The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
comfort and despair, and that dispelled the illusions
of my youth.
The whole life of childhood is a dream and an
illusion, and whether they take one shape or another
shape depends not upon the dreamy boy but on what
surrounds him. As well might I have dreamed of
burglars and wished to be one as to dream of policemen
and wished to be one. Perhaps I was lucky,
too, that I had no money. We have grown to think
that the misfortune is in not having it. The great
misfortune in this case is the money. That has de-
stroyed these lives. That has fostered these illu-
sions. That has promoted this mad act. And if
your Honor shall doom them to die, it will be be-
cause they are the sons of the rich.
Do you suppose that if they lived up here on the
Northwest Side and had no money, with the evi-
dence as clear in this case as it is, any human being
would want to hang them? Excessive wealth is a
grievous misfortune in every step in life. When I
read malicious newspapers talking of excessive fees
in this case, it makes me ill. That there is nothing
bigger in life, that it is presumed that no man lives
to whom money is not the first concern, that human
instincts, sympathy and kindness and charity and
logic can only be used for gold. It shows how
deeply money has corrupted the hearts of most men.
Now, to get back to Dickie Loeb. He was a child.
The books he read by day were not the books he
read by night. We are all of us moulded somewhat
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