Gale Encyclopedia of American Law Volume 3 P38 fully illuminates today's leading cases, major statutes, legal terms and concepts, notable persons involved with the law, important documents and more. Legal issues are fully discussed in easy-to-understand language, including such high-profile topics as the Americans with Disabilities Act, capital punishment, domestic violence, gay and lesbian rights, physician-assisted suicide and thousands more. | 358 DARROW CLARENCE SEWARD Darrow in the face the pullman strike of 1894. This bitter dispute pitted the workers of the newly formed American Railway Union ARU against the powerful Pullman Company and its railroad industry allies. The conflict was so violent that President Grover Cleveland sent in army troops to protect the trains. Darrow resigned his corporate position with CNR despite enticing offers of higher pay. Instead he took the case of the ARU s national leader EUGENE V. DEBS who was charged with violating a strike injunction. Darrow s defense strategy was not to quibble about the violation of an injunction order but to expose the working conditions imposed upon railroad workers by the industry in this case the enormously wealthy Pullman Company. To do this Darrow boldly subpoenaed company president George M. Pullman to testify but the tycoon went into hiding rather than appear. So after describing the abysmal working conditions of Pullman s railroad workers and their families he argued fervently that people had a right to strike for just causes and that adequate wages and safe working conditions were such causes. Darrow defended Debs in two trials taking an appeal to the . Supreme Court before finally losing and seeing his client sentenced to six months in prison. In this defense of the underdog against the powerful Darrow had found his calling. In just six years Darrow had moved from positions of political power and financial security to that of gladiator in the nation s emerging class struggle. In 1894 Darrow handled his first criminal case in Chicago defending Eugene Prendergast. Prendergast was a mentally ill drifter who had murdered Mayor Carter H. Harrison Sr. of Chicago then walked to a police station and confessed to the crime. Darrow attempted an INSANITY DEFENSE and failed and Prendergast was executed. Of the 50 murder defendants Darrow represented in his lifetime this was the first and last one he lost to execution. In 1897 Darrow divorced .
