Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (89 page)

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.