The transition from a largely rural and agricultural society to an industrialized and urbanized nation created sharp contrasts between the wealthy and the new working-poor class.
Darrow considered the conditions the poor faced in the new industrial society inhuman and unjust. Darrow believed that such restrictions were unconstitutional. Of all the threats to freedoms of speech, of the press, and to gather and to petition the government, the most sinister, Darrow thought, was the increasing use of conspiracy laws to combat labor unrest and other forms of dissent.
Such laws both increased the potential severity of sentences and criminalized the discussion of or dissemination of information or ideas that were directed at improving the lot of the working class.
In Darrow had the chance to argue against conspiracy laws in front of the Supreme Court. Debs and other union leaders were found guilty of violating the injunction, and a federal judge sentenced them to three months in jail. Darrow appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, where he argued that Debs and the others had been convicted of doing and advocating what is lawful — organizing support for a union. They had not encouraged violence and had even cautioned their supporters to avoid any violent activity.
To make them responsible for the remote consequences of their acts would be to destroy individual liberty and make men slaves. While Bryan became the party's nominee and lost to McKinley, further down the ticket, Clarence Darrow lost his race for Congress by only votes.
At the century's end, Darrow—by this time a committed determinist and agnostic—was a fixture in Chicago 's intellectual circles. Through his voracious reading he absorbed the mechanistic thinking and modernist notions of the age. He also, undoubtedly, was influenced by the times: a time of class conflict so intense as to border on class warfare, a time of Jim Crow and of unprecedented xenophobia, a time when the modernist notion of asking whether a behavior pleased one's own intellect began to challenge the Victorian way of asking whether the behavior was approved of by society.
Invariably, he saw his client's cases as inextricably linked to these large philosophical and social issues. Unlike most attorneys, Darrow fought his battles not just for his clients, but also for the hearts and minds of the American people.
Darrow believed, as did most people in the early twentieth-century, that intellectual battles could be won, not just fought. He felt strongly that science could beat fundamentalism or that Fundamentalism could beat Science , that trade unionism would win or trade unionism would be routed—there seemed no middle way. After a long career of celebrated cases, including—especially—his defense the year before of two, young genius thrill killers, Leopold and Loeb, Darrow by ranked as the most famous lawyer in the country.
In the pre-television, newspaper world, words mattered more than images. People appreciated oratorical skills; whole speeches were heard and were read—not just sound bites. The ability to use words well still could make one a hero in the s, the decade of Ruth and Lindbergh, a time that was the Age of Heroes. The Scopes case was a dream-come-true for Clarence Darrow. Bryan and the other fundamentalists in America. Two years before the Scopes trial, the July 4, front page of the Chicago Tribune carried a list of fifty-five questions, composed by Darrow and addressed to Bryan , relating to human origins and the stories of the Bible.
The questions came in response to a letter from Bryan , published in the same paper, attacking the teaching of evolution. Darrow does. Tierney cited the comments of a woman who attended a debate on religion between Darrow and G. His naturalistic philosophy left no room for the supernatural, and he had a hard time seeing how any thinking person could conclude otherwise.
Darrow considered himself something of an amateur scientist—and boasted of his knowledge of things scientific. VooC, They all served without fees. Neal served one term as a State Representative and one as a State Senator. While serving as a State Senator, he was elected speaker.
As a state legislator, he was author of a general education bill which created the four normal schools. The bill also carried the first annual appropriation for the University of Tennessee. He was the author of the present University Charter. At one time, he was employed as a professor at the University of Tennessee Law School.
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