Attorney for the Damned, by Arthur Weinberg

[p024] Attorney for the Damned, by Arthur Weinberg (Mac- Donald, 30s.) Mr Arthur Weinberg has collected in book form a series of speeches by Clarence Darrow, the famous American. lawyer. To these speeches he has added historical footnotes and the net result is one of the most interesting and thrilling biographies that any author ever, I am sure, intended to write. Although essentially this book is a verbatim repetition of the final speeches of Clarence Darrow in famous legal conflicts {all against authority and for the underdog) the “result is a revelation of Darrow the man. That Clarence Darrow was one of the greatest advocates in American legal history almost goes without saying, but Mr Weinberg has succeeded in proving that Darrow was also one of the greatest of Americans—and a fine Socialist to boot. 1 am sure no words of mine can illustrate this better than the following: quotations: ‘If every man, woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent fair honest living, there would be no jails, no lawyers and no courts’. They had just as many criminals It was not because the world had grown bad; it was because the earth had . been taken away from the people’. ‘Abolish the right of private ownership of land, abolish monopoly, make the people of the ‘world partners in Production’. . this hue and cry of today ..... is moved and instigated By a gang of profiteers who would strangle freedom that they may get rich’, “Twenty states would pass a statute like this... . so that great interests may silence every human voice while they are robbing the American people’. ‘.... there are things that are higher than patriotism—love of justice, the devotion to truth, the love of freedom ....and they will live until the last heartbeat dies in man’, ” “Let me tell you about this red flag .... why every tyrant on earth has hated it. ...why every man with stolen money in his pocket has hated it,’ “.... you would have sent Christ to jail just the same as you would these defendants .... just the same as there have always been prosecutors to send to jail every man who had a dream beyond the narrow vision of his fellow man’. “I do know that capitalism does not work,’ — their toil... . I wish the time would come when the n men who work in the industries would own the industries’. ‘It is but an episode in the great battle for human liberty . . . . which will not end so long as the children of one father shall be compelled to toil to support the children of another in luxury. and ease’. c ... if it was in my power to-morrow to provoke another strike in this City that would succeed I would doit... .’ ‘He has been called a labour agitator and he is. I will be called one, and I am. Gentlemen, I hope I will continue to be one so long as breath is spared in me to speak... .’ ‘he is mortal, he will die, but I want to say that a million men will grab up the banner of labour .... and will carry it to victory in the end’, ‘The radical of to-day is the Conservative of to-morrow, and other. martyrs take up the work ....and. . soaked by their blood . . the world moves on’. These are not quotations from ‘Das KapitaY—they are the words of Clarence Darrow—not made in the snug safety of the American equivalent of the monthly meeting of the Trades Council & Labour Party, but to judges and juries, to bitter and influential opponents, in defence of humanity and in defiance of its persecutors. - Indeed, Darrow was justified when he said of himself—T speak for the poor, for the weak, for the weary, for that long line of men who in darkness and despair have borne the labours of the human race’. In spite of this book being in effect a series of speeches, it still will give to the reader the enjoyment of a first class ‘thriller’ and above all an appreciation of Darrow the great. E. M. Mannhehn, LLB Central America