The Project Gutenberg EBook of Industrial Conspiracies, by Clarence S. Darrow
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Title: Industrial Conspiracies
Author: Clarence S. Darrow
Release Date: December 21, 2009 [EBook #30731]
Language: English
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The earth is moving, the universe is working, all the laws of creation
are working toward justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher
ideal, toward a time when men will be brothers the world over.
Industrial Conspiracies
By CLARENCE S. DARROW
Noted Lawyer, Philosopher, Author and Humanitarian
=Price 10c=
The earth is moving, the universe is working, all the laws of creation
are working toward justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher
ideal, toward a time when men will be brothers the world over.
Industrial Conspiracies
BY CLARENCE S. DARROW
Noted Lawyer, Philosopher, Author and Humanitarian
Lecture delivered in Heilig Theatre, Portland, Oregon, September 10,
1912.
Stenographically reported and published by permission of the author.
Published by Turner, Newman and Knispel,
Address Box 701 Portland, Ore.
Single copies of this lecture may be had by sending 10 cents to
publishers, 100 copies $6.00, $50.00 per thousand.
Orders must be accompanied by cash or money order. Postage will be
prepaid.
Make checks payable to Otto Newman, Publisher.
Box 701, Portland, Oregon.
=ALL RIGHTS RESERVED=
Publisher's Note.--This address was delivered shortly after Mr.
Darrow's triumphant acquittal on a charge growing out of his defense
of the McNamaras at Los Angeles, California. The man, the subject
and the occasion makes it one of the greatest speeches of our time.
It is the hope of the publishers that this message of Mr. Darrow's
may reach the millions of men, women and youth of our country, that
they may see the labor problem plainer and that they may receive hope
and inspiration in their efforts to make a better and juster world.
PAUL TURNER,
OTTO NEWMAN,
JULIUS KNISPEL.
Copyright, October 3, 1912, by Turner, Newman & Knispel.
Industrial Conspiracies
By CLARENCE S. DARROW
Mr. Darrow said:
I feel very grateful to you for the warmth and earnestness of your
reception. It makes me feel sure that I am amongst friends. If I had
to be tried again, I would not mind taking a change of venue to
Portland (applause); although I think I can get along where I am
without much difficulty.
The subject for tonight's talk was not chosen by me but was chosen for
me. I don't know who chose it, nor just what they expected me to say,
but there is not much in a name, and I suppose what I say tonight
would be just about the same under any title that anybody saw fit to
give.
I am told that I am going to talk about "Industrial Conspiracies." I
ought to know something about them. And I won't tell you all I know
tonight, but I will tell you some things that I know tonight.
The conspiracy laws, you know, are very old. As one prominent laboring
man said on the witness stand down in Los Angeles a few weeks ago when
they asked him if he was not under indictment and what for, he said he
was under indictment for the charge they always made against working
men when they hadn't done anything--conspiracy. And that is the charge
they always make. It is the one they have always made against
everybody when they wanted them, and particularly against working men,
because they want them oftener than they do anybody else. (Applause).
When they want a working man for anything excepting work they want him
for conspiracy. (Laughter). And the greatest conspiracy that is
possible for a working man to be guilty of is not to work--a
conspiracy the other fellows are always guilty of. (Applause). The
conspiracy laws are very old. They were very much in favor in the Star
Chamber days in England. If any king or ruler wanted to get rid of
someone, and that someone had not done anything, they indicted him for
what he was thinking about; that is, for conspiracy; and under it they
could prove anything that he ever said or did, and anything that
anybody else ever said or did to prove what he was thinking about; and
therefore that he was guilty. And, of course, if anybody was thinking,
it was a conspiracy against the king; for you can't think without
thinking against a king. (Applause). The trouble is most people don't
think. (Laughter and applause). And therefore they are not guilty of
conspiracy. (Laughter and applause).
The conspiracy laws in England were especially used against working
men, and in the early days, not much more than a hundred years ago,
for one working man to go to another and suggest that he ask for
higher wages was a conspiracy, punishable by imprisonment. For a few
men to come together and form a labor organization in England was a
conspiracy. It is not here. Even the employer is willing to let you
form labor organizations, if you don't do anything but pass
resolutions. (Laughter and applause).
But the formation of unions in the early days in England was a
conspiracy, and so they used to meet in the forests and in the rocks
and in the caves and waste places and hide their records in the earth
where the informers and detectives and Burnes' men of those days could
not get hold of them. (Applause). It used to be a crime for a working
man to leave the county without the consent of the employer; and they
never gave their consent. They were bought and sold with the land.
Some of them are now. It reached that pass in England after labor
unions were formed, that anything they did was a conspiracy, and to
belong to one was practically a criminal offense. These laws were not
made by Parliament; of course they were not made by the people. No law
was ever made by the people; they are made for the people (applause);
and it does not matter whether the people have a right to vote or not,
they never make the laws. (Applause).
These laws, however, were made by judges, the same officials who make
the laws in the United States today. (Applause).
We send men to the Legislature to make law, but they don't make them.
I don't care who makes a law, if you will let me interpret it.
(Laughter). I would be willing to let the Steel Trust make a law if
they would let me tell what it meant after they got it made.
(Laughter). That has been the job of the judges, and that is the
reason the powerful interests of the world always want the courts.
They let you have the members of the Legislature, and the Aldermen and
the Constable, if they can have the judges.
And so in England the judges by their decisions tied the working man
hand and foot until he was a criminal if he did anything but work, as
many people think he is today. He actually was at that time, until
finally Parliament, through the revolution of the people, repealed all
these laws that judges had made, wiped them all out of existence, and
did, for a time at least, leave the working man free; and then they
began to organize, and it has gone on to that extent in England today,
that labor organizations are as firmly established as Parliament
itself. Much better established there than here.
We in this country got our early laws from England. We took pretty
much everything that was bad from England and left most that was good.
(Applause). At first, when labor organizations were started they had a
fair chance; they were left comparatively free; but when they began to
grow the American judges got busy. They got busy with injunctions,
with conspiracy laws, and there was scarcely anything that a labor
organization could do that was not an industrial conspiracy.
Congress took a hand, not against labor; but to illustrate what I said
about the difference between making a law and telling what the law
means, we might refer to the act which was considered a great law at
the time of its passage, a law defining conspiracy and combinations in
reference to trade, the Sherman anti-trust law. In the meantime, the
combinations of capital had grown so large that even respectable
people began to be afraid of them, farmers and others who never learn
anything until everybody else has forgotten it (laughter); they began
to be afraid of them. They found the great industrial organizations of
the country controlling everything they used. One powerful
organization owned all the oil there was in the United States; another
handful of men owned all the anthracite coal there was in the United
States; a few men owned all the iron mines in the United States; and
the people began to be alarmed about it. And so they passed a law
punishing conspiracies against trade. The father of the law was
Senator Sherman of Ohio. The law was debated long in Congress and the
Senate. Every man spoke of it as a law against the trusts and
monopolies, conspiracies in restraint of trade and commerce. Every
newspaper in the country discussed it as that; every labor
organization so considered it.
Congress passed it and the President signed it, and then an indictment
was found against a corporation, and it went to the Supreme Court of
the United States for the Supreme Court to say what the law meant. Of
course Congress can't pass a law that you and I can understand.
(Laughter). They may use words that are only found in the primer, but
we don't know what they mean. Nobody but the Supreme Court can tell
what they mean.
Everybody supposed this law was plain and simple and easily
understood, but when they indicted a combination of capital for a
conspiracy in restraint of trade, the Supreme Court said this law did
not apply to them at all; that it was never meant to fit that
particular case. So they tried another one, and they indicted another
combination engaged in the business of cornering markets, engaged in
the business of trade, rich people, good people. It means the same
thing. (Laughter). And the Supreme Court decided that this law did not
fit their case, and every one began to wonder what the law did mean
anyhow. And after awhile there came along the strike of a body of
laboring men, the American Railway Union. They didn't have a dollar in
the world altogether, because they were laboring men and they were not
engaged in trade; they were working; but they hadn't found anything
else that the Sherman anti-trust act applied to, so they indicted Debs
and his followers for a conspiracy in restraint of trade; and they
carried this case to the Supreme Court. I was one of the attorneys who
carried it to the Supreme Court. Most lawyers only tell you about the
cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. (Applause). A lawyer
who wins all his cases does not have many. (Laughter).
Debs was indicted for a conspiracy in restraint of trade. It is not
quite fair to say that I lost that case, because he was indicted and
fearing he might get out on the indictment the judge issued an
injunction against him. (Laughter). The facts were the same as if a
man were suspected of killing somebody and a judge would issue an
injunction against him for shooting his neighbor and he would kill his
neighbor with a pistol shot and then they would send him to jail for
injuring his clothes for violating an injunction. (Laughter). Well,
they indicted him and they issued an injunction against him for the
same thing. Of course, we tried the indictment before a jury, and that
we won. You can generally trust a part of a jury anyhow, and very
often all of them. But the court passed on the injunction case, and
while the facts were just the same and the law was just the same, the
jury found him innocent, but the court found him guilty. (Laughter).
And Judge Wood said that he had violated the injunction. Then we
carried it to the Supreme Court on the ground that the Sherman
anti-trust law, which was a law to punish conspiracies in restraint of
trade, was not meant for labor unions but it was meant for people who
are trading, just as an ordinary common man would understand the
meaning of language, but the Supreme Court said we didn't know
anything about the meaning of language and that they had at last found
what the Sherman anti-trust law meant and that it was to break up
labor unions; and they sent Mr. Debs to jail under that law (laughter
and applause), and nobody, excepting someone connected with the union
had ever been sent to jail under that law, and probably never will be.
So of course, even the employer, the Merchants' and Manufacturers'
Association and the Steel Trust, even they would be willing to let the
Socialists go to the Legislature and make the laws, as long as they
can get the judges to tell what the law means. (Loud applause). For
the courts are the bulwarks of property, property rights and property
interests, and they always have been. I don't know whether they always
will be. I suppose they will always be, because before a man can be
elected a judge he must be a lawyer.
They did patch up the laws against combinations in restraint of trade.
Even the fellows who interpreted it, were ashamed of it and they fixed
it up so they might catch somebody else, and they brought a case
against the Tobacco Trust, and after long argument and years of delay
the Supreme Court decided on the Tobacco Trust and they decided that
this was a combination in restraint of trade, but they didn't send
anybody to jail. They didn't even fine them. They gave them six
months--not in jail, but six months in which to remodel their business
so it would conform to the law, which they did. (Applause and
laughter). But plug tobacco is selling just as high as it ever was,
and higher.
They brought an action against the Standard Oil Trust--Mr. Roosevelt's
enemy. (Laughter and applause). That is what he says. (Laughter and
applause). They brought an action against the Standard Oil Trust to
dissolve the Trust and they listened patiently for a few years--the
Supreme Court is made up of old men, and they have got lots of time
(laughter)--and after a few years they found out what the people had
known for twenty-five years, that it was a trust, and they so decided
that this great corporation had been a conspiracy in restraint of
trade for years, had been fleecing the American people. I don't
suppose anybody would have brought an action against them, excepting
that they had a corner on gasoline and the rich people didn't like to
pay so much for gasoline to run their automobiles. (Laughter and
applause). They found out that the Standard Oil Company was guilty of
a conspiracy under the Sherman anti-trust law, and they gave them six
months in which to change the form of their business, and Standard Oil
stock today is worth more than it ever was before in the history of
the world, and gasoline has not been reduced in price, nor anything
else that they have to sell. There never has been an instance since
that law was passed where it has ever had the slightest effect upon
any combination of capital, but under it working men are promptly sent
to jail; and it was passed to protect the working man and the consumer
against the trusts of the United States. So, you see, it does not
make much difference what kind of a law we make as long as the judges
tell us what it means.
The Steel Trust has not been hurt. They are allowed to go their way,
and they have taken property, which at the most, is worth three
hundred million dollars and have capitalized it and bonded it for a
billion and a half, or five dollars for every one that it represents,
and the interests and dividends which have been promptly paid year by
year have come from the toil and the sweat and the life of the
American workingman. (Applause). And nobody interferes with the Steel
Trust; at least, nobody but the direct action men. (Laughter and
applause). The courts are silent, the states' attorneys are silent;
the governors are silent; all the officers of the law are silent,
while a great monster combination of crooks and criminals are riding
rough-shod over the American people. (Applause). But it is the working
man who is guilty of the industrial conspiracy. They and their friends
are the ones who are sent to jail. It is the powerful and the strong
who have the keys to the jails and the penitentiaries, and there is
not much danger of their locking themselves in jails and
penitentiaries. The working man never did have the keys. Their
business has been to build them and to fill them.
There have been other industrial conspiracies, however, which are the
ones that interest me most, and it is about these and what you can do
about them and what you can't do about them that I wish to talk
tonight.
The real industrial conspiracies are by the other fellow. It is
strange that the people who have no property have been guilty of all
of the industrial conspiracies, and the people who own all the earth
have not been guilty of any industrial conspiracy. It is like our
criminal law. Nearly all the laws are made to protect property; nearly
all the crimes are crimes against property, and yet only the poor go
to jail. That is, all the people in our jail have committed crimes
against property, and yet they have not got a cent. The people
outside have so much property they don't know what to do with it, and
they have committed no crime against property. So with the industrial
conspiracies, those who are not in trade or commerce are the ones who
have been guilty of a conspiracy to restrict trade and commerce, and
those who are in trade and commerce that have all the money have not
been guilty of anything. Their business is prosecuting other people so
they can keep what they have got and get what little there is left.
But there are real industrial conspiracies. They began long ages ago,
and they began by direct action, when the first capitalist took his
club and knocked the brains out of somebody who wanted a part of it
for himself. That is direct action. They got the land by direct
action. They went out and took it. If anybody was there, they drove
them off or killed them, as the case might be. It is only the other
fellow that can't have direct action. They got all their title to the
earth by direct action. Of course, they have swapped it more or less,
since, but the origin is there. They just went out and took possession
of it, and it is theirs. And the strong have always done it; they have
reached out and taken possession of the earth.
A few men today can control all the industry and do control all of the
industry of this country. A dozen men sitting around the table in a
big city can bring famine if they wish; they can paralyze the wheels
of industry from one end of the United States to the other, and the
prosperity of villages, cities and towns, and the wages of its people
depends almost entirely upon the wills of a dozen men.
They have taken the mines; and all the coal there is in the United
States, or practically all, is controlled today by a few railroad
companies who can tell us just what we must pay, and if we are not
willing to pay it, we can freeze; and we respect private property so
much that we will stand around and freeze rather than take the coal
that nature placed in the earth for all mankind. (Applause).
All the iron ore in the United States that is worth taking is owned
and controlled by the Steel Trust, one combination with a very few men
managing the business; not more than a half a dozen absolutely
controlling it have their will; and nobody can have any iron ore, or
mold it or use it, excepting at the will of a few men who have taken
possession of what nature placed there for all of us, if we were wise
enough to use it and understand it. And the great forests of the
United States, what is left of them--and there is not so very much
left. We are a wise people. We pass laws now for the protection of
timber in the United States, so it won't be destroyed too fast, and at
the same time, we put a tariff duty of two dollars a thousand on
lumber that comes from somewhere else so that it will be destroyed at
a high price. (Laughter and applause). We are the wisest set of people
of any land that the sun ever shone upon. And if you don't believe it,
ask Roosevelt when he comes here. (Laughter and applause).
A few men control what is left of the forests, a few men and a few
great corporations have taken the earth, what is good of it. They have
left the arid lands, the desert and the mountains which nobody can
use,--the desert for sand heaps and the mountains for scenery. They
are now taxing the people to build reservoirs so that the desert will
blossom; and after it begins to blossom, they will take that.
(Applause). And even if they didn't own the land, they own all the
ways there are of getting to it, and they are able to take from the
farmer just so much of his grain as they see fit to take, and so far
as the farmer is concerned, I wish they would take it all (laughter
and applause), because he always has been against the interests of
every man that toils, including himself. (Applause). And they are able
to say to the working man engaged in industry just how much of his
product they will take, and from him they take just enough to leave
him alive. They have got to leave him alive, or he can't work, and
they have got to leave him enough strength and ambition to propagate
his species or the rich people can't get their work done in the next
generation. And that is all that they are bound to leave him.
They own the railroads, the mills, the factories, and all the tools
and implements of trade and commerce, and the workingman has only one
thing to sell. That is his labor, his life; and he has to sell that to
the highest bidder.
There are only a few of these men who own the earth and all of its
fullness. There are millions and millions of the people who do the
work, and if you can keep these millions and millions disorganized and
competing with each other, they will keep wages down themselves
without any help from the bosses. (Loud applause). On the other hand,
there are so few men who own the earth and the tools that they find it
perfectly easy to combine with each other and regulate the price of
their products, and they have learned better than to compete, and
there is no way for the wit of man to make and interpret any law which
will ever set them to competing again. They have managed to control
the price of their products, and charge what they see fit and all they
need is to buy their raw material in the open markets of the world as
cheaply as they can, and labor is the principal raw material that they
use. So of course they want free trade in labor, and protection in
commodities; and they have always had it, and our wise Americans that
are the marvel of the day, including the working people, have
cheerfully given them protection in the commodities that they sell and
free trade in the labor which they buy. (Applause). And they thought
by protecting the Steel Trust, so there can't be any foreign
competition that it will make the Steel Trust so rich that they can
afford to pay high prices to their working men. It is one thing to
make a man rich enough so he can afford to pay high wages; it is
another thing to make him pay. (Laughter).
So the employer and the capitalist have combined in all industry, and
they fix the price to suit themselves and insist that the workingman
shall come to them individually and unorganized and compete with each
other for a day's labor, so they can buy labor at the smallest cost
and if, perchance, there are not working men enough here, they want
the ports of the world opened so they can draw on China or Japan or
any other country on the face of the earth, and get working men there
to work for them at the smallest price.
The game is simple and easy. It seems as if it were simple enough for
an American farmer to understand; but he doesn't. (Laughter).
Now, the original conspiracy, industrial conspiracy, has been on the
part of the strong to take the earth, and they have got it. They own
it, and all they need now is to get enough working men and women at a
low enough price to make them as much wealth as they want. It is
pretty hard to fill that market, they want so much; but that is all
they need. And the conspiracy on the other side of the workingman of
the United States is the same conspiracy as the conspiracy of the
workingman of the world, and it has only one object. We may temporize;
we may be content with a little; we may stop at half measures, but in
the end it only has one object, and that is for the workers of the
world to take back the earth that has been taken from us. (Cries of
hurrah and loud cheering).
Take it back, and have all the products of their toil, not part of it,
but all of it. Now, it is a long road. It is a universal, world-wide
conspiracy by the intelligent working people and by their friends the
world over to get back the earth that has been stolen by direct
action. (Applause).
Now, no one who understands this question wants anything less and the
employer is right when he says if workingmen are permitted to
organize they won't stop with that; and they won't. (Applause). You
may place every lawyer on the bench and you may place a jail in every
block and a penitentiary in every ward, and the workingmen won't stop.
(Applause). If they will, they deserve to be workingmen forever.
(Applause).
The employer understands that if workingmen organize something will be
doing; and so he does not believe in organization. Sometimes he says
he does, but he does not. If workingmen must organize, then the thing
is to keep them as quiet as they can, to turn their labor meetings
into prayer meetings. (Laughter and applause). They are entirely
harmless. They don't help the people who pray, and the Lord has always
been so far away from the workingman that it doesn't bother Him
either. (Laughter). They are willing even, as I have said, to let them
pass resolutions, but that is about the limit. (Laughter). They
understand that one thing leads to another, and if they concede higher
wages today, next year they will want another raise and so they will.
There is no danger of raising it too high for a long while to come.
And if they concede shorter hours today, next year they may want them
shorter still. Everybody is working for shorter hours, especially the
people who don't work. And they are all working for bigger pay; even
those who get all there is, they want more. And of course, there will
be no stopping, there will be no end to the demand, until we get it
all, and that is a long way off.
And the question is how? And that is not so easy. It is easier to tell
how you can't get it than to tell how you can get it. It is easier to
tell how you haven't got it than how you are going to get it.
There is another thing that they are fairly well satisfied with: They
don't worry much about voting. They have been satisfied to let all the
men vote, and they have still kept their property. (Laughter). They
will be satisfied to let all the women vote, and they will still keep
their property. Voting has not done very much. We have been
practicing at it for more than a hundred years, and it is a nice
little toy to keep people satisfied, but that is all it has done so
far. (Applause).
Of course, here and there we have been able to pass a few laws. For
instance, we have statutes which forbid women from working in a
factory more than ten hours a day. (Laughter). Now, we have done
something. (Laughter and applause). We have statutes forbidding men to
labor more than a certain number of hours a day. That is, people like
to work; they love it so dearly that you have to pass a law to keep a
working man from working. (Laughter).
When we pass laws to keep men and women from working it ought to show
the stupidest mind that there is something terribly wrong with the
industrial conditions under which we live. If men had a chance to work
and get all the proceeds of their work, you would not have to pass
laws to keep them from working. They would stop soon enough. And if
every man could employ his own labor and receive the full product of
his toil it would make no difference how hard your neighbor worked, it
would not hurt you in the least, and you could let him work himself to
death if he wanted to.
The only difficulty is under the patch work industrial system of today
where a few men own all the earth, and all the factories and mills and
are compelled to sell their product to the workingman, they give him
such a small share of that product that the workingmen haven't
anything to buy it with. They can't buy it back, and so there is not
work enough to go around. And for that reason we are tinkering up this
old system of laws to keep people from working, and we pass a law to
limit the number of hours that a man can work and to limit the number
of hours that a woman can work, and to limit the age at which a little
child can be fed into a factory or a mill.
Do you suppose that the fatherhood and the motherhood of the people
of the United States is not of a high enough grade so they would not
send their children to a factory or a mill if there was any way to
avoid it? And do you think under any fair system of industry and life
we would ever need a law to keep a child out of a factory or a mill?
(Applause).
We have managed to pass some laws to require safety appliances in
factories and in mills and upon railroads. For instance, to put a
guard on a buzz saw so that a workingman won't saw his hand instead of
sawing the wood. (Laughter). But if a workingman had any chance to
employ his labor and get what he produced he would not be fooling with
a buzz saw and there would be no need of it and he would look out for
the safety of the machines himself and do it a great deal better than
the Government ever did it or can ever possibly do it. (Applause). So
we have done everything and tried everything, excepting to strike at
the root of any evil and accomplish something of real value. We have
even passed laws excluding the Chinaman and the Jap from the United
States. That is, we love our own people so dearly that we won't let
the Chinaman or the Jap do the work for them. (Laughter). We want our
people to have all the work, and if they come here and volunteer to do
it we won't let them; for work is a blessing under the present
industrial system. We have to work. If we stop we starve.
Now, I could imagine a system, and it seems to me that most all of you
could imagine a system that was so fair and so just and so equal that
if any body of philanthropic heathens would agree to come over here
and do our work for us, we would go and play golf or run automobiles
whilst they were doing it; but with a condition of life where a few
men have it all and the rest can only live if they have the work to
do, why no one can do it for us; we have got to do it ourselves. We
can't even allow a machine to do it, for every time we get the machine
to do the work it takes the place of a man or two, or more, and they
go out to beg or tramp or starve, as the case may be.
We have got a wonderful system of industry, and industrial life. If
anybody ever invented it, which they didn't, he must have been
standing on his head and drunken at the time he did it. (Laughter and
applause).
And now what are we going to do about it? We have the great mass of
men living upon the will of a few and taking what they can get, and we
have got to get back the earth. A small job. Some people would say,
"Well, if you have got to get it back why don't you go and take it?"
Well, we don't. Some people say we have got to vote it back, and some
say we have got to get it back through labor organizations, and some
say we have got to have a good deal more than that.
I don't know. But I want to say some things about political action. If
we are going to get at it in that way we first had better understand
the size of the contract, and there are a great many people who don't.
(Applause).
We have been voting a long time, and we have a democracy. Everybody
can vote--every man past twenty-one. If we are not doing well enough
we are going to let the women vote; then if we don't do any better we
will let the children vote, and then we will get somewhere.
(Applause). If we are going to get out of this muss by voting, why,
let's have a little of it. We had better have an election every day,
because if we can do it that way it is about the simplest there is.
But we have been working at it a long while and we are getting in
worse all the time.
In the first place, how many of us understand our system of
government? We hear people talk about it on the Fourth day of July,
and they run for an office in the fall. The most glorious system ever
invented by the wit of man!
I want to say that it is about the craziest system that was ever
conceived in the brain of man. (Applause).
Our system of government never was conceived in the brain of man,
because no man or combination of men were ever foolish enough and weak
enough to conceive them. It is a system of blunders. If you would
elect for the next hundred years a president as wise as Roosevelt
(laughter and applause) you could not move a peg.
Let me just tell you why. Suppose we want to pass a law. As I have
said, we pass little fool laws and nobody pays much attention to them.
They don't hurt anybody and they let them go. But suppose we want to
pass a law of substance, if there is any such thing as a law of
substance; suppose we want to do it, something affecting fundamental
rights, now how are we going to get at it?
One hundred and twenty-five years ago and more a body of men, very
wise for their day and generation, met to form the constitution. They
had just been indulging in a little direct action against England.
(Laughter). They could have sent members to Parliament up to now and
we would have still been British subjects. I don't know as we would
have been any worse off if we had been. But they got at it simply and
directly, and so they won our American independence. I don't know just
when it was lost, but they won it. (Applause). And the first thing
they did was to have a constitution.
You can't do anything without a constitution. You have got to have a
good constitution to get anywhere.
And so they got together a body of men, John Hancock and some more
penmen, and they wrote a constitution.
Now, what is a constitution? Why, it is just the same as if a boy,
twenty-one years of age, would say, "Well, now, I have become of age,
and I am wise, and I am going to write out a constitution to cover the
rest of my life, and when I am forty I can't do anything that is
unconstitutional."
There wasn't a railroad one hundred and twenty-five years ago; there
wasn't a steam engine; there wasn't a flying machine, of course, nor
an automobile. Nobody knew anything about electricity, except what
came down from the clouds and they were busy dodging it. There were
few machines; there was just a body of farmers--that's all. (Laughter
and applause). And they wrote the constitution, and there it is. It
didn't apply to the industrial conditions of today, for they didn't
know anything about the industrial conditions of today, but they
imagined that they were so wise that lest people one hundred and
twenty-five years later should think they knew more they would tie
things up so that we could not make a fool of ourselves, to the third
or fourth generation after they were dead. (Laughter). And so they
wrote down a constitution which meant that whatever the American
people wanted to do a hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred years
afterward, they could not do it unless it agreed with the constitution
that had already been written down or unless they changed it.
Well now, that was a wise piece of business so far, wasn't it? But
that is only the beginning of it.
Then they organized this government into separate states. I don't know
how many there are now, they are hatching some new ones all the while.
But every state was independent in a way, and in a way it was united
with all the rest. Nobody knows just how much independence there is
and how much union there is. Nobody knows but the judges, and they
only know in the particular case. They can say this goes or this does
not go; nobody can tell until they get there. (Laughter). What comes
within the state province and what comes within the national province
nobody knows, nor ever did know. The states are individual and
separate to make laws for themselves. Each one of them has a law
factory of their own, and they are all busy; and the United States
Government has another big law factory, and they have all been
grinding out laws for a hundred years and not only that but the courts
have been telling us what they mean and what they don't mean; so it
has been pretty busy for the lawyer.
Then they decided that they should have a congress, which consisted of
the senate, where men were selected for six years, not by the people
but by state legislatures, and a congress where men were elected for
two years by the people. But these congressmen elected for two years
didn't take their seat for a year after they were elected, and time to
forget all about the issue on which they were elected. (Laughter). And
not satisfied with that, they had to have a Supreme Court to tell us
what congress or the senate meant, and the Supreme Court was appointed
for life and not beholden to anybody; and they are generally about a
hundred years old apiece. (Laughter). And then they had a president,
who was elected for four years, and who had a right to veto anything
that congress and the senate saw fit to pass, and if he vetoed it you
could not pass it except by a two-thirds majority of both houses. And
there you have got it, so far as the United States Government is
concerned. But that is not nearly all.
So if you want to pass some important law, let's see what you have to
do. Of course, little laws don't count, for you can't keep up a
factory unless you do something, pass laws one year and repeal them
the next, or some little thing like that, to save the job. But take an
important thing, an issue coming up from the people, one ultimately
meaning the taking of the earth. Nothing else is important. It may be
in one form or another, but it must have that purpose, or it won't be
important, because you can't regulate things that belong to other
people very successfully; you have got to get it yourselves.
(Applause). Now, let's see what you have got to do.
In the first place, you must elect a congress, and the congress does
not take its seat for a year after they are elected; and then they run
up against the United States senate, holding six year terms, and
one-third of them passing away each two years, none of them elected
upon the issue upon which congress were elected, mostly old men and
generally rich men--rich enough to get the job. (Laughter). Now you
have got to get the law through congress and through the senate both,
which is well nigh impossible, if it is a law of any consequence. And
then here comes a president, who is elected by the people for four
years, and he must sign it, and if congress and the senate or the
president refuses, then you can't do it. Excepting if the president
refuses then you have got to get two-thirds of both the houses, which
is impossible if the law amounts to anything, and then you have only
begun. If you should happen to get all these three at once, which we
never did and never will on anything very important because the claws
are all cut out of any bill before it ever gets very far,--then you
have only begun. Then here is this document, this sacred document
which came down from Mount Sinai one hundred and twenty-five years
ago, The Constitution, and you lay down the law beside the
Constitution and see whether it is unconstitutional or not and of
course you could not tell. You would not know anything about it.
Congress could not tell; the senate could not tell; the president
could not tell. There is only one tribunal that could tell, and that
is the Supreme Court. And while the Constitution fills about ten
pages, the interpretation of the Constitution will fill a hundred
volumes or more. (Laughter). And the Constitution is not what is
written in ten pages but it is what is written in the decisions of the
judges covering over a hundred years; and they don't always agree, at
that, which makes some of them right. If they all agreed probably none
of them would be right. (Laughter).
So if you should ever succeed in getting a law past congress with its
two year term, and the senate with its six, and the president with his
four, any one of whom may block it, and will, if it is important, then
you have got to pass it to these wise judges who are not elected at
all and who have no interests with the people because they are
holding their office for life and they have been there so long and got
so old that they don't understand any of the new questions anyhow, and
could not, and who have the conservatism of age anyway, and they have
got to decide whether that law is constitutional or not, and before
they have decided it and before it has run the gauntlet of all of
them, even if they decided it right you would not need the law. The
law would be dead. (Laughter). But you must combine on all these four
things before you can accomplish anything.
And that is not all. Then you must decide whether the law is within
the province of the state or the nation; whether it is state business
or whether it is national business; and most of our laws are state
laws and when we get back to the state we find the same old story.
Wonderful wisdom! Here is first a constitution, which is nothing
except as I illustrated, a boy twenty-one years old swears he won't
know any more when he is fifty, and that kind of a boy generally does
not. (Laughter). And we have a legislative body to make laws, composed
of a house and a senate, two bodies, one not being wise enough to make
them themselves; and we have a governor with a veto, and a Supreme
Court to say whether the law is constitutional or not. The same thing
in the state and the same thing in the nation. Then we have got to see
whether it is in the province of the nation or the state, and you see
it is next to impossible to ever get a constitutional law that amounts
to anything, and we have never done it.
But, they say, this is a country where people vote, and if you don't
like the law, why change it. If you didn't vote there would be some
excuse for direct action, but as long as you vote you can change the
law. (Applause). The trouble is you can't change it. You haven't got a
chance. How can you change one of these laws that are important? How
can you appeal to the people, first of all, and change it with the
people? And next, how could you possibly elect a congress and a
senate and a president and a Supreme Court all at once, that ever
would make any substantial change, or ever did?
"Well," they say, "if the Constitution fetters you too much, why,
change the Constitution. The Constitution provides that it can be
changed." And so it does; but how?
You can change the Constitution of the United States. You could change
Mt. Hood, but it would take a pile of shovels. (Laughter). You could
change Mt. Hood a good deal easier. It could be done. The law provides
that if you pass a law through congress and the senate and it is
signed by the president, to change the Constitution, you may submit it
to the people and if three-fourths of all the states in the Union
consent to it, why you can change it. What do you think of that?
Do you suppose there is any power on earth that ever could get a law
through congress and the senate, approved by the senate, and then get
three-fourths of the individual states in the Union to approve it? You
and your children and your children's children would die while you are
doing it.
The best proof of that is the fact that we have had a constitution for
one hundred and twenty-five years, and the Lord knows it needs
patching. It needs something worse: It needs abolishing worse than
anything else. (Applause).
If anybody does want to tinker with voting the first thing necessary
is to get rid of the constitution. We have had one for a hundred and
twenty-five years with a provision for changing it. It has needed
change. It needs it all the while, and yet it has never been changed
but once. They passed several amendments all in a heap. What were
those? Those were amendments growing out of the Civil War, and they
didn't permit any of the Southern States to vote. They just ran them
over their heads, and they were all amendments protecting the negroes
after enfranchisement. And those are the only amendments we have had
in one hundred and twenty-five years, and it took a war to get
those--considerable direct action.
Why, if a body of ingenious men had gotten together to make the frame
work of a government to absolutely take from the people all the power
they possibly could, they could not have contrived anything more
mischievous and complete than our American form of government.
(Applause).
Russia is easy and simple compared with this. If you did happen to get
a progressive, kindly, sympathetic, humane Czar, which you probably
won't, but if you did you could change all the laws of Russia and you
could change them right away and get something. But if you got the
wisest and kindest and most sympathetic man on earth at the head of
our government he could not do anything; or if you filled congress
with them they could not do anything, or the senate they could not,
and the Supreme Court could not. You would have to fill them all at
once, and then they would have to override all the precedents of a
hundred and twenty-five years to accomplish it.
The English Government is simplicity itself compared to it. As
compared with ours it is as direct as a convention of the I. W. W.
(Applause). The English people elect a Parliament and when some demand
comes up from the country for different legislation which reaches
Parliament and is strong enough to demand a division in Parliament and
the old majority fails, Parliament is dissolved at once, and you go
right straight back to the people and elect a new Parliament upon that
issue and they go at once to Parliament and pass a law, and there is
no power on earth that can stop them. The king hasn't any more to say
about the laws of England, nor any more power than a floor manager of
a charity ball would have to say about it. He is just an ornament, and
not much of an ornament at that. (Applause). The House of Lords is
comparatively helpless, and they never had any constitution; there
never was any power in England to set aside any law that the people
made. It was the law, plain and direct and simple, and you might get
somewhere with it. But we have built up a machine that destroys every
person who undertakes to touch it. I don't know how you are ever going
to remedy it. Nothing short of a political revolution, which would be
about as complete as the Deluge, could ever change our laws under our
present system (applause) in any important particular.
But while anybody is voting they had better vote the right way if they
can find it out. If they can't it is just as well not to vote. They
had better vote for some workingman's candidate and be counted as long
as you are doing it. (Applause). Still any benefit that must come
anywhere in the near future must come some other way. Workingmen have
not raised their wages by it; they haven't shortened their hours of
toil by it; they haven't improved the conditions of life by it; it has
all been done in some other way. All of this has been accomplished by
trades-unionism, by organization. If you can organize workingmen
sufficiently so that they may make their demands strong enough you can
accomplish something in all of these directions. (Applause). But our
political institutions are such that before you could get anything
like a political revolution you need an industrial revolution.
(Applause).
And then we come to face some of the problems of today, and I want to
speak a little bit about that. I have talked to you about as long as I
ought to tonight, but I want to say something about some matters that
perhaps are closer home than those.
We find the American workingman bound by the law, as I have
said,--everything taken from him. He can't do anything by voting. The
courts are almost always against him, for the simple reason that
courts are made from lawyers, generally prominent lawyers and well
known lawyers. In almost every instance these lawyers have been
corporation lawyers. Their instincts are that way. Their beliefs are
that way, and their training and heredity are that way; and they are
not with the poor.
In order to be a lawyer you must spend considerable time, if not
studying, at least you must spend it not working. You can't work while
you are becoming a lawyer, and you won't work afterwards. (Laughter).
It takes eight or ten years' schooling at least. That is one reason
why a lawyer says he should have big fees, it takes him so long to
learn the trade. That is, the poor people support a lawyer so long
while he is preparing that they ought to support him better while he
is practicing (laughter); because a fellow studying to be a lawyer, or
a doctor, or a minister--I don't know what they study to be a
minister, but I suppose they do (laughter)--has got to be living while
he is studying and somebody must take care of him; to take care of him
while he is learning--after he gets it learned he takes care of
himself.
So the judges are not on your side. They don't look at things the way
you do. They are trained differently. If they were picked out of your
trade councils they would look at them differently and they could
decide cases differently. Everything is in habit, and the environment
and the training, and they are all the time fashioning the law against
you.
Then what? Workingmen find themselves hedged about wherever they turn.
They can't employ themselves. Somebody has got the earth. They can't
mine ore; somebody owns it. They can't get the steel to do the work
with themselves; they have got to buy it off somebody. They can't do
the work except for wages; the employer does it and the employer
insists upon open competition in labor and workingmen are constantly
fighting each other.
Everybody admits that the systems must change, that the laws must
change. They can't change them by political action, and the injustice
goes on, and on, and on.
They find children taken from school and put in factories and mills;
their children, not the children of the rich but the children of the
poor. The rich love their children so much that they don't put them in
factories and mills. Only the children of the poor are put in
factories and mills, which shows that mother love is not the same with
poor people as it is with rich people. Still the poor people have all
the children anyway, so there are enough. (Laughter). They are good to
the rich and they have the children for them.
They find that the life of a poor man is only about two-thirds as long
as that of a rich man. A man dies because he is poor. A lawyer, or
preacher or a doctor can take care of himself; but the workingman dies
because he is poor. Lots of gray-headed lawyers and preachers and
bankers and doctors, but there are not so very many gray-haired
workingmen. That is lucky for them, too, because they would have to go
to the poor house. (Laughter). Maybe they will get old age pensions
sometimes. (Applause). It is always safe and economical to give
workingmen old age pensions, because they never reach old age. They
find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death
under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from
ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big
spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and
they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are
squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know
which way to turn. And which way do they turn? They try voting. They
don't accomplish it. They try organization, and that is hard. They try
direct action, and that is hard, too. You wonder that they try it.
Now, a great many people condemned the McNamaras. A great many working
people condemned them. I don't say that the working people ever need
to resort to force, or ever should resort to force, but it is not for
me to condemn anybody who believes they should. (Applause).
I know that the progress of the human race is one long bloody story of
force and violence (applause); and from the time man got up on his
hind legs and looked the world in the face he has been fighting, and
fighting, and fighting for all the liberty and the opportunity that he
has had. I think the time will come when he can stop. Perhaps it has
come. And no one hates cruelty and force and violence more than I hate
it. But don't let them ever tell you that all the force has been on
our side. (Loud applause). It never has been; most all of it has been
with them. (Applause). They are the ones who have the force, who have
the power.
Why are these standing armies and navies; and, more than that, the
militia building their armories in every great city in the United
States? Are they there for a foreign foe or are they there to shoot
strikers and workingmen when the time shall come? (Loud applause). Are
they there to protect the people from China and Japan and England, or
are they there to protect property against the poor? (Loud and
prolonged applause).
What is a lockout in a factory or mill when they call it famine and
want and hunger and cold, to do their work? Is that force, or is it
peace and quietness and gentleness, and the Golden Rule?
What are the policemen, what are the officers of the law, what is the
machinery of government directed against the workingmen, holding all
the resources of the earth in the power of a few and compelling the
money to go to those few for the means of life? Isn't this force?
What is the blacklist? Is it anything but force that drives children
into the factories, that drives women into factories, and compels men
to work with defective machinery for long hours and poor wages? Is it
anything but the force of starvation and want that has always been
used by the owners of the earth to make the poor do their bidding and
their will?
The force is there. It is not with the weak. The weak have never had
the strength or the opportunity to use the force. And when here and
there some man like the McNamaras and others--I don't need to mention
them alone, excepting that I want to live to see the day that justice
will be done to them (loud applause)--here and there when they reach
out blindly to meet force with force, call it blind if you will, call
it wrong if you will; I have never counseled it or advised it, perhaps
because I am not brave enough; it is not for me to say; but call it
blind, call it mistaken, call it what you will; but the fact will ever
remain that men who do it never do it for their own mean personal ends
but because they love their fellowmen. (Loud applause). And long ago
it was written down that "Greater love hath no man than this, that he
who would give his life for his friend." Some day, I say, it will be
understood, and some day the world will understand that they and Wood
who was indicted from the other side for an attempt to charge
something to labor that labor was not guilty of, and all of these
other indictments growing out of the same acts, that all of these acts
were not individual acts at all, but they were a part of a great
industrial tragedy of a great evolution of society; that they are what
are called social crimes or social acts for which these men were
responsible in no degree. They were a part of a machine; they were
risking their lives; a part of a system; and, do what you will, others
will be ground out of it forever and forever, until the system shall
change and until there will be some equity and justice in the world.
(Loud applause).
The world is changing, and every person is doing his part in his own
way. It is not for you to criticize me or for me to criticize you, but
to judge men by their motives and to judge them by the side they are
on. Labor must stand for its own men. (Loud applause). It must stand
even for its own mistakes, and its own crimes if it is guilty of them.
(Applause). There is one question, and only one, to ask concerning a
man or concerning an act: "Was he on my side?" (Applause). You may
counsel him to do differently; yes. You may teach him moderation, and
believe in it; and all of us want to see peace and justice and harmony
come out of all of these contending forces, as it one day will come;
you may teach it and you may believe it, but the man who lets a
thought loose in the universe can never tell what the results of that
thought may be. It may bear fruit in a thousand ways of which we never
dream; but even though it does and it must the thought must go forth
to do its work and to change the face of the earth. The highest and
the holiest and the best thought may bring on strife and war. And John
Brown, a devoted man who believed in the liberty of the slaves, took
his gun in his hand and went to Virginia and raised his hand in
rebellion against the country. He was tried and convicted and hanged
for murder, and he was guilty of murder under the laws of man, but
under the laws of God he was a hero. The laws of justice and
righteousness look not to the act but they look at the motive that
moved the brain. Were they fighting on our side? Were they fighting
for justice and humanity and the weak and the poor and the oppressed,
as they saw it? If so, whoever they are and whatever, they demand our
sympathy and our support. (Applause).
John Brown by his act of heroism plunged the United States into a
civil war costing hundreds of thousands of lives, and billions of
property. But he was not responsible for the thought. It came in the
evolution of time. And so don't think that any one man is responsible
for any one great event in this world. The earth is moving, the
universe is working, all the laws of creation are working toward
justice, toward a better humanity, toward a higher ideal, toward a
time when men will be brothers the world over. (Applause). The
evolution will not all be peaceful. It can't be. There will be
conflict and blood shed; there will be prisons, there will be jails,
but through it all this same humanity that has come onward and upward
from the brute below us, onward and upward to where we are today, this
same humanity will be growing in wisdom and strength and
righteousness, and the good and the evil, the peace and the charity,
the violence and all, will be combined to make man better and make the
world juster and fairer than it has ever been before. (Loud applause).
(At the conclusion of the address of Mr. Darrow at the suggestion of a
member of the audience three lusty cheers were given for the speaker).
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
2. Other than the misprint corrections listed below, printer's
inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been retained:
"wont" corrected to "won't" (page 3)
Added missing period at the end of "conspiracy" (page 3)
"alays" corrected to "always" (page 3)
"Laugher" corrected to "Laughter" (page 4)
"appause" corrected to "applause" (page 4)
"guity" corrected to "guilty" (page 4)
"especialy" corrected to "especially" (page 4)
"hey" corrected to "they" (page 5)
"dolars" corrected to "dollars" (page 10)
"penitentaries" corrected to "penitentiaries" (page 10)
"rairoad" corrected to "railroad" (page 11)
"ony" corrected to "only" (page 13)
"Laud" corrected to "Loud" (page 13)
Added missing bracket at the start of "Applause)" (page 15)
"you" corrected to "your" (page 16)
"yon" corrected to "you" (page 19)
"can'" corrected to "can't" (page 19)
"yaers" corrected to "years" (page 21)
"voted" corrected to "vetoed" (page 21)
"coud" corrected to "could" (page 22)
"whlie" corrected to "while" (page 22)
Extra comma removed at the end of "four," (page 22)
"qoestions" corrected to "questions" (page 23)
"strong strong" corrected to "strong" (page 26)
"chidren" corrected to "children" (page 28)
"oe" corrected to "on" (page 28)
"and and" corrected to "and" (page 28)
"strvation" corrected to "starvation" (page 29)
"applaune" corrected to "applause" (page 32)
End of Project Gutenberg's Industrial Conspiracies, by Clarence S. Darrow
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