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hatred of his former allies in organized labor.  "Our rev-

olutionary war for independence had its Benedict Arnold,"

said American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers

of Steunenberg's action.  After his murder, union official

and Socialist party leader Eugene Debs argued that

Steunenberg had "simply reaped what he had sown."6

The WFM hierarchy was based in Denver, Colorado.

There, its penchant for threats, assaults, and murders

perpetrated on nonunion miners, along with its political

domination of the local mining areas, was so pervasive

that "juries couldn't be found that would convict a union

man of any serious offense."7

In a midnight raid on February 17, 1906, Haywood,

Moyer, and Pettibone were kidnapped by Pinkerton detectives

in Denver and extradited to Idaho to be tried for

Steunenberg's murder.  They turned to Clarence Darrow who,

Lukas wrote, had gained national fame as a defense lawyer

by his appeal to "larger" issues while skimming over his

clients' actual guilt or innocence.8

Defending Haywood, the first of the three to be

tried, Darrow employed that familiar tactic: "I don't care

how many wrongs they [unions] have committed--I don't care

how many crimes," Darrow proclaimed to the jury in his

closing argument.  "I don't care how often they fail, how

many brutalities they are guilty of.  I know their cause

is just."9   Whether moved by Darrow's oratory, or fearful

of retaliation by the WFM,10 the jury acquitted Haywood.

Afterward, the cases against Moyer and Pettibone fell

apart.

Ironically, correspondence between those in the

Socialist camp who were instrumental in the defense

effort--including Fred Warren, the foremost defender of

Haywood in the press--indicated that they had knowledge of

the WFM officials' guilt.  "If, four years after the Boise

trial, these prominent Socialists wrote freely to one

another about the guilt of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone,

what does this tell us about who struck down the governor

on that snowy night in Caldwell?" Lukas finally conclud-

ed.11

Reviews of Big Trouble, though, did not focus on the

WFM's use of violence as a standard tactic in its war with

the western mine owners.  Even Lukas saw the WFM's tactics

in the light of what Darrow might have called "larger

issues."  "Big Trouble isn't about Bill Haywood's guilt or

innocence,"  Lukas wrote.  For him, the Steunenberg assas-

sination and the trial of his reputed assassins was "a