Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (9 page)

Altgeld’s political success was all the more notable for his alien disposition. He had a German accent, short-cropped nappy hair, and a bit of a harelip hidden beneath his beard. He was a congenital outsider, attuned
to the difficulties faced by the workingmen hauled into his court. He developed a following in the immigrant wards and trade unions and, after publishing his judicial philosophy in the book that had caught Darrow’s attention in Ashtabula, was embraced by liberals too. But Altgeld was no dreamy socialist; in practice he could be ruthless. “I want power, to get hold of the handle that controls things,” he told Schilling. “When I do, I will give it a twist.” On the mantel in his library was a bust of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. But there was also a bust of Augustus Caesar.

Darrow had called on Altgeld soon after arriving in Chicago. They were compatible politically and shared a contempt for political leaders who, as Altgeld put it, were “moral cowards, following the music wagon of their times.” Here was an Amirus, but with courage, steel, and the knack of making money. “It will always be a source of pride to me that I knew him … that there never was a time that I did not love and follow him,” Darrow recalled. He adopted Altgeld’s blend of passion and calculation. The judge was “absolutely honest in his ends and equally as unscrupulous in the means he used to attain them,” Darrow said, admiringly. “He would do whatever would serve his purpose when he was right. He’d use all the tools of the other side—stop at nothing.”

One of Altgeld’s enemies was Judge Gary, the man who hanged the Haymarket anarchists, and their feud had long-lasting consequences for Darrow. The hard feelings stemmed from their political differences, but also from Altgeld’s investments in real estate. He had purchased a building along the Chicago River, only to have its value damaged by the city’s construction of a bridge. After consulting with the city attorney, Altgeld agreed to have experts testify and abide by a jury’s verdict.

Mayor
John Roche, however, was a political foe of the city attorney. Two mischievous members of the mayor’s staff—John Green and
Clarence Knight—arrived at the courtroom, where they suggested that Judge Altgeld was using improper influence. Altgeld lost his temper, jumped to his feet, and, in a confrontation that made headlines as far away as New York, waved his fist and called Green “a damned liar!” Altgeld won the case, but was fined $100 and publicly humiliated for his outburst. And when an appellate panel reversed his victory he sent a seething letter to the judges, one of whom was Gary.

Altgeld first took revenge on Roche, a Republican who ran for reelection against Democrat DeWitt Cregier in 1889. Altgeld spent some
$5,000 to distribute a campaign leaflet, topped by Cregier’s name, that listed Democratic and Republican candidates and identified them as an “anti-machine” ticket. Enough Republicans were fooled into voting for the slate to cost Roche his job.
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Knight was Altgeld’s next victim. In June, Cregier fired the ten-year veteran of the city legal staff. “Judge Altgeld was after my scalp,” Knight told reporters. The new assistant counsel was the unknown C. S. Darrow, who had campaigned for Cregier and been rewarded with an obscure position—special assessment attorney—at City Hall. His promotion to a $5,000-a-year job caught the press by surprise. “Mr. Darrow is of too recent establishment in Chicago to be widely known, but in so far as he has made a record here it all seems to be creditable,” the
Daily News
reported. “Almost from the time of his arrival he has signalized himself … in the sessions of all societies and bodies convened for the discussion of social and political doctrine … He sealed his great serviceability to the Democratic Party by some excellent work on the stump.”
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Darrow profited from his time at City Hall, learning municipal law, advising Mayor Cregier, and obtaining a first-rate education in the wild and blighted habitudes of the city’s politics. “A rare conglomeration of city fathers ruled Chicago in the Nineties,” Carter Harrison Jr., a five-term mayor, would recall. They were “a low-browed, dull-witted, base-minded gang of plug-uglies, with no outstanding characteristic beyond an unquenchable lust for money.”
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Altgeld and Darrow were joined in Cregier’s camp—at least for a time, since things were always shifting as the boys chased the better deal—by the city’s gambling kingpin,
Michael Cassius “King Mike” McDonald, corrupter of cops and public officials, and the boss of the city’s vice district,
Joseph “Chesterfield Joe” Mackin, fresh from Joliet Prison. With them were aspiring scoundrels like
Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and
John “Bathhouse” Coughlin, a Laurel-and-Hardy pair destined for fame as the “lords of the Levee,” the downtown sin sector. Kenna, a spry, poker-faced little wizard, ran the Workingman’s Exchange, a saloon and gambling den that became the headquarters of the First Ward political organization. In return for a cut of the action, he arranged police protection for the pimps and barkeeps, and in return for votes on Election Day found tramps a place to flop. Coughlin was “a rubber”—a masseur at the Turkish baths—who graduated to the exalted status of alderman.
He was known for his elocution and unique dishabille—he wore Prince Albert coats of billiard-cloth green, plaid and mauve vests, lavender trousers, pink kid gloves, and gleaming yellow pumps. Kenna and Coughlin were a team, and they followed the advice of Senator
Billy Mason, who told Bathhouse, “You and Mike stick to th’ small stuff. There’s little risk and in the long run it pays a damned sight more.” For many years they hosted the annual First Ward balls, garish events at which gamblers, pols, saloon-keepers, cops, and prostitutes joined in a nightlong carousal of dance, drink, and rapine.

Making his way in this Gomorrah, Darrow steered clear of the worst offenses. He drew up ordinances, crafted legal opinions that upheld the city’s power to regulate guns and public utilities, and advanced Chicago’s right to condemn private property and annex land for civic improvements, such as the Columbian Exposition, the upcoming world’s fair. He prevailed in a weeklong trial defending the city in a $200,000 lawsuit filed by
Warren Springer, a landowner whose property was devalued by municipal street work. He helped settle a carpenters’ strike. And when a politically connected German American police captain named
Herman Schluetter gunned down an organizer of the secret Celtic society Clan Na Gael in early 1890, raising ethnic tensions to dangerous levels, the mayor and the officer turned to Darrow for advice. Darrow counseled Cregier, as well, when the mayor was charged with selling police protection to downtown bookies. And the public was appreciative when Darrow hauled the venal streetcar baron Yerkes into court for failing to keep his conveyances heated in Chicago’s frigid winter.

Amid the general mediocrity of the Cregier administration, Darrow won good reviews. “The appointment of CS Darrow to his present position by Mayor Cregier covers a multitude of sins of other appointments,” one journalist reported. “Darrow is able, fearless, independent with a fine sense of political honor and integrity, and with all his merit possesses a modesty that overshadows the whole.”

Darrow was lucky, as well. His boss, the corporation counsel, became ill and took an extended leave, and Darrow was placed in charge of all the city’s legal affairs. By the spring of 1890—three years after his arrival in Chicago—he was a star, mentioned as a candidate for high office, and hosting strategy meetings of Cregier’s political organization. His rise, said the
Inter Ocean
, was “almost phenomenal.” In the summer of 1890, his
friends launched a “boom” for Darrow in the Second District race for Congress. It was snuffed by the need to name an Irishman and give ethnic balance to the ticket. The
Tribune
got his name wrong again (“Charles Sumner Darrow”), but mourned his defeat.
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Darrow earned his first unfavorable bout of publicity after undertaking a clandestine assignment on Altgeld’s behalf in 1891. U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures in that era, and the voters had sent 101 Democrats, 100 Republicans, and three independent populists to Springfield. Most expected that the populists would ultimately give Democrat
John Palmer the required absolute majority. But the balloting dragged on for weeks, with Democratic newspapers exhorting the “Immortal 101” to stand by Palmer “until the last ballot.”

In February, Darrow took the train to Springfield, where he quietly urged Palmer to withdraw and tried to persuade the populists to anoint Altgeld. “C. S. Darrow … has made himself famous,” the
Chicago Post
announced, after news of the mission leaked. His attempt “to break the solid Democratic front and to defeat Palmer” was seen as “treachery” and “despicable conduct.” In an editorial, the
Herald
called on Cregier to fire the upstart.

The storm passed and, on the 154th ballot, Palmer was elected. But the episode did not dim Altgeld’s resolve, and he set out to be governor. He barnstormed the state and impressed the Democracy with his willingness to spend his own money to get elected, while Darrow, Schilling, and other lieutenants assembled a coalition of immigrant laborers, silk-stocking liberals, bucket-house gamblers, and socialist dreamers. Speaking for the good people, the
Tribune
publisher
Joseph Medill labeled Altgeld a “jesuitical little socialistic demagogue,” but in 1892 he defeated a Republican incumbent and became the state’s first Democratic governor since before the Civil War.
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A
S
D
ARROW ROCKETED
through Chicago’s legal and political ranks, his social and intellectual appetites soared. He settled Jessie and Paul in a new home on Vincennes Avenue but roamed the city without her. “When he became a big figure in a big city, their interests became different,” his son Paul recalled. Jessie was loyal; she skimped on her own clothes and jewelry so that Darrow could dress well. While she stayed home, Darrow
doffed his coat and danced to “Annie Rooney” at the annual picnic of the Cook County Democracy; partied with the University of Michigan alumni society; led the city law department’s baseball team in a contest against the county clerks; and judged the sailing races at the Fox Lake Yacht Club regatta. He began, as well, a dangerous flirtation with a young stenographer in the city law office,
Katherine Leckie.

When Mayor Cregier lost his bid for reelection, Altgeld called on William Goudy, an old friend and business associate, and got Darrow his position in the legal office of the Chicago & North Western Railway
Company. As a member of the
Iroquois Club, an organization of upscale Democrats, Darrow joined Goudy, Altgeld, and others at swank dinners and receptions, making friends with fellow strivers like lawyer
Stephen Gregory, Judge
Edward Dunne, a young banker named
W. W. Catlin, and Judge
William Barnum, whose daughter Gertrude would become a lifelong adorer. The “Iroquois club never does anything by halves,” the
Tribune
reported. For its tenth-anniversary dinner, in 1891, the club imported thousands of American Beauty and La France roses, filled two stupendous punch bowls with liquor, ice, and fruit, and decorated its dining room with relics from the Custer massacre. The club’s leaders, dressed in buckskin and feather headdresses, welcomed guests to a dinner of oysters, caviar, lobster salad, “pate of prairie chicken aux truffles,” partridge, salmon, and boar. Many of the “Iroquois braves” were also members of the Sunset Club, an organization of “genial and tolerant fellows” that met each fortnight for debates on social and political issues. Catlin drew up a “declaration of principles” that included “No By-Laws … No Bores … No Preaching … No Dead Beats.”

Darrow had found success. Like many in his generation in those days of periodic panics, when banks and businesses failed, he feared the snares of poverty and recognized the benefit of working for a wealthy corporation. His avidity disturbed some of his compatriots in progressive politics.
Jane Addams had opened the Hull House social settlement in the West Side slums of Chicago in 1889. She and the other refined young ladies who came to do good works in the ghetto joined Darrow on many liberal causes—most notably the landmark bill that limited child labor, established an eight-hour day for women working in factories, and banned the harmful sweatshops that exploited immigrants. Darrow was the bill’s advocate in Springfield, and his lobbying helped get it passed over the
opposition of the state’s manufacturing interests. He was also the lawyer whom the settlements turned to when a young man from the ghetto got in trouble with the law. But Addams recalled that Darrow was also “interested very much in advancing his own career in his profession—and in the financial side” during their early years in Chicago. She remembered “having to go among my friends and acquaintances, with my hand out, helping to raise funds to pay some of the big fees that Mr. Darrow demanded.”
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That was Chicago. The dollar ruled. The wealthiest citizens set the city’s standards from quiet offices high above the factory floor, or in their splendid drawing rooms. The great newspapers, and their editors, were fiercely conservative. The “good people” sang psalms on Sundays, equipped the local militia with ten-barreled Gatling guns to mow down striking workers, and launched crusades to close down the saloons. “These were church people who had grown rich on running grist mills, plumbing factories, piano factories; they were managers of dry-goods stores, and proprietors of elevators and wholesale candy houses,” said
Edgar Lee Masters, another young lawyer drawn to the city. “These were the specimens of odious respectability and … hypocrisy.”

But if avarice ranked among Darrow’s attributes, it did not supplant compassion. When he was confronted by a hard-luck case, it tortured him to think he might help and had not. It took nerve to cross the social divide, yet Darrow did. There was little to be gained by striving to ease the dreary lives of the working class, yet Darrow did. Respectable folks frowned at those who spoke on behalf of anarchists, Irish and Russian revolutionaries, and foreign-born workers, yet Darrow did. Trouble found the man who pleaded for trade unions and women’s suffrage, yet Darrow did. He seemed to go out of his way to vex the people and institutions that bestowed wealth. While employed at the railroad he joined the crusade to regulate the sweatshops, and another to give the public control of gas and electric utilities. He electrified a crowd of radicals at the Central Music Hall with his call for a revolution in Russia. And at the Sunset Club, Darrow spoke out against capital punishment, scolding his wealthy colleagues for their indifference when a young African American lad was executed.