Clarence Darrow

Lawyer, social reformer, author; born in Kinsman, Ohio. Admitted to the bar in 1878, he began as a small-town Ohio lawyer, but moved to Chicago in 1887. Political involvement with reform-minded Democrats led to a successful civil practice, then to two decades of labor law, ending in 1913. He gained a national reputation defending Eugene V. Debs and other railway union leaders in connection with the 1894 Pullman strike. Later came sensational criminal cases that displayed his eminence as a defense lawyer, especially the Loeb-Leopold kidnap, murder, and ransom case (1924) and the Scopes anti-evolution "monkey trial" (1925) in which he argued against William Jennings Bryan. (This is the case celebrated in Jerome Lawrence's play, Inherit the Wind.) He opposed capital punishment and was a popular public speaker on religious, social, political, scientific, and literary issues. One of his law partners (1903--11) was the poet Edgar Lee Masters. His many books include Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922).