Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,97

tale of a murderous “inner circle.” Two of the three Adams trials ended with hung juries, the other in an acquittal. The trials of Haywood and Pettibone—the two instances where jurors had an opportunity to watch Orchard testify and judge him—ended in verdicts of not guilty. Despite its home court advantage and star witness, the finest prosecutors and a compliant press, the mine owners’ money, the Pinkerton spies, a permissive Supreme Court, and the unconscionable meddling of Theodore Roosevelt, the state had failed to prove that the union killed Frank Steunenberg.

MEANWHILE, DARROW WAS suffering through another month—his fourth—of grueling pain. The usual procedure for mastoiditis was to remove a portion of the affected area, drain the wound, and keep the infection from spreading. But the doctors were stumped by the absence of characteristic swelling or fever, and balked at subjecting him to the hazards of an operation. On January 2, the newspapers in Los Angeles reported that Darrow’s condition was critical, and that he had resolved to return to Chicago. Then, on the day that he and Ruby were preparing to leave, Darrow felt a lump behind his ear. The surgeons operated the next day.

Darrow recovered, though he lost his hearing in that ear. But his troubles were not over. A panic had swept Wall Street in October. Banks failed, speculators hoarded gold, and desperate investors killed themselves. The resultant depression lingered for months, crushing businesses and throwing millions out of work. Darrow lost his investments in bank stocks, and Ruby received urgent cables from an Illinois associate who had helped persuade him to invest in a Mexican gold mine. Darrow had sunk much of his savings in the Black Mountain mine and should withdraw his money immediately, the man said. But the doctors in California told Ruby that Darrow should not be subjected to such a shock. She shoved the telegrams under a cushion, and more money was lost. When she finally informed him, he stood up “like a rocket and paced back and forth, jerking himself from the arms of those strong men trying to subdue his emotions,” Ruby remembered. “Toward me he turned an unforgettable look, charged with … accusation.”

Darrow demanded to know if she realized that “I had thrown away his life savings, his dream of retiring,” Ruby said. “Now he would have to begin all over and be a slave to the irksome law work.” He had nursed hopes of moving to New York or London to be a man of letters. He sank back onto the bed and told her: “I will never forgive you for this. We’re wiped out. We’re broke.”3

BACK IN CHICAGO, Edgar Lee Masters was feeling the effects of the market crash as well. He had developed a fine opinion of himself and his talents, convinced that the acts of lesser men—“the cords of the Lilliputians,” as Masters put it—kept him from fulfilling his great promise.

Darrow, Masters & Wilson had done well. “Business had poured into our office, and we could have become rich on it,” Masters recalled. Yet his rambunctious sex life cost him money, and his wife Helen was pressing him to buy a home commensurate with their social status. And though the Haywood case carried a supposed fee of $50,000, the Federation was strapped for funds. By June 1907, the law firm had received just $14,500. His defense of the union took Darrow away from the office for much of two years. “He neglected the most important cases,” Masters griped, “and the result was that they ceased to come.” Hearst was behind on his payments to the firm, the American economy was crumbling, and according to Ruby’s frantic messages, the rainmaker was on the brink of death.

In November, Masters had written Darrow, alerting him to the firm’s troubled finances and demanding money. The partners had an agreement, Masters reminded him, to divide the fees. Darrow was to get 55 percent, Masters to get 25 percent, and Cy Symon and Frank Wilson 10 percent each. But Darrow and his son Paul were overdrawing money from the firm’s account to cover their losses and pay Jessie’s expenses. According to Masters, Darrow owed him $1,725, plus a share of the balance due from the union. More important, the firm needed its marquee name back in Chicago, generating business.

Darrow answered the letter from Boise. He expressed his “regret” that the firm was “hard up” and that his absence “hurts the business,” but was wounded by his partner’s demands and defended his decision