The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1907-09-21
CHARACTER SKETCH Or
CLARENCE S. .0ARR0N|
Great Lawyer Who Defended
Haywood Fought Many
- Battles For Labor. :
He Has Ever Been On the Firing
Line In the Interest Of <
HUMANITY.

no 11t6S GVC1 o0CA vi VuCa IL 40&
Line In the Interest Of
-. Humanity. .,, -"
Twelve years ago, when Eugene V.
Debs was imprisoned as result of
his activities in the great railway.
strike in Chicago, Clarence barrow
became his legal champion. Three
years later he defended Thomas l..
Kidd and two striking woodworkers
who were charged with having ICON
spired," through their union, to In
iure the business" of great lumber
company in Oshkosh, Wis. His argu-
ments, which has: been printed in
phamphlet form and Is pronounced by
no less critic than William Dean
Howells "as interesting as novel"
resulted in the acquittal of his clients.
A more distinctive figure than Oar
rows, says Kellogg Durland, in the
Boston Transcript, has seldom come
out of the west:
he was born in the Western Re-
serve of Ohio. His father was an hon
est man. After qualifying for the
church he gave up the cloth for a
country store that he might feel surer
of what he was doing At 10 young
barrow was teaching school. One
year of college life satisfied him.
Early in his twenties he drifted to
Chicago and studied law. All his life
he has been. a dreamer and happy in
his dreams. He has the strength Of
a man Of vision. AS a lawyer he has
wide reputation, for he has been the
corporation counsel for great rail-
road and the defender of men like
Eugene V. Debs and Kidd in the ia
nous woodworkers' conspiracy case.
Public life has always called him, but
he has mostly been deaf to the call, I
want to make my. living as a lawyer
and devote my leisure to writing sto-
ries and essays he has pleaded al
most peevishly. And I want to write
long novel; His life is best under
stood in his philosophy. The ideas he
gives utterance to today are rooted in
years of his boyhood when his plant
mind was brought in contact with
scenes surrounding an underground
railroad station. His flesh and blood
heroes were Garrison, Kelley, Foster,
PillsburY and other devoted abolition
lists who inspired him with ideals of
liberty and fired him with bitter hat
red toward every form of oppression.
The black mans letters have been
loosed, but he believes there are work
ingmen in this country who are
shackled as truly as were ever the
negroes. barrow offers his life to
these. If he sometimes speaks life
hater of the rich it is only because
of his burning zeal to speak at all.
He calls himself a Tolstoyan. 'Tol-
st6y,' he says, is the first author who
has put the doctrine of non-resistance
on substantial basis Tolstoy IS the
one man to whom barrow has ever
pledged himself. To be sure, it is
Rarrowesque Tolstoyanism, but it
works out an interesting code and
Darrow follows it with amazing con-
sistency. He has ever steadfastly re.
Trained from committing himself to
any movement which partook of the
nature of an ISM"
It was in 1888 that Chicago first be-
gan to ask, "Who is this man Oar.
row." He had delivered a speech in
the Central Music Hall on labor and
taxation, and Henry George had
spoken on the same occasion from the
same platform. Among those who
were deeply impressed by this speech
was Ex-Governor Altgeld, and later he
and Darrow went into partnership
"Altgeld was the first man of import
ance to express any recognition of
the fact that there lives a man of the
name of Clarence S. Darrow," barrow
once remarked. Altgeld believed that
In Clarence Darrow was the making
OF man of destiny. Several years
after the partnership had been formed
barrow went into politics for awhile
and was elected to the state legisla-
ture. Some of his friends wanted to
nominate him for mayor of Chicago.
But he baked. ''The people don't
want me in the mayors CHAIR" he told
them. II am too RADICAL" Mr.. Rur-
land proceeds with his narratives:
indifferent to personal appearances
and conventional trifles of life, he pom
ders and emphasizes the larger is
sues. He is brilliant speaker, quick
at retort, incisive, epigrammatic. Six
days in the week he gives over to the
routine of business, but on Sundays
he tucks loose pages of a favorite lee
ture into an outer coat pocket and
scurr1es off to some obscure place to
preach Tolstoy from the. platform, of
any, church that will open it's doors
to him, or to tell of the rich and deep
humanity Of Robert Burns at a single
tax gathering or at an ethical league.
Wherever men and women will listen
to his utterances on the inherent
worth of every human soul, there he
will 60. I have heard him talk until
long past midnight to a handful of
Jews in an upper room of the Chicago
Ghetto. 1 have sat with a hundred
radical Socialists, Anarchists and po-
litical and social outcasts for two
hours and half when he told the
story of Waslova as drawn in 'Resur-
rection,' but as usual, with as much of
barrow as of Tolstoy.~ I have sat with
half dozen friends through the even
ing and the night. till in the morn
ing listening to him reading Bonnie
Rriov. p1roh, fo1oc mhio1, xvnro -. .>.,