•1920–1924

TO EUGENE V. DEBS • WASHINGTON, D.C. • WEDNESDAY 14 JANUARY 1920

THE NEW WILLARD Jan 14 1920

My Dear Debs,

I am down here to see if I can do a little on this mad crusade against freedom.1 I did not go to the Attorney General on your case. In my frame of mind I couldn’t ask him to do any thing. At the same time I felt that I had no right to talk about individuals, and I knew perfectly well that you would feel the same way. Incidentally I am lead to believe that your case & others will be disposed of when the treaty is signed by U.S. I don’t know. I hope so, but it is no time to bother about individuals—much as I care for you. Any how I want you to know how I feel about this madness, & that nothing can happen which can make me overlook you for long.

With regards & affection

Your friend | Clarence Darrow²

MS: ALS, InTI, Debs Papers.

TO CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 11 JUNE 1920

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN June 11, 1920.

My Dear Mr. Wood:—

Your letter was just received. I have sent the note to Mr. Bryan, so that I know it will reach him. I read it carefully. Of course I approve of it. I have no confidence in Bryan. Anyhow, the note was all right.

I observed your postscript which asked for press seat for you and Sarah.3 Mr. W.W. Marsh⁴ is the Treasurer of the National Committee and he is a close friend of mine and a fine fellow. I suppose he is in California by this time and stopping at the Palace. He was here a week or so ago and is driving through. Anyhow, he told me he would be glad to do anything for any of my friends in San Francisco, so I am enclosing a letter for both you and Sarah and I am sure he will take care of you. In addition to this, he will be thoroughly posted on what is going on and will give you any information you want. He is not a radical. He is just a good fellow and an able man and my friend. He is really Palmer’s⁵ friend, which will not commend him to you, but with him it is largely a question of personal liking and loyalty.

I want you to see him. If it comes in the way for you or a crowd to entertain him, I wish you would. I am sure you will enjoy him.

I am glad you speak as you do of my letter to Reidy in reply to yours.⁶ I really felt that something could be said for Wilson and I tried to say it. I, of course, thoroughly agree with everything you said in your article. At the same time I felt that it was not quite fair to Wilson. Your article was a wonderful piece of workmanship and I admired it greatly. Was sorry that mine fell so far short of yours in this regard.

I have been terribly depressed over the tyranny and injustice that has grown out of the war, but I fancy we had no reason to expect anything else.

I often think of you both and wish I might see you again.

As ever, | Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, CSmH, Wood Papers, WD Box 126 (48). INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. C.E.S. Wood, | 1601 Taylor Street, | San Francisco, | Calif.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • MONDAY 28 JUNE 1920

DARROW, SISSMAN & POPHAM June 28th

Dear Paul

I should have written you long ago but it has been a busy spring and summer and I have been putting it off and then too you are not much of a writer yourself. I got the May report & I thought it very good. Still I am sure we should have a higher price and if the electric ask for more I think we should too. You can afford to let them make their own estimate.

I have been doing well and am now trying the Lloyd & others case.7 We have so far been two months getting a jury & it will take a week or two longer & then a month to try the case so you see I am pretty closely held. I wish you would try to come. Don’t believe you will loose much by leaving for a week or two. Have seen Lilian & the children twice. They are all looking well and seem to be happy. There will be plenty of room for you to stay here such time as you can. Everett is here but stopping at Mr. Dawson’s.⁸ I tried running an automobile & the first day I drove fifty miles without much trouble & then drove down town. Am doing pretty well at it now. I also went up in the flying machine that made the record flight from Omaha to N.Y.⁹ So you see I am pretty lively. I am hoping that the Democrats will nominate McAdoo¹⁰ at San Francisco. He is by far the ablest man in either party. Harding is absolutely nothing but one of the cheepest of cheep politicians. I had a good visit with Doherty also with Gilchrist.¹¹ Tell G. that he is a poor guesser on what the convention would do. Any how let me hear from you & come if you possibly can, and any time you want to.

As Ever | C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1920” appended.

TO FREMONT OLDER • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 13 JULY 1920

DARROW, SISSMAN & POPHAM July 13th

My Dear Fremont

I have been intending to write ever since I got your letter. But I have been working hard against the mob in one of the Syndicalist cases. It took nine weeks to get a jury and I have put off every one, you with the rest. It gives me a thrill to think of seeing you again, really I had been wondering if I ever should. Somehow I once in a while get it into my head that I won’t stick around so very long, and it rather gives relief. I have seen about all I want of it. There is nothing in the scheme. We have always been foolish to think that any thing could be made of a man—except a man. Still I presume we will keep on trying. I noted what you said about J.J.12 but I really don’t know what to think about it. Of course I couldn’t go there without seeing them & I would not want to be insulted—perhaps I would not be, although Walsh was here today and did not seem very reassuring. If I knew they would want to see me I would come, for I would dearly love to see you all. I don’t know how you could find out any more than you have. I don’t want them to think that I am anxious to be invited. Of course something will need to be done for J.J. to get his indictments dismissed between now & next May and I believe I might help. I feel that you & Lem¹³ could do more for him than any one else, and then Frank Walsh thinks that his friend in L.A. would help. I don’t know what to think about it all and I want to come. I don’t want them or any one else to think that I am worried for I am not. I would never think of it except for the nightmare that I went through, and still one thing is about as good as an other in this world. I don’t know whether you have any reason to go there again & if you did whether any thing more would come of it. You necessarily must handle it very gingerly. With it all I would like to help them. I know as well as any one else can how much I did for them and at what a sacrifice, but these things don’t count. If I came it would be around the middle of August probably a little later. How I would like an other ride with you down the Santa Clara Valley.

Ever your friend | Darrow

MS: ALS, CU-BANC, Older Papers, Box 1. DATE: letterhead and reference to “Syndicalist cases.”

TO MARY FIELD PARTON • CHICAGO • THURSDAY 25 NOVEMBER 1920

140 NORTH DEARBORN STREET Thanksgiving day

Dear Mary

I came down this morning to write you a letter but I don’t know as there is anything to say. I got yours yesterday and it was like all of them, the best any one ever wrote. Why don’t you pick out a few people and subjects & write into the air and have them published. No one can do it like you and they would make a great hit. I read it to Frank Wolfe who was crazy about it and said what a shame it was that you didn’t write. He said that he couldn’t write but made a living out of it while you could beat any one, & did nothing. Go on and do it.

I, like you, find nothing new from day to day. My office is filled all the time mainly by poor clients in trouble, people who have got money against the rules of the game & are trying to stay out of jail. People in all sorts of troubles: their wives crying & begging me to help as if I could do any thing if I only tried: how I wish I could but I can’t. Lord what an awful mad house the world is, and it is Thanksgiving day and all the damn fools in the world are giving thanks that they are alive. Well I am not.

Sunday I am to debate with Starr14 on the question is civilization a failure. It ought to be easy to show. How any one can think any thing else I can’t conceive. I don’t know why I do these things. I never convert any one and don’t want to. I am getting more and more convinced that if any one has any dope they ought to keep it. The only trouble is they insist that we shall take their dope or go without. Chicago is now on a mad hunt for criminals, the big ones are after the little ones as usual except worse. People are getting more cruel all the time more insistent that they shall have their way. I wish I was either younger or older. If I was younger I would go to the South Seas or somewhere east of Suez. If I were older I shouldn’t care so much. Any how it wouldn’t have the same personal meaning for me. I have grown quite convinced that the happiest time of the human race was in Barbarism and likewise convinced that we are going back to it, although I presume I shall not be able to go. I have been thinking of the civilized cattel & hogs & horses. Take a Berkshire hog for instance. All fat. It can hardly waddel. Stays in its pen and drinks swill. All the good people think that this shows that civilization has improved the hog. Still turn out a Berkshire to run wild in competition with one of the primitive Razor backs and which would win. There can’t be a doubt the Berkshire would die. Of course the men have only considered hogs from the standpoint of their use to men: they have not thought of it from the standpoint of hogs. The human race are going the same way. We are getting so civilized that we can’t live. The old time savage chased the game & digested its food. We have it brought to us and take pills. The civilized man can’t live. The race is only replenished by the primitive people. Nature is boss and when we get too far away she just snuffs us out. I am for the snuffing. Still it won’t be snuffed out. We will just go over the same old ground that civilization has traveled over before. I have no doubt but what the human race is going back, neither have I any regrets. All we need to do is to teach the good women birth control & we will get rid of them & their kind, and repopulate the world with those who don’t know any thing about birth control; in fact don’t know what causes birth. I see that a campaign has been started to bring back the New England Sunday laws to stop every thing that people want to do. I have been thinking of the woman’s party made of Radical women who wanted the ballot. Now they have it and the great mass of conservative women are used by the preachers to suppress life. It would be different if the Y.W.C.A. had done it; but the radical women did it and now they will get theirs; the only pleasure I have out of it is that I told them so. Steffens is to be here next month. Suppose he will go from here to California speaking on the way; he and I are to debate in [x] Dec 19th. We do it to get money for the Socialists, so they can help suppress people. When he gets out there perhaps he may fix it so I can come. I would really like to come, would like to see you and all the rest. Gee Mary you are about the only one that knows any thing;—you and I. But see what advantage you have had. I presume when the Soviets get to boss the world they will snuff out what little freedom is left. The fact is I am getting afraid of everyone who has convictions. When one loves a theory more than they do human beings they are dangerous. I hope I won’t believe in any theories again. I was interested in the things you are doing. In your rosy faced lady with five children, all older than the mother, but what does it prove? The children will not be rosy faced, will not lure men; will understand birth control, will die. The rosy faced women who grade 10 mentally will keep on populating the world. It would be all right if the wise ones could destroy life, but they can’t. There will be some left with low intellect & big busts, and they will breed. Which kind are the best and what are the Eugenists doing any how. Nature is always working for the normall which are the low grade intellectually. They have no imagination. The present moment is all there is to life with them, and so they enjoy the process of having children & only suffer for a short time. This is the law of life and it can’t be changed. It is interesting to study it for people like us who get interest from ideas; but all their fads prove the opposite from the conclusions that they reach. Write often. You always have something to say & can say it. I will try to do better in the future for I do miss you.

Your friend always | Clarence

MS: ALS, ICN, Parton-Darrow Papers, Box 1, Folder 8. ENVELOPE ADDRESS: Mrs. Mary Field Parton | 184 Edgewood Av. | San Francisco | Cal. POSTMARK: Chicago 26 November 1920.

TO MAX SEHAM • CHICAGO • MONDAY 6 DECEMBER 1920

December 6, 1920.

My dear Doctor:

I remember our conversation at Mr. Leonard’s15 and am glad to write to you.

The best article I ever saw on the subject was written by Alfred Russell Wallace, in a volume published more than twenty years ago. I think its title is “Some Great Illusions” or something of that sort.16 I believe you can find it. It is a very thorough article and it seems to me quite conclusive on the question.

There is an excellent article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I have not examined the latest edition, but it was in the former edition, which you can easily find. This does not take sides, but it shows plainly that most of the things claimed for vaccination are uncertain, if not untrue. I have taken pains to find out what there is on the other side, both by reading books and talking to physicians, and I am surprised to see how little the physicians really know about the subject and also how little literature there is on their side of the question.

In the first place, I never yet found a physician who could tell me just what takes place in the blood or any other part of the human system, as a result of vaccination. If they could tell this, it might throw some light on the further question, assuming that it does something toward making one immune from smallpox, how does it effect other diseases? We are getting so much of this vaccination business on different diseases, that it is hard to tell what will become of the human system after they get through with it. Nature herself is some artist in the way of making one immune. She tempers man through successive generations to the place where they live and makes them more or less immune from the things that are most liable to kill them. The human system, through time, has been adapted by nature to the condition of life of the individual. Some people live in countries where miasma is prevalent, and the native inhabitants are not bothered with it as a stranger would be who moves into that part of the country. I suppose a vaccine could be found for five or six of the diseases which cause most of the deaths of mankind. For instance—tuberculosis, cancer, pneumonia, diphtheria and typhoid fever. Suppose this vaccine is given and it really makes the man immune from any of these diseases, would he then live forever, or would he die in operation. I am inclined to think he would die. He at least would probably fall a victim to something else that otherwise he would not have had.

Alfred Russell Wallace in this book says that the human system is something like a garden. You may destroy all the pigweed in the garden, but some other weed would grow up to take its place. We who have lived in the country, know this is the truth.

The fact is, the human system is a stone house for germs of all sort and I have no idea that the system can get rid of all germs and stay rid of them. Every position that the believers of vaccination have taken has been found tenable. It was first claimed that it made one immune forever, but cases of smallpox were found after vaccination. It was then claimed that it was good for fifteen years, then for ten, then for seven and now they think that one should be vaccinated every time it enters their head. Under modern systems of sanitation, smallpox is a matter of very little consequence. Very few people die of it and to say that one in health shall introduce something into his system, where the chances are not more than one in a thousand that he would ever have smallpox, it seems to me to be absurd and probably very injurious.

Anyhow, Wallace has collected a vast amount of facts and I am sure the book will interest you.

With kind regards, I am,

Very truly yours, | (signed) Clarence Darrow

MS: TT, DLC-MSS, Darrow Papers. PLACE: no reason to doubt Chicago. INSIDE ADDRESS: Dr. Max Seham, | 538 LaSalle Building, | Minneapolis, Minnesota.

TO FREMONT OLDER • CHICAGO • SATURDAY 25 DECEMBER 1920

140 NORTH DEARBORN STREET Dec 25th

Dear Fremont

I am a very poor letter writer as you already know, but today being Christ’s birth day and not going to the office I am writing a few letters. I gave no presents to any one and wished no one a Merry Christmas. This is one kind of bunk I cut out long ago. I am as fast as possible cutting out all bunk, so if I live a few years longer (as I fear I shall) there will be nothing left in life. I am still working hard though I don’t know why except habit, a habit that at my age is hard to break. What I should do is to take the small amount I have and go to the South Seas and wait, but I presume I shan’t do this. Of course I get some consolation and satisfaction from my friends and I have gathered around me a good many, (more probably than I deserve) and we spend some rather pleasant evenings together. Then too I read some, but hardly ever find any thing really new, only more or less new ways of saying old things. Chicago is now in the throes of a fierce, brutal, unthinking, and foolish fight with criminals. That is one class of them is trying to terrorize an other. We are having a good many shootings by gun men, mostly boys, and the good people are hanging indiscriminately. Last week we hanged a boy eighteen years old; which should have terrorized every one into virtue but which hasn’t done it.17 Of course no one studies the causes of things or tries to cure the cause and I presume no one ever will. It does not seem to occur to them that the slaughter of millions in the last four years could have any thing to do with jarring people loose from their old mores, but it has jarred the public loose as well, for they too like murder, if it is only the right ones. I got a little bit interested in politics & made a few speeches for Cox.18 Don’t know exactly why except on account of Harding. The election added its evidence of proof of the wonderful intellect of man, and also confirmed my prophesy of the censuring effect of woman’s suffrage. In Chicago where they take the votes of men & women and put them in separate boxes (no doubt for moral purposes) I figured out that 48% of the prohibition vote was women, 39% of the Republican vote was women, 30% of the Democratic vote women, 25% of the Socialist women, about 20% of the Farmer labor vote women. Those who thought that the women’s vote would help radicalism or progressive ideas ought to know, but probably never will. I can see nothing in voting but generally go to the polls as a matter of habit. For amusement I now & then have a debate in which I take the pessimistic side—I really can see no other. The only optimistic thing that I can see is death; but surely this is a very permanent hope, and one that for all is soon reached. A week ago I debated with Steffens on Does the Russian Revolution show there is permanent progress in the world. I of course said “no.” It was not really a debate. He made his speeches for Russia & I said what of it. Steffens goes west in Feby & will be in California early in March. How I wish I could be there with him. We could at least have some companionable times together. I hear nothing more about the McNamaras & wonder sometimes what will happen when JJ gets out. You will probably keep an eye on it & do anything that needs to be done if it can be. I am not seriously worrying about it all. I did the best I could in what the world would class as an unselfish way & that is all there is to it, and then I can really see how any thing could befall. It looks as if there was a determined fight on the Unions and I am afraid that big business is making some progress in it. 100% American is a good camaflage for a scoundrel, and it does seem as if all idealism and aspiration for freedom is dead. It is hard to realize that the phisical laws control much the same as blind matter, and that action and reaction are equal; but I think they are absolutely equal. We have been through four years of drunkenness and now comes the depression of the morning after. I am very much disappointed that I have not been able to see you this year, but I shall not let an other year pass without it, we are both getting too old. My health in the main is pretty good but I find myself out of geer quite often and not coming back as I once did. I don’t suppose I could stand as hard a jolt as I once could & the truth is I don’t want to. Of course I would be sorry to have you think that all of this means self pitty. I believe I have conquered this form of egoism, and then when I look things over as an intellectual process I am quite sure I have had as much as any one else, and would not change places with those who seem to have had the most. I am always glad to hear from you. One of your letters always gives me a thrill. Perhaps it is unmanly to say it but my acquaintance with you has been enough to compensate me for any pain I have had in the years I have known you.

Ever your friend | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, CU-BANC, Older Papers, Box 1. DATE: “1920” appended and reference to speeches for Cox.

TO CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 1921

140 NORTH DEARBORN STREET Jan 18th

My Dear Mr. Wood

I received the book and have acknowledged it and thanked Mr Nash for sending.19 It is a beautiful peace of work & I prize it highly and thank you for having it sent. I will mail you some stuff tomorrow. Don’t know how good it is or how much you will care for them. They are stenographic copies of debates &c and really not done well enough to publish. I would have sent some things before if I had known your address. I wish I might see you once in a while. I hear that Sarah is coming this way & hope I can see her. I am glad to see that the public is slowly finding out that you are a poet and I hope this is some pleasure to you. I don’t know any thing that brings much more satisfaction than turning out some work you like to do. So far my life does not change a great deal. I still live in Court & always hope to stop & never find the place. In the natural course of events I will soon find the place.

Ever with regards and best wishes

Your friend | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, CSmH, Wood Papers, WD Box 126 (47). DATE: reference to Nash’s book.

TO SINCLAIR LEWIS • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN Feby 9th

Dear Mr. Lewis

I got your address from Mr. Ben Huebsch.²⁰ Now and then some D—n fellow writes a book that costs me about $100. You are the last. When I get the right book I feel I must send it to my friends, so you see I like the book about $100 worth. Really you have done a wonderful job. I don’t want to over-do my praise, but I do wish I could have done it. But I couldn’t & no one else could. I want to write a page review mostly quotations if one of the Chicago papers will take it. If not I will get some one to.²¹ I wonder if I ever met you.²² I don’t remember that I have but wish I might. The book was so popular I didn’t read it for a long time. I am a confirmed pessimist & I think the people have no brains. Now I must either revise my opinions as to the people or give up the idea that I am a judge of litterature. I don’t like to do the latter. If you are ever this way I wish you would let me look at you. Still perhaps I should leave it entirely with the book. Any how I put you down in the top shelf of litterary men. I am very thankful that you did the job & wonder if you can ever do an other.

Sincerely Yours | Clarence Darrow

Am enclosing a part of a letter from a very clever woman to whom I sent a copy.23

D.

MS: ALS, CtY-BR, Lewis Papers, Box 46, Folder 479. DATE: Main Street was published in October 1920 and other letters confirm that Darrow had read the book by early 1921.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • SUNDAY 20 FEBRUARY 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN Feby 20th

Dear Paul

You probably haven’t seen me yet. I am like your Grand father: “next week.” I have refused to make any Sunday speaking engagements through March & the last tour in Feby thinking I could get away but so far haven’t had a chance. Am now in the trial of a case which will take two weeks more & shall then try again to come.²⁴ Any how shall take the first chance.

We are obliged to move this spring as the building is to be cut up into small apartments & I don’t think I shall take an other place before fall and am thinking of my books. How would you like to have me send the following to you

Fine edition Oliver Wendel Holmes—14 vol.

Balzac—(Gebbie edition) about 30 vol.

Thackrey—(limited edition) about 35 vol.

R.L. Stevenson—The old edition—26 vol.

Ben Franklin—(old edition) 10 vol.

Stoddard’s Lectures 10 vol.

Jefferson—10 vol.

De Musset—(Limited edition) 10 vol.

Then there are 42 vol. Voltaire—good edition. I can sell them for about $1 per vol. They would cost probably $3 now. I shall never use them & I can sell or send to you whichever you wish. Will also put in some other things that will interest you. You might write me about it. If there are any others you want let me know.25

Hastily | C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: letterhead and reference to trial.

TO DUNCAN C. MILNER • GREELEY, COLORADO • WEDNESDAY 23 MARCH 1921

THE GREELEY GAS & FUEL CO. March 23rd.

My Dear Mr. Milner

I am here for a few days with my son and grand children and your letter was forwarded and just received. I am very glad that you thought of me. I have read your sermon and find it good and kindly like yourself.²⁶ Of course I can not see all things as you do, but I know and admire & so far as I can try to practice your spirit. I am glad that you grow more charitable to others as you grow old—that you don’t bar any out. The longer I live the more I try to understand, that all are the product of their heredity and environment and that no one has the right to judge. I am quite sure that there is no one in the world to whom I bear ill will or who I would try to injure & who I would not really like to help. But I didn’t mean to brag so much about myself. Ever since I knew you I have loved you and believed in you & have never thought about any difference in any views that we might hold. I hope I can see you when we both return to Chicago.

Ever with the warmest personal regards,

Your friend Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, IU-HS, Milner Papers. DATE: letterhead, Darrow’s presence in Colorado in March, and the reference to a sermon.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • MONDAY 18 APRIL 1921

DARROW & SISSMAN April 18th

Dear Paul

I have not heard from you since my return, nor have I written so I guess we are even. I have today paid the bank the balance I owe them & sent Noyes & Jackson $500 on acct. Am just now in the trial of a case that will last a month.27 Just returned from St Paul where I made a talk yesterday, raking in $150.²⁸ We are all well, & I don’t know any thing new to report. Am hoping you are getting busy on coal rate. It looks as if there would be a general reduction of freight rates soon, but ours is out of line.

Regards to all | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: reference to “talk” in St. Paul.

TO MARY FIELD PARTON • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 10 JUNE 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN June 10th

Dear Mary

When I got your letter I felt sure that I would answer it at once but I haven’t. Probably I never will do anything on time. I have been busy at the same game, trying cases here. Then I went down to a small town in Indiana to defend four young fellows who tried to get money out of a bank without having deposited any. They took revolvers & masks &c and one citizen was killed in the affray. They were indicted for murder & I worked 10 days to save their lives—nothing else—and the jury did it much to the regret of the whole community. The court house was packed the whole time. I had not seen any thing of the sort since I was a youth.²⁹ Still it was tough on me. The fact is Mary I have not been well for two months—my digestion is racing the devil with me, and I have been taking it as easy as I could and am going away to a country place in Wisconsin for two months to try to get well (why in hell should I). If the spirit moves me I will write a book while I am gone. So far as I can make plans I am not going to work so hard any more, and I am going out to California for a while this winter. Tomorrow I am going up to Wisconsin to look at a place where I hope to spend the summer and am just rushing this off before I go. When I get back will send you a letter at least twice as long as this.

Ever | C.S.D.

MS: TLS, ICN, Parton-Darrow Papers, Box 1, Folder 8. DATE: “1929” is appended but the letterhead and reference to the Indiana case places this in 1921.

TO JOSEPH LEWIS • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 21 JUNE 1921

DARROW & SISSMAN June 21st

Dear Mr. Lewis

Sometime ago I received a copy of your little book “The tyranny of god.”30 I just read it. The book is well done. It is a very clear statement of the question, bold & true, beyond dispute. Of course it seems foolish that people should write books to prove that a man is not living when he is dead. That you could take a live fly and put it in the fire and the fly would still live. But men cling to these delusions in spite of facts. I am quite sure that reason has nothing to do with beliefs & next to nothing to do with conduct, perhaps failing to recognize this fact is the fundamental mistake of all “rationalists.” I am not sure that your book will convert any one or that the world would be any happier if it converted every one, or that it makes any substantial difference whether men are happy or not, or whether any thing makes any difference. But I am glad you wrote it & it is as plain & true as the multiplication table, which does not mean that any one will believe it. I am glad too that it is well printed. If you will send me your address I will send you a few things of mine more or less along the same line. And if you live in N.Y. will try to hunt you up sometime when I am there. With thanks to you for writing the book and to the company for sending it I am

Very truly yours | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, IEN, Leopold-Loeb Collection, Box 39, Folder 26. DATE: letterhead and publication of The Tyranny of God.

TO PAUL DARROW • FISH CREEK, WISCONSIN • TUESDAY 19 JULY 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN July 19th

Dear Paul

I got your letter the other day telling your gross for June. I am glad to see it growing. Hope you will get a freight reduction but I know the roads never do any more than they are obliged to do. I feel as if we ought not to wait any longer than this fall, we should be making more money and you should not be working so hard. Your time is worth too much to spend it on the things clerks can do. I would like to go to Greece; Italy; Spain; Egypt & Constantinople this winter, but I don’t like to leave business for three or four months at that time of year until I feel that the business out there is in such shape that it will keep on improving and with a good fair income in sight say at least 1,000 per month. Of course I don’t want to hurry you but I really think we should face the situation & do the best possible about it. I have been here a week and hope to stay until the middle of September if possible.31 Am gradually getting better. We have a house & Fay Lewis & Mr. & Mrs. Eldridge³²; backers from Rockford are with us. It is a very beautiful country. I am writing a book on Criminology. Have made a good start & will have it done subject to revision by the first of Sept. About 80,000 or 100,000 words.³³ Ask Jessie why she didn’t copy The Hen with One Chicken. She mustn’t grow up like her Grand father & great grand father & put things off. Tell her I want it. You can write directly here.

Fish Creek—Door Co.—Wisconsin

C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1921” appended and supported by reference to criminology book.

TO MARY FIELD PARTON • FISH CREEK, WISCONSIN • THURSDAY 25 AUGUST 1921

Fish Creek—Wisconsin | Aug 25

Dear Mary

Your letter duly arrived yesterday and made my conscience (what is left of it) prick me for my indolence in not writing. I have been here for two months, loafing, driving a machine, writing and vegetating. It is a very beautiful country tucked in between Lake Michigan and Green Bay, cut up with hills and promontories and covered with woods. The people have not really discovered it so thoroughly that the rich have driven all comfort and simplicity away, but they are finding it and getting the best places, and fencing them away from the poor. Still it is a beautiful spot and I wish you could see it which you can’t. I have been working on a book on Criminology. Have written about 60,000 words, a damn lot of words, and am nursing it. Don’t know what it will look like or who will print it but there is some good stuff in it. One of my chief reasons in coming here was my health. The truth is I have not been well for about five months. Don’t know yet just what it is but some lack of elimination is depositing some poison in my system. It shows mainly by indigestion &c. I didn’t know but this would cure me but it hasn’t. So when I go back will find out just what it is and possibly some cutting will need to be done; guess not much. You will probably still know me if at all. Any how it doesn’t worry me any. I really believe that now nothing would seriously worry me. I am so sure that there is nothing in it all—and then I have so nearly finished the foolishness—but this isn’t very serious. I shall leave here the 6th of Sept. and go back to work & to the Drs. and the old grind of five little mosquito bites that I have got used to and I will surely write you as soon as I get a more definite line on myself. You said you were going to give up your job & write. You should have done that long ago and you should do it now. Nobody can write like you. No one feels so much & knows so well and can do it. So do it. I want to see it, some of it in print, before Jesus calls me home.

Ever with love | Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, ICN, Parton-Darrow Papers, Box 1, Folder 8. DATE: “1921” appended and supported by reference to book on criminology.

TO ANNA SCHERFF TZITLONOK • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN September 23, 1921.

My Dear Mrs. Tzitlonok:—

I received the book “The Children of The Universe” and I have read it.34 I have been away on a long vacation and did not get it until last week, which is the reason I have not written sooner. Of course, I like this book, but I have no idea as to whether it would sell. My guess would be that it would not. I doubt whether it is a proper subject for a play and do not know of any form in which science and sense can be made attractive to the world made up of fools. Neither am I sure that the book is true. Am inclined to think it is not. It makes too much of healthy reason. There is no such thing. There is not even reason, let alone healthy reason.

As a matter of strict science, I am convinced that the brain is about the last organ to develop and the least use in life. It has almost nothing to do with life or action. If it did, the human race would have been dead long ago, which would have been a very good thing.

I am also convinced that the book is not true in another regard. It assumes that intelligence and reason tend to happiness. I am satisfied that they do not. The intelligent person is less happy then the fool. The truth is, nature did not make people to be happy, but just out of a whim she insists on preserving life and for that reason takes little account of the brain.

The misery of life is not caused by superstition or ignorance, but it is instinct in life itself and cannot be cured. The only amelioration to living, is dope in some form—religious, political or physical. Some take it in Catholicism, some in Methodism, some in Christian Science, some in Socialism, some in Single Tax. The brain that will receive this dope is lucky, but not strong. With some of us, the only dope that ever works is some form of opium and this is carefully guarded from those who need it most. This may sound like a joke, but I am satisfied that it is true; but nobody can live on the fact.

However, the book is good in the sense that anything is good. That helps to destroy superstition. At least, it meets my emotional nature and I would like to see it sell.

I am enclosing the price of the book, not because you expect it, but because I printed books that way myself and I know they do not sell.

I wish I might see you and your husband. I am going to be in New York Monday next and possibly Tuesday at the Prince George. If you get a chance to be that way, will be glad to see you.

Very truly yours, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, WHi, Tzitlonok Papers. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mrs. Anna Scherff Tzitlonok, | 137 Bay 25th St., | Bath Beach, | Brooklyn, N.Y.

TO FRANK WALSH • CHICAGO • SATURDAY 8 OCTOBER 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN October 8th, 1921.

Dear Frank:—

I was very glad to get your letter this morning and glad to know that you are back in America.35 Somehow I like it better when you are here. I was down in New York the day before you arrived and would have stayed and waited for the boat, but I knew there would be so many shouting Irishmen around you, that I would not have any chance, so I went on my way.

I see you have got me down for an A.P.A. and a lover of England.³⁶ When I do anything in politics here that does not agree with some of the Irish, they always put me down that way, but I do not know why, for in spite of their damned imperfections—perhaps on account of them—I have always been strong for the Irish. They are an emotional, sympathetic, law hating bunch and all this appeals to me. I would be glad to see Ireland get Home Rule, which I think they are going to get. If they get it and both sides behave themselves, which they will not, they would be in good shape. I am quite sure that Ireland is better off as a part of the British Empire, but they do not know it and perhaps never will. Any how, I like to see a row and they are always good at stirring up a row.

I am glad to see that you have got over your delusion of prohibition. I do not know whether you have begun drinking, but your size and weight would indicate it. This is the best kind of dope I know of, so long as I cannot take religious dope.

I would not blame you if you went to Ireland to live. Anywhere is better than America. They are so damned pharisaical and good, that if I was not too old to move and any other country would have me, I would go on the first ship.

Am glad to hear what you say about the Cole estate and I am inclined to think we will win.37 I will read the briefs in this case, not because I like to read a fool brief, much less write one, but I am very much interested personally in the outcome.

The next time I am down I will see if I can get hold of Daugherty.³⁸ I want to do it and I want you to get in touch with him. Glad to see you get into politics and I do not know but what it is as good to be with the Tammany bunch as any other.

By the way, I am interested in a case here where the City of Chicago has forbidden the sale of the Ford papers on the streets on account of their malicious attacks on the Jews.³⁹ In this I am helping the City and have been reading some of Ford’s truck against the Jews. They are bad enough, but his stories are slightly exaggerated. For instance, one of the last numbers contained a story showing how the Jews had debauched Tammany Hall. I remarked to a friend of mine that the charge of the Jews debauching Tammany Hall would be about like charging a fifteen year old boy with debauching the madam of a pleasure house. You having lived in Kansas City in the good old days would know what I mean.

I am to be in New York on November 27th to debate with Scott Nearing40 on one of my favorite topics involving a grouch against the world. Do you want to be chairman? We got to do something to get out a crowd and I think this would help. If you do, I will tell them you must be chairman. I may be there before, but I am not certain.⁴¹

With all good wishes,

Your A.P.A. friend, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: TLS, NN, Walsh Papers, Box 10. INSIDE ADDRESS: Hon. Frank P. Walsh, | Woolworth Building, | New York City, N.Y.

TO NEGLEY D. COCHRAN • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 14 OCTOBER 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN October 14, 1921.

Dear Neg:—

Am much obliged for your letter with the enclosure from Daugherty.⁴²

I was down to Washington a week or ten days ago in reference to the pardon of St. John and it seems that all they need is a little more urging in order to get him released. You will remember St. John.⁴³ He was that brick of a fellow that visited you at your booze parlor in the Sherman House one day, on his road to Leavenworth. You remember we talked about getting him out after he got in. He has been there altogether about two years and really for nothing. He was tried with one hundred others, the I.W.W. bunch. He was one of the original organizers and he was its first President, but had severed all connection with the organization more than two years before anything happened upon which he was indicted. He went because the rest went. He is probably like you and me—got over his illusions that he could do much good and had embarked in the laudable business of getting money, and in that way was engaged in mining where he had got a claim that he thought he would make money out of. He still thinks so, if he was not so far away as Leavenworth.

There is really no evidence of any substantial sort against him. He wrote a letter or two in which he said that he would be willing to give any help he could in reference to finding out spotters in the mine where he lived, but this had no reference to anything that was charged in the indictment.

I am sending you a copy of the brief, which is very short and which states all there is in the case.

When I was down there, Mr. Daugherty was away. I went to see his First Assistant, Mr. Goff,44 who seemed to know a great deal about the case and was rather favorably impressed with the matter. From there I went to the Pardon Attorney on the same floor and had a long conference with him. I have the feeling that he thinks St. John has been there long enough, but he did not say so. The custom is for the Pardon Attorney to go over the matter and report the facts to the Attorney General.

I think a little urging to the Attorney General or Mr. Goff to bring the papers out of the Pardon Office will result in at least a parole and I am darned anxious to have it done.

While you are there, will you see what you can do. I will probably have some one from New York call and see you and if you have time, you might write me where you will be in Washington and if possible, I may come down. Will if I can.

Forgot to thank you for the books you sent to Fish Creek. “The Mirrors of Washington” is a peach.⁴⁵ I have read it many times, especially the one about our noble President. I have had a good deal of fun reading it to my friends. Wish I knew who wrote it. I am inclined to think that it was not Samuel Blythe.⁴⁶ If you get any line on it, let me know.

I often think of the days at Fish Creek and the good times we had and wish we could get together again soon.

While you are in Washington, I wish you could get General Sherwood to send me a copy of that magnificent speech he made in Congress where he compared the Civil War with the War in Europe.47 The part that was carried by the Associated Press was one of the best things I ever saw. Incidentally, remember me kindly to both Mr. Sherwood and his wife.⁴⁸

As ever, | Your friend, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: TLS, OT, Cochran Papers.

TO NEGLEY D. COCHRAN • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 27 DECEMBER 1921

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN Dec. 27

Dear Neg

Sorry, but I expect to go the P.M. of the 28th to see Paul. I would put it off but I only have a few days. Too D—n bad. Call up Ruby & Dwight & May.⁴⁹ They will all be glad to see you & get you a drink. I wish I could go with you & E.W.⁵⁰ It would be better than going to Europe, but I am intending to sail Jan 21st for two months. If it doesn’t go I will be glad to go to Florida. I am glad you are going to let up so am I. Probably we can loaf together for a part of the time that’s left. We can get a place in an Old Man’s home for 500 or same price in an Old Lady’s home.

Ever | Darrow

MS: ALS, OT, Cochran Papers. DATE: letterhead and reference to trip to Europe.

TO FREMONT OLDER • PARIS, FRANCE • WEDNESDAY 22 MARCH 1922

Paris | March 22d.

Dear Fremont

Ever since I left America I have intended to write you but have been working pretty hard—sight seeing &c. I sailed from N.Y. the 21st of Jan. and have done Italy, been to Cairo & have seen the Pyramids, the Sphynx, the Nile, the desert &c &c and been to Jerusalem and shall be back home by April 5th. So you see I have thoroughly done three continents, leaving nothing more to do but S America & Australia before I die. Still I am not anxious to wait for the other two continents. Think I have had enough of the game. Rome did not impress me. There are some ruins of past splendor, considerable new in the way of buildings and art, plenty of Religious Junk, but still I left without any desire to return. I lingered longer in Naples with its wonderful view over the bay with Vesuvius on the other side. The view is very fine, some like your own Golden gate. After all nature appeals to me most where man leaves it alone. The ragged people—the beggars, the religious bunk and all that defaces it makes you weary if not sad. The Nile is interesting & beautiful. The Pyramids & Sphynx, not much. The people a motley throng of all the nations on earth are an ever interesting picture. One gets an idea of what we have called the “backward” people. The Arabs from the desert & the Turks &c. can beat the Jews out of their eye teeth in trade. We westerners haven’t a chance with them. They are industrious, alert—smart. They know all our tricks and many more. Egypt is farmed to the last foot of land. Our farmers can teach them nothing, either in raising or selling. The idea that has been created of their backward and primitive ways is bunk. An American farmer could not live beside them. They are too smart & too industrious. There is more evidence of prosperity & push in Egypt than I saw in Europe.

I went to Jerusalem too. This was different from the Jerusalem I expected to see. Of course all the Religious junk was there, but no one seemed to notice it, except a few of us ignorant civilized people. With all that has been done to convert the benighted heathen, nine tenths are still Muhammedans & Jews, the latter being about 10% of the whole population. The child of the [x] is the man. There he is wide awake smart and he or she breeds. The panorama in the streets is most interesting with its people of all races in all kinds of costumes. Its camels, donkeys and goats. The place is barren windy and a desert, but they know what they are doing & neither the Christian or the Jew is a match for the Arab. Zionism is a foolish dream, where it isn’t a fake. In the main it is useful to help Jews get offices in America, but they have as much chance [to] control Palestine as the Socialists have to control America. One is impressed with the age of it all, with the fact that man has not changed and can not change. That he is as important as the fly & no more so, that he is a fool to take himself so seriously. I wish you could have been with me. Our moods would have fitted the surroundings. We have been disillusioned, but all of this old stuff, the march of generations from birth to death makes it somehow more real, and helps put you where you belong. What difference whether you manage to live until next week or not. How I would like to see you once more. I presume you have the same struggles as the rest of us, but you always impress me as one who knows the vanity and futility of it all and who has helped me to know it better than any one else.

Always your friend | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, CU-BANC, Older Papers, Box 1. DATE: Reference to trip and an unpublished letter to Paul Darrow on same day with year appended.

TO BENJAMIN B. LINDSEY • CHICAGO • THURSDAY 4 MAY 1922

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN May 4th, 1922.

My Dear Judge Lindsey:—

Your letter of May 2nd is received.51 I know John R. Randolph, if that is his name. I do not suppose even he remembers what his name is, and I likewise know his wife. I think you know me well enough to know that I will be very careful not to do an injustice to anyone who might suffer on account of it.

Randolph was in the penitentiary in Missouri, if I recall it, for burglary. His wife and his wife’s mother whom I have known for many years, were instrumental in getting him out.⁵² He then married the young woman. Her mother later came to see me because she could not get track of the daughter. I looked him up and found the evidence to show that he was a professional burglar. I advised her mother that he would turn up sooner or later to see the outcome of things. Not long after that, early in December last, the wife came to me in great trouble because her husband had been arrested and was in the lock-up for burglary. I told her that there was nothing that could be done for him and that she ought to get a divorce and get it at once. There were many charges against him here at the time and there was no sort of question about his profession, but she succeeded in getting bail for him and they came to my office, together. I told him what I had told her, that it would be impossible for him to change and that if he really cared anything about his wife he should leave her. He said if he ever got into trouble again he would. I urged him to do it at the time but of course he did not. I am not certain what was done with the cases here in Chicago. The chances are there were some bonds put up and he went somewhere else to ply his trade. If he is released in Denver, we will hear of him in some other State. I say all this without the slightest feeling against him. I am sorry for him, but it is out of the question for him to change. If he were sixty years old and somebody would take care of him, he might not have ambition enough to engage in business any further, or if there should be such a change in society that he would get as much as I do in a safer trade, he would follow that, but with society as it is, he never can do anything else.

He seems to me to be a nice fellow and under other environment in his early life, might have been a good respectable hod carrier, getting $50.00 a week and being satisfied, but he is too ambitious to hold any job that is recognized by society, with the attainments he has. Of course there is no other place for him than prison, although I wish there was.

His wife is all right. She comes of a good family, has been in newspaper work; has written some good short stories. She has ability and is a fine person. Of course she is not guilty of any crime. I am certain of it. It may be that any wife of the right sort would get remotely implicated with something the husband did, if the husband was this sort and she most certainly will if she sticks to him, but everything ought to be done that is possible to help her to leave her husband. I told her this when she was here and I told it to her in his presence, with the best intentions to both of them. If he had the right kind of feeling, he would tell her the same. He has absolutely no business to have a wife.

I am willing to do anything I possibly can to help her in her difficulty and if there is any danger of her suffering any through this, let me know and I will see that anything that I can do is done.

You are at perfect liberty to show her this letter and to show it to her husband. She has no chance whatever unless she quits him.53

I expect to be out your way this summer and shall call and see you.

With kindest regards, as ever,

Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, DLC-MSS, Lindsey Papers. INSIDE ADDRESS: Hon. Ben B. Lindsey, | Denver, Colo.

TO MELVILLE E. STONE • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 1922

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN May 17, 1922.

My Dear Mr. Stone:—

Some time ago, Mr. George Schilling wrote you a letter concerning a publication in your book about the anarchist case and his connection with it.⁵⁴ He has not heard from you regarding it. Thinking you had not received it, I am sending you herewith a copy.

This article seems not only to make out that Mr. Schilling was a part of the physical force party, but also that he betrayed his companions, and of course this is distressing him a great deal.

I am not writing to you professionally about this matter, but I feel that I know you well enough to know that you would not do anybody any injustice knowing it and if you did one without knowing it, you would be glad to make it good so far as possible.

I think you will remember Mr. Schilling well enough to know that he was always a non-resistant and that the last thing in his nature would be to betray any person.

He was a member of the Free Trade Club, as I was, with you and many others, and his ideas are pretty well known. He has received letters from Lyman Gage,55 Andrew Adair⁵⁶ who was formerly in your composing room for many years, whom you will remember, Judge E.O. Brown,⁵⁷ Dr. William Salter⁵⁸ and others, concerning his views and activities.

Of course Mr. Schilling is not looking for money and has no purpose, except to protect his name.

Won’t you take this up seriously and see what you think is right about it in the way of satisfying his feelings. I think most anything that would set him right would be entirely satisfactory.

Very truly yours, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: TLS, ICN, Stone Papers, Box 1, Folder 95. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. Melville Stone | 51 Chambers Street, | New York, | N.Y.

TO BENJAMIN SCHLESINGER • CHICAGO • THURSDAY 3 AUGUST 1922

Chicago, August 3, 1922.

Dear Mr. Schlesinger:—

I am just sending you a wire that you may use my name in the matter of the prosecution in Russia against Socialists.⁵⁹

Of course I do not want to see these people executed. It may be that they have been conspiring against the government and perhaps connected with some killings, but I know what their purpose was. However, it demonstrates that radicals are just like other people which I have known for a good many years. I think it would be unwise to send anything in the way of criticism either of the trial or the accusation. Very likely these people are just like anybody else who conspires against the government and no doubt they are doing it from high motives. Still, all governments act alike to protect themselves. However, their lives should be saved and then before very long, they would be pardoned. Anyhow, whatever you do is satisfactory to me and you may use my name.

Truly yours, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, NIC, Schlesinger Papers. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. Benjamin Schlesinger, | 3 W. 16th Street, | New York, N.Y.

TO MARY FIELD PARTON • EN ROUTE TO NEW YORK CITY • FRIDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 1922

PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM | BROADWAY LIMITED Sept 8th

Dear Mary

Am on my way to N.Y. for a few days. Shall send you a book from there which I hope you will like. Have been loafing all summer. Took an automobile trip of 2,500 miles through Canada & then went to Colorado & loafed with my boy & grandchildren. Seems as if I had grown weary of work & the world, but suppose it is time. Any how I have seen the show, & have no desire to see much more and certainly not to do it again here or elsewhere. Your letter from California was forwarded to me at Colorado. Yes I have read Berman.60 It is a remarkable book. The scientists generally think it is too emphatic & positive, still it is one the people are reading & all the better for being strong and lucid. The scientific world is rapidly solving the origin & method of life & learning all about the conduct of man. Of course we are only a machine responding to stimuli, good & bad. Moral concepts are going into the descent with intelligent people and either praise or blame have no longer any justification. It is all very interesting but it will never effect the mass of people who are not moved by scientific conceptions, but work automatically and more through mass psycology. I don’t know that the world will ever be any better or kindlier—we must take it as it is and excuse the human animal as we do all others.

I am growing a more confirmed pessimist all the time. Nothing is worth while except to keep the emotions at work so we can forget life, at least my part of it. How I wish I could talk it all over with you. Sometime I hope I shall. What you say about the cooling of the passions is likewise true. They have a distinct function & when they have finished their work we should rejoice. I do for one. Nirvana is the only thing that is really alluring. As I grow older I think I grow more reconciled to life & death, and neither expect or hope for any thing. The desire for rest and peace comes over me as a premonition of the endless rest & peace. Of course the mountains and woods & water are beautiful, and give a certain pleasure. Still it is not the peace of Nirvana. I am anxious to see your book.61 I know you can write. If you don’t get a publisher let me try. I hope you too are getting peace & quiet as you grow older.

I never can be thankful enough for our long & helpfull friendship. It has been a great deal in my life & will be to the end. I always love your letters and get everything from them. I hope Sarah⁶² will sometime find rest. Life is terribly hard while one tries to do things and imagines they can. When [I] look in the glass to comb my hair I can see the grey slowly coming on & it gives me pleasure. It is a part of the whole premonition.

Love always | Clarence D.

MS: ALS, ICN, Parton-Darrow Papers, Box 1, Folder 9. ENVELOPE ADDRESS: Mrs. Mary Parton | San Francisco | Cal. | 1607 Taylor St. POSTMARK: New York City, 8 September 1922.

TO E.W. SCRIPPS • CHICAGO • MONDAY 30 OCTOBER 1922

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN October 30, 1922.

My Dear Mr. Scripps:—

I was glad to get your letter and know what you thought about the book.⁶³ If it agrees with your opinions, I am pretty well satisfied it is all right. If you and I can agree, we ought not to need anything else.

I wish I could go to Wood’s Hole some time. I do not know whether I could get in with the bunch or not, but would go if I thought I could.⁶⁴

The biological part of the book ought to pretty nearly reflect Conklin’s views. I have certainly read him more than any other biologist and in the main, I think he is right, although I do not especially admire his last book.⁶⁵

I am not quite certain what I said about the subnormal settling in America and the West. I have read the book so many times that I hate to look at it again. My impression is, however, that I did not put it that strong.66

Let us see whether we can agree on the people who are constantly going West from the centers of population. Barring the spirit of adventure, which no doubt attracts some strong men, the people who really settle in a new country are those who are poor and who have given up the race in favor of the stronger and the richer. I well remember those that went from a little country town in Ohio where I lived and who settled in Kansas in the early days. They were all poor, coming from a class of shiftless and often regarded as worthless. California has a little different history, due to the gold excitement in ’49 and perhaps since that, due to the lure of climate, which has taken many strong men, although I am not stuck on the Iowans who make up the larger part of Southern California. I still believe that the people who migrate to a new country are in the main, weaker physically, intellectually and certainly financially than the ones who stay at home. I cannot understand why they would take the hardships of pioneering, except for this. Of course, as I have said, allowance must be made for the minority who are moved by the spirit of adventure. Assuming, what is no doubt true, that the average wealth is greater in California and probably in a number of other Western States, that the number of college graduates are greater, this does not prove that those sections were settled by the strongest people. One cannot discuss questions of human conduct without making due allowance for environment, as well as heredity. The environment for getting rich, was very much easier in the West and men of inferior capacity could accumulate wealth there, while superior men would be poor in the East. This has happened in thousands of cases. This in turn would place their sons in college and raise both the level of property and the level of intelligence. Then too, you must distinguish between native intelligence and the results real and seeming that come from education. The well educated man of poor intellect shows up much better than a strong man with no education. Many college graduates are not much over the moron class, although by means of their education and association and wealth, they have the reputation of intelligence and may doubtless do many things much better than a more intellectual man without education. You have seen this in your daily experience through life and it seems to me to be entirely in accordance with biology and the nature of things.

Much of the work of the world, in business and the professions, is purely routine and cannot be done successfully without education. It does not require a great amount of strength to get a conventional education that enables one to get by, especially where such persons also have money.

As you suggest in your letter, there are many captains of industry who have less intelligence than their employees.67 A close examination would show why and it would generally show that the employers have had a better chance.

It would hardly do to say that the men who carried down the fortunes of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Fields were men of unusual mental strength, but with education and association and understanding the routine of affairs, they were able to do what the more intelligent men could not possibly do. We have had, probably now have, for Presidents of the United States, men who would grade rather low in tests as to native ability, but fortuitous circumstances have placed them where they could get by without ability.

I am glad you like the chapter on “Luck and Chance”. It seems to me to be responsible for most of the good and ill that befall man in the world.

I do not know whether you are familiar with the story of Jonathan Edwards.⁶⁸ This is quoted by the eugenists as an example of breeding. The number of Supreme Court judges, both Federal and of the various States, college professors and presidents, bankers and lawyers and one vice president, is very startling. Eugenists write of the Edwards family as if Jonathan Edwards had no ancestors, but that he was specially made by the Lord to raise up strong men, which of course means, mainly conventional men. I find that Jonathan Edwards’ grandmother, Elizabeth Tuthill,⁶⁹ was a woman who would now be classed as not much different from a harlot. She had a brother who murdered one of the family and a sister who killed another. She was divorced from the Edwards branch, I presume, for adultery and remarried. Little came of the descendants of the second marriage, which shows that the second husband did not contribute much, if it shows anything, of which I am doubtful. One of her sisters started another line and from that line came Grant, Grover Cleveland and Mrs Theodore Roosevelt, as well as a number of other strong people, so Elizabeth with all her tendencies to violate traditions, must have carried down the germplasm. Where she got it, I do not know. I do know that the modern eugenists would have said that Elizabeth should not have had children. I think this would have been best, for Jonathan Edwards was nowhere near as good for the race as the elder Jukes.70 I am quite distrustful of the whole eugenists idea. I would rather trust nature with all her vagaries, than to submit the question of ancestry to a town meeting.

I had a fine time with Neg⁷¹ last summer. He told me he was going to visit you after our vacation. I have not heard from him lately, because I have not written him. I expect to go to Miami some time in January for two or three weeks. I wish I might run on to you.

I share your views as to the good that a book like mine will do and as to the insignificance of one man and for that matter the whole damn race.

With kindest personal regards, I am,

Your friend, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: TLS, OAU, Scripps Papers, Box 39, Folder 7. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. E.W. Scripps, | United Bank Building, | Cincinnati, | Ohio.

TO E.W. SCRIPPS • CHICAGO • MONDAY 4 DECEMBER 1922

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN December 4, 1922.

My Dear Mr. Scripps:—

I have just received your letter and still think I can go.⁷² I am very thankful to you for giving me a chance.

From what you state about inviting Ritter and some others,⁷³ something occurred to me which perhaps I should not mention. I have learned enough about polite society to know that it is not polite to ask for anything from one who is doing what you are for me, but I am not asking that. If you have the room and want it, Professor Starr⁷⁴ who is one of the leading anthropologists of the world and an all around well-informed man, has been in Japan many times and is a great traveller and knows all about the kind of people we are to meet and a very interesting and well informed man. I know he would fit in well, but of course I have not mentioned it to him and would not want it unless it would be convenient and I thought you would like to do it, in which event I will take it up with him. He is leaving the University in spring, as he is eligible to pension, at which time he proposes to keep on travelling, as he has done all his life.

With thanks and best wishes, I am,

Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

P.S. I hope you will be able to persuade Neg to go.

MS: TLS, OAU, Scripps Papers, Box 39, Folder 7. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. E.W. Scripps, | United Bank Building, | Cincinnati, O.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • MONDAY 4 DECEMBER 1922

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Dec 4

Dear Paul

I have been away a good deal lately trying to beat the new constitution which will be voted on the 12th. I think we will beat it.75

Your report was mighty good for Oct. especially the net which is important.

I have got my note in the bank paid so I can no doubt help if you need it.

I am to speak in Denver on the 24th of Dec. Shall arrive there in the morning unless I go direct to Greeley. If I go there first will wire you & you might come down & call for me at Savoy. Shall speak for the Open Forum. Am not sure whether afternoon or evening. You can find out by writing Judge Lindsey.⁷⁶ Can stay only a short time probably until the 30th.

C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: reference to vote on state constitution.

TO MARY FIELD PARTON • CHICAGO • THURSDAY 1 FEBRUARY 1923

Feby 1st

Dear Mary

If I ever delay writing so long again, I won’t expect you to answer a letter. The fact is I began one two weeks ago. In the mean time I have been to N.Y and have tried a case and rushed around like mad—for what—D–n fi-kno.77 Life has moved or rather rushed along with me without much change. I scarcely feel that it is going yet it is. Some one is always waiting in the outside office until some one else goes, and I hear an endless sound of troubles & sorrows from morning until night. Talk of Grand Juries, Courts, Jails, Penitentiaries &c. &c. until I wish I was on a desert Island where none of these signs of progress have ever appeared. I have been pretty busy in court this winter and am now going into the school graft cases (so called) which will probably take forever.⁷⁸ One of my good friends (formerly of a settlement) came in yesterday panned that I should defend men accused of graft, and wanted to know why I did. I told her for the money and because I hated jails and good people. I said that I had fought for many things that her people believed in, but I had never seen the time that one of them had sent me a case where there was a fee; they had sent many poor to me, that no one else would look after, but if one had money they sent them to a respectable lawyer, which is true. Any how it never occurs to me that I should refuse to defend any one. All I dread about it is the hard work and the long time it will take.

I was in New York not long ago where I debated again the old question is life worth living, which it isn’t. Still all the dope fiends profess that it is. They think that one is not only foolish but wicked if he is a pessimist. Every one of them takes dope and yet they send men to jail for peddling the only kind of dope that will work on me. Really there are a lot of fools in this world, and it is getting no wiser.

I saw Dudley Malone & Doris⁷⁹ in N.Y. They are just as lovable as ever. Doris is still trying to find out things that females can complain about, with Alice Paul⁸⁰ & the rest of them really grieving because they got the amendment for it took away one of the emotions that made life bearable. It is awful to have nothing to do but to think about yourself. It is better to love money and try to get it. I was out to Greeley over the holidays to see my boy & his family. The three girls are growing fast, the oldest beginning to suggest a new generation to push me further toward oblivion, and might. It beats the devil how we pushed the others off & are now being pushed. What a senseless fool thing the march of the generations of men to nothingness. And how damn foolish to think any of it has any meaning to one who thinks and does not take dope. I still have many friends, but am not so ambitious to go out of my way to find them, like them when they come where I am, which they often do, & sometimes hunt them up. Some people think that this means growing wisdom & virtue but I know better. I know exactly what it means & somehow have no regrets. I read a good deal. I wonder if you have seen the novels of Jerald O’Donell.81 He was a Catholic Priest, in Ireland but left them & his stories tell why. They are very good & beautiful. If you haven’t seen them I will send you one. Of course I read Berman⁸² and believe it is true even if perhaps exaggerated. I like science more & more; especially those branches which deal with life and its manifestations. I have quite a fever for George Moore⁸³ whom I had somehow overlooked. Have been reading quite a number of his. As soon as I finish this case I am going to begin an other book, this I hope to make much better than any of the others, it may & may not be. Any how I think I can do it. The Crime book is selling very well, have had the very best reviews, but people don’t seem to really buy books, they borrow them or wait until the author sends them one. Still I write for fun of it, so I am not disappointed. I don’t wonder people do not read. It is much more thrilling to live a story than it is to read about it.

Margarett Johansen was in yesterday and we both had a good deal to say about you & both wished we might see you perhaps some time we will—Perhaps.

Any how, always with best thoughts & wishes and always your friend

Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, ICN, Parton-Darrow Papers, Box 1, Folder 9. PLACE: no reason to doubt Chicago. DATE: “1923” appended, probably in Parton’s hand.

TO EDWARD BOYCE • CHICAGO • SATURDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Feby 10

My Dear Boyce

For years I have been intending to write you. I am afraid I did not even write when you were good enough to help in the most trying time of my life.84 In spite of that I have always appreciated and valued your friendship and only regret we live so far apart. I have been working hard as always & although the years are accumulating I am well and strong & do not take life to heart. Mrs. Darrow too is well. I would be glad to know how you are and trust this will reach you. If I am ever your way I shall hunt you up. Senator Pettigrew told of having a nice visit with you some time ago.

Always Your friend | Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, WaSpHiE, Boyce Papers. NOTE: at the bottom of the letter in another hand is written “Answered Oct. 21, 1923”; no letter from Boyce to Darrow was found.

TO E.W. SCRIPPS • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Feby 16

My Dear Mr. Scripps

I am heart broken over not going with you also a little ashamed. I had expected to be sea sick all the way for I generally am on a big ship but wanted so much to go that I was willing to be sick (and I hate sea-sickness). The fact is I couldn’t afford to miss the trial of this case which will be long & hard.⁸⁵ I have seen so many radicals broke in their last years that I always had a foolish & unholy fear of alms, and inconvenience. Perhaps it was a sort of foolish pride. And while I could afford to take the trip & lose the time as it is still I would have been obliged to come back to work & I didn’t want to after this case. With what I have I can live comfortably (and will probably die at once in consequence) and I thought I ought to do it. If you are lingering around China or Japan when my case is finished I will go there at once and take the rest of the trip with you. Prof Starr is going to leave Seattle about July 15th going directly to Japan. He has been there many times & knows the leading men & I want you to meet him there, if you will be there about that time.

I want you to know how much I appreciate your kindness & how disappointed I am.

Your friend | Clarence Darrow.

Love to Neg, hope he goes.

MS: ALS, OAU, Scripps Papers, Box 39, Folder 9. DATE: reference to trip.

TO THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 4 JULY 1923

Editor of The Tribune:

I was very much interested in Mr. Bryan’s letter to THE TRIBUNE and in your editorial reply.86 I have likewise followed Mr. Bryan’s efforts to shut out the teaching of science from the public schools and his questionnaires to various college-professors who believe in evolution and still profess Christianity. No doubt his questions to the professors, if answered, would tend to help clear the issue, and likewise a few questions to Mr. Bryan and the fundamentalists, if fairly answered, might serve the interests of reaching the truth—all of this assumes that truth is desirable.

CREATION OF THE EARTH

For this reason I think it would be helpful if Mr. Bryan would answer the following questions: Do you believe in the literal interpretation of the whole Bible? Is the account of the creation of the earth and all life in Genesis literally true, or is it an allegory? Was the earth made in six literal days, measured by the revolution of the earth on its axis? Was the sun made on the fourth day to give light to the earth by day and the moon made on the same day to give light by night, and were the stars made for the benefit of the earth? Did God create man on the sixth day? Did God rest on the seventh day?

GARDEN OF EDEN

Did god place man in the Garden of Eden and tell him he could eat of every tree except the tree of knowledge? Was Eve literally made from the rib of Adam? Did the serpent induce Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge? Did the eating of this fruit cause Adam and Eve to know that they were naked? Did God curse the serpent for tempting Eve and decree that thereafter he should go on his belly? How did he travel before that time? Did God tell Eve that thereafter he would multiply the sorrows of all women and that their husband should rule over them?

WHAT ABOUT FLOOD?

Did God send a flood covering the whole earth, even the tops of the highest mountains, and destroy “all flesh that has the breath of life,” excepting the inmates of the ark? Did God command Noah to build an ark for him and his family and to take on board a male and female of every living species on earth? Did he build the ark and gather the pairs of all animals on the earth and the food and water necessary to preserve them? As there were no ships in those days, except the ark, how did Noah gather them from all the continents and islands of the earth? Did he then cause it to rain forty days and forty nights and destroy every living thing on the earth? Did all these living things enter the ark on the second month and 17th day of the month? Were all the high mountains on all the earth covered? Did the waters prevail on the earth for 150 days?

ARARAT AND THE RAINBOW

Did the ark rest on Mount Ararat in the seventh month and the tenth day of the month? Did God set a rainbow in the heavens for a token that the world would not again be destroyed by flood? Was this the first rainbow that ever appeared? According to the old testament, was this not about 1,750 years B.C.? Is not history full of proof that all colors and kinds of people lived over large and remote parts of the earth within fifty years after this time? Were the pairs of animals sent to every quarter of the earth after the flood? How could many species that are found nowhere but in Australia or other far off places get there and why did they not stop on the way? Was there any more water on the earth in Noah’s day than any other time before or since? Is not all the water that falls drawn from the reservoirs of water on the earth? Is it possible to increase the amount of water on any part of the earth without drawing it from another part? Does not water seek its level? Shortly after the flood was the whole earth of one language? Did the inhabitants begin to build the Tower of Babel so they might reach the heavens? Did God confound their language so they could not complete the tower? How high would the tower have had to be built to reach the heavens? Was the confounding of tongues at the Tower of Babel the cause of the many languages spoken by the people of the earth? Did the Lord prepare a big fish to swallow Jonah and did he lie for three days and three nights in the whale’s belly when he was spewed out on dry land? Was Lot’s wife turned into a literal pillar of salt for turning back and looking at Sodom and Gomorrah when she was fleeing from their destruction? Did Balaam’s ass speak to him in human language? Did the walls of Jerico fall down flat from the soldiers and priests marching around it and blowing on the ram’s horn?

JOSHUA AND THE SUN

Did the sun stand still to give Joshua time to fight a battle? If the sun had stood still, would that have lengthened the day? If instead of the sun standing still, the earth had stopped revolving on its axis, what would have happened to the earth and all life thereon? Under the biblical chronology, Was not the earth created less than 6,000 years ago? Were there not many flourishing civilizations on the earth 10,000 years ago? According to the same chronology, Was not Adam created less than 6,000 years ago? Are there not evidences in writing and hieroglyphics and the evidence of man’s handiwork which show that man has been on the earth more than 50,000 years? Are there no human remains that carry their age on the earth back to at least 100,000 years? Does not geology show by fossil remains, by the cutting away of rock for river beds, by deposit of all sorts, that the earth is much more than a million years and probably many million years old? Did Christ drive devils out of two sick men and did the devils request that they should be driven into a large herd of swine and were the devils driven into the swine and did the swine run off a high bank, and were they drowned in the sea? Was this literally true, or does it simply show the attitude of the age toward the cause of sickness and affliction? Can one not be a Christian without believing in the literal truth of the narrations of the Bible here mentioned? Would you forbid the public schools from teaching anything in conflict with the literal statement referred to?

Questions might be extended indefinitely but a specific answer to these might make it clear what one must believe to be a “fundamentalist.”87

Very truly yours, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: “Darrow Asks W.J. Bryan to Answer These,” Chicago Tribune, 4 July 1923. DATE: publication of letter.

TO FREMONT OLDER • CHICAGO • SATURDAY 14 JULY 1923

Chicago, July 14, 1923

Dear Fremont:

Your letter just came to hand. I am sorry you have been ill and glad you are getting better, and likewise I am interested in the way you treated your sickness. So far as you are personally concerned, I am sure I would not mourn over your death, but would feel relieved to feel that you got through with it and it was not still before you. I would feel very sad about it, but that would be purely personal, because I would miss you. Of course my philosophy is practically the same as yours. Intellectually I know that life is a damned humbug and not worth while. I am quite certain I would not care to be born again, or go through it again, yet I know I will fight as hard as you will when it is coming to an end. Man is just like every other organism, whether a tree, a rabbit, or the Socialist Party. It fights to preserve itself. It is instinctive in the organism and we cannot help it. Life must be preserved by those who fight death. In fact I think everybody fights, even the man who suicides does not do it until the will to live has been overcome. I am quite sure that you cannot do anything with your mental equipment, whatever that is, to prevent your physical reaction which makes you fight death. I often have been told in my debates that if I really believed that annihilation was preferable to life, I would suicide. Of course I know this is not so and that one’s thoughts and philosophy have nothing whatever to do with his conduct. His reactions are purely mechanistic and cannot be changed. These people are like the pacifists who get up organizations to prevent the war and who think they can educate man so that he will not fight. I used to believe it, but I know that I was ignorant and silly as they are. Pacifism is a good philosophy when you don’t want to fight, but when you get mad you fight, because the instinctive side of man is in absolute mastery of it. But anyhow, I am glad you are better and hope you keep well.

I am always wishing I could see you. I would like to take another look at the California hills from your veranda, but I presume I never shall. There are a good many things that impel me to do it, and likewise not to do it, so that I have pretty much given up the idea that the forces that urge me to do it will ever predominate. This I regret, but so far cannot help it. I wish you would come here, or meet me some time in Colorado.

I have just got out of a big case, where I have had a three months’ fight to keep twenty men out of prison.88 We had a terrible man-hunt and a fierce public opinion, but we managed to overcome it and got a verdict of not guilty. This gives me some satisfaction which may last for forty-eight hours, and then I will have to look for some new emotion.

A few days ago Abby Scott Baker⁸⁹ went to California to see what she could do with Judge Rudkin to get him to show some consideration to the men he sentenced to prison.⁹⁰ I have known him since he was a boy and he is a good fellow and I cannot understand why he does not do it. I hope she will be successful. I know she will go and see you. She is a very interesting person.

Give my best wishes to Mrs. Older and let me hear from you when you feel like writing.

Always your friend, | Clarence Darrow. (Signed)

MS: TT, CU-BANC, Older Papers, Box 1.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • SATURDAY 14 JULY 1923

July 14

Dear Paul

Your mother has concluded to go to Greeley next month and I just finished my case & shall go next week. Will be there around the 21st or 22d. Just finished Lundin case yesterday & it was a wild time when they were acquitted. I never saw such a happy crowd.

Mr. & Mrs. John Frances91 are here and are driving through to California, & want Ruby & me to go with them as far as Colorado, so we shall do it. He will start Monday & we will start about two days later & we will pick them up in Iowa or at Omaha. They want to stay a few days in Greeley, perhaps a week & go to Estes Park. If you know a convenient place near bye where they can get one or two rooms you might arrange it. If not perhaps the Sterling would be all right. They naturally haven’t much money to waste. Will keep you posted so you will know when we shall get there.

Hastily | C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: reference to Lundin trial.

TO EDGAR LEE MASTERS • CHICAGO • THURSDAY 16 AUGUST 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Aug 16th

Dear Ed

Sometime ago you spoke to me about getting into a good law office on a salary. A few days ago, such a position happened to be presented to me with the request that I find some one so I immediately thought of you, and made the suggestion, telling them that I was not sure whether you would take it. I was just called up & asked if I had seen you. It is in the corporation counsel’s office. Frank Bush⁹² has the swing of the place. The salary would be somewhere from $6,000 to 7,500 probably even more could be got later. It would be a fine place where you would be put in the way of business, and would not be obliged to work too hard. I don’t know whether you would want to take it or whether you should take it, but if I wanted a good place with a good prospect for the future in the law line, I would take it. Mr. Bush wants to know tomorrow.

Yours | C.S. Darrow.93

MS: ALS, TxU-Hu, Masters Collection. DATE: letterhead and suggestion that Busch had just become corporation counsel and that Masters was still in Chicago (he moved to New York City in late 1923).

TO FREMONT OLDER • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, POPHAM & CARLIN Aug 22d

Dear Fremont

Have you read G. Stanley Hall’s book on Senescence.⁹⁴ If you haven’t, get it. I am sure you would find it worth while. I did. Of course it is none too funny for us old fellows & still you & I have a habit of looking things in the face & somehow this didn’t hurt me. Do you think your will to live grows stronger or weaker as you grow older? I believe mine weakens but am not quite certain.

I trust you are better & will be able to fairly enjoy the 10 or 12 yrs which are probably still to come. I am not sure that I hope for any more for you. Love to Cora—

Your friend always | Darrow.

MS: ALS, CU-BANC, Older Papers, Box 1. DATE: “[1923]” appended.

TO FREDERICK STARR • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 12 OCTOBER 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Oct 12 1923

My dear Mr. Starr:

We were very much worried about you until we found in the newspapers and later by your postcard, that you were all right and in this country. As long as you got away without serious injury, it must have been a wonderful experience.⁹⁵ I shall try to get hold of a copy of the University paper to read an account that I hear you have given them, and if you should speak or write more fully on it, I wish you would send me a copy. Although I am a pessimist, I am glad you got out all right and your many friends feel the same.

Mrs. Darrow’s brother, Bert Hamerstrom,96 has located in Seattle and will call you. He is a fine young man, interested in all things that will interest you. I hope he won’t bore you.

With best regards, I am | Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, ICU, Starr Papers, Box 4, Folder 8. INSIDE ADDRESS: Dr. Frederick Starr, | 5727–35th Ave., N.E., | Seattle, Wash.

TO JULIUS F. TAYLOR • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Oct. 24, 1923.

Dear sir:

I desire to protest against the unfair treatment received by Edward H. Morris⁹⁷ at the hands of the Chicago Bar Association and its committee. It is unfortunate that such a direct insult should be offered to the colored people of Chicago. It does no good to the feeling that already exists due to very narrow views of many people.

The committee’s report on the candidates for judges stated that Edward H. Morris was a colored man. They might as well have given the nationality or race of every other candidate on the ticket, and the ticket is made up of various nationalities. They stated that he was a man who had a large practice, mainly in criminal cases. I know of no reason why a lawyer engaged in the defense of those charged with crime should not be a good judge, but, as a matter of fact, Mr. Morris’ practice has been mainly civil for many years, which fact must have been known to this committee and certainly should have been known had they wished to make a point of the question of his line of practice. We have had many judges who came directly from the State’s Attorney’s office and whose sole experience had been in the criminal courts, and this is the first time I have ever known this matter to be referred to in a report of the committee.

The report also says that he would not be a fit man for the bench. Every man familiar with Mr. Morris’ attainments and practice of the law in the City of Chicago knows perfectly well that in legal ability, disposition and everything else that goes to make a judge, he is the peer of any man on either ticket. This must have been known both to the committee and the members of the bar who voted at the bar primary.

The statement of the committee that he would not make a fit judge must have been prompted solely by his color. The small vote he received at the bar primary was due solely to his color. I guarantee that if any one doubts this and will ask the lawyers whom they meet in Chicago indiscriminately, 90 per cent of them will say of Mr. Morris what I said. I say it not only from his general reputation as a lawyer, but from a long personal acquaintance, friendship, and experience with him in court. Aside from his ability as a lawyer, he was for many years a member of legislature. During one session, I was a member with him and I can say emphatically that there was no abler man in the legislature than Mr. Morris.

I know of no man on either ticket who is better qualified or whom I believe that would make a better judge, and I trust that the colored voters of this City will give him such a vote as emphatically to show their disapproval of the report of the committee and the action of the bar.98

Very truly yours, | Clarence S. Darrow

MS: “Hon. Clarence S. Darrow, One of the Most Eminent Lawyers in the United States, Champions the Candidacy of Hon. Edward H. Morris for Judge of the Superior Court of Cook County,” The (Chicago) Broad Ax, 23 November 1923. INSIDE ADDRESS: Julius F. Taylor, Editor, | The Broad Ax, | Chicago.

TO BRAND WHITLOCK • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 19 DECEMBER 1923

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN December 19th 1923.

Dear Brand:—

Some days ago I receive your book from the publishers and since that, your welcome letter.⁹⁹ I have read the book. It is a bully one. The best you have written, as a matter of art, and I am delighted that your views of life have undergone no change. You have done a fine job. It is true and pessimistic. It must be pessimistic if true. Your picture of the cruelties of human judgments—the futility and foolishness of the law, delights me. You also know the love psychology better than I feared you did. (Has Nellie read it? If so, she will want a divorce). You picture the junior Harding true to life. Likewise the senior, and the knocks about the prohibition fanaticism and the fanaticism of all virtue are fine. The junior could not follow his instincts, but was bound by his heredity and environment and went back to the fool bank and the fool wife. This is as it should be and is. The wives will approve it. I have found that there is no other trade unionist who hates a scab as much as the members of the married woman’s union. Life is a deadly thing about nothing. Happiness and the following of emotions is the unforgivable sin. You have done it all remarkably well.

As to myself, life moves on as it always has. I am very busy. Never was so busy in my profession as the last two years. Am trying to get enough money ahead to live and will succeed by the time I am so old that I will not be able to buy any fun with my money. This time has almost arrived. My best emotions come from fighting the law and the good and I generally manage to cheat the mob. I am sending you some miscellaneous stuff that you may care to read, and which will give you a picture of what I think I am thinking in these later days. I am also asking my publishers to send you a book which I managed to write and which I believe you will find interesting and I think you will agree with. It is on crime and stands pretty nearly alone amongst the books on the subject.100 Needless to say, it is written from the standpoint of the criminal that I like and sympathize with and somehow understand. I am quite sure that the scientific part is true, as well as the rest. To me the life of man is like the life of a fly—a buzzing about nothing. Life itself is only an unsatisfactory and brief interruption of nothingness. I think I have no illusions left (mores the pity). I still have good health and while I probably am not as alert and responsive, and my mind does not work as well as it once did, still I do not know it. God is very good to me and every one. I was discussing it the other day with a Christian. I told him that after one was sixty, the Lord made up his mind to take away about ten teeth and to show his goodness he took five from the east side of his upper jaw and five from the west side of his lower jaw, so he might as well have taken twenty if he had that many left. I am intending to take a trip to Europe next summer unless the Lord interferes. Charlie Russell and I have planned a walking tour through Switzerland and the writing of a book at the same time. Wish you could join us. If not, hope we can see you there. I rather envy you living abroad where there is some freedom left. There is no chance in Protestant countries, although England is better than America.

I sympathize fully with your views of England and the English. I have never read Peppys’ Diary, but shall. I wonder if you have read “Of Human Bondage”.¹⁰¹ It is one of the best things I have seen for years. Also “The Growth of the Soil”.102 I have read “The Revolt Against Civilization”. I do not like it. There is much truth in it, but I think the author is a snob. I have read a great deal on this subject and I do not believe Stoddard is scientific. If you can get “The Mind of the Original Man” by Bvaz,¹⁰³ who is a Columbia professor, I think you will find it a good antidote for Stoddard. I do not mean by that the human race is of any value, or that it is capable of improvement, but that the “backward people” are the equal of the “forward” assuming that we could tell what is backward and what is forward.

This is the longest letter I have written for many months. I wish you would write again and often.

Love to Nellie.¹⁰⁴

Best wishes, | Always, | Clarence Darrow.

MS: TLS, NNC, Allan Nevins Papers.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 16 JANUARY 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Jan. 16

Dear Paul

Just got your statement. It is very encouraging. Am glad to see how many heating stoves you are selling. It may be the solution of the gas business in spite of the fact that involves lower rates. I thought I sent Mary the book she wanted. If she will return it, with the name of the one she wants I will get it.

Ned Oakley¹⁰⁵ has been to see me several times of late. He has made up his mind he must work. Sort of awakened from a dream. I got an interview for him with a news paper & he worried so much over it that I made up my mind that he couldn’t do it, and told him he should try something simpler first. As to contact with life he is a child. He then thought he ought to go to work at manual labor, in the stock yards or on a farm, (not a bad idea if he would do it). I told him if he really wanted to try working on a farm he could probably get a job in Colorado when the season opens up. So he said he was going to write you. Now I know you can’t give your time to looking up jobs; and I know Ned will not expect it. He is one of the most considerate & independent fellows I ever met. He has stayed over night at the house a number of times and is always reluctant to do it, and always refuses to come back the 2d night, so if he does go there I know he will make you no trouble. He really should try to do something & must try for himself & he knows it perfectly well. Of course you know his father is well to do and always helps him but naturally wants him to do something for himself & Ned is bound to do it.106

Truly | C.S.D.

How did you come out with Shoemaker?¹⁰⁷

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1924” appended.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 12 MARCH 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN March 12, 1924.

Dear Paul:—

Was glad to get your letter with Everett’s enclosure. Everett has gone plumb crazy. I never write to him any more about the question that obsesses him. The fact that a member of the cabinet took a bribe of $100,000 to make conveyance of government property, does not seem to effect or even interest him.¹⁰⁸ This man was always a crook and Harding knew it when he appointed him and appointed him for that reason. Only a small part of his work has come to light or ever will come to light, most likely. About half of Harding’s cabinet and all of his friends are the same sort, as everybody knows who cares about knowing.

As to Coolidge, I regard him as simply nothing. His tariff on the farmer’s wheat shows how much he amounts to and likewise what he thinks of the farmer. As to the latter, he is undoubtedly right. Of course Everett would not have the Senate or any one else make any investigations as to fraud. No matter what crooked thing the employer or capitalist did, he would think is all right. I was surprised he classed Adams¹⁰⁹ as a red. It gives me a better opinion of Adams, although I notice Adams has been doing something of late.

LaFollette, I regard as the outstanding, honest man in politics. He has never wavered in his fight on the crooked men who control political and business life. Of course it is wrong for the farmers and laborers to have a bloc, but every one else has and always have had it. Lenroot110 has always been a tool of the corporation. I think he admires Phipps who was elected Senator because he had money to pay for it as everybody knows. Of course I admire his stand on the soldier’s bonus, but that is all I ever saw about him to admire.

Every lawyer that Coolidge has appointed to represent the government is a man tied up with big business and one who is on their side, no matter what they do. Of course he is dreaming when he thinks all of this is going to seriously effect any half-way decent business.

Much that he says about the railroads in reference to regulations and rates and combination, is due entirely to railroads. The working man had nothing whatever to do with it. The Union Pacific, for instance, was built entirely with government money. They had a land grant in addition, which was large enough to build it and they repudiated both their bonds and obligations to the government and they bonded and stocked it for many times its value. The same is true of the Southern Pacific and largely true of all other railroads. Their freight rates, as you know, are simply a specie of grand larceny. They have no regard whatever for the rights or justice of anybody who pays them, but simply get all they can.

As to the labor unions, of course I know more about their good and bad things than he ever dreamed of. They do a great many unwarranted things, most of which they learned from the employer. Even at that, the working man would be helpless without them. The truth is that all business is a hodge podge where every fellow is grabbing all he can. There is no method or system or sense of justice in any of it and I do not know how it can ever be changed. I don’t see how anybody who thinks can believe that coal and oil and lumber, to say nothing about air, should be privately owned. The trouble with the question is to know how to own it and operate it some other way, but I have never seen the way.

As to the Coolidge oil business, it is perfectly plain that he was trying to shield Fall and the rest of them from the beginning. It does not admit of question. I don’t know how far organizations of capital or organizations of labor are either immutable or natural laws. They are probably neither one, but grow out of a phase of life and in that sense are natural.

Of course McAdoo¹¹¹ did not go to Mexico to do anything to Doheny’s rights in Mexico. This could only have been done in Washington. He either went there or sent his partner, which is the same thing.

I wonder how soon we would get cheap transportation or cheap freight rates if the railroads were left to manage it without the interference of government. The truth is, the railroads have always owned the government.

I see that Everett misunderstood your letter as to business in Colorado. I presume you have written him about it since. Of course he is a fine fellow and would do anything we wanted him to do, but I don’t like to have him even worry about the amount of bonds he has. I could take them up if you can’t.

I am not certain as to what you write me about the tariff and the balance of trade as shown by the imports of plate glass. Of course the tariff on farmer’s wheat is nothing but a reflection on the farmer’s brains. The farmers last year exported about two hundred and fifty millions of wheat, most of which went to Europe. Canada exported about one hundred and fifty millions, but I have not the figures, most of which went to Liverpool. A small amount of Canadian wheat was sent to Minneapolis, because their wheat is hard wheat like the Red River Valley wheat and there was a shortage in the Red River Valley last fall. This is not in any way influenced by the tariff and of course the extra 12¢ that the politicians in the White House put on, will not raise the price of wheat. There was already a tariff of 30¢ on wheat and the farmer has never received this because he takes the Liverpool price after paying the freight. I presume this was the sense in which you made your reference—the tariff on wheat—that it would have a tendency to keep Europe from buying it. One trouble with us has been that our exports have so far exceeded our imports and I am glad that we are importing more glass than we once did. It shows that we are selling more wheat. Of course trade is a good thing. If it was not, we ought to exclude it.

I am not writing all this because I want to seriously influence your thought on the matter. I have always wanted you to do your own thinking, which I know you do. If for any reason you are a little doubtful on the tariff question, you might reread one of the books that treat on that subject.

I am glad to see that business is doing so well this year.

Truly, | C.S.D.

MS: TLS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 19 MARCH 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN March 19, 1924.

Dear Paul:—

Replying to your letter of March 15th, I would say I do not remember exactly what I wrote you about McAdoo, but there is no question about the facts.

Doheny employed four of Wilson’s cabinet members immediately on their retirement. It is perfectly obvious that they were not employed for law business, but to help him in his graft on account of political influence. As to McAdoo, he resigned from the cabinet, stating that he had to make some money. He had never been a lawyer to speak of—was really a promoter and a soldier of fortune. Within one year of his resignation, he received a million dollars from Doheny and others, which was paid purely as political graft. He says he went to Mexico to spend about two weeks in reference to Doheny’s interests in Mexico. This I am sure is not true and if the Senate Committee had seen fit to cross-examine him, the facts would have been brought out. He received $100,000 with the prospective contingent fee of $900,000 more. He never made an entry in his books, nor prepared a paper, nor filed one, nor entered a court room. He could be of no use in Mexico. The only lawyer that could help him there would be some Dago who spoke their language and knew their men. When he went to Mexico, his partners went to Washington. Of course Doheny could be helped from Washington and nowhere else. It was undoubtedly a case of the recognition of the Mexican government by providing that oil should be protected. McAdoo had been the Secretary of the Treasury for six or seven years. He was a son-in-law of the President; he knew all the departments and the men connected with them. He not only got this money from Doheny, but some three or four hundred thousand dollars on coal shipped to Italy and several hundred thousand dollars by getting a rebate of taxes for the Republic Iron & Steel Co., from his own department. He got many other sums which have not yet come out. The Federal statutes provide that it is an offense for any clerk in any department to practice law within two years after leaving the department. This statute does not apply to the heads of the department, for it would be presumed that they would not do such a thing. One of my friends said that McAdoo was not a lawyer, but a son-in-lawyer.

There is absolutely no defense for him, and to nominate him would be certain defeat, otherwise he would have been cross-examined by the Republicans on the investigating committee.

The whole situation revealed in Washington by the investigating committee is rotten in the extreme. Nothing like it has ever been shown in American politics, with the possible exception of Grant’s administration.

As to Coolidge, he sent his Secretary to Palm Beach to see Fall and he spent several weeks with him. Three telegrams were sent from the White House cautioning Fall and Doheny and informing them of the situation. He has not acted in the Daugherty case.112 He has appointed investigators whom he knew would not investigate. He is simply a small-sized New England politician.

I feel about as you do as to Mellon.¹¹³ It would require a very strong necessity to make me vote for Coolidge. As between him and McAdoo, I would have no choice.

I am rather expecting to be a delegate to the National Democratic Convention for Al Smith. Don’t know whether I will succeed or not.

I did not know about Phipps on the Volsted Act. In fact, I know very little about it. I presume my view of him is largely prejudiced. About all I know of him is that he was a very wealthy Pittsburgh man who had never been known as anything but a business man. He went to Colorado, either for his health or his family’s and on account of his money alone, this man who was practically a carpet bagger in Colorado, was elected to the United States Senate. He might be better than I think, but it was a rotten thing for Colorado to do and it shows the effect of money in politics.

I see you have the free trade idea of the traffic, which I believe is absolutely sound. As you know, I am not very well posted on exchange. You know much more about this than I do. However, you are probably in error in thinking that the tariff on wheat caused a drop in exchange. I can readily see how it would do this if it effected the export or import of wheat, which it does not—at least only slightly, due to a sentiment in Europe against the United States on account of our selfishness. I noted the drop of the price of wheat after the increase in tariff, but I would rather assume that this was due to the law of supply and demand which causes a constant variance of price, instead of to the tariff.

I was interested in my radio talk reaching Greeley.114 I don’t look for any improvement in stocks until the campaign is far enough along to see who will win. Still I don’t expect much further decline.

C.S.D.

MS: TLS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. NOTE: The last paragraph is written in Darrow’s hand.

TO NEGLEY D. COCHRAN • CHICAGO • SUNDAY 6 APRIL 1924

DARROW & SISSMAN April 6th

Dear Neg

It is a devil of a long time since I heard from you. I have been trying to get down, perhaps I can in two or three weeks. My main reason is to see you. Are you figuring on any thing for this summer. I mean to take a good vacation but don’t know where. Wish I could be with you. These days must furnish you a lot of excitement. Things are d—n wrotten down there and I wish they could all be cleaned out. I am running for delegate to National Convention. Election on Tuesday. Rather think I shall win.¹¹⁵ If I go I want to do what I can for Al Smith—he might help us get a drink. Should be glad to hear from you—Love to family

Always yours Darrow.

MS: ALS, OT, Cochran Papers. DATE: “1928” appended but reference to convention makes 1924 more likely.

TO H.L. MENCKEN • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 2 MAY 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN May 2, 1924.

My Dear Mr. Mencken:—

Enclosed you will find the copy that you requested. I have revised it, as you wished, and also cut out some of the paragraphs. I have no doubt you have readers who understand punctuation and grammar and will find many corrections to make. I shall be glad to see this in the July number.116

I wonder if arrangements could be made to have it printed by itself for circulation? I am willing to pay for some of this. I would like to get it before some of the delegates to the National Convention which meets in New York on the 20th of June. By the way, I am one of the delegates and hope to see you in New York at that time. I have long wanted to know you and have read most everything you have written and find little of your stuff I do not believe is true. This of course, will show you that your views are logical and correct.

You ask me about further manuscripts. I have some in mind and will get them ready. I want to write one about Eugenics. In fact, I have one practically finished. This is one of my pet abominations. Also I am preparing one on the Jukes family and the Edwards family, in which I seek to show the Jukes family was much the better family.¹¹⁷ I think you will be interested in this.

These articles will be livelier than I one I enclosed. Will use the axe in them. I purposely wanted to make this dull and stupid so that I might deceive some yokels into believing that it is judicial and fair. Of course I have no judicial attitude toward prohibition. I think it is an unmitigated evil and an abominable violation of personal rights. I like to hit it in every way it can be hit.

You will find me amongst the subscribers to your magazine from the first and there is no other I like as well.

Wishing you a long life and more power, I am,

Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, NN, Mencken Collection. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. H.L. Mencken, | 730 5th Avenue, | New York, N.Y.

TO H.L. MENCKEN • CHICAGO • SUNDAY 11 MAY 1924

DARROW & SISSMAN May 11th

My Dear Mr. Mencken,

It has occurred to me that you have a Who’s Who business in the back of your magazine giving a sketch of the contributors. Less said about me the better. Please don’t say I am a “labor lawyer.” If any thing you can say I am a lawyer. If necessary, that I am well known & live in Chicago. If more is needed, I have written several books. The last on “Crime, its cause & treatment”—also that I have given many addresses on political economy and other subjects. Please don’t say I am a criminal lawyer—although I am both. Still, as to law, I have done all sorts.118 Shall hunt you up at the convention or Biltmore & adjourn to your celler, and let the convention go hang, unless I see a chance for a bigger part in the bunk game than I expect to play.¹¹⁹

Yours | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, NN, Mencken Papers.

TO JESSIE BROWNLEE • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 10 JUNE 1924

DARROW & SISSMAN June 10th

Dear Jessie

Have been so busy I have had no chance to write letters. Do just what you think best about the house either keep it or sell it. I want you to live as you wish and go where you want to go. Both Paul & I can afford to give you what you want at any time and of course we want to do it. If you wish to go back by Ohio you should do it. Let me know about what you want & I will see that you get the money promptly. This case is quite perplexing & will most likely be a hard struggle to save the lives of the boys.¹²⁰ Was intending to go to NY. as a delegate to the convention but may not be able to get away. Don’t know about going to Paul’s this summer but hope I will find time. Let me know at once when & where you will go & also if you need more money to repair house. Have not called up to see if Mary is at Frank’s but will in a day or so—

Always your friend | C.S.D.

[In Jessie Brownlee’s hand, to Paul Darrow:] I wrote your father about selling the house last mo. but he’s forgotten it. He may never have gotten it altho. it was sent to his office instead of house. So queer about the long letter I wrote Lillian & mailed to 1537—E—60th Chic. c/o your father &c.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1924” appended.

TO FRANK WALSH • CHICAGO • FRIDAY 13 JUNE 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN June 13, 1924.

Dear Frank:—

I have seen your name mentioned in the papers a number of times as likely to be in the Franks case here.

Of course I do not need to tell you that I would be very glad to have you in it, more than any one else, with me. It would soften up a hard job to have you around.

I have not heard any one connected with the case speak of it and do not know just how it got into the press. Their present intention now seems not to have any one outside of Chicago and probably no one else, but if it was thought best to get outside assistance, of course I would be for you.

With best wishes, | Always, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, NN, Walsh Papers, Box 13. INSIDE ADDRESS: Hon. Frank P. Walsh, | 55 Liberty Street, | New York, N.Y.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN June 25

Dear Paul

Just got your statement. It is certainly good. It looks as if things are now all right with you. I have been so busy that I have hardly had time to think of any thing but this wierd case. Don’t know how I will come out. It is very hard to get a fair hearing. As to fees I will of course get a fair & substantial fee, as yet I have no idea how much time it will take. The families are fine people and will do what is right & of course you know I will. You might write me just what you think of various stocks & when you think is the right time. B & O looks good to me so does Gt Northern and Northern Pacific. Haven’t thought much about others. Will try to write oftener after this.

Love to all | C.S.D.

Don’t know when I will get out there probably not until this case is finished.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: reference to Loeb and Leopold case.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • SUNDAY 20 JULY 1924

Sunday | July 20

Dear Paul

You have no doubt been surprised at the turn we have taken in the Loeb-Leopold case.121 We have concluded it is the most hopeful way of saving the boys’ lives. It is doubtful if any way will accomplish it.

Hastily | C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1924” appended.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • SUNDAY 3 AUGUST 1924

DARROW & SISSMAN Aug 3rd

Dear Paul

The last report is mighty good. It begins to look as if you were coming out all right with the Co. It seems as if we ought to get in on the oil, but do as you please about it. I don’t know how I shall come out in the case. It is an awfull hard fight and the papers have been so rotten that the feeling runs high. However I am hopeful of succeeding in saving their lives. It will probably be over in about two weeks and I shall be out sometime this fall. Am not going to stick so closely to work any more. So I will have more time for visiting & writing. How is Blanche?¹²² Tell her that Marie¹²³ has looked for a letter for a long time and has given up hearing from her. Love to all

C.S.D.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: reference to Loeb and Leopold case.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • MONDAY 4 AUGUST 1924

Aug. 4th

Dear Paul

I suppose you know that the case will be decided the tenth of this month. I am very hopeful that I will win, but may not. Will send you 25 copies or more if you want as soon as it is ready which will be in a few days.124 If we win I shall go away for a little time & later go out to Colorado, but have your mother stay as long as she wishes. Any how it will be some time before I go. If we loose shall probably stay here for a while to figure out something else to do, but I do not really expect to loose. Can’t just see how the judge can beat us.

I think you are having a good year & I presume you will continue making a better showing than last year. I had a visit with Davis¹²⁵ for about an hour yesterday. He is a fine fellow: he seems thoroughly posted and speaks square out and has a good sense of humor. He is to be in Denver the 11th & I told him I was going to have you call if you could get up there. You will find with him, no doubt, Jack Nevins¹²⁶ who is one of my best friends & who will be delighted to see you. I think you will find it worth while to go up.¹²⁷

Truly | C.S.D.

Tell the girls there was a paper here that had my picture in last month.

MS: ALS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection. DATE: “1924” appended and supported by reference to Loeb and Leopold case.

TO FRANK WALSH • CHICAGO • MONDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN September 8, 1924.

Dear Frank:—

Of course I am very much obliged to you for your kind letter.¹²⁸ My argument will be out in pamphlet form in a few days and will send you one. I am hopeful of winning. I hope it will do some good outside of those involved.

I called upon Mr. Davis when he was here and was very much taken with him. He is a very likeable fellow and exceedingly intelligent and has a sense of humor, which always appeals to me. At the same time, you need not worry about me going back on La Follette. I would like to see him win. First of all, I want to see Coolidge beaten, if it is possible and I assume that Davis will get the South and possibly some of the East, including New York. In the West it is divided between La Follette and Coolidge and it ought to result in throwing the election into the House. If my vote or influence could do him any good, it would all be cast for him.

I wish you would give me your ideas from New York and the East. I do not see how Coolidge can be defeated if he carries New York and I have been thinking that Davis has a much better show there than La Follette. What do you think of the other States in that section?

This may impress you as a sort of two-sided position, but to me it seems logical. Any how, I want to see La Follette win.

I have been trying for a long time to get to New York and hope I make it pretty soon.

Always, | Your friend, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, NN, Walsh Papers, Box 13. INSIDE ADDRESS: Hon. Frank P. Walsh, | 55 Liberty Street, | New York, N.Y.

TO H.L. MENCKEN • CHICAGO • TUESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN Sept 9th

My Dear Menkin

I am sending you c/o Knopf a book that I wrote years ago. It is I am quite sure an overlooked classic. You can tell from the first page whether it is worth reading through. It went through two editions only by McClurg’s. Then Huebsch published it in a bum way. Knopf wrote me that when I had an other MSS he wanted a look at it.129 I feel pretty sure that this book would sell if it had a chance. If I had been some other sort of a fellow it would have sold better. I am not much better now, still I think there are more people who would read it. Won’t you look it over and if you think it worth while pass it on to Knopf.

Faithfully | Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, NN, Mencken Papers. DATE: “1924” appended.

TO HAROLD ICKES • CHARLEVOIX, MICHIGAN • WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 1924

MRS. ALBERT H. LOEB | LOEB FARMS Sept 17th

My Dear Mr Ickes

It was mighty good of you to write me.130 I hope you will write Judge Caverly.¹³¹ I am particularly glad that you agree with me on crime & punishment. I am very anxious to have the legislature abolish capital punishment, and if you will join it will be a great help.

With kind regards | Your friend | Clarence Darrow

MS: ALS, DLC-MSS, Ickes Papers. DATE: letter from Ickes.

TO NATHAN LEOPOLD • CHARLEVOIX, MICHIGAN • SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 1924

CHARLEVOIX, MICHIGAN Sept 20th

Dear Nathan

I have been up here for about ten days getting some rest.¹³² Shall be back in Chicago on Monday & will arrange to go & see you soon after arriving. I won’t take the trouble to give you advice now & any how I presume I know less about it all than you do. Although I am not a christian scientist (or any thing else) I know that the most of life “is within” us and man is a wonderfully adaptable animal. I think you know this too. Of course you will be there for a long time & will naturally figure out the best way to make things tolerable, as I have tried to do, with poor success, on the outside. I can help you figure this out & will make it my business to do it both for you & Dick.

I am ambitious for you to write your bird book. I have had a good deal of pleasure, or rather forgetfulness in writing books which no one reads, & I want you to write one which will be read. Any how I won’t forget you and I am sure I can help you in many ways.

Always Your friend | Clarence Darrow.

MS: ALS, ICHi, Leopold Collection. ENVELOPE ADDRESS: Nathan Leopold Jr | Joliet | Ill. | 1900 Collins St #9306.

TO FRANK WALSH • CHICAGO • MONDAY 6 OCTOBER 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN October 6, 1924.

Dear Frank:

I will probably be down to New York for a few hours to act as chairman in the debate between Untermeyer133 and Hillquit. I suppose they want me for an ornament and to draw a crowd, and I no doubt will serve very well for both purposes.¹³⁴

I hope you will be there and I will see you. That is another reason for coming. I am also going to debate capital punishment with some New York judge on the 26th of October and I probably will have a chance to see you.¹³⁵ Anyhow, I want to see you.

As always,

Call me at Belmont Hotel 10–30 am.

MS: TL, NN, Walsh Papers, Box 13. INSIDE ADDRESS: Mr. Frank P. Walsh, | 55 Liberty street, | New York, N.Y.

TO PAUL DARROW • CHICAGO • WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER 1924

DARROW, SISSMAN, HOLLY & CARLIN October 29, 1924.

Dear Paul:—

Just got your letter and statement and think business is holding up remarkably well. Wish I could come out to Greeley before the campaign is over, but cannot do it.

As to the La Follette matter, I guess you understand how it is. I think Davis is probably the best in the lot, but I am confident that he cannot win, and neither can La Follette unless it goes into the House. I talked the matter over fully with the Democratic National State Committee and they agree with my point of view and are quietly doing what they can in the same direction. Of course I have refused to speak in any State where Davis has a chance, but I am satisfied that in the Western states, with the possible exception of Colorado, La Follette has the only chance to win.

I note what you say about Senator Phipps. I think I should vote for him as against any wet Democrat, unless there were some exceedingly good reason for not doing it.

Truly yours, | Clarence Darrow

MS: TLS, MnU-L, Darrow Collection.