He that troublemen

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.

Proverbs chapter 11, verse 29.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Thank you. Episode Episode 247 Inherit the Wind

Clarence Seward Darrow was born on April 18, 1857 in Farmdale, Ohio.

He passed to the Ohio bar exam and became a lawyer in 1878 when he was 21 years old.

Ten years later, he and his wife and son moved to Chicago, where Clarence became involved in Democratic Party politics,

which in turn got him work as an

attorney in the city law department. Two years later, he left that position to work as a lawyer for

the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company. Darrow left that job a couple of years later.

The reasons why are unclear, but soon after, in

1994, he was on the other side, as it were, defending Eugene Debs, who at this time was leader of the

American Railway Union. Debs was prosecuted for supporting the Pullman strike of 1894. Specifically, the U.S. government

charged him with interfering with the U.S. mail, which was carried on trains.

Debs was convicted and sentenced to prison, where he read Carl Marx and became a socialist.

Longtime listeners already know that Debs will later run for President

of the United States multiple times as a candidate of the Socialist Party.

The administration that prosecuted Debs was that of Democrat Grover Cleveland.

Darrow and his political mentor, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld,

were angry at Cleveland for supporting the railroads and at the 1896 Democratic National Convention

worked to ensure that Cleveland was not nominated for a third term as president. It was William Jennings Bryan, who got the nomination instead, and this convention is

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