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Clarence Seward Darrow (1857 - 1938)  

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


als ich noch ein kleiner Junge war, sagte man mir, jeder könne Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten werden. So langsam glaube ich, das stimmt wirklich
die erste Hälfte unseres Lebens wird von unseren Eltern ruiniert und die zweite von unseren Kindern