For The Thrill Of It Part 10

The entry of the United States into World War I confirmed his friends' suspicion that Darrow had drifted away from radical politics and toward the center. Darrow had become an ardent supporter of American involvement and of Woodrow Wilson, on moral grounds: Germany, an aggressively militaristic power, had violated the neutrality of Belgium. Darrow joined the National Security League, the princ.i.p.al group advocating American partic.i.p.ation in the war, and spent several months in 1917 and 1918 traveling around the country speaking in support of the government's foreign policy.

Yet Darrow strongly opposed Wilson's antidemocratic restrictions on free speech at home, and Darrow's efforts on behalf of anarchists, communists, and antiwar protesters helped restore some of his reputation within progressive circles. In 1917 anarchists in Milwaukee fought a gun battle with the police and subsequently received long prison sentences for conspiracy to a.s.sault with intent to murder. Eighteen months later, in March 1919, Darrow presented the appeal to the Wisconsin supreme court and succeeded in overturning the convictions.

Darrow also defended members of the Communist Labor Party on charges of violating the Espionage Act. Twenty members of the party stood trial in 1919 in the Cook County Criminal Court. Despite Darrow's best efforts, including a closing speech that attacked the prosecution for trampling on the const.i.tutional rights of the defendants, the jury found the communists guilty of advocating the overthrow of the government.32 Darrow thus managed to remain in the public eye throughout the 1910s. His p.r.o.nouncements and opinions continued to appear in the Chicago newspapers, of course, and occasionally his court cases would attract attention outside Cook County, in cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He had reached-and pa.s.sed-middle age, yet he still retained an uncanny ability as an attorney. He had become a fixture at the Cook County Criminal Court, representing as varied an a.s.sortment of clients as one might expect to find in a metropolis such as Chicago: corrupt politicians; bootleggers and saloon keepers; pimps, prost.i.tutes, and owners of ma.s.sage parlors; embezzlers, gamblers, and gangsters; and, of course, a steady stream of murderers.

NO ASPECT OF D DARROW'S CAREER before the Criminal Court was as significant in transforming his philosophy of crime and criminal justice as his efforts on behalf of Chicagoans indicted for murder. Until around 1915 Darrow clung stubbornly to the belief that all crime was, in one sense or another, economic crime. Criminals broke the law, Darrow believed, because they were impoverished, uneducated, and dest.i.tute; they had been reared in poverty and, deprived of any semblance of education or training, they had no way to make a living by normal means. They had no choice but to engage in criminal activity. before the Criminal Court was as significant in transforming his philosophy of crime and criminal justice as his efforts on behalf of Chicagoans indicted for murder. Until around 1915 Darrow clung stubbornly to the belief that all crime was, in one sense or another, economic crime. Criminals broke the law, Darrow believed, because they were impoverished, uneducated, and dest.i.tute; they had been reared in poverty and, deprived of any semblance of education or training, they had no way to make a living by normal means. They had no choice but to engage in criminal activity.

In June 1914, the warden at Joliet Prison invited Clarence Darrow to speak to the prisoners on crime and punishment. Darrow was well known for his opposition to the prison system, and his visit to Joliet was, according to the warden's critics, ill judged and inappropriate. But Darrow had come in support of the warden's inauguration of a more liberal regime at Joliet, and in his talk he endorsed the relaxation of the disciplinary system and urged the inmates to cooperate with the honor system introduced earlier that year. The prisoners, at least, received Darrow's speech with good grace-Darrow absolved them of blame and attributed their incarceration to the effects of impoverishment. "Most all the people in here are poor," Darrow drawled to his captive audience, "and have always been poor; have never had a chance in the world.... The first great cause of crime is poverty, and we will never cure crime until we get rid of poverty.... Most of the crimes committed, like burglary and robbery and murder, are committed by boys, young people.... And they are boys of a certain cla.s.s; boys who live in a tenement district; boys who are poor, who have no playground but the street; boys [who]...gradually learn crime, the same as we learn to be a lawyer, and, of course, after they get started then it is easy."33 Yet Darrow's work as a defense attorney in the Cook County Criminal Court often seemed to confound his most fundamental a.s.sumptions about the causes of crime. Some defendants seemed to have acted irrationally or, at the very least, in ways that defied easy explanation. Darrow, in his defense of such prisoners, could not make his appeal to the jury in ways that argued an economic motive, and as he took up alternative explanations for such crimes, his philosophy of criminal justice gradually began to adopt a more subtle mien.

Darrow's philosophy of economic determinism could not, for example, account for those murderers who killed in pa.s.sion and anger. Darrow himself knew that, in order to make an effective appeal to the jury in such cases, he had to abandon his concept of crime as a consequence of economic need.

RUSSELL P PETHICK, A TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD deliveryman, was a case in point. On Thursday, 6 May 1915, at ten o'clock in the morning, Pethick stopped at 7100 Lowe Avenue, the house of John and Ella Coppersmith, to deliver groceries. Ella Coppersmith was in the kitchen when Pethick knocked at the door, and her two-year-old son, Jack, was playing in an adjacent room. Pethick unloaded the groceries from his wagon in the alley adjacent to the Coppersmith house and stepped into the kitchen. Ella Coppersmith, alone in the house with her child, offered a ten-dollar bill in payment. There was a dispute over the change; the dispute escalated into an argument; and, as they faced each other, Pethick suddenly reached for the woman's blouse as though to touch her. She responded by striking him in the face with her fist. There was a butcher knife, with a wooden handle and a sharp, serrated edge, lying on the kitchen table. Pethick suddenly grabbed it and lunged at the woman. She fought back, raising her arms to defend herself from the blows, but Pethick struck at her, slas.h.i.+ng violently at her abdomen and throat. deliveryman, was a case in point. On Thursday, 6 May 1915, at ten o'clock in the morning, Pethick stopped at 7100 Lowe Avenue, the house of John and Ella Coppersmith, to deliver groceries. Ella Coppersmith was in the kitchen when Pethick knocked at the door, and her two-year-old son, Jack, was playing in an adjacent room. Pethick unloaded the groceries from his wagon in the alley adjacent to the Coppersmith house and stepped into the kitchen. Ella Coppersmith, alone in the house with her child, offered a ten-dollar bill in payment. There was a dispute over the change; the dispute escalated into an argument; and, as they faced each other, Pethick suddenly reached for the woman's blouse as though to touch her. She responded by striking him in the face with her fist. There was a butcher knife, with a wooden handle and a sharp, serrated edge, lying on the kitchen table. Pethick suddenly grabbed it and lunged at the woman. She fought back, raising her arms to defend herself from the blows, but Pethick struck at her, slas.h.i.+ng violently at her abdomen and throat.

As Ella Coppersmith lay dying at his feet, her throat cut, blood streaming out across the kitchen floor, the child, hearing his mother's screams, ran into the room crying. Pethick could not afford to leave behind a witness to his crime-the child might identify him to the police, he thought-and so he grabbed Jack by his s.h.i.+rt, pulled the child suddenly toward him, and slit the boy's throat.34 After killing the boy, Pethick ransacked the house, looking for valuables; he then returned to the kitchen, where he s.e.xually abused Ella Coppersmith's body before cleaning his clothes and hands of blood and returning to work.35 There seemed to be no mitigating circ.u.mstances for the brutal murder of a young mother and her innocent child. At the hearing before the grand jury, several witnesses, including Pethick's employer, John McCrea, testified that Pethick had shown no previous signs of insanity and that he could distinguish right from wrong. The state's attorney, Maclay Hoyne, was confident that he had a hanging case, and he announced that he would seek the death penalty for the double murder.36 But according to a diagnosis presented by medical experts, Pethick was mentally ill. Rachel Watkins, a prominent member of the Medical Woman's Club of Chicago, examined him in the Cook County jail. The prisoner, Watkins reported, had "degeneration of the nerve tracts.... He is very deficient in memory, reason, and judgment.... There is a disturbance throughout the entire emotional field. In general knowledge he is equal to a 5 or 6 year old child; and although he attended public school for eight years, he was unable to pa.s.s the third grade."37 Psychologists examined Pethick in his prison cell-they agreed with the physicians that Pethick was mentally incompetent. He was unable to perform even elementary tasks, and he had the judgment and intelligence of a young child.38 It was exactly the type of case that appealed to Clarence Darrow's humanitarian instincts. Pethick, a young man from a family of modest means, had committed a crime that was extraordinary in its violence. The murders had been entirely out of character. Pethick, according to everyone who knew him, was a reserved, quiet man who never smoked and rarely drank-he had never run wild or behaved indecently but had worked diligently to support his two aged parents.

Darrow had first learned of the case through the Chicago newspapers, and the more he read, the more incongruous it seemed that Pethick should commit such a brutal murder. The killing of Ella and Jack Coppersmith was inexplicable except as a consequence of mental derangement. Russell Pethick had acted from a compulsion to kill. Defects in his mental apparatus, Darrow believed, had removed his ability to choose his actions freely and had compelled him to murder his victims. Pethick was a suitable case for medical diagnosis, and the state's attorney would be better advised to send him to a mental inst.i.tution than to the gallows.

And if Pethick had not chosen to kill, then what could justify a death sentence? He was not responsible for his actions, Darrow reasoned, and under the circ.u.mstances, capital punishment would serve no purpose except to satisfy the bloodthirsty mob. The execution of Russell Pethick would not bring Ella Coppersmith or her son back to life; it would not deter other murderers; and, of course, it would neither redeem nor rehabilitate the murderer.

That summer, as Pethick awaited his trial in the Cook County Criminal Court, Darrow volunteered his services as defense attorney.

George Pethick, astonished that Chicago's most famous lawyer should take up his son's case, quickly consented; and on 24 September, the opening day of the trial, Darrow and his cocounsel, Alice Thompson, stood in front of George Barrett, judge of the Criminal Court, to plead their client's case.39 Might Darrow have submitted a motion for a change of venue? Even if Darrow could succeed in moving the trial away from Cook County, he would, he believed, be unable to secure a sympathetic jury. Even the most objective jury would find it difficult to look beyond the brutality of the murders and the intimations of s.e.xual depravity.

There was little chance, moreover, that a jury would find the prisoner not guilty by reason of insanity. The defendant may have been mentally disturbed, but in appearance at least, he presented no obvious signs of derangement. Pethick was lucid and coherent, and the state's attorney would no doubt present a surfeit of witnesses to testify to Pethick's ability to perform everyday tasks in a satisfactory manner.

It would be futile, Darrow realized, to use insanity as a defense. He had a better strategy, a strategy so simple that it caught the prosecution entirely by surprise. On the opening day in court, he said that his client pleaded guilty and asked the judge to consider Pethick's mental condition in mitigation of his punishment. Pethick, Darrow stated to the judge, was capable of distinguis.h.i.+ng right from wrong. He did not, therefore, meet the accepted test of insanity. But on the other hand, Darrow insisted, Pethick was suffering from mental illness. This medical condition should be taken into consideration in determining the appropriate punishment.

Pethick, by admitting his guilt, would avoid a jury trial. The judge would first listen to the psychiatric experts present their evidence that Pethick was mentally diseased. On the basis of that evidence, he would then sentence Pethick either to death or to a prison sentence of not less than fourteen years.

Darrow's gamble paid off. H. I. Davis, the former superintendent of the Psychopathic Hospital, testified for the defense that Pethick was subnormal-"His mental capacity is far below par. I wouldn't call him an idiot, but he is feeble-minded"-and that Pethick had a diminished sense of responsibility. Other physicians took the stand to support Davis's a.s.sertion that Pethick was mentally diseased.

James (Jimmy) O'Brien, the a.s.sistant state's attorney, countered the defense testimony with a reading of the defendant's confession and a recital of the numerous stab wounds found on the victims' bodies, but to no avail. Darrow had saved his client from the gallows. The judge handed down a life sentence in the penitentiary for the murders of Ella Coppersmith and her son.40

EVEN WHEN A DEFENDANT CONFESSED that he had acted for the sake of money, Darrow preferred to explain the crime as a consequence of mental derangement. On 5 April 1916, Edward Hettinger, a nineteen-year-old factory worker, had slit the throat of Agnes Middleton after breaking into her apartment looking for money. At his trial later that year, Hettinger denied his guilt and claimed that the police had tortured him to obtain his confession. Hettinger's attorney, Guy Walker, offered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury, after listening to the testimony of the medical experts, found Hettinger guilty of murder and sentenced the prisoner to hang. that he had acted for the sake of money, Darrow preferred to explain the crime as a consequence of mental derangement. On 5 April 1916, Edward Hettinger, a nineteen-year-old factory worker, had slit the throat of Agnes Middleton after breaking into her apartment looking for money. At his trial later that year, Hettinger denied his guilt and claimed that the police had tortured him to obtain his confession. Hettinger's attorney, Guy Walker, offered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury, after listening to the testimony of the medical experts, found Hettinger guilty of murder and sentenced the prisoner to hang.41 Clarence Darrow had played no role in the case. Yet enough had been written about it in the newspapers to convince him that Hettinger was mentally unbalanced. One year before the murder the authorities had committed Hettinger to the Psychopathic Hospital because of his eccentric behavior. The jury had made a mistake, Darrow believed, in sentencing the boy to hang.

Hettinger had a mental ability, according to the medical experts at the Psychopathic Hospital, equivalent to that of a child, and it would be a retrograde step, Darrow protested to the judge, Hugo Pam, to execute a boy with such a low intellectual capacity. "I don't believe any mental defective should be hanged," Darrow stated. "To hang this boy would leave the community cold. It would be a brutal thing to hang him. He is only 19 years old and his mentality is the most important thing to determine what punishment he should get. I believe the jury overlooked those facts."42 Pam listened to Darrow's words sympathetically, and a few days later, he announced that he would commute the sentence to life imprisonment, but only if the prisoner confessed his guilt. Hettinger was initially reluctant to concede guilt-he had had nothing to do with the killing, he protested. The police had beaten a confession out of him with their truncheons, and he now repudiated it. But Hettinger, after a long talk in his jail cell with Clarence Darrow, eventually agreed to confess in exchange for a life sentence in Joliet Prison.43

THROUGHOUT THE 1910 1910S AND INTO the early 1920s, Darrow defended countless clients on murder charges and avoided the death penalty in every instance. A murder might seem premeditated and deliberate, yet Darrow needed only to bring on the psychiatric experts to explain his client's action for the jury to accept his defense. Most typically the jurymen would accept Darrow's insistence that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. Even on the infrequent occasions when the jurors found the defendant guilty, they refused to hand down a death sentence, specifying instead incarceration in the penitentiary. the early 1920s, Darrow defended countless clients on murder charges and avoided the death penalty in every instance. A murder might seem premeditated and deliberate, yet Darrow needed only to bring on the psychiatric experts to explain his client's action for the jury to accept his defense. Most typically the jurymen would accept Darrow's insistence that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. Even on the infrequent occasions when the jurors found the defendant guilty, they refused to hand down a death sentence, specifying instead incarceration in the penitentiary.44 Emma Simpson, a wealthy socialite charged with the murder of her husband in 1919, looked to Clarence Darrow as her best hope-her only hope-of avoiding the death penalty. Emma had separated from her husband in 1912 after discovering him in bed with another woman. She had refused a request for a divorce-why should she give him the freedom to marry her rival?-but in February 1919 she filed suit in court charging her husband with infidelity and requesting payments for separate maintenance.

Elmer Simpson regarded his wife's demand as preposterous. She was a wealthy woman, from one of Chicago's most affluent families, he told the judge. He was making a modest living as a telegraph operator. The demand for maintenance payments was fueled more by jealousy and rage than by any need for the money. He taunted his wife, sitting directly across from him, with a cutting remark; but the words were the last he ever uttered. In front of a crowd of witnesses, Emma Simpson drew a revolver from the folds of her dress and fired four shots at her husband. Two bullets struck Elmer Simpson in the face, one lodged in his shoulder, and the fourth went wide, narrowly missing the clerk of the court, Gus Wedemaier.45 Emma Simpson had no regrets at killing her husband. As the bailiffs hustled her out of the court, she waved and smiled to a courtroom photographer from the Chicago Daily Tribune Chicago Daily Tribune while he snapped her picture. Later that day, she explained her action to the newspaper reporters as entirely justified: "I took the gun to court with me, but I didn't expect to shoot. He said something to me-something nasty, indicative of his whole nature. It made me boil-I couldn't stand it any longer.... I will tell my story to the jury and they will free me. I am perfectly confident of that." while he snapped her picture. Later that day, she explained her action to the newspaper reporters as entirely justified: "I took the gun to court with me, but I didn't expect to shoot. He said something to me-something nasty, indicative of his whole nature. It made me boil-I couldn't stand it any longer.... I will tell my story to the jury and they will free me. I am perfectly confident of that."46 Clarence Darrow announced that he would defend Emma Simpson as a victim of partial insanity-his client, he proclaimed to the newspapers, was rational in all aspects save one. Her husband's philandering, his provocative behavior, his cruel taunts and needling remarks, had driven Emma Simpson into a condition of insanity whenever she contemplated his behavior.47 Later that year, at the trial in the Cook County Criminal Court, Darrow produced numerous witnesses to testify to Emma's obsessive neurosis with her husband's infidelity. Ida Will, a close friend of the defendant, related that Emma would talk incessantly about her husband. She had driven all her friends to distraction with her talk. It had caused the dissolution of a card circle-no one could enjoy the card games while Emma complained endlessly about her husband.

Harry McCormick, a business a.s.sociate of Emma's uncle, recalled the physical changes in Emma's appearance after her troubles began. "She haunted my office asking my aid.... She became insane over the subject of her domestic life. I often found her in the office, her hair disheveled, her eyes staring, using violent language."48 Medical experts testified also that the defendant suffered from partial insanity. Harold Moyer, a specialist in nervous disorders, believed Emma Simpson to be manic-depressive. She was certainly insane at the time of the killing. Archibald Church, a professor of nervous and mental diseases at Northwestern University, had examined Emma Simpson and found her to display "egregious egotism and lack of self control," both of which, Church concluded, suggested insanity.49 In his closing speech, Clarence Darrow focused on Elmer Simpson's raffishly disreputable character. Emma Simpson had married beneath her, Darrow suggested, and she had discovered-too late!-that the man she had wed was an incurable philanderer who cheated on her at every turn. He had married her for her fortune, and just as soon as he had exchanged the matrimonial vows, he had taken up with another woman. No wonder, Darrow continued, appealing to the twelve jurymen, that Emma Simpson had sought to end her misery by shooting her husband-anyone else would have reacted similarly under such provocation! "Does it seem to you, gentlemen, that a person in his or her right mind would pick out a court, a temple of justice, where a dozen persons are gathered, to do a murder?...A large number of women, under the same conditions as Mrs. Simpson faced, would go insane."50 Darrow's eloquence worked its customary magic. The jury needed only thirty minutes to agree with his diagnosis of partial insanity. The judge committed Emma Simpson to the Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane, but her confinement lasted less than a year. A few months after her arrival the hospital psychiatrists decided that Emma Simpson had regained her sanity. She was free to return to Chicago and resume her previous life.51

BY THE EARLY 1920 1920S, Darrow no longer regarded crime as a consequence of economic circ.u.mstances. Darrow now looked to biology-understood in its broadest sense-to explain human behavior. Darrow had an autodidact's awareness of science and scientific theory. His father, Amirus, had an easy familiarity with such nineteenth-century cla.s.sics as Charles Darwin's Darrow no longer regarded crime as a consequence of economic circ.u.mstances. Darrow now looked to biology-understood in its broadest sense-to explain human behavior. Darrow had an autodidact's awareness of science and scientific theory. His father, Amirus, had an easy familiarity with such nineteenth-century cla.s.sics as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species and Charles Lyell's and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology Principles of Geology and had transmitted some of that familiarity to his son. In middle age, Clarence Darrow had read Herbert Spencer's and had transmitted some of that familiarity to his son. In middle age, Clarence Darrow had read Herbert Spencer's First Principles First Principles and had immediately taken Spencer's evolutionary viewpoint as his own. Darrow was never consistent in his adoption of Spencer's philosophy: he subscribed to the deterministic belief that mind is contingent on matter yet refused to accept the idea that society need make no attempt to ameliorate the lot of the underprivileged. And, although Darrow had never taken courses in science as an undergraduate at Allegheny College, he had, during the 1910s and 1920s, read omnivorously on scientific topics and had kept abreast with the most recent scientific propositions, especially as they touched on criminology. "I have always leaned strongly toward science," Darrow wrote in his autobiography, "and longed to give myself over to its study. I know something of astronomy and geology; I know a good deal of biology and psychology.... In that department of science I have spent a great deal of time and labor, and no one can make much of a success of any subject unless he knows a good deal about man himself." and had immediately taken Spencer's evolutionary viewpoint as his own. Darrow was never consistent in his adoption of Spencer's philosophy: he subscribed to the deterministic belief that mind is contingent on matter yet refused to accept the idea that society need make no attempt to ameliorate the lot of the underprivileged. And, although Darrow had never taken courses in science as an undergraduate at Allegheny College, he had, during the 1910s and 1920s, read omnivorously on scientific topics and had kept abreast with the most recent scientific propositions, especially as they touched on criminology. "I have always leaned strongly toward science," Darrow wrote in his autobiography, "and longed to give myself over to its study. I know something of astronomy and geology; I know a good deal of biology and psychology.... In that department of science I have spent a great deal of time and labor, and no one can make much of a success of any subject unless he knows a good deal about man himself."52 In Crime: Its Cause and Treatment Crime: Its Cause and Treatment, a monograph published in 1922, Darrow attributed criminal behavior to biological determinants. He was, Darrow admitted in the preface, no scientific expert-he had no specialized training in biology or psychology. Yet he had, nevertheless, picked up sufficient science, in the course of a long life, to know that crime was a consequence of biomedical circ.u.mstances.53 It was obvious, according to Darrow, that each individual differed from every other in mental and physical makeup. Such differences originated in the embryo and were modified only slightly in the pa.s.sage from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. The complexity of the nervous system, the capacity of the brain, the strength of the instincts and the emotions-everything found in the adult was potential in the nucleated cell. "There is no exception," Darrow wrote, "to the rule that the whole life, with every tendency, is potential in the original cell.... The child is born with a brain of a certain size and fineness. It is born with a nervous system make up of an infinite number of fine fibers reaching all parts of the body, with fixed stations or receivers like the central stations of a telephone system, and with a grand central exchange to the brain."54 The metaphor of the body as a telephone system served Darrow's claim that human action was less a consequence of free will and more a result of the effects of external stimuli. Sensory impressions traveled along neural pathways to register their impact on the brain, and knowledge was no more than an acc.u.mulation of sensations. "The child...feels, tastes, sees, hears or smells some object, and his nerves carry the impression to his brain where a more or less correct registration is made." Each individual operated as a machine might operate; if the machine was defective, then of course it would operate imperfectly. "All of these impressions are more or less imperfectly received, imperfectly conveyed and imperfectly registered. However, he is obliged to use the machine he has. Not only does the machine register impressions but it sends out directions immediately following these impressions: directions to the organism as to how to run, to walk, to fight, to hide, to eat, to drink, or to make any other response that the particular situation calls for."55 Science and scientism const.i.tuted the core of Darrow's philosophy. Admittedly Darrow's view of science might have seemed, in the 1920s, slightly outdated and old-fas.h.i.+oned. Darrow had come under the spell of positivism and had never abandoned his faith in a thoroughly mechanistic and materialistic universe. The natural world, according to Darrow, alone const.i.tuted reality. There was no room within this world for mental processes independent of materialism. The laws of matter and motion governed the world, and nothing, including mankind, could be exempt from their diktat.56 Science and technology provided the metaphor of the machine-the telephone system-that supplied an accurate understanding of the human condition. It had become a truism, Darrow believed, that scientific law could account for all phenomena, and there was now no reason to believe that human beings were exempt from the regulations governing the natural world. "That man is the product of heredity and environment and that he acts as his machine responds to outside stimuli and nothing else, seem amply proven by the evolution and history of man.... The laws of matter are now coming to be understood. Chance, accident and whim have been banished from the physical world."57 Science, Darrow believed, had eliminated free agency in human behavior-how could individuals choose their actions if they were susceptible to natural law? Each new scientific fad seemed to confirm Darrow's faith that an individual acted according to the rules governing the natural world. Endocrinology-the study of the glands and hormonal secretions-was a case in point. The hormones that poured into the bloodstream had a demonstrated effect on human behavior: the proper supply of hormonal secretions seemed to regulate the body precisely as though it were a machine. "Certain secretions," Darrow wrote in Crime: Its Cause and Treatment Crime: Its Cause and Treatment, "are instantly emptied from the ductless glands into the blood which, acting like fuel in an engine, generate more power in the machine, fill it with anger or fear and prepare it to respond to the directions to fight or flee, or to any type of action incident to the machine. It is only within a few years that biologists have had any idea of the use of these ductless glands or of their importance in the functions of life. Very often these ductless glands are diseased, and always they are more or less imperfect; but in whatever condition they are, the machine responds to their flow."

Other sciences also captivated Darrow in the years immediately following World War I. Accounts of the research of Jean-Henri Fabre on instinct and its acquisition by insects and arachnids had recently made their way from France to the United States. Fabre had spent his life in obscurity, patiently observing the insects in the countryside around Serignan, southwest of Montpellier, and publis.h.i.+ng his conclusions in Souvenirs Entomologiques Souvenirs Entomologiques. Fabre's predecessors had endowed insects with the ability to reason; but Fabre had demonstrated that their actions were entirely instinctual. The mason bee, the red ant, the dung beetle, the Sphex Sphex wasp-all caught their prey or provided for their off-spring instinctually. Recognition of Fabre's work arrived just before his death in 1915-he had been solitary, reclusive, and impoverished-and it resulted in an avalanche of popular works that brought his research to a general audience for the first time. The American public had to wait until 1921 for the first account of Fabre's work to reach the United States, but that account provoked a torrent of popular articles in the magazines and newspapers in praise of Fabre's work. wasp-all caught their prey or provided for their off-spring instinctually. Recognition of Fabre's work arrived just before his death in 1915-he had been solitary, reclusive, and impoverished-and it resulted in an avalanche of popular works that brought his research to a general audience for the first time. The American public had to wait until 1921 for the first account of Fabre's work to reach the United States, but that account provoked a torrent of popular articles in the magazines and newspapers in praise of Fabre's work.58 In a lecture before the Rationalist Society of Chicago in 1921, Darrow drew his own conclusions from a reading of Fabre's observations of instinct in insects and arachnids. The importance of instinct in the animal world, Darrow stated, provided a clue to its significance in higher forms of life. Human beings believe that they act rationally, but might they not also be subject to instinctual drives? Fabre's research was grist to Darrow's deterministic mill-human beings were no more capable of free agency than the mason bee or the red ant.59 Darrow's exegesis remained vague on such questions as the relative significance of instincts vis-a-vis the effects of hormonal secretions. Nor was it apparent that instinct explained human actions comprehensively enough to enable Darrow so casually to dismiss agency and free will. No matter that his account was vague: Darrow seized every opportunity to proselytize his opinion that science had made the concept of choice redundant. Instinct was one more way for him to push home his point. "Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.... These instincts and emotions are incident to every living machine and are the motor forces that impel the organism.... Instincts are primal to man. He has inherited them from the animal world."60 Darrow's philosophy of human behavior was built on the cert.i.tude provided by the sciences. This cert.i.tude pointed to a conclusion that, to Darrow at least, seemed inescapable. Objective forces compelled individuals to act. Crime was not the consequence of choice, and therefore punishment was inappropriate and futile. "Before any progress can be made in dealing with crime," Darrow declared, "the world must fully realize that crime is only a part of conduct; that each act, criminal or otherwise, follows a cause...that however much society may feel the need of confining the criminal, it must first of all understand that the act had an all-sufficient cause for which the individual was in no way responsible, and must find the cause of his conduct, and, so far as possible, remove the cause."61

FEW OF D DARROW'S CLIENTS CARED one way or the other about his philosophy of behavior. They knew only that he had an extraordinary knack for obtaining the best possible outcome in the courtroom. And so, in May 1924, the parents of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb sought out Clarence Darrow to save their boys. Darrow had accomplished miracles in the courtroom-it would take a miracle for their sons to escape the scaffold. one way or the other about his philosophy of behavior. They knew only that he had an extraordinary knack for obtaining the best possible outcome in the courtroom. And so, in May 1924, the parents of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb sought out Clarence Darrow to save their boys. Darrow had accomplished miracles in the courtroom-it would take a miracle for their sons to escape the scaffold.

And Darrow would accept the case, not because the defendants were deserving but because it was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. The trial of Leopold and Loeb would capture the attention of the nation. It would be Darrow's chance to prove to the world that crime was less a consequence of free will and deliberate choice and more a result of forces that had compelled the boys to an act of murder. Both families had promised him unlimited resources in the defense; Clarence Darrow would use those resources to make his philosophy of crime and punishment a reality.

9 ROBERT CROWEIn recent years the American public has been influenced to some extent by an active, persistent and systematic agitation based on an unfortunate and misplaced sympathy for persons accused of crime. This sympathy forgets the life that was blotted out. It forgets the broken hearted left behind. There should be no sentiment about it. Persons whose existence means death and disaster to others who have done no wrong have no claim upon society for anything-not even for life itself. I believe society should have no hesitancy in springing the trap every time the noose can be put around a murderer's neck.1Robert Crowe, 18 February 1928 JANET W WILKINSON SKIPPED UP the main entrance stairs of her apartment building at 112114 East Superior Street. She had golden blond hair, cut in a bob; china-blue eyes, set wide apart; a broad forehead, fair complexion, and firm chin-and she always had a smile on her face. No wonder the six-year-old was the darling of the neighborhood! That Tuesday morning, 22 July 1919, she wore a blue sailor frock with a collar edged with pearl b.u.t.tons and, on her feet, white cotton socks and a pair of black oxfords. Janet had just come from the public playground on Chicago Avenue; she had forgotten to return the metal identification tag issued by the playground and it hung, attached by a clasp, from the edge of her dress. the main entrance stairs of her apartment building at 112114 East Superior Street. She had golden blond hair, cut in a bob; china-blue eyes, set wide apart; a broad forehead, fair complexion, and firm chin-and she always had a smile on her face. No wonder the six-year-old was the darling of the neighborhood! That Tuesday morning, 22 July 1919, she wore a blue sailor frock with a collar edged with pearl b.u.t.tons and, on her feet, white cotton socks and a pair of black oxfords. Janet had just come from the public playground on Chicago Avenue; she had forgotten to return the metal identification tag issued by the playground and it hung, attached by a clasp, from the edge of her dress.2 Halfway up the stairs, Janet suddenly paused. One of her neighbors, a thin, bespectacled, middle-aged man, was leaning over the banister looking down, watching her intently as she climbed the steps. Janet continued to walk up the stairs, more slowly now. She recognized the man. The previous December he had shown her some comic books in his apartment, and after she had told her parents, her mother had insistently forbidden Janet to speak to him a second time.3 Several mothers in the building had complained to the police about Thomas Fitzgerald. He had often befriended children in the neighborhood. On at least three occasions he had exposed himself from the window of his second-floor apartment to girls walking on Superior Street; and a few months earlier, the Morals Court had fined him $100 for indecent behavior.4 [image]

17. ROBERT CROWE. ROBERT CROWE. After studying law at Yale University, Robert Crowe became a.s.sistant state's attorney for Cook County in 1909. He won election as a judge on the Circuit Court in 1916 and served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court in 1919 and 1920. After studying law at Yale University, Robert Crowe became a.s.sistant state's attorney for Cook County in 1909. He won election as a judge on the Circuit Court in 1916 and served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court in 1919 and 1920.

Now he stood on the landing, still staring down at Janet as she walked timidly up the staircase. Fitzgerald wore rimless gla.s.ses over his large brown eyes; he sported a faint mustache under an obtrusive nose, and at that moment his clothes and hair were rumpled and disheveled, as though he had just got out of bed. He was a shy, solitary man with few friends, diffident and awkward in the company of adults. Indeed, everything about his manner expressed a tremulous hesitancy, as though he expected to be contradicted at any moment. Even the few people who knew him well had a disregard for this nervous and vaguely unpleasant man.

Fitzgerald held a box of chocolates in his right hand. Janet looked at the candy, hesitating; Fitzgerald invited her to take one but she silently shook her head. She had remembered her mother's warning-she was not to talk to this strange man.

As she turned away to walk up the next flight of stairs, Fitzgerald suddenly grabbed the girl by the arms. His apartment door was ajar, only a few feet away. He lifted her up as though she were a doll, a blue-eyed, fair-haired doll, and half dragged, half carried her into the apartment, pus.h.i.+ng the door behind him with his foot to close it.

Janet was screaming now, crying and kicking. They were in the bedroom and Fitzgerald began to panic: the window was wide open; surely someone in the street below would hear her cries.

He punched the girl hard in the mouth to stop her screams-anything to stop that noise!-and he felt some of Janet's teeth break loose under the impact of his blow. He punched her again and noticed the blood on his hand. Fitzgerald grabbed the girl by the throat and squeezed hard. Soon she had stopped crying; her head fell backward and her limp, lifeless body lay diagonally on the bed; minute specks of blood had spattered over her blue dress.5

FOUR DAYS AFTER J JANET'S DISAPPEARANCE, Fitzgerald broke down and admitted the killing. He told the police that he had hidden the body in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the apartment building, in the s.p.a.ce between the wall and the flue, and buried it with coal lying by the furnace. Fitzgerald broke down and admitted the killing. He told the police that he had hidden the body in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the apartment building, in the s.p.a.ce between the wall and the flue, and buried it with coal lying by the furnace.6 The circ.u.mstances of Janet's death seemed bad enough. When a rumor spread that Fitzgerald had raped the girl, public anger in the neighborhood reached a crescendo. On Sat.u.r.day, 26 July, hundreds of men and women waited through the evening outside the East Chicago Avenue police station for the chance to grab Fitzgerald from his prison cell and lynch him. Even the Chicago Daily Tribune Chicago Daily Tribune, one of the city's more cautious newspapers, could exclaim that Fitzgerald deserved nothing less than the death penalty: "Every circ.u.mstance of the crime was horrible, from the motive and the manner to the agony caused by the concealment of it.... Fitzgerald is in custody with a clear case against him.... There will be a general opinion that he is sane enough to be hanged."7 The killing had touched the heart of the city. One week after the murder, on Tuesday, 29 July, more than 1,000 spectators turned out to watch the funeral cortege travel the short distance from Janet's apartment building to Holy Name Cathedral on State Street. Five thousand mourners crammed into the Victorian Gothic cathedral to see the small white coffin carried to the altar by six of Janet's cla.s.smates. Banks of flowers, garlands of roses, lilies, peonies, mignonette, poinsettias-red, white, pink, yellow, blue-were ma.s.sed at the front of the cathedral; the fragrance filled the air of the sanctuary and bore mute testimony to the sorrow of the city for the sudden death of the little blond girl.8

ON 21 S 21 SEPTEMBER 1919 1919 THE THE trial of Thomas Fitzgerald began in the Criminal Court. The chief justice, Robert Crowe, left no doubt that, despite Fitzgerald's guilty plea, he was eager to impose a death sentence. trial of Thomas Fitzgerald began in the Criminal Court. The chief justice, Robert Crowe, left no doubt that, despite Fitzgerald's guilty plea, he was eager to impose a death sentence.

A police physician had diagnosed Fitzgerald as syphilitic and mentally ill-"on the verge of paresis or softening of the brain"-but, nevertheless, Crowe declared, he doubted that there were any mitigating circ.u.mstances for such an atrocious killing. Crowe leaned forward over the bench and spat out the words at Fitzgerald standing nervously before him. "If you have any idea," Crowe shouted, "[that] the court would not impose the death penalty, get rid of that notion.... If you think the court is chicken-hearted, put that idea aside, too. If the evidence shows that hanging is proper there will be no turning aside."9 The next day, the a.s.sistant state's attorney, Jimmy O'Brien, argued for the death penalty. It had been a brutal, savage killing, he explained. Several of Janet's teeth had been broken by the force of the blows. The police had discovered spots of blood on the walls of Fitzgerald's bedroom. Most shocking of all, O'Brien informed the court, medical experts had concluded that Janet had still been alive when Fitzgerald had buried her under the coal in the bas.e.m.e.nt.10 It was true, O'Brien conceded, that a guilty plea traditionally mitigated the punishment. No one who pleaded guilty had been sentenced to the gallows in Chicago for several decades. Fitzgerald would be the first such case in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, O'Brien continued, the nature of the crime called for capital punishment.

Thomas Fitzgerald cut a pathetic figure as he stood in the dock awaiting sentence the following day. His police guards had beaten him severely in his cell, bruising his face and arms and kicking him in the s.h.i.+ns until his legs bled. As he faced Crowe, Fitzgerald's fingers twitched and fidgeted; he s.h.i.+fted nervously from one foot to the other, as though this movement would release him from the terror that he felt at his imminent sentence of death. His eyes seemed to have sunk back into his sockets, and his face was colorless; his forehead shone under the bright lights of the courtroom.

"Have you anything to say," Crowe asked, "before I p.r.o.nounce sentence upon you for the murder of Janet Wilkinson?"

"I'm sorry. I-I ask forgiveness."

"Is that all?" Crowe demanded impatiently.

"I ask G.o.d to forgive me."

"Thomas R. Fitzgerald," Crowe p.r.o.nounced, in a booming voice that reached the far wall of the courtroom, "I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead on Monday, October 27, at the Cook County jail."11

FOR AN AMBITIOUS POLITICIAN SUCH as Robert Crowe, it was an entirely appropriate verdict, one that bolstered his reputation as a hanging judge. Crowe, in his brief career on the Criminal Court and, in the 1920s, as state's attorney for Cook County, was never reluctant to use such episodes for political gain. Jut-jawed and thin-lipped, with a steady gaze and an intimidating manner, Crowe had always been foursquare for law and order. He was regular in manner and regular in appearance: he dressed conservatively, in a gray business suit, white s.h.i.+rt, and dark bow tie, with his brown hair brushed neatly toward the right. In 1919, he had started to wear brown tortoisesh.e.l.l eyegla.s.ses to compensate for shortsightedness. In another man, those eyegla.s.ses might have softened the appearance, made him more approachable, less minatory, but with Crowe, there was no appreciable effect, nothing that subdued his appearance of fierce, unbending determination and resolve. as Robert Crowe, it was an entirely appropriate verdict, one that bolstered his reputation as a hanging judge. Crowe, in his brief career on the Criminal Court and, in the 1920s, as state's attorney for Cook County, was never reluctant to use such episodes for political gain. Jut-jawed and thin-lipped, with a steady gaze and an intimidating manner, Crowe had always been foursquare for law and order. He was regular in manner and regular in appearance: he dressed conservatively, in a gray business suit, white s.h.i.+rt, and dark bow tie, with his brown hair brushed neatly toward the right. In 1919, he had started to wear brown tortoisesh.e.l.l eyegla.s.ses to compensate for shortsightedness. In another man, those eyegla.s.ses might have softened the appearance, made him more approachable, less minatory, but with Crowe, there was no appreciable effect, nothing that subdued his appearance of fierce, unbending determination and resolve.

Crowe was still only forty years old-the youngest man ever appointed chief justice of the Criminal Court of Cook County-and already he had a reputation as a formidable presence in the hothouse world of Cook County politics. An intensely competent and precise man who valued punctuality as a cardinal virtue, Crowe was also unscrupulous, cynical, cunning, and devious; he regarded the world with a knowing gaze and judged every situation with cold calculation. He was compet.i.tive, charismatic, and clever-as a law student at Yale University, he had quickly risen to leaders.h.i.+p in the Republican Club; and on his return to Illinois in 1901, he rapidly made his mark as an attorney with the firm of Moran, Mayer, and Meyer.12 His Yale education had given Crowe an intellectual polish and sophistication that distinguished him from his peers. Many attorneys in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century had attended Kent College of Law or one of the less reputable night schools that flourished in the city. Some had even forgone law school and had entered the profession simply by pa.s.sing the bar exams after private study. Crowe was different from the rest, and he knew he could never be content with the humdrum, workaday concerns of a law practice. In 1909, at the age of twenty-nine, he w.a.n.gled himself a position as a.s.sistant state's attorney for Cook County.13 This was Crowe's first step into Chicago politics. It was a modest beginning-the state's attorney, John Wayman, typically appointed half a dozen a.s.sistants each year-but Crowe, during his tenure in Wayman's office, managed to attract the attention of William Hale (Big Bill) Thompson, a leader of the Republican Party and former member of the City Council. Thompson, a bluff, outspoken, gregarious patrician and accomplished yachtsman, was a brilliant speaker with an appeal that transcended cla.s.s and ethnic lines. He had served one term as an alderman from the Second Ward but had lost his seat two years later because of redistricting.

In 1915 Thompson won the Republican nomination for the mayoralty. The party bosses had realized that he could attract the middle-cla.s.s voters, concentrated in the Seventh and Thirty-third wards, with promises of good government, efficiency, and honesty; and they were confident that he could entice the tenement dwellers-Poles in the Sixteenth Ward, Italians in the Nineteenth Ward, African-Americans in the First and Second wards, Russian Jews in the Maxwell Street neighborhood-with vague promises and populist demagogy.

Thompson was just as good on the stump as everyone had hoped. The Republican factions put aside their differences and united around his candidacy. The Democratic candidate, Robert Sweitzer, was a party hack whose German-American heritage and boorish remarks alienated voters and torpedoed his party's chances at the ballot box. On 6 April 1915, Thompson beat Sweitzer by 149,000 votes. It was a stunning triumph for a candidate whose only previous political experience-a two-year term as alderman-had come thirteen years earlier.14 Thompson had promised to eliminate the corruption that had characterized Chicago politics for as long as anyone could remember. But his victory had been more a consequence of the West Side machine than a result of his own efforts, and Fred Lundin, the boss of the West Side, was not about to permit the mayor to say and do whatever he wished.

Lundin, tall and gaunt, with a spindly frame, was instantly recognizable. His suit, coal-black and full-tailed, was s.h.i.+ny with age; his newly pressed white s.h.i.+rt had a black four-in-hand tie as its adornment; his large black hat, with a broad rim and a black ribbon, concealed his ma.s.s of rumpled, straw-colored hair; and a pair of dark, amber-tinted eyegla.s.ses shaded his eyes from the curious glances of inquisitive strangers. His chalk-colored complexion had a translucent, waxlike pallor, as though he had spent a lifetime indoors. Lundin might have been a mortician-except for that large, expansive, sinister smile which revealed a mouthful of regular, but slightly discolored, teeth.

Lundin-the son of Swedish immigrants-had started modestly; he had begun by selling juniperade, a beverage of his own invention, from a cart and horse, and within a few years, he had ama.s.sed a fortune. He entered politics in 1892 as a party worker in the Twenty-Eighth Ward; he served as a state senator from 1895 to 1897; and twelve years later, he won election to the United States House of Representatives. Lundin served only one term in Was.h.i.+ngton, returning to Chicago in 1911 and establis.h.i.+ng himself as the undisputed Republican party boss of the West Side.

Lundin had fixed on William Thompson as his candidate for mayor. Lundin knew the inner workings of the munic.i.p.al administration better than anyone else in Chicago; and he had no compunction about manipulating City Hall for his own benefit. Lundin was the puppet master who pulled the strings, and Thompson soon fell in with Lundin's scheme to rob the city treasury.

Thompson's election in 1915 ended any hope of reform of the city government, but it served Robert Crowe well. The mayor immediately appointed Crowe to an interim position-attorney to the Police Trial Board (where Crowe was responsible for defending police officers brought before the board on charges of malfeasance)-while he waited for some more lucrative position for his young protege.15

THE R REPUBLICAN P PARTY HAD BEEN the dominant force in Chicago politics for as long as anyone could remember, and its grip on power endured in the 1910s despite the emergence of three powerful factions within the party. Charles Deneen, a lawyer and former governor of Illinois, was the party boss for the South Side; Edward Brundage, who would be elected attorney general in 1916, commanded the Republican battalions on the North Side; Fred Lundin was the boss of the West Side. Each faction depended for its cohesion on the charisma of its leader and owed its continued existence to his ability to win jobs and patronage for the members. Neither ideology nor policy counted for very much in Republican politics in Chicago during the 1910s; each faction promised good government, an honest administration, and an end to corruption but relied more on the ability of party workers to get out the vote. the dominant force in Chicago politics for as long as anyone could remember, and its grip on power endured in the 1910s despite the emergence of three powerful factions within the party. Charles Deneen, a lawyer and former governor of Illinois, was the party boss for the South Side; Edward Brundage, who would be elected attorney general in 1916, commanded the Republican battalions on the North Side; Fred Lundin was the boss of the West Side. Each faction depended for its cohesion on the charisma of its leader and owed its continued existence to his ability to win jobs and patronage for the members. Neither ideology nor policy counted for very much in Republican politics in Chicago during the 1910s; each faction promised good government, an honest administration, and an end to corruption but relied more on the ability of party workers to get out the vote.

In the 1915 elections, the Lundin faction had won overwhelmingly-Thompson's plurality was the largest ever won for the mayor's office by a Republican in Chicago-but factionalism within the Republican Party continued unabated. Too many sources of power and patronage lay outside the control of the mayor's office for Fred Lundin to be able to ever entirely silence the rival factions within the Republican Party.

The disburs.e.m.e.nt of political power throughout numerous munic.i.p.al and county agencies foiled Lundin's repeated attempts to crush dissident Republicans who had burrowed deep within the administrative bureaucracy. Warfare within the Republican Party continued unabated as rival politicians ceaselessly battled for the spoils of office. Factional leaders were forever searching for compet.i.tive advantage, forming new coalitions and breaking old alliances. Chicago politics was endlessly labile; it offered ample opportunities for a bright, ambitious young politician to fight his way to the top.

IN 1916 R 1916 ROBERT C CROWE-WITH the backing of Fred Lundin-secured the Republican nomination for a judges.h.i.+p on the Circuit Court. In the election later that year, Crowe defeated his Democratic opponent handily. He served as a judge with distinction, becoming chief justice of the Criminal Court in 1919. the backing of Fred Lundin-secured the Republican nomination for a judges.h.i.+p on the Circuit Court. In the election later that year, Crowe defeated his Democratic opponent handily. He served as a judge with distinction, becoming chief justice of the Criminal Court in 1919.

In November 1920, voters in Illinois would choose a United States senator, the governor and lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the auditor, the treasurer, the attorney general, and the clerk of the state supreme court. At the county level, the voters would elect the county judge, state's attorney, recorder, clerk of the Circuit Court, clerk of the Superior Court, three trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago, ten judges of the Munic.i.p.al Court, county surveyor, and coroner.16 Robert Crowe's reputation as a no-nonsense judge and his effectiveness as an administrator, combined with his fealty to Fred Lundin, made him the obvious choice as the Republican candidate for state's attorney for Cook County. Crowe's decision the previous year to send Thomas Fitzgerald to the gallows for the murder of Janet Wilkinson had been a popular one. Crowe, moreover, could claim that measures adopted during his tenure as chief justice of the Criminal Court had significantly reduced crime in Chicago. He had served as chief justice for only one year, yet during that year, he boasted to a reporter from the Chicago Daily Tribune Chicago Daily Tribune, "more indictments were returned, more tried, more convicted, more hanged, and more sent to penal inst.i.tutions than in any other year of the Criminal court." For years the court system in Chicago had been notoriously slow and ponderous; criminals had escaped successful prosecution solely because of the length of time it had taken to bring them to court, yet already Crowe had begun to clear up the backlog of cases that had cluttered up the courts. "When I started," Crowe explained, "the Criminal Court was nine years behind in its work and now it is only two years."17 Crowe faced anemic opposition in the Republican primary-the Deneen-Brundage nominee, David Matchett, a judge on the Appellate Court, talked loudly about corruption in City Hall but had little else to recommend him. Neither Matchett nor a third candidate, Bernard Barasa, running as an independent without the support of any party faction, had a chance of winning the Republican nomination.

Nevertheless, warfare within the Republican Party reached fever pitch as the September primary approached. The Deneen and Brundage factions had combined forces to present a single ticket in the expectation that a unified campaign would more easily overturn the Lundin group. Whoever won the Republican primary would most probably win the general election, and victory would ensure control of patronage and jobs.

ON THE MORNING OF 15 September 1920, small cl.u.s.ters of city police and deputy sheriffs guarded the polls. Campaign workers stood nearby, watching closely as county officers checked the ident.i.ty of voters. For three hours the election proceeded peacefully, but toward noon, carloads of men, armed with clubs and revolvers, could be seen moving through precincts on the West Side. Violence broke out first in the Fourth Ward-three carloads of men attacked the polling station on South Lowe Avenue and kidnapped a precinct captain-and spread quickly throughout the city. The police department had too few men to guard every polling place in every precinct, and soon open warfare had broken out across Chicago as armed men fought to take control of the primary. 15 September 1920, small cl.u.s.ters of city police and deputy sheriffs guarded the polls. Campaign workers stood nearby, watching closely as county officers checked the ident.i.ty of voters. For three hours the election proceeded peacefully, but toward noon, carloads of men, armed with clubs and revolvers, could be seen moving through precincts on the West Side. Violence broke out first in the Fourth Ward-three carloads of men attacked the polling station on South Lowe Avenue and kidnapped a precinct captain-and spread quickly throughout the city. The police department had too few men to guard every polling place in every precinct, and soon open warfare had broken out across Chicago as armed men fought to take control of the primary.18 It was the most violent primary in the history of Cook County. One man, Mike Fennessy, a campaign worker for Al Gorman, a nominee for state senate, died in a shoot-out between police and party workers in the Fourth District. No one else died that day but, across the city, the police, deputy sheriffs, and party workers fought each other in a series of b.l.o.o.d.y battles that left men beaten, clubbed, stabbed, and shot. Robert Crowe's men were in the thick of it: in one incident a dozen men, armed with clubs, attacked twenty of Crowe's supporters in the Burton & Ascher saloon on Chicago Avenue, but after fierce fighting with blackjacks and knives, the intruders were eventually beaten back.19 It was not only the most violent primary in the city's history but also one of the most expensive. The whole affair, wrote the editor of the Chicago Daily Journal Chicago Daily Journal, was "a disgrace to the republican party, the state of Illinois, and the American people.... Close to $2,000,000 was spent by the two republican factions in cutting each other's throats.... This money, remember, was not spent to beat the opposing party, but to beat the opposing factions in the same party. Broadly speaking, the principles of the two factions are identical; the really important quarrel between them was over the 'honors,' emoluments and perquisites of office-and does anyone imagine that either side made its outlay without planning to recoup itself in the event of victory?...If this be the only fas.h.i.+on in which the people of Illinois can choose candidates for office, the state is in sore straits, indeed."20 A disgrace? Perhaps-but Lundin's men had emerged victorious. Candidates on the City Hall ticket won almost every nomination at the state and county levels. Robert Crowe did particularly well, winning the nomination for state's attorney with over 180,000 votes; his closest rival, David Matchett, received 113,000 votes. Crowe's triumph was the more impressive on account of the low turnout. Party registration had fallen since 1916, and even an increase in the vote as a result of women's suffrage had not compensated for the general lack of interest of registered Republicans in a battle between two equally corrupt political factions.21

JUST AS SOON AS THE returns had confirmed his victory in the primary, Crowe began the campaign for the November election. His Democratic opponent, Michael Igoe, a graduate of Georgetown University, was an experienced politician who had represented Cook County in the state legislature for four terms. Igoe was the better candidate-he was six years younger than Crowe, yet he had considerably more political experience and was better equipped to serve as state's attorney, having prosecuted several landmark cases while working as an a.s.sistant United States attorney for the Chicago district during the 1910s. Two other candidates for state's attorney-William Cunnea of the Socialist Party and John Teevan of the Farmer-Labor Party-were on the ballot, but neither organization now commanded much support within Cook County. The fight for state's attorney would be decided in 1920 in favor of Igoe or Crowe. returns had confirmed his victory in the primary, Crowe began the campaign for the November election. His Democratic opponent, Michael Igoe, a graduate of Georgetown University, was an experienced politician who had represented Cook County in the state legislature for four terms. Igoe was the better candidate-he was six years younger than Crowe, yet he had considerably more political experience and was better equipped to serve as state's attorney, having prosecuted several landmark cases while working as an a.s.sistant United States attorney for the Chicago district during the 1910s. Two other candidates for state's attorney-William Cunnea of the Socialist Party and