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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