to Morris Hillquit, Dec. 19, 1911, Morris Hillquit papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society; Hutchins Hapgood, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939); Los Angeles Times, Dec. 2, 1911; Los Angeles Herald, Dec. 1, 1911; Irvine, Revolution in Los Angeles; Steffens, “Explosion.”

  26. A decade later, after his release from prison, John McNamara met Gompers at a union convention. “If you had told me in confidence you were guilty, I would not have betrayed you,” Gompers told McNamara. Gompers refused to shake hands. “The last time I took your hand, you assured me of your innocence. After that, you betrayed yourself and labor.” Lucy Robins Lang, Tomorrow Is Beautiful (New York: Macmillan, 1948); Bernard Mandel, Samuel Gompers (Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1963).

  27. Darrow told reporters on December 2: “I never told Samuel Gompers, or anybody else, that James B. McNamara was innocent.” Indeed, Darrow said, it would have been unethical for him to discuss the question of guilt or innocence with an outsider, even one who was paying the bills. Darrow to Gompers, telegram, Dec. 1, 1911, Samuel Gompers papers, Library of Congress; Steffens, “Explosion”; Boston Globe, Dec. 5, 1911; Los Angeles Times, Dec. 2, 1911; Washington Star, Dec. 2, 1911; Washington Post, Dec. 3, 1911; Chicago Tribune, Dec. 3, 1911; Sissman interview with Stone, CD-LOC; Sara Field oral history, University of California, Berkeley; Gompers statement, Samuel Gompers papers, Library of Congress.

  28. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 6, 1911; New York Times, Dec. 6, 1911; Los Angeles Herald, Dec. 4, 1911; U.S. v. Ryan files, WD.

  29. Johannsen fancied, at one point, that Darrow had initiated the plea negotiations “to save his own skin” after learning that Fredericks was on to the jury-bribing plot, several weeks before Franklin was arrested. See Wood to Sara, Apr. 12, 1912, CESW-HL; Lissner to Norman Hapgood, Mar. 22, 1912, Meyer Lissner papers, Stanford University; Lawler to A. G. Wickersham, Dec. 6, 1911, U.S. Department of Justice records, National Archives.

  CHAPTER 12: GETHSEMANE

  1. The scene is drawn by Mary Field’s daughter Margaret Parton in an unpublished biography of her mother. ALW and MFP.

  2. Los Angeles Herald, Dec. 4, 1911. James would die in prison, but John’s sentence was reduced for good behavior, and he was released after serving a little more than nine years. Several thousand people crowded the street outside the courthouse to see the brothers hauled to jail. “You see?” James McNamara told Steffens. “You were wrong and I was right. The whole damn world believes in dynamite.”

  3. Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1, 1912.

  4. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Darrow, Story of My Life; Ruby to Paul, Dec. 3, 1911, CD-UML. For Darrow on prison see letters to Paul, Jennie (“I am really convinced that it would do me good”), and Howard Moore, CD-UML; Lawler to Wickersham, Jan. 26, 1912, U.S. Department of Justice records, National Archives. To add to Darrow’s woes, his old antagonist Elbridge Hanecy, now a counsel for a congressional panel probing corruption in Illinois, used the moment to exact vengeance. Hanecy called a witness who said that the International Harvester Company, via Darrow, had offered him $10,000 to drop a public-interest lawsuit. The committee dismissed the testimony as irrelevant, but the newspapers carried stories of the $10,000 “bribe.” It dated back to Darrow’s work for Hearst, whose editors in Chicago had been surprised when he suggested they call off their crusade against the Harvester firm, which had been dodging taxes. He had just lunched with the corporate counsel, Darrow told them, and the company was ready to make a huge payment to the public treasury. The journalists celebrated their victory. And then Darrow informed them that he hoped to take a fee from Harvester for brokering the deal. It had not occurred to the editors, who were paying Darrow to represent them, that he would accept money from the other side as well. Hanecy’s witness was the leader of a taxpayer group allied with the newspaper. His complaint was investigated, and no action taken. See U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Election of William Lorimer report, which includes the transcript of the Dec. 9, 1911, hearing; Chicago Tribune, Dec. 10, 11, 31, 1911; New York Times, Dec. 15, 1911; George Murray, The Madhouse on Madison Street; Moses Koenigsberg, King News (Philadelphia: Frederick A. Stokes, 1941).

  5. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Adela Rogers St. Johns, Final Verdict (New York: Doubleday, 1962); Baillie, High Tension; Alfred Cohn and Joe Chisholm, Take the Witness (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1934).

  6. Darrow knew Rogers. A few years earlier they had been advocates for Anna Mayr, a wealthy California woman who, the press said, lived “a Bohemian existence and probably did not live congenially with her husband, who was of an entirely different type.” Mayr had charged his wife with infidelity; Rogers represented her, and somehow Darrow ended up with the woman’s expensive furniture, which her husband sued to recover.

  7. Debs to Darrow, Feb. 19, 1912, Eugene Debs collection, Indiana State University; St. Johns, Final Verdict; Jerry Geisler, Hollywood Lawyer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960). Adela’s biography of her father is the only voice that survives from the Rogers family. She admits it is subject
to the vagaries of memory and emotion and contains errors. The sentiments it portrays, however, seem genuine.

  8. Morrison to AFL colleagues, Dec. 2, 1911, Samuel Gompers papers, Library of Congress.

  9. Darrow to Moore, Feb. 6, 1912, Darrow to Paul, Jan. and Feb. 1912, Ruby to Paul, Aug. 23, 1912, CD-UML; Catlin to Wood, Feb. 14, 1912, CESW-UC; Helen Darrow to Jennie Moore, Jan. 8, 1912, KD; Jennie Moore to Ruby, Feb. 1, 1912, Ruby to Ella Hoswell, Jan. 17, 1912, Leo Cherne papers, Boston University; Ruby letters to Stone, CD-LOC.

  10. Gerson to Darrow, Jan. 17, 1918, Perceval Gerson papers, UCLA; Ruby letters to Stone, CD-LOC. “We understood too well his philosophy of life to care about his guilt,” Reynold Blight, a friend from the Heart to Heart Club, told Irving Stone. “He was fighting for the underdog, who was being brutally abused by methods that were unjust and unfair; he felt he had to fight fire with fire.”

  11. Unpaid bills became a source of friction with Rogers—so that he would joke about it with the jury. “Do you believe that Darrow, a man who has financial peculiarities, would let go of $4,000?” Rogers would ask. “It is a physical, mental and moral impossibility. Witnesses testified that Darrow is the stingiest man in the world. And I believe it fully. I know whereof I speak.”

  12. Mitchell to Darrow, Feb. 12, 1912, Darrow to Mitchell, Feb. 20, 1912, John Mitchell papers, Catholic University.

  13. Gompers was furious over a newspaper article in which Darrow was quoted saying that the AFL chief knew the McNamaras were guilty all along. When Darrow heard this, he wrote and wired Gompers, denying the story, but it made no difference. Darrow to Gompers, Feb. 1912, Gompers to Darrow, Mar. 16, 1912, Samuel Gompers papers, Library of Congress.

  14. Stone, Darrow for the Defense; Ruby to Whitlock, Feb. 14, 1912, Mary to Whitlock, Jan. 24, 1912, BW.

  15. Los Angeles Examiner, Jan. 30, 1912; Chicago Tribune, Jan. 30, 1912; Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30, 1912; New York Times, Jan. 31, 1912; Baillie, High Tension; Darrow to Everett, telegram, Leo Cherne papers, Boston University; Darrow to Paul, Dec. 29, 1911, CD-UML; Darrow to Masters, Feb. 3, 1912, ELM.

  16. Older to Darrow, Jan. 30, 1912, Barnum to Darrow, Jan. 31, 1912, Simon to Darrow, Feb. 1, 1912, Jones to Darrow, early 1912, Mary to Darrow, Jan. 29, 1912, Leo Cherne papers, Boston University; Los Angeles Times, Mar. 3, Apr. 27, 1912; Debs to Darrow, Feb. 19, 1912, Eugene Debs collection, Indiana State University; Darrow to Wood, Feb. 20 and 23, 1912, CESW-UC; Darrow to Wood, Mar. 1, 1912, CESW-HL; Ruby to Older, in Older to Masters, Feb. 2, 1912, Masters unpublished autobiography, ELM. Masters later griped that the “smell of Darrow on me” cost him a federal judgeship he craved in 1913.

  17. Sullivan to Wood, Mar. 21, 1912, CESW-HL; Drew correspondence, Harrington statements, Foster autobiography, WD; Willard to Scripps, Jan. 26, 1912, E. W. Scripps papers, Ohio University; transcript, People v. Darrow.

  18. Wood to Sara, Apr. 12, 1912, CESW-HL. There was nothing that Darrow could proffer to tie Gompers to the dynamite plots. No one probed the bombings for union connections more than Walter Drew, and, in the end, he absolved the AFL chief. “Are there any professional ethics in the detective business?” Drew wrote Detective William Burns. “Your continued remarks about Mr. Gompers and men ‘higher up’ etc. have, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, become a boomerang and a source of embarrassment and injury … Had any evidence at any time been produced … our association would have followed it up.”

  19. Mary to Sara, May 1912, Wood to Sara, Apr. 12, 1912, Sara to Wood, Apr. 1912, CESW-HL; Los Angeles Times, May 17, 18, 1912; Los Angeles Herald, May 15, 1912; Foner, Industrial Workers.

  20. Golding wrote Darrow asking for money in 1913. Darrow responded favorably and Golding wrote him back. “You must not consider that you are under obligation to me, because I stood for what was right and just,” he said. But “had I fell into what they wished I would do, and taken a strong stand against you, I probably would not have any debts to worry me.” Darrow left no record of what he gave Golding then, but he told his son Paul to send the juror $4,500 of their profits from the sale of the Greeley gas company in 1928. See Golding letter in CD-LOC and Darrow letter to Paul, Dec. 16, 1927, in CD-UML.

  21. Except where noted, description of the trial comes from the transcript of People v. Darrow at the Los Angeles County Law Library and daily coverage of the trial in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald, and Chicago Tribune, supplemented by the Los Angeles Examiner and Los Angeles Record. St. Johns, Final Verdict; Drew to J. Badorf, June 5, 1912, WD.

  22. It should be noted that the first time Harrington told the story of the $10,000 bankroll, to Oscar Lawler in February, he swore that the conversation took place in their offices in the Higgins Building. See Harrington statements, WD. Transcript, People v. Darrow; St. Johns, Final Verdict; Baillie, High Tension; Cowan, The People v. Clarence Darrow; Darrow to Paul, July 4, 1912, CD-UML.

  23. Why was Darrow at the scene? In his autobiography, Darrow chose not to mention that he was there when Franklin was arrested, nor to explain why. The prosecutors did a good job tearing Hawley’s explanation—that Darrow was needed for a political consultation—apart at the trial. But their version—that Darrow was there to supervise Franklin—seems equally convenient, for Franklin had a dozen meetings with Lockwood, Bain, and others in which he attempted to bribe prospective jurors before he was arrested, and Darrow was not present at any of them. So why this day? Rogers contended that Darrow was lured into a trap by an anonymous caller. And Franklin had his own plausible version: that the defense had been tipped off by a source in the prosecution, spurring Darrow, too late, to rush out to stop the crime (“Bert, they are on to you!”). Transcript, People v. Darrow; Los Angeles Examiner, June 23, 1912; Mary to Wood, Aug. 6, 1912, CESW-HL. For a more extensive day-to-day portrayal of the trial, see Cowan, The People v. Clarence Darrow, and for an account that argues for Darrow’s innocence, see Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense.

  24. The account of the night of drinking and song with the labor leaders is from Mary Field Parton’s journal, MFP; Johannsen, “Darrow Case.”

  25. “He needs friends,” Steffens told Whitlock. “And when they are down and out and out and down and there’s no one else, then it’s up to us muckrakers to go and hold hands, isn’t it?”

  26. In a private letter from Reedy to Darrow, the publisher expressed similar sentiments: “You possibly took a long chance for your clients.” Reedy to Darrow, Mar. 15, 1912; CD-LOC; Mirror, June 27, 1912.

  27. Steffens testified that he ignored Darrow’s order and tried without success to get the bribery case dismissed as part of the McNamara settlement. If so, his actions may have supplied the grounds for the subsequent suspicions of Johannsen, Lawler, and others that Darrow gave up the McNamaras to save himself. Steffens to Laura, June 25, 1912, Lincoln Steffens papers, Columbia University. Transcript, People v. Darrow; New York Times, July 19, 1912; Los Angeles Record, July 20, 1912.

  28. When he testified before the grand jury, Tvietmoe denied that he had ever passed the $10,000 in cash back to Darrow, and said he still had $7,500 of it. There were other reasons why Tvietmoe needed money. According to Detective Burns, for example, Tvietmoe was in charge of funneling cash to Schmidt and Caplan, who were still on the run.

  29. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1912.

  30. It was a reach—that Darrow would stake so much on the unattested prospect that Frederick might feel charitable. If that was Darrow’s overriding goal, he surely would have nailed it down by including the bribery case in the McNamara settlement. Los Angeles Times, July 30; Mary Field journal, MFP; Mary to Wood, Aug. 6, 1912, CESW-HL.

  31. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 14, 1912; Los Angeles Examiner, Aug. 15, 1912.

  32. Transcript, People v. Darrow; Mary to Wood, Aug. 6, 1912, CESW-HL; Los Angeles Examiner, Aug. 15, 18, 1912; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 1912; Los Angeles Record, Aug. 18, 1912, New York Times, Aug. 18, 1912.

  CHA
PTER 13: THE SECOND TRIAL

  1. “Caesar had received his pound of flesh,” said Johannsen, with a nice mix of metaphors. Sara to Wood, Mar. 9, 1913, Sullivan to Wood, Aug. 17, 1912, CESW-HL; Mary Field diary, Jan. 9, 1934, MFP.

  2. Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14, 1913; Pettigrew to Darrow, Aug. 29, 1912, CD-LOC.

  3. Anton Johannsen wrote to Darrow: “Our people seem to feel very kindly toward you and realize as best they can that you were up against the strong brace game, and while your judgment may have been poor in the selection of men such as Franklin and Harrington, they have nowhere questioned your integrity.” Johannsen to Darrow, Oct. 17, 1912, CD-LOC; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 26, 27, 29, 1912; Boston Globe, Sept. 1, 1912; San Francisco Daily News, Sept. 2, 1912; San Francisco Daily Morning Call, Sept. 2, 1912; San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 2, 1912; “If Man Had Opportunity,” Everyman, Jan./Feb. 1915.

  4. “Industrial Conspiracies,” Everyman, Nov./Dec. 1913.

  5. Sara to Wood, Sept. 7, 1912, CESW-HL.

  6. Mary to Sara, no date, Oct. 1912, Mary to Sara, no date, Nov. 1912, CESW-HL; Lem Parton to Mary, no date, MFP; Ruby to Paul, Aug. 23, 1912, CD-UML.

  7. Darrow to Mary, Oct. 22 and Nov. 12, 1912, CDMFP-NL.

  8. Wood urged her to have an abortion, but she miscarried before making that decision. Ehrgott to Wood, Oct. 4, 1912, Ehrgott to Mary, Jan. 15, 1913, CESW-UC.

  9. Older to Wood, June 21, 1912, Wood to Older, June 26 and June 27, 1912, CESW-HL; Steffens to Laura, July 20, 1912, Lincoln Steffens papers, Columbia University; Sara Field oral history, Berkeley.

  10. Wood to Older, June 26, 1912, CESW-HL.

  11. Wood to Older, June 27, 1912, CESW-HL.

  12. Sara to Wood, Dec. 15, 1912, Mary to Sara, fall 1912, CESW-HL.

  13. “I love a great masterful passion that sweeps over a man or a woman for the only beloved to the soul, and tears one up by his very roots like a great thunderstorm which leaves one’s whole being cleansed and purified,” Sara told Wood. But Darrow’s “sort of oozy-woozy passion that is squeezed out like toothpaste on every attractive woman that appears—yea Gods how I hate it!” Sara to Wood, Dec. 15, 1912, CESW-HL.