hist_img:
Big Bill visits Stetson, WI
The full Darrow quote (in defense of Haywood and the WFM) in 1907 following the assassination of Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg:
"I don't mean to tell this jury that labor organizations do no wrong. I know them too well for that. They do wrong often, and sometimes brutally; they are sometimes cruel; they are often unjust; they are frequently corrupt. . .But I am here to say that in a great cause these labor organizations, despised and weak and outlawed as they generally are, have stood for the poor, they have stood for the weak, they have stood for every human law that was ever placed upon the statute books. They stood for human life, they stood for the father who was bound down by his task, they stood for the wife, threatened to be taken from the home to work by his side, and they have stood for the little child who was also taken to work in their places--that the rich could grow richer still, and they have fought for the right of the little one, to give him a little of life, a little comfort while he is young. I don't care how many wrongs they committed, I don't care how many crimes these weak, rough, rugged, unlettered men who often know no other power but the brute force of their strong right arm, who find themselves bound and confined and impaired whichever way they turn, who look up and worship the god of might as the only god that they know--I don't care how often they fail, how many brutalities they are guilty of. I know their cause is just."
sources:
"William Haywood mug shot at the United States Penitentiary" Leavenworth Prison, 1918 (PD - by date and public record) via US National Archives and Records Administration.
Clarence Darrow "Summation in the Haywood Trial" 1918 via Prof. Douglas O. Linder @ famous-trials.com.