Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell Page B
Authors: John A. Farrell
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candidate; he was prevented from running for president himself. “It is a pity that Gov. Altgeld was not born on American soil,” said the New York Times . “He is their logical candidate, as he is their actual leader.” He and Darrow could only watch as Bryan roused the crowd in the platform debate, his roar reaching to the farthest corners of the Coliseum.
There were two great theories of government, Bryan said. One claimed that “if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below.” But “the Democratic idea,” he said, was “if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
Bryan defined the Democrats as the party of the little guy—the wage earners, small-town shopkeepers, miners, and farmers—and heaped scorn on the merchants of the East. “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world … the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere,” Bryan said, and now he was stepping back from the podium, and raising his arms, as in benediction, “we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then the Coliseum erupted. “Bryan did something to your spinal cord,” Darrow said. It was “the molten expression of pent up wrath against evils conterminous with the government,” said Masters. “Political idealism never had so thorough, so unimpeachable a presentation.” Altgeld held his cards for four ballots, as Bryan slowly picked up strength and other candidates fell away. Finally, on the fifth round of voting, Altgeld announced that Illinois would vote for Bryan; it triggered the cascade that gave him the nomination. It was the unmatched trick of American political history: with a single speech, a baby-faced thirty-six-year-old congressman had seized a presidential nomination, and turned his party in a new direction. “It was the first time in my life and in the life of a generation,” wrote journalist WilliamAllen White, “in which any man large enough to lead a national party had boldly and unashamedly made his cause that of the poor and the oppressed.” 16
B RYAN FACED MANY handicaps as he entered the fall election. He was young and inexperienced. The press was allied against him—the New York Times called him an “irresponsible, unregulated, ignorant, prejudiced, pathetically honest and enthusiastic crank”—and the gold bugs ran their own candidate and split the Democratic vote. Republican bossMark Hanna raised millions of dollars and outspent his foes, twenty to one. “Never were so many fraudulent votes cast,” Carter Harrison Jr. recalled. Every time Hanna ran out of money, the Republicans dispatched another trainload of currency, said Altgeld, and “debauched a continent.”
Bryan barnstormed the country, halting at whistle-stops, shaking hands, giving speeches. But across the Midwest and Northeast, the factory owners told their workers that they would lose their jobs if Bryan was elected. The Republicans made Altgeld an issue, as well.
“For Mr. Bryan we can feel the contemptuous pity always felt for the small man unexpectedly thrust into a big place. But in Mr. Altgeld’s case we see all too clearly the jaws and hide of the wolf,” saidTheodore Roosevelt. “The one plans repudiation with a light heart and a bubbly eloquence, because he lacks intelligence … the other would connive at wholesale murder and would justify it by elaborate and cunning sophistry.”
When the Populists convened in St. Louis that summer, Darrow and Lloyd were there. The great question was whether to align with the Democrats. Lloyd, who hoped that the People’s Party would become an independent, radical organization, feared it would lose its soul. But
There were two great theories of government, Bryan said. One claimed that “if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below.” But “the Democratic idea,” he said, was “if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
Bryan defined the Democrats as the party of the little guy—the wage earners, small-town shopkeepers, miners, and farmers—and heaped scorn on the merchants of the East. “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world … the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere,” Bryan said, and now he was stepping back from the podium, and raising his arms, as in benediction, “we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then the Coliseum erupted. “Bryan did something to your spinal cord,” Darrow said. It was “the molten expression of pent up wrath against evils conterminous with the government,” said Masters. “Political idealism never had so thorough, so unimpeachable a presentation.” Altgeld held his cards for four ballots, as Bryan slowly picked up strength and other candidates fell away. Finally, on the fifth round of voting, Altgeld announced that Illinois would vote for Bryan; it triggered the cascade that gave him the nomination. It was the unmatched trick of American political history: with a single speech, a baby-faced thirty-six-year-old congressman had seized a presidential nomination, and turned his party in a new direction. “It was the first time in my life and in the life of a generation,” wrote journalist WilliamAllen White, “in which any man large enough to lead a national party had boldly and unashamedly made his cause that of the poor and the oppressed.” 16
B RYAN FACED MANY handicaps as he entered the fall election. He was young and inexperienced. The press was allied against him—the New York Times called him an “irresponsible, unregulated, ignorant, prejudiced, pathetically honest and enthusiastic crank”—and the gold bugs ran their own candidate and split the Democratic vote. Republican bossMark Hanna raised millions of dollars and outspent his foes, twenty to one. “Never were so many fraudulent votes cast,” Carter Harrison Jr. recalled. Every time Hanna ran out of money, the Republicans dispatched another trainload of currency, said Altgeld, and “debauched a continent.”
Bryan barnstormed the country, halting at whistle-stops, shaking hands, giving speeches. But across the Midwest and Northeast, the factory owners told their workers that they would lose their jobs if Bryan was elected. The Republicans made Altgeld an issue, as well.
“For Mr. Bryan we can feel the contemptuous pity always felt for the small man unexpectedly thrust into a big place. But in Mr. Altgeld’s case we see all too clearly the jaws and hide of the wolf,” saidTheodore Roosevelt. “The one plans repudiation with a light heart and a bubbly eloquence, because he lacks intelligence … the other would connive at wholesale murder and would justify it by elaborate and cunning sophistry.”
When the Populists convened in St. Louis that summer, Darrow and Lloyd were there. The great question was whether to align with the Democrats. Lloyd, who hoped that the People’s Party would become an independent, radical organization, feared it would lose its soul. But
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