Читать книгу The Story of my Life - Clarence Darrow - Страница 11

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In 1894 I opened an office and went into private practice. Neither then nor for any considerable time thereafter did I need to worry over business prospects. For many years my practice covered almost all sorts of litigation. When I began, it was with the intention of trying only civil cases. But no one controls his own destiny, and lawyers are no exception to that rule.

I was willing to undertake the injunction case brought by the railroad companies in behalf of the government against Mr. Debs and his associates, or, brought by the government in behalf of the railroad companies, whichever way one chooses to put it. How one puts it depends on how he views public questions. I had never had anything to do with criminal cases, and, like most other lawyers, did not want to take them. But Mr. Debs insisted that I should defend him, so I undertook the case. Naturally the trial attracted a great deal of attention throughout the country, and, as it resulted in victory for the accused, I was asked to enter other labor cases, and criminal cases as well.

Soon afterward I assumed the defense of Thomas I. Kidd, president of the National Association of Wood Workers, and others along with him, all charged with conspiracy, growing out of a strike in the large sash-and-door factories of Oshkosh, Wis. As in all places outside of big cities and industrial centres, the feeling was very bitter on both sides. The division was, as always, the rich of the community on one side and the workers on the other. The case was reported pretty closely by the newspapers of the Northwest, and the fight was intense and long drawn out. I shall not go into the details of this prosecution. It was one of the earliest conspiracy charges against working men growing out of strikes. The jury was drawn from people of all stations, but after short deliberation they returned a verdict of "Not guilty."

From then on I was very busy with all sorts of litigation: labor cases, strikes, condemnation, chancery, criminal cases, and many contests that were submitted to arbitration. I entered my first criminal case in the attitude of the "good" lawyer--the lawyer who attends all the Bar Association meetings and so gravitates as rapidly as he can to the defense of Big Business. The tragedies, the sorrow and despair that were present in the criminal court I knew nothing of, and did not want to know. A verdict of "Not guilty" or a disagreement had been viewed by me as by the general public as a miscarriage of justice and a reflection on the jury system. The jail was a place spoken of as we sometimes mention a leper colony.

Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down. By no effort of mine, more and more of the distressed and harassed and pursued came fleeing to my office door. What could I do to change the situation? I was not responsible for my peculiar organism. It was due to a certain arrangement of cells in which I had no choice that made it impossible to deny help to those in trouble and pain, if I could see or find a way to give them aid. It was really my lively imagination which put me in the other fellow's place and made me suffer with him; so I only relieved him to help myself.

Strange as it may seem, I grew to like to defend men and women charged with crime. It soon came to be something more than winning or losing a case. I sought to learn why one man goes one way and another takes an entirely different road. I became vitally interested in the causes of human conduct. This meant more than the quibbling with lawyers and juries, to get or keep money for a client so that I could take part of what I won or saved for him: I was dealing with life, with its hopes and fears, its aspirations and despairs. With me it was going to the foundation of motive and conduct and adjustments for human beings, instead of blindly talking of hatred and vengeance, and that subtle, indefinable quality that men call "justice" and of which nothing really is known.

I have read and studied and worked so much on this question of what men call "crime" that to fail to discuss it would be to omit the thoughts and feelings that concern me most, and have made up a large part of my activities in court. We know that man and his strivings and complainings represent a matter of small concern excepting to the individual during his brief consciousness here. Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call law. If instead of the telescope we use the microscope, we find another world so small that the human eye cannot otherwise see it, but fully as wonderful as the one revealed by the telescope. No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets?

It will be admitted that no one is responsible for his birth or early environment. No one is responsible for the sort of instruction that he receives in his childhood, or the absence of any, that might have shaped his religious, political, and general views of life.

As to all animals, excepting man, we now know that their actions are determined by causes such as heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and sex. We know that fishes and birds migrate thousands of miles in recurring seasons, probably moved by the instinctive desire to propagate their kind; and we know that all of these causes influence man the same as other animals that inhabit the earth. We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.

In ancient times the diseased were afflicted with devils, and to cure the ill these must be cast out. Jesus is said to have thus driven the devils out of an afflicted man, and the devils took possession of a drove of hogs that straightway jumped into the sea.

Magic was the origin of medicine as it was of religion. It was only when man began to recognize cause and effect that physicians learned something of disease and its causes, and studied means to prevent and cure. Now no intelligent physician would consider treating an ailment without trying to discover its cause. While cause and effect are not always easy to discover, our observations have been so general that we are warranted in the belief that every manifestation of matter, and what we call mind, is the result of some cause, or causes, most of them fairly obvious, but some of them still beyond the ken of man. That crime, so-called, stands out alone as an uncaused manifestation of human conduct is beyond the understanding of those who try to study and comprehend.

The truth is, the causes of crime are much better understood than the causes of insanity or many other ailments or diseases that afflict the unfortunate. There are few men to-day who can be called criminologists who do not recognize and fairly understand this fact.

In spite of the hatred, aversion and cruelty that attend the treatment of crime, we know a good deal about it now that may be called new.

Man has the innate instinct to satisfy his needs and desires that moves every form of animal life. In satisfying these instincts he often comes in conflict with obstacles forbidding their gratification in certain ways. The forbidden ways are not fixed and necessarily cannot be determined by any absolute rules or moral codes, which are always changing as new desires are developed and new methods devised for satisfying needs. The babe is born into the world without any thoughts or inhibitions on any subject. He is equipped with a human organism, and probably a few primitive natural instincts. He has no inherited consciousness that he should not gratify his wants in any way that he can find. The fox going through the woods in search of food happens upon a chicken; instinctively he grabs it and in spite of the chicken's cries kills and devours it to preserve his life. All lower animals pursue the same course, naturally. Instinct tells them what they want, and any possible means are resorted to for bringing about the result. The child is like any other animal; it sees what it wants and reaches out its hand to grasp it. He may like candy, and, as any other animal, takes what he wants where he can find it. Soon he observes that money will buy candy, so, he finds the money, takes it with him and buys candy. No instinctive feeling tells him that this is wrong. It is only through slow and patient teaching that he learns he can be permitted to get money in certain ways and not in others. He is not born with any natural inhibitions against taking it in these certain forbidden ways.

Only after special training does the child finally feel a reaction against taking things in the way called "doing wrong," and while he is being taught there is constantly the conflict between the desire to take things in natural ways and the inhibition that teaching has cultivated. He goes one direction or the other according to the relative strength of the needs and the influence of the created restraints. Nature has given him no sense that one is right and the other wrong.

No matter how fine the training, there are doubtless circumstances where any one will ignore restraints and follow his natural emotions. Any normal person would most likely steal before he would starve; certainly before he would let a member of his family suffer. Most people would steal far short of that line. With the majority there is always a question as to where that line should be drawn. It is determined by the control of the inhibitions and the strength of the need or the desire. It is obvious that no two human beings would draw the line at the same place. The criminal code is not content with certain limitations on conduct that seem perfectly plain. Most persons can see no distinction between stealing and cheating, except that to some cheating seems more cowardly. But what is cheating? If one scans the law books he will find endless conflicts in the opinions of courts. This is true in the nature of things, depending in the last analysis on how the particular sort of conduct appeals to certain judges. The law has always held that one had the right to "puff his wares," to represent that the thing he has to sell is worth much more than its real value, or is of much finer texture than it really is. He may publish broadcast cunningly worded ad's explicitly designed to make men and women of none-too-good mentality buy things that they do not need and cannot afford, in the belief that they are getting bargains. Essentially this is cheating, and published with the intent of getting people's money for nothing. How much moral difference is there between this and stealing outright?--or in burglarizing a home?

Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a narrow, shifting one and usually lets those get by that are the most subtle and already have more than they can use. The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits and defects, and putting themselves in the purchasers' place and inquiring if he himself would buy under the circumstances. But such men never would be prosperous merchants.

Recalling that those found in prisons are practically always poor, it follows that their needs to get things must be great; and their desires being the same as those of others, the struggle between wants and inhibitions lands them outside the law, when under more fortunate circumstances they would conform. But whatever man does or does not do, he is bound to yield to the strongest motive. It must be remembered, too, that wants and needs are elastic words. In this day and generation, who is poor and who is rich? I can recall when it was scarcely believed possible to be a millionaire. But now, from the standpoint of many men and women, a millionaire is poor. Fortunes have grown so rapidly, their figures are so enormous, and the expenditures of the wealthy so lavish as to excite the envy and even hatred of the millions who toil and strive and save to satisfy the plainest and humblest needs. The new method that brings to some untold wealth adds to the desires of all classes of men and women. It brings new thoughts to the minds of men who know that they cannot play the game that others play. Some proportion, at least, is sure to find its inhibitions too weak to withstand the strain, or to ask what life is worth if one is to be condemned to endless slavery and self-denial.

Crimes such as larceny, burglary, and robbery are more numerous in hard times than in good seasons. They increase during strikes and lockouts. They flourish in panics and with closed shops and factories. They are more frequent in winter than in summer. They would well-nigh disappear if conditions of life came anywhere near being equable and fair and decent.