Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (98 page)

The story of General Otis and the
Los Angeles Times
is told in
Thinking Big
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977) by Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt.

On Earl Rogers, read Alfred Cohn and Joe Chisholm in
Take the Witness
(New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1934), Adela Rogers St. John in
Final Verdict
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), Jerry Giesler in
The Jerry Giesler Story
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960),
Once Upon a Time in Los Angeles
(Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark, 2001) by Michael Lance Trope, and Walton Bean’s
Boss Ruef’s San Francisco
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

Gene Ceasar wrote of William Burns in
Incredible Detective
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968). Alexander Irvine’s
Revolution in Los Angeles
(Los Angeles: The Citizen Print Shop, 1911) offers a glimpse into socialist politics and Job Harriman’s campaign for mayor. The invaluable book on the Owens Valley saga is
Water and Power
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982) by William Kahrl. For the early history of organized labor in California see also Michael Kazin’s
Barons of Labor
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Robert Munson Baker, in “Why the McNamaras Pleaded Guilty to the Bombing of the
Los Angeles Times”
(1949), and Richard Cole Searing with “The McNamara Case: Its Causes and Results” (1947) offered valuable insight in their master’s dissertations for the University of California at Berkeley. See also the coverage by
Outlook, Collier’s
, and
McClure’s
magazines in 1911 and 1912, the
Survey
special issue in December 1911, and subsequent analyses in
Southern California Quarterly
.

Philip Foner, in the multivolume
History of the Labor Movement in the United States

(New York: International Publishers, Volumes II, III, IV, and V, 1955–1980), Louis Adamic in
Dynamite
(New York: Viking, 1931), and Graham Adams in
The Age of Industrial Violence
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1966) look at what drove the men and women of labor to violence.

Foner, Anthony Lukas in
Big Trouble
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), and David Grover in
Debaters and Dynamiters
(Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1964) offer the best accounts of the Haywood and first Steve Adams trials. (Like Darrow’s second bribery trial, the Adams retrials and the Pettibone trial have been neglected by historians.) See also Fremont Wood’s
The Introductory Chapter to the History of the Trials of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1931) and Vernon Jensen’s
Heritage of Conflict
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950). Morris Friedman, who testified at the Haywood trial, detailed his experiences in
The Pinkerton Labor Spy
(New York: Wilshire Book Company, 1907), and James Horan profiles the detective agency in
The Pinkertons
(New York: Crown, 1968). See, as well, the William Borah and Bill Haywood biographies listed below and
The Rocky Mountain Revolution
(New York: Henry Holt, 1956) by Stewart Holbrook. Francis X. Busch includes the Haywood case and the Leopold and Loeb trial in
Prisoners at the Bar
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952). Fine magazine coverage was provided by
Outlook, Current Literature, Collier’s
, and
McClure’s
and subsequent editions of
Idaho Yesterdays
and
Pacific Northwest Quarterly
.

Almont Lindsey’s
The Pullman Strike
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942) and the
Report on the Chicago Strike
(1895) by the United States Strike Commission best tell the story of the Debs Rebellion. See also David Ray Papke’s
The Pullman Case
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999) and
The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), edited by Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore. In telling the story of the fiendish Herman Mudgett in
The Devil in the White City
(New York: Crown, 2003), Erik Larson memorably paints Chicago during the days of the Prendergast case and the Pullman strike. Richard Ely’s piece “Pullman: A Social Study” ran in
Harper’s Monthly
in February 1885. See also Richard Morton’s “A Victorian Tragedy: The Strange Deaths of Mayor Carter Harrison and Patrick Eugene Prendergast” in the
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Soci
ety, Spring 2003, and Edward Burke on political homicide in Chicago in the
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
(Northwestern University, Spring–Summer 2002).

Two excellent accounts of the Sweet case are
Arc of Justice
(New York: Henry Holt, 2004) by Kevin Boyle and
One Man’s Castle
(New York: Amistad, 2004) by Phyllis Vine. See also
A Man’s Home, A Man’s Castle
(New York: McCall Publishing Co., 1971) by Kenneth Weinberg. The Haldeman-Julius company published many of Darrow’s writings, as well as valuable accounts of the Scopes and Sweet trials by Marcet Haldeman-Julius, which were collected as
Clarence Darrow’s Two Great Trials
(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Co., 1927). David Lilienthal’s coverage of the first trial, together with a 1927 profile, is in the
Nation
. See also
Freedom’s Sword
(New York: Routledge, 2005), the tale of the NAACP, by Julian Bond and Gilbert Jonas, and the biographies of Walter White, Judge Murphy, and James Johnson listed below. The
Crisis
offered heart-wrenching accounts of violence and hatred against African Americans in the time that Darrow was affiliated with the NAACP.

The Massie case has inspired several authors. The best accounts are
Honor Killing
(New York: Penguin, 2005) by David Stannard and Peter Van Slingerland’s
Something Terrible Has Happened
(New York: Harper and Row, 1966). See also Theon Wright’s
Rape in Paradise
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1966) and Cobey Black’s
Hawaii Scandal
(Honolulu: Island Heritage, 2002). Thalia’s mother wrote a multipart series for
Liberty
magazine in the summer of 1932. George Leisure wrote of his participation in the
Virginia Law Review
.

The story of Darrow and the Red Scare is told in
Young J. Edgar
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007) by Kenneth Ackerman and in the autobiographical novel
The Trial of Helen McLeod
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1938) by Alice Beal Parsons. Michael Belknap captures the tensions of the Gitlow and Debs trials, among others, in
American Political Trials
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).

Edmund Morris gives a lively description of Theodore Roosevelt’s involvement in the anthracite coal strike in
Theodore Rex
(New York: Random House, 2001). The best overall account is by Robert Cornell in
The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1957). See also the
Report to the President on the Anthracite
Coal Strike
(1903) by the federal commission, Robert Janosov et al. in
The Great Strike: Perspectives on the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike
(Easton, PA: Canal History and Technology Press, 2002), and
The Kingdom of Coal
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) by Donald Miller and Richard Sharpless. See, as well, the 1902 coverage by the
American Monthly Review of Reviews
and
Public Opinion
and Robert Wiebe’s “The Anthracite Strike of 1902: A Record of Confusion” in the
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, no. 48, 1961.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in
The Coming of the New Deal
(Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1958) and James McGregor Burns in
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1956) give accounts of Darrow’s clash with Hugh Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt over the NRA. See also Johnson’s
The Blue Eagle
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1935) and Lowell Mason’s “Darrow v. Johnson,” in the December 1934 edition of the
North American Review
.

Paul Avrich in
The Haymarket Tragedy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) and James Green in
Death in the Haymarket
(New York: Pantheon, 2006) re-create that tragic episode.
The Oshkosh Woodworkers’ Strike of 1898
is profiled by Virginia Glenn Crane in her 1998 self-published book on that topic. Steve Lehto in
Death’s Door
(Troy, MI: Momentum Books, 2006) and Arthur Thurner in
Rebels on the Range
(Lake Linden, MI: John H. Forster Press, 1984) describe the Michigan copper strike and the Italian Hall tragedy.

In
Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), George W. Hilton offers an authoritative account of the tragic sinking. See also Jay Bonansinga’s
The Sinking of the Eastland
(New York: Citadel Press, 2004). Anthony Hatch’s
Tinder Box
(Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2003) tells the story of the Iroquois Theatre fire. Dan Carter’s
Scottsboro
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1969) traces that shameful saga.

Werner Troesken follows the history of the Chicago gas industry, in
Why Regulate Utilities?
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). The municipal ownership question was covered in April 1906 by Henry K. Webster in “From Yerkes to Dunne” for
American Illustrated Magazine
. Lincoln Steffens wrote about Chicago and other cities in several editions of
McClure’s
magazine in 1903 and collected and published these pieces as
The Shame of the Cities
(New York: McClure, Philips & Co., 1904). See also John Fairlie in the May 1907
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, and Ida Tarbell in the November and December 1908 issues of
American Magazine
.

CHICAGO AND THE TIMES

Donald Miller gives a panoramic view of Chicago’s early history in
City of the Century
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), and William Cronon outlines the city’s economic rationale in
Nature’s Metropolis
(New York: Norton, 1991). Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan tell the story of Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin in
Lords of the Levee
(Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2005), and of Mayor Bill Thompson in
Big Bill of Chicago
(Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2005). Richard Lindberg gives glimpses of Chicago at the turn of the century in
Chicago by Gaslight
(Chicago: Academy Chicago, 2005). George Murray describes the Chicago newspaper world in
The Madhouse on Madison Street
(Chicago: Follett, 1965). Dale Kramer wrote on the
Chicago Renaissance
(New York: Appleton-Century, 1966). Karen Abbott described the
Sin in the Second City
(New York: Random House, 2007), as did Jeffrey Adler in
First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Paul Green and Melvin Holli profile the city’s mayoral history in
The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995). Charles Merriam wrote
Chicago: A More Intimate View of Urban Politics
(New York: Macmillan, 1929). James Merriner follows
Grafters and Goo Goos: Corruption and Reform in Chicago
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, 2004). Dick Simpson writes of
Rogues, Rebels and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).

Chicago’s gangsters are ably chronicled in
The Wicked City
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1998) by Curt Johnson and R. Craig Sautter, and by Jonathan Eig in
Get Capone
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010) and Herbert Asbury’s
The Gangs of Chicago
(New York: Knopf, 1940). Joseph Weil, the “Yellow Kid,” tells his story with the help of W. T. Brannon in
Con Man
(New York: Broadway Books, 2004). See also the report of the Chicago City Council Committee on Crime (1915) and
The Illinois Crime Survey
(1929), a report by the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice, as well as Leigh Bienen and Brandon Rottinghaus on homicide in the
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
, vol. 92, nos. 3-4, 2002.

William Tuttle in
Race Riot
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970) and Allan Spear in
Black Chicago
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) describe the African American community in Darrow’s era, as does
The Negro in Chicago
, the report of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1922).

Thomas Pegram examines the impact of
Partisans and Progressives
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992) on Chicago and Illinois, and Richard Schneirov that of
Labor and Urban Politics
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998). John Keiser describes Illinois in the years after the Civil War in
Building for the Centuries
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977). See also the
History of the Illinois State Federation of Labor
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930) by Eugene Staley.

Harriet Taylor Upton takes up
The History of the Western Reserve
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1910). Daniel Walker Howe paints the world of Amirus Darrow’s youth in
What Hath God Wrought
(New York: Oxford, 2007) and H. W. Brands does the same for Clarence Darrow’s era in
American Colossus
(New York: Doubleday, 2010) and
The Reckless Decade
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995). Matthew Josephson wrote delightful accounts of the Gilded Age in
The Robber Barons
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934) and
The Politicos
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938). See also
The Age of Excess
(New York: Macmillan, 1965) by Ray Ginger and Thomas Beer’s
The Mauve Decade
(New York: Knopf, 1926). The impact of the industrial age is portrayed by Robert Wiebe in
The Search for Order, 1877–1920
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), Nell Irvin Painter in
Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919
(New York: Norton, 1987), Alan Trachtenberg in
The Incorporation of America
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), and Thomas Schlereth in
Victorian America
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992).