You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday May 22, 1915
Washington, D. C. - Clarence Darrow Testifies Before Industrial Relations Commission
On Monday May 17th and Tuesday the 18th, Clarence Darrow came before the Commission on Industrial Relations and gave testimony regarding his many long years as a defender of the nation's labor leaders including Eugene Debs, Charles Moyer, and Big Bill Haywood.
From The Washington Herald of May 18, 1915:
DARROW FLAYS COURTS
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Labor Attorney Asserts Laws Are
Not Equally Administered.
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Clarence Darrow
in Washington, D. C.
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Clarence S. Darrow, the Chicago attorney, who has been prominently identified with court proceedings involving labor leaders and the cause of unions for a quarter of a century, notably in the Debs case, the Moyer-Haywood case at Boise city, and the McNamara case at Los angeles, was another witness before the commission yesterday. He said that unquestionably the laws are not equally administered between the rich and the poor.
Debs Got Six Months in Jail.
"In the Debs case, " he said, "Debs" conviction was the first under the Sherman act and he got six months in jail. A few years Later the Standard Oil Company was convicted under the Sherman law and it got six months also-six months in which to revise its charter and methods of doing business. These are the things that the laboring man remembers and resents."
A little later he said: "Federal judges are appointed for life or good behavior. They always behave and they never die!"
Mr. Darrow denounced the kidnaping of the McNamaras from Indianapolis and the transporting of them to Los Angeles for trial, and declared that it was clearly illegal. The men could not have been extradited for a crime admittedly committed when they were not in the State; and, moreover, if put to trial they were entitled to a trial in their own homes. Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone were kidnaped from Colorado and taken to Idaho for trial in just as outrageous manner, he said. "The Supreme Court of the United States decided that the authorities had no right to kidnap them," he said, "but that decision did the men no good. They were already in Idaho and were kept there."
[Photograph added.]
From The Washington Herald of May 19, 1915:
Darrow Doesn't Believe There's Any Remedy.
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Clarence Darrow
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Clarence S. Darrow, the Chicago labor attorney, concluded his testimony [yesterday], and in reply to a question of Commissioner Weinstock told frankly the amount of fees he received in three notable labor cases. In the coal strike case, to which he gave four months' time, he said his fee was $10,000. For defending Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone in the spectacular trial at Boise City, to which he gave eighteen months, time, he received $35,000. In the McNamara case, at Los Angeles, he received $48,000 for six months' work but he had to spend all that money and eighteen months time in defending himself from the charge of attempted jury fixing. On the whole, he said, he had not made money out of his labor cases.
Mr. Darrow gave numerous epigrammatic expressions in summing up his views on social, political and industrial questions. Among them were:
"Everybody boycotts the thing he doesn't like." "Punishment is barbarism, being predicated on the theory that if you hang me you'll be a good citizen." "There is a cause for crime as there is for typhoid fever." "Hate and love move courts and juries just as they move all human beings." "We're all partly criminal and partly conventional." "There is nothing so fickle nothing so ephemeral and nothing so powerful as public opinion-it is the greatest force there is and the hope of labor," and "I don't believe there is any remedy for anything, and the grave is the only escape from unrest."
[Photograph added.]
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SOURCE
The Washington Herald
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-May 18, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-May 19, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Clarence Darrow in WDC X2
http://www.loc.gov/...
http://www.loc.gov/...
See also:
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations, Vol. 11
-ed by Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
https://books.google.com/...
10769-Testimony of Mr. Clarence S. Darrow.
Washington, D. C., on May 17, 1915
https://books.google.com/...
10784-Darrow Recalled on May 18th
https://books.google.com/...
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The Bending Cross - David Hanners
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