The Chicago Martyrs/Address of Albert R. Parsons
Address of Albert R. Parsons.
FREEDOM.
Speed thy prayer, for time is gold.
At thy door Need's subtle tread;
Pray in haste! for time is bread.
And thou rivet'st and sewest,
And thou harvestest in vain;
Speak! O, man; what is thy gain?
Heav'st the ores of earth to light,
Fill'st with treasures plenty's horn;
Brim'st it o'er with wine and corn.
Festive garments with thee shared;
And where is thy cheerful hearth,
Thy good shield in battle dearth?
Ali thy work, but naught for thee!
Yea, of all the chains alone thy hand forged,
These are thine own:
Chains that lame the spirit's wing,
Chains that infants' feet, indeed,
Clog! O, workman! Lol Thy meed.
Profits by the idle wight,
What ye weave of divers hue,
'Tis a curse—your only due.
Not a sheltering roof.to yours,
And by haughty ones are trod—
Ye, whose toil their feet hath shod.
Given thee naught hut honey's gift?
See! the drones are on the wing.
Have you lost the will to sting?
Know the might that in thee lies,
Wheel and shaft are set at rest
At thy powerful arm's behest.
When thou, weary of thy toll,
Shun’st thy plough thy task begun,
When thou speak'st: Enough is done!
Break thy want's enslaving chain;
Break thy slavery's want and dread;
Bread is freedom, freedom bread.
That poem epitomizes the aspirations, the hope, the need, of the working classes, not alone of America, but of the civilized world.
Your honor: If there is one distinguishing characteristic which has made itself prominent in the conduct of this trial, it has been the passion, the heat, and the anger, the violence both to sentiment and to person, of everything connected with this case. You ask me why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon me, or, what is tantamount to the same thing, you ask me why you should give me a new trial in order that I might establish my innocence and the ends of justice be subserved. I answer you and say that this verdict is the verdict of passion, born in passion, nurtured in passion, and is the sum total of the organized passion of the city of Chicago. For this reason I ask your suspension of the sentence and the granting of a new trial. This is one among the many reasons which I hope to present before I conclude. Now, what is passion? Passion is the suspension of reason; in a mob upon the streets, in the broils of.the saloon, in the quarrels on the sidewalk, where men throw aside their reason and resort to feelings of exasperation, we have passion. There is a suspension of the elements of judgment, of calmness, of discrimination requisite to arrive at the truth and the establishment of justice. I hold that you cannot dispute the charge which I make, that this trial has been submerged, immersed in passion from its inception to its close, and even to this hour, standing here upon the scaffold as I do, with the hangman awaiting me with his halter, there are those who claim to represent public sentiment in this city, and I now speak of the capitalistic press—that vile and infamous organ of monopoly of hired liars, the people's oppressor—even to this day these papers are clamoring for our blood in the heat and violence of passion. Who can deny this? Certainly not this court. The court is fully aware of the facts.
In order that I may place myself properly before you, it is necessary, in vindication of whatever I may have said or done in the history of my past life, that I should enter somewhat into details, and I claim, even at the expense of being lengthy, the ends of justice require that this shall be done.
For the past twenty years my life has been closely identified with, and I have actively participated in, what is known as the labor movement in America. I have some knowledge of that movement in consequence of this experience and of the careful study which opportunity has afforded me from time to time to give to the matter, and what I have to say upon this subject relating to the labor movement or to myself as connected with it in this trial and before this bar—I will speak the truth, the whole truth, be the consequences what they may.
The United States census for 1880 reports that there are in the United States 16,200,000 wage workers. These are the persons who, by their industry, create all the wealth of this country. And now before I say anything further it may be necessary in order to clearly understand what I am going to state further on, for me to define what I mean and what is meant in the labor movement by these words, wage worker. Wage workers are those who work for wages and who have no other means of subsistence than the selling of their daily toil from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year, as the case may be. Their whole property consists entirely of their labor—strength and skill or, rather, they possess nothing but their empty hands. They live only when afforded an opportunity to work, and this opportunity must be procured from the possessors of the mean of subsistence—capital—before their right to live at all or the opportunity to do is possessed. Now, there are 16,200,000 of these people in the United States, according to the census of 1880. Among this number are 9,000,000 men, and reckoning five persons to each family, they represent 45,000,000 of our population. It is claimed that there are between eleven and twelve million voters in the United States. Now, out of these 12,000,000 voters, 9,000,000 are wage workers. The remainder of the 16,200,000 is composed of the women and children employed in the factories, the mines and the various avocations of this country. This class of people—the working class—who alone do all the useful and productive labor of this country are the hirelings and dependants of the propertied class.
Your honor, I have, as a workingman, espoused what I conceive to be the just claims of the working class; I have defended their right to liberty and insisted upon their right to control their own labor and the fruits thereof, and in the statement that I am to make here before this court upon the question why I should not be sentenced, or why I should be permitted to have a new trial, you will also be made to understand why there is a class of men in this country who come to your honor and appeal to you not to grant us a new trial. I believe, sir, that the representatives of that millionaire organization of Chicago, known as the Chicago Citizens' Association stand to a man demanding of your honor our immediate extinction and suppression by an ignominious death. Now, I stand here as one of the people, a common man, a workingman, one of the masses, and I ask you honor to give ear to what I have to say. You stand as a bulwark; you are as a brake between them and us. You are here as the representative of justice, holding the poised scales in your hand. You are expected to look neither to the right nor the left, but to that by which justice, and justice alone, shall be subserved. The conviction of a man, you honor, does not necessarily prove that he is guilty. Your law books are filled with instances where men have been carried to the scaffold and after their death it has been proven that their execution was a judicial murder. Now, what end can be subserved in hurrying this matter through in the manner in which it has been done? Where are the ends of justice subserved, and where is truth found in hurrying seven human beings at the rate of express speed to the scaffold and an ignominious death? Why, if your honor please, the very method of our extermination, the deep damnation of our taking off appeals to your honor's sense of justice, of rectitude, and of honor. A judge may also be an unjust man. Such things have been known. We have, in our histories, heard of Lord Jeffreys. It need not follow that because a man is a judge he is also just. As everyone knows, it has long since become the practice in American politics for the candidates for judgeships, throughout the United States, to be named by corporations and monopoly influences, and it is a well known secret that more than one of our chief justices have been appointed to their seats upon the bench of the United States, Supreme Court at the instance of the leading railway magnates of America—the Huntingtons and Jay Goulds. Therefore the people are beginning to lose confidence in some of our courts of law.
Now, I have not been able to gather together and put in a consecutive shape these thoughts which I wish to present here for your consideration. They have been put together hurriedly in the last few days, since we began to come in here, first, because I did not know what you would do, nor what the position of, your honor would be in the case, and secondly, because I did not know upon what ground the conclusion of the prosecution would be made denying us the right of a rehearing; and, therefore, if the method of the presentation of this matter be somewhat disconnected and disjointed, it may be ascribed to that fact, over which I have had no control.
I maintain that our execution, as the matter stands just now, would be a judicial murder, rank and foul, and judicial murder is far more infamous than lynch law—far worse. Bear in mind, please, this trial was conducted by a mob, prosecuted by a mob, by the shrieks and howls of a mob, an organized, powerful mob. But that trial is now over. You sit here judicially, calmly, quietly, and it is now for you to look at this thing from the standpoint of reason and common sense. There is one peculiarity about the case that I want to call your attention to. It was the manner and the method of its prosecution! On the one side, the attorneys for the prosecution conducted this case from the standpoint of capitalists as against the laborers. On the other side, the attorneys for the defense conducted this case as a defense against murder not for laborers and not against capitalists. The prosecution in this case throughout has been a capitalistic prosecution, inspired by the instinct of capitalism, and I mean by that, by class feelings, by a dictatorial right to rule, and a denial to common people the right to say anything or have anything to say to these men, by that class of persons who think that working people have but one right and one duty to perform, viz., obedience. They conducted this trial from that standpoint throughout, and, as was very truthfully stated by my comrade Fielden, we were prosecuted ostensibly for murder, until, near the end of the trial, when all at once the jury is commanded, yea, commanded to render a verdict against us as Anarchists. Your honor, you are aware of this; you know this to be the truth; you sat and heard it all. I will not make a statement but what will be in accord with the facts, and what I do say is said for the purpose of refreshing your memory and asking you to look at both sides of this matter and view it from the standpoint of reason and common sense.
Now, the money makers, the business men, those people who deal in stocks and bonds, the speculators and employers, all that class of men known as the money making class, have no conception of this labor questions; they don't understand what it means. To use the street parlance, with many of them it is a difficult matter to "catch onto" it, and they are perverse also; they will not have knowledge of it. They don’t want to know anything about it, and they won’t hear anything about it, and they propose to club lock up and, if necessary, strangle those who insist on their hearing this question. Can it any longer be denied that there is such a thing as the labor question?
I am an Anarchist. Now strike! But hear me before you strike. What is Socialism, or Anarchism? Briefly stated, it is the right of the toiler to the free and equal use of the tools of production, and the right of the producers to their product. That is Socialism. The history of mankind is one of growth. It has been evolutionary and revolutionary. The dividing line between evolution and revolution, or that interceptible boundary line where one begins and the other ends can never be designated. Who believed at the time that our fathers tossed the tea into Boston harbor that it meant the first act of the revolution separating this continent from the dominion of George III. and founding this republic here in which we, their descendants, live today? Evolution and revolution are synonymous. Evolution is the incubatory state of revolution. The birth is the revolution-its process the evolution.
What is the history of man with regard to the laboring classes? Originally the earth and its contents were held in common by all men. Then came a change brought about by violence, robbery and wholesale murder, called war. Later, but still way back in history, we find that there were but two classes in the world—slaves and masters. Time rolled on and we find a labor system of serfdom. This serf labor system existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and throughout the world the serf had a right to the soil on which he lived. The lord of the land could not exclude him from its use. But the discovery of America and the developments which followed that discovery and its settlement, a century or two afterwards, the gold found in Peru and Mexico by the invading hosts of Pizarro and Cortez, who carried back to Europe this precious metal, infused new vitality into the commercial stagnant blood of Europe and set in motion those wheels which have rolled on and on, until today commerce covers the face of the earth; time is annihilated and distance is known no more. Following the abolition of the serfdom system was the establishment of the wage labor system. This found its fruition, or birth, rather, in the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1793. It was then for the first time that civil and political liberty was established in Europe. We see, by a mere glance back into history, that the sixteenth century was engaged in a struggle for religious freedom and the right of conscience—mental liberty. Following that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the struggle throughout France which resulted in the establishment of the republic and the founding of the right of political liberty. The struggle today, which follows on in the line of progress and in the logic of events, is the industrial problem, of which we were the representatives, as the State’s attorney has said we were, selected by the grand jury because we were leaders, and are to be punished and consigned to an ignominious death for that reason, that the wage slaves of Chicago and of America may be horrified, terror-stricken, and driven like rats back to their holes, to hunger, slavery, misery and death. The industrial question, following on in the natural order of events, the wage system of industry is now up for consideration; it presses for a hearing; it demands a solution; it cannot be throttled by this district attorney, nor all the district attorneys upon the soil of America. Now, what is this labor question which these gentlemen treat with such profound contempt, for advocating which these distinguished "honorable" gentlemen would throttle and put us to an ignominious death and hurry us like rats into our holes? What is it? You will pardon me if I exhibit some feeling. I have sat here for two months, and these men have poured their vituperations out upon my head and I have not been permitted to utter a single word in my own defense. For two months they have poured their poison upon me and upon my colleagues. For two months they have sat here and spat like adders the vile poison of their tongues, and if men could have been placed in a mental inquisition and tortured to death, these men would have succeeded here now, for we have been villified, misrepresented, held in loathsome contempt, without a chance to speak or contradict a word. Therefore, if I show emotion, it is because of this, and if my comrades and colleagues with me here have spoken in such strains as these, it is because of this. Pardon us. Look at it from the right standpoint. What is this labor question? It is not a question of emotion; the labor question is not a question of sentiment; it is not a religious matter; it is not a political problem; no, sir, it is a stern economic fact, a stubborn and immovable fact. It has, it is true, its emotional phase; it has its sentimental, religious, political aspects; but the sum total of this question is the bread and butter question, the how and why we shall live and earn our daily bread. This is the labor movement. It has a scientific basis. It is founded upon fact, and I have been to considerable pains in my researches of well known and distinguished authors on this question to collect and present to you briefly what this question is and what it springs from. I will first explain to you briefly what capital is:
Capital is the stored up and accumulated surplus of past labor; capital is the product of labor. The function of capital is to appropriate or confiscate for its own use and benefit the "surplus" labor product of the wage laborer. The capitalistic system originated in the forcible seizure of natural opportunities and rights by a few, and then converting those things into special privileges which have since become vested rights, formally entrenched behind the bulwarks of statute law and government. Capital could not exist unless there also existed a majority class who were propertyless, that is, without capital a class whose only mode of existence is the selling of their labor to capitalists. Capitalism is maintained, fostered, and perpetuated by law; in fact capital is law—statute law—and law is capital. Now, briefly stated, for I will not take your time but for a moment, what is labor? Labor is a commodity and wages is the price paid for it. The owner of this commodity sells it, that is himself to the owner of capital in order to live. Labor is the expression of energy, the power of the laborer's life. This energy or power he must sell to another person in order to live. It is his only means of existence. He works to live but his work is not simply a part of his life; it is the sacrifice of it. His labor is a commodity which under the guise of free labor he is forced by necessity to hand over to another party. The whole of the wage laborer's activity is not the product of his labor—far from it. The silk he weaves, the palace he builds, the ores he digs from out the mines, are not for him. The only thing he produces for himself is his wages, and the silk, the ores, and the palace which he built, are simply transformed for him into a certain kind of means of existence, namely, a cotton shirt, a few pennies, and the mere tenancy of a lodging house. In other words, his wages represent the bare necessities of his existence, and the unpaid-for or "surplus" portion of his labor product constitutes the vast superabundant wealth of the non-producing or capitalist class.
That is the capitalist system defined in a few words. It is this system that creates these classes, and it is these classes that produce this conflict. This conflict intensifies as the power of the privileged classes over the non-possessing or property leas classes increases and intensifies, and this power increases as the idle few become richer and the producing many become poorer; and this produces what is called the labor movement. This is the labor question. Wealth is power; poverty is weakness.
If I had time I might stop here to answer some suggestions that probably arise in the minds of some persons, or perhaps of your honor, not being familiar with this question. I imagine I hear your honor say, "Why, labor is free. This a free country." Now, we had in the southern states for nearly a century a form of labor known as chattel slave labor. That has been abolished, and I hear you say that labor is free; that the war has resulted in establishing free labor all over America. Is this true? Look at it. The chattel slave of the past—the wage slave of today; what is the difference? The master selected under chattel slavery his own slaves. Under the wage slavery system the wage slave selects his master, and he has got to find one or else he is carried down here to my friend, the jailer, and occupies a cell along side of myself. He is compelled to find one. So the change of the industrial system, in the language of Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Southern Confederacy, in an interview with the New York Herald upon the question of the chattel slave system of the south and that of the so-called "free laborer," and their wages—Jefferson Davis stated positively that the change was a decided benefit to the former chattel slave owners who would not exchange the new system of wage labor at all for chattel labor, because now the dead had to bury themselves and the sick take care of themselves, and now they don't have to employ overseers to look after them. They give them a task to do—а certain amount to do. They say: "Now, here, perform this piece of work in a certain length of time," and if you don't (under the wage system, says Mr. Davis), why, when you come around for your pay next Saturday, you simply find in the envelope which contains your money, a note which informs you of the fact that you have been discharged. Now, Jefferson Davis admitted in his statement that the leather thong dipped in salt brine, for the chattel slave, had been exchanged under the wage system for the lash of hunger, an empty stomach and the ragged back of the wage slave of free born American sovereign citizens, who, according to the census of the United States for 1880, constitute more than nine-tenths of our entire population.
But you say the wage slave had advantages over the chattel slave. The chattel slave couldn't get away from it. Well, if we had the statistics, I believe it could be shown that as many chattel slaves escaped from bondage with the bloodhounds of their masters after them as they tracked their way over the snow-beaten rocks of Canada, and via the underground grape vine road—I believe the statistics would show that as many chattel slaves escaped from their bondage under that system as can and do escape today from wage bondage into capitalistic liberty.
I am a Socialist, I am one of those, although myself a wage slave, who holds that it is wrong, wrong to myself, wrong to my neighbor, and unjust to my fellowmen for me, wage slave that I am, to undertake to make my escape from wage slavery by becoming a master and an owner of slaves myself. I refuse to do it; I refuse equally to be a slave or the owner of slaves. Had I chosen another path in life. I might be upon the avenue of the city of Chicago today, surrounded in my beautiful home with luxury and ease, with slaves to dо my bidding. But I chose the other road, and instead I stand here today upon the scaffold. This is my crime. Before high heaven this and this alone my crime. I gave been false and a traitor to the infamies that exist today in capitalistic society. If this is a crime in your opinion I plead guilty to it.
Now, be patient with me; I have been with you, or rather, I have been patient with this trial. Follow me, if you please, and look at the oppressions of this capitalistic system of industry. As was depicted by my comrade Fielden, this morning, every new machine that comes into existence comes as a competitor with the man of labor; as a drag and menace and a prey to the very existence of those who have to sell their labor in order to earn their bread. The man is turned out to stave, and whole occupations and pursuits are revolutionized and completely destroyed by the introduction of machinery, in a day, in an hour as it were. I have known it to be the case in the history of my own life—and I am yet a young man—that whole pursuits and occupations have been wiped out by the invention of machinery.
What becomes of these people? Where are they? They become competitors of other laborers made to reduce wages and increase the work hours. Many of them are candidates for the gibbet, they are candidates for your prison cells. Build more penitentiaries; erect new scaffolds, for these men are upon the highway of crime, of misery, of death. Your honor, there never was an effect without a cause. The tree is known by its fruit. Socialists are not those who blindly close their eyes and refuse to look, and who refuse to hear, but having eyes to see, they see, and having ears to hear, they hear. Look at this capitalistic system; look at its operation upon the small businessmen: the small dealers, the middle class. Bradstreet's tells us in last year's report that there were 11,000 small business men financially destroyed during the past twelve months. What became of those people? Where are hey, and why have they been wiped out? Has there been any less wealth? No; that which they possessed has simply been transferred into the hands of some other person. Who is that other? It is he who has greater capitalistic facilities. It is the monopolist, the man who can run corners who can create rings and squeeze these men to death and wipe them out like dead flies from the table into his monopolistic basket. The middle classes destroyed in this manner join the ranks of the proletariat. They become what? They seek out the factory gate, they seek in the various occupations of wage labor employment. What is the result? Then there are more men upon the market. This increases the number of those who employment. What then? This intensifies the competition, which in turn creates greater monopolists, and with it wages go down until the starvation point is reached, and then what? Your honor Socialism comes to the people and asks them to look into this thing, to discuss it, to reason, to examine it, to investigate it, to know the facts, because it is by this and this alone that violence will be prevented and bloodshed will be avoided; because as my friend here has said, men in their blind rage, in their ignorance not knowing what ails them, knowing that they are hungry, that they are miserable and destitute, strike blindly, and do as they did with Maxwell here, and fight the labor saving machinery. Imagine such an absurd thing, and yet the capitalistic press has taken great pains to say that Socialists do these things; that we fight machinery; that we fight property. Why, sir, it is an absurdity; it is ridiculous; it is preposterous. No man ever heard an utterance from the mouth of a Socialist to advise anything of the kind. They know to the contrary. We don't fight machinery; we don't oppose the thing. It is only the manner and methods of employing them that we object to. That is all. It is the manipulations of these things in the interests of a few; t is the monopolization of them that we object to. We desire that all the forces of nature, all the forces of society, of the gigantic strength which has resulted from the combined intellect and labor of the ages of the past shall be turned over to man, and made his servant, hie obedient slave forever. This is the object of Socialism. It asks no one to give up anything. It seeks no harm to anybody. But, when we witness this condition of things, when we see little children huddling around the factory gates, the poor little things whose bones are not yet hard; when we see them clutched from the hearthstone, taken from the family altar carried to the bastiles of labor and their little bones ground up into gold dust to bedeck the form of some aristocratic Jezebel, then it stirs us and we speak out. We plead for the ittle ones; we plead for the helpless, we plead for the oppressed; we seek redress for those who are wronged; we seek knowledge and intelligence for the ignorant; we seek liberty for the slave. Socialism secures the welfare of every human being.
Your honor, if you will permit it, I would like to stop now and resume tomorrow morning.
The court here adjourned until 10 o'clock the following day, when Mr. Parsons resumed his address.
Your honor, I concluded last evening; at that portion of my statement which had for its purpose a showing of the operations and effects of our existing social system, the evils which naturally flow from the established social relations, which are founded upon the economic subjection of dependence of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor and the resources of life. I sought in this connection to show that all the ills that afflict society—social miseries, mental degradations, political dependence—all resulted from the economic subjection and dependence of the man of labor upon the monopolizer of the means of existence; and as long as the cause remains the effect must certainly follow. I pointed out what Bradstreet's had to say in regard to the destruction of the middle class last year. As it affects the small dealers, the middle class men of our shop streets, the influences are likewise at work among the farming classes.
According to statistics ninety per cent of the farms of America are today under mortgage. The man who a few years ago owned the soil that he worked, is today a tenant and a mortgage is placed upon his soil, and when he, the farmer whose hand tickles the earth and causes it to blossom as the rose and bring forth its rich food of human sustenance—even while this man is asleep, the interest upon his mortgage continues. It grows and it increases, rendering it more and more difficult for him to get along or make his living. In the meantime the railway corporations place upon the traffic all that it will bear. The Board of Trade sharks run their corners until—what? Until it occurs as stated in the Chicago Tribune about three months ago, that a freight train of corn from Iowa consigned to a commission merchant in Chicago, had to be sold for less than the cost of freight, and there was a balance of $3 due the commission man on the freight after he had sold the corn. The freightage upon that corn was three dollars more than the corn brought in the market. So it is with the tenant farmers of America. Your honor, we do not have to go to Ireland to find the evils of landlordism. We do not have to cross the Atlantic to find Lord Lietrim's rackrenters, or landlords who evict their tenants. We have them all around us. There is Ireland right here in Chicago and everywhere else in this country. Look at Bridgeport where the Irish live! Look! Tenants at will, huddled together as State's Attorney Grinnell calls them, like rats; living as they do in Dublin, living precisely as they do in Limerick—taxed to death, unable to meet the extortions of the landlord.
We were told by the prosecution that law is on trial; that government is on trial. That is what the gentlemen on the other side stated to the jury. The law is on trial, and government is on trial. Well, up to near the conclusion of this trial we, the defendants, supposed that we were indicted and being tried for murder. Now, if the law is on trial and if the government is on trial, who placed it upon trial? And I leave it to the people of America whether the prosecution in this case have made out a case; and I charge it here now frankly that in order to bring about this conviction the prosecution the representatives of the State, the sworn officers of the law, those whose obligation is to the people to obey the law and preserve order—I charge upon them a willful, a malicious, a purposed violation of every law which guarantees a right to American citizens. They have violated free speech. In the prosecution of this case they have violated a free press. They have violated the right of public assembly. Yea, they have even violated and denounced the right of self-defense. I charge the crime home to them. These great blood bought rights, for which our forefathers spent centuries of struggle it is attempted to run them like rats into a hole by the prosecution in this case. Why, gentlemen, law is upon trial; government is upon trial indeed. Yea, they are themselves guilty of the precise thing of which they accuse me. They say that I am an Anarchist and refuse to respect the law. "By their works ye shall know them," and out of their own mouths they eland condemned. They are the real Anarchists in this case, while we stand upon the constitution of the United States. I have violated no law of this country. Neither I nor my colleagues here have violated any legal right of American citizens. We stand upon the right of free speech, of free press, of public assemblage, unmolested and undisturbed. We stand upon the constitutional right of self-defense, and we defy the prosecution to rob the people of America of these dearly bought rights. But the prosecution imagines that they have triumphed because they propose to put to death seven men. Seven men to be exterminated in violation of the law, because they insist upon the inalienable rights granted them by the constitution. Seven men are to be exterminated, because they demand the right of free speech and exercise it. Seven men by this court of law are to he put to death, because they claim their right of self-defense. Do you think, gentlemen of the prosecution, that you will have settled the case when you are carrying my lifeless bones to the potter's field? Do you think that this trial will be settled by my strangulation and that of my colleagues? I tell you that there is a greater verdict yet to be heard from. American people will have something to say about this attempt to destroy their rights, which they hold sacred. The American people will have something to say as to whether or not the constitution of this country can be trampled under foot at the dictation of monopoly and corporations and their hired tools.
Your honor read yesterday your reasons for refusing us a new trial, and I want to call your attention to it, if you please, on some points on which I think you are laboring under misapprehension. Your honor says that there can be no question in the mind of any one who has read these articles (referring to the Alarm and Arbeiter-Zeitung), or heard these speeches, which were written and spoken long before the eight hour movement was talked of, that this movement which we advocated was but a means in our estimation toward the ends which we sought, and the movement itself was not primarily of any consideration at all. Now your honor, I submit that your are sitting in judgment not alone upon my acts, but also upon my motives. That is a dangerous thing for any man to do; any man is so liable to make a mistake in a matter of that kind. I claim that it would not be fair to you to assume to state what my motives were in the eight hour movement; that I was simply using if for another purpose. How do you know that? Can you read and order my actions? If you go by the record, it will disprove your honor's conjecture, because it is a conjecture!
The State's attorney has throughout this trial done precisely what Mr. English, the reporter of the Tribune, when he was instructed to do by the proprietor of the Tribune, when he attended labor meetings. It was the custom of the chief editors of the large dailies to instruct those who went to labor meetings to report only the inflammatory passages of the speaker's remarks. That is precisely the scheme laid out by the prosecution. The have presented you here copies of the Alarm running back for three years, and my speeches covering three years back. They have selected such portions of those articles, and such articles, mark you, as subserve their purpose; such as they supposed would be calculated to inflame your mind and prejudice you and the jury against us. You ought to be careful of this thing. It is not fair or right for you to conclude that from the showing made by these gentlemen we were not what we pretended to be in this labor movement. Take the record. Why, I am well known throughout the United States for years and years past and I have come in personal contact with hundreds of thousands of workingmen from Nebraska in the west to New York in the east, and from Maryland to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I have traversed the states for the past ten years, and I am known bу hundreds and thousands who have seen and heard me.
Possibly I had better stop a moment, and explain how this was. These labor organizations sent for me. Sometimes it was the Knights of Labor; sometimes it was the Trades Unions; sometimes the Socialistic organizations; but always as an organizer of workingmen, always as a labor speaker at labor meetings. Now, it there is anything for which I am well known it is my advocacy of the eight hour system of labor; so it is with my colleagues here. But because I have said in this connection that I did not believe it would be possible to bring about a reform of this present wage system, because of the fact that the power of the employing class is so great that they can refuse to make any concessions, you say that I had no interest in the eight hour movement. Is it not the fact that the present social system places all power in the hands of the capitalist class? They can and do refuse to make any concessions, and where they grant anything they retract it when they choose to do so. They can do it. The wage system gives them the power. The tyranny and the despotism of the wage system of labor consists in the fact that the wage laborer is compelled under penalty of hunger and death by starvation to obey and accept terms laid down to him by his employer. Hence I have pointed out that it might be difficult for this reason to establish an eight hour rule. What have I said in this connection? I have said to the employers, to the manufacturers and the corporations—the monopolists of America: "Gentlemen, the eight hour system of labor is the olive branch of peace held out to you. Take it. Concede this moderate demand of the working people. Give them better opportunities. Let them possess the leisure which eight hours will bring. Let it operate on the wants and the daily habits of the people." I have talked this way to the rich of this country in every place I have gone, and I have told them, not in the language of a threat; not in the language of intimidation; I have said: "If you do not concede this demand if, on the other hand, you increase the hours of labor, and employ more and more machinery, you thereby increase the number of enforced idle; you thereby swell the army of the compulsory idle and unemployed; you create new elements of discontent; you increase the army of idleness and misery." I said to them: "This is a dangerous condition of things to have in a country. It is liable to lead to violence. It will drive the workers into revolution. The eight hour demand is a measure which is in the interest of humanity, in the interest of peace, in the interest of prosperity and public order."
Now, your honor, can you take your comments there and say that we had other motives and ulterior motives? Your impression is derived from the inflammatory sections and articles selected by the prosecution for your honor to read. I think I know what my motives were, and I am stating them deliberately and fairly and honestly, leaving you to judge whether or not I am telling lhe truth. You say that "the different papers and the speeches furnish direct contradiction to the arguments of the counsel for the defense that we proposed to resort to arms only in the case of unlawful attacks of the police." Why, the very article that you quote in the Alarm—а copy of which I have not, but which I would like to see, calling the American Group to assemble for the purpose of considering military matters and military organization, states specifically that the purpose and object is to take into consideration measures of defense against unlawful and unconstitutional attacks of the police. That identical article shows it. You forget surely that fact when you made this observation; and I defy any one to show, in a speech that is susceptible of proof, by proof, that I have ever said aught by word of mouth or by written article except self-defense. Does not the constitution of the country, under whose flag myself and my forefathers were born for the last 260 years, provide that protection, and give me, their descendant, that right? Does not the constitution say that I, as an American, have a right to keep and to bear arms? I stand upon that right. Let me see if this court will deprive me of it.
Let me call your atttention to another point here. For some of these articles that appear in the Alarm, I am no more responsible than is the editor of any other paper. And I did not write everything in the Alarm, and it might be possible that there were some things in that paper which I am not ready to endorse. I am frank to admit that such is the case. I suppose you could scarcely find an editor of a paper in the world, but what could conscientiously say the same thing. Now, am I to be dragged up here and executed for the utterances and the writings of other men, even though they were published in the columns of a paper of which I was the editor? Your honor, you must remember that the Alarm was a labor paper, published by the International Working People's Association, belonging to that body. I was elected its editor by the organization, and, as labor editors generally are, I was handsomely paid. I had saw-dust pudding as a general thing for dinner. My salary was eight dollars a week, and I have received that salary as editor of the Alarm for over two years and a half—$8 a week! I was paid by the association. It stands upon the books. Go down to the office and consult the business manager. Look over the record in the book and it will show you that A. R. Parsons received $8 a week as editor of the Alarm for over two years and a half. This paper belonged to the organization. It was theirs. They sent in their articles—Tom, Dick and Harry; everybody wanted to have something to say, and I had no right to shut off anybody's complaint. The Alarm was a labor paper, and it was specifically published for the purpose of allowing every human being who had a wrong to ventilate it; to give every human being who wore the chains of monopoly an opportunity to clank those chains in the columns of the Alarm. It was a free press organ. It was a free speech newspaper.
But your honor says: "Oh, well, Parsons, your own language, your own words, your own statements at these meetings—what you said." Well, possibly I have said some foolish things. Who has not? As a public speaker probably I have uttered some wild and possibly incoherent assertions. Who, as a public speaker, has not done so? Now, consider for a moment. Suppose, as is now the case with me, here I see little children suffering, men and women starving. There I see others rolling in luxury and wealth and opulence, out of the unpaid-for labor of the laborers. I am conscious of this fact. I see the streets of Chicago, as was the case last winter, filled with 30,000 men in compulsory idleness; destitution, misery and want upon every hand. I see this thing. Then on the other hand I see the First Regiment out in a street-riot drill, and reading the papers the next morning describing the affair, I am told by the editor of the capitalistic newspaper that the First Regiment is out practicing a street-riot drill for the purpose of mowing down these wretches when they come out of their holes that the prosecution talks about here in this case; that the working people are to be slaughtered in cold blood, and that men are drilling upon the streets of the cities of America to butcher their fellowmen when they demand the right to work and partake of the fruits of their labor. Seeing these things, overwhelmed as it were with indignation and pity, my heart speaks. May I not say some things then that I would not in cooler moments? Are not such outrageous things calculated to arouse the bitterest denunciations?
Your honor, I want to call your attention to some of the reasons which I propose here today to offer in justification of the words and utterances, and the acts, whatever they may have been, of myself, or my colleagues, on the question of force, on the question of arms, and on the question of dynamite. Now, going back to 1877, what do we find? The railroad strikes occurred. During the conflict of that year the following utterances were made by heavy employers and manufacturers and monopolists in this country. I will give you a few samples. This, mark you, is published in the Alarm of November 8, 1884, but the same extracts have been kept standing in the labor papers, published by the Knights of Labor, the Trades Unions, and the Socialists of the United States, there being somewhere over three hundred of these papers. Now listen: "Give them (the strikers) a rifle diet for a few days, and see how they like that kind of bread," said Tom Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Central Railway, addressing Gov. Hartranft of Pennsylvania, and calling upon him to send his army of militiamen to Pittsburg, to put down his railroad strikers, who were asking for a little more pay, and some of them asking for pay enough to get their hungry children bread. His answer is, "Give them a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." Mark you, this was in 1877. "If the workingmen had no vote they might be more amenable to the teachings of the times," says the Indianapolis News. "There is too much freedom in this country instead of too little," says the Indianapolis Journal. In 1878, the New York Tribune, in an editorial upon strikes, used these words: "These brutal strikers or creatures can understand no other meaning than that of force, and ought to have enough of it to be remembered among them for many generations." "Hand grenades should be thrown among these Union sailors who are striving to obtain higher wages and less hours. By such treatment they would be taught a valuable lesson, and other strikers could take warning from their fate," said the Chicago Times. "It is very well to relieve real distress wherever it exists, whether in the city or in the country, but the best meal that can be given a ragged tramp is a leaden one, and it should be supplied in sufficient quantities to satisfy the most voracious appetite," New York Herald, 1878. "The American laborer must make up his mind to be not so much better than the European laborer. He must be contented to work for less wages and must be satisfied with that station in life to which it has pleased God to call him." The New York World uttered these sentiments in 1878. I could go through the whole gamut of the monopolistic press of America and show similar expressions of sentiment. These sentiments were used against strikers, against men who were simply seeking to improve their condition. They only asked for less hours of labor and for increased pay. These are the bloody, bitter words of these papers. Now, what follows? It is the experience nowadays and has been since that time, when workingmen strike, to call out the militia. That has been the practice since these utterances and declarations in 1878, growing out of the great railroad strike. It has become the custom in America to call out the militia if there is a strike, or even if there is one contemplated. Why, look at the packing houses in the city of Chicago. Only yesterday the packing house bosses, who employ 25,000 men, called for an army of Pinkerton men to go down there, and advertised for them to come. That was before there was a strike—in mere contemplation of it, your honor. This in America—the United States! Why, is it surprising that the working people should feel indignant about these things and say to Mr. Gould or to Tom Scott: "If you are going to give us a rifle diet instead of a bread diet, as was asked of Christ, when we ask you for bread you give us a stone, and not only give us a stone, but at the point of the bayonet compel us to swallow it, where is the constitutional right of resistance to these outrages?" If I am to be deprived of my rights of defense against the administration of a rifle diet, and strychnine put upon my bread and food, which was advocated by the Chicago Tribune when it said that, when tramps come around in the neighborhood, give them a slice of bread with strychnine upon it, and other tramps will take warning and keep out of the neighborhood; if I am to be deprived of my right, what shall I do? Are not such expressions as this calculated to exasperate men? Is there no justification for these what you denominate violent speeches? Did not these monopolists bring about the inception of this language? Did they not originate it? Were they not the first to say: "Throw dynamite bombs among the strikers, and thereby make a warning to others?" Was it not Tom Scott who first said, "Give them a rifle diet?" Was it not the Tribune which first said, "Give them strychnine?" And they have done it. Since that time they have administered a rifle diet; they have administered strychnine. They have thrown hand grenades, and the hand grenade upon the Haymarket on the night of the 4th of May was thrown by the hand of a monopolist conspirator sent from the city of New York for that specific purpose, to break up the eight hour movement and bring these men to the gallows in this court. Your honor, we are the victims of the foulest and blackest conspiracy that ever disgraced the annals of time. If these men will preach these things; if the Tribune thinks that strychnine is good enough for us; if the Times thinks that hand grenades are good enough for us, why have we not got a right to say they will use it? They say they believe in it. They say they think it. What right have we to say that they will not hire some mercenary to carry out what they think, and put into practice that which they believe?
In this connection I want to call your attention to the way armed men, militiamen and Pinkerton's private army are used against workingmen, strikers; the way they'are used to shoot them, to arrest them, to put up jobs on them and carry them out. In the Alarm of Oct. 17, 1885, there is printed the following: "Pinkerton's Army. They issue a Secret Circular Offering Their Services to Capitalists for the Suppression of Strikers. The secretary of the Minneapolis, Minn, Trades and Labor Assembly sends us the following note: Minneapolis, Minn., Oct. 6, 1885. Editor of the Alarm. Dear Sir: Please pay your respects to the Pinkerton pups for their extreme kindness to labor. Try to have the government of your city do away with its metropolitan police and employ Pinkerton protectors." (Of course this is sarcastic.) "The inclosed circular fell into the hands of the Minneapolis Trades Assembly, which thought it not out of place to pass it around. Please insert it in your paper. Yours fraternally, T. W. Brosnan." That letter is under the seal of the Trade and Labor Assembly of the city of Minneapolis, Minn. Then follows the circular. Then, after referring to the services rendered the capitalists, corporations, and monopolists during the strikes in all parts of the country during the past year, the circular closes with the following paragraphs, which we give in full as illustrative of the designs of these secret enemies upon organized labor. Let every workingman ponder over the avowed purposes of these armies of thugs. It says: "The Pinkerton Protective Patrol is connected with Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, and is under the same management. Corporations or individuals desirous of ascertaining the feelings of their employees, whether they are likely to engage in strikes or are joining any secret labor organizations, such as the Knights of Labor, with a view of compelling terms from corporations or employers, can obtain upon application to the superintendent of either of the offices a detective suitable to associate with their employees and obtain this information." This circular continues: "At this time, when there is so much dissatisfaction among the labor classes, and secret labor societies are organizing throughout the United States, we suggest whether it would not be well for railroad companies and other corporations, as well as individuals who are extensive employers, to keep a close watch for designing men among their own employees, who, in the interest of secret labor societies, are influencing their employees to join these organizations and eventually cause a strike. It is frequently the case that, by taking a matter of this kind in time, and discovering the ring-leaders, and dealing promptly with them"—"discovering the ringleaders," mark you, "and dealing promptly with them, serious trouble may be avoided in the future. Yours respectfully, William A. Pinkerton, General Superintendent Western Agency, Chicago; Robert A. Pinkerton, General Superintendent Eastern Division, New York."
Now, here is a concern, an institution which organizes a private army. This private army is at the command and control of those who grind the faces of the poor, who keep wages down to the starvation point. This private army can be shipped to the place where they are wanted. Now it goes to the Hocking Valley to subjugate the starving miners; then it is carried across the plains to Nebraska to shoot the striking miners in that region. Then it is carried to the east to stop the strike of the factory operatives and put them down. The army moves about to and fro all over the country, sneaks into the labor organizations, worms itself into these labor societies, finds out as it says, who the ring-leaders are and deals promptly with them. "Promptly," your honor, "with them." Now, what does that mean? It means this: that some workingman who has got the spirit of a man in his organization, who gets up and speaks out his sentiments, protests, you know, objects, won't have it, don't like these indignities and says so, is set down as a ring-leader, and these spies go to work and put up a job on him. If they cannot aggravate him and make him, as the New York Tribune says, violate the law so they can get hold of him, they go to work and put up a scheme on him, and concoct a conspiracy that will bring him into court. When he is brought into court he is a wage slave; he has no friends, he has got no money—who is he? Why, he stands here at the bar like a culprit. He has neither position wealth, honor, nor friends to defend him. What is the result? Why, sixty days at the Bridewell or a year in the county jail. The matter is dismissed with a wave of the hand. The bailiff carries the ring-leader out. The strike is suppressed. Monopoly triumphs and the Pinkertons have performed the work for which they receive their pay. Now, it was these things that caused the American Group to take an exceeding interest in this manner of treatment on the part of the corporations and monopolies of the country, and we became indignant about it. We expostulated, we denounced it. Could we do otherwise? We are a part and parcel of the miseries brought about by this condition of things. Could we do otherwise than expostulate and object to it and resent it? Now, to illustrate what we did, I will read to you from the Alarm, December 12, 1885, the proceedings, of the American Group, of which I was a member, as a sample. I being present at that meeting, and that meeting being reported in this paper, I hold that this report of the meeting, being put into the Alarm at that time, is worthy of your credence and respect, as showing what our attitude was upon the question of force and of arms and of dynamite. The article is headed "Street Riot Drill. Mass Meeting of Working People Held at 106 East Randolph Street." This was the regular hall and place of meeting. The article reads: "A large mass meeting of workingmen and women was held by the American Group of the International last Wednesday evening at their hall, 106 East Randolph street. The subject under discussion was the street-riot drill of the First Regiment on Thanksgiving day. William Holmes presided. The principal speaker of the evening was Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons. She began by saying that the founders of this republic, whose motto was that every human being was by nature entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would turn in their graves if they could read and know that a great street-riot drill was now being practiced in times of peace. 'Let us,' said she, 'examine into this matter and ascertain, if we can, what this street-riot drill of the military is for. Certainly not for the purpose of fighting enemies from without; not for a foreign foe, for if this was the case we would be massing our armies on the sea-coast. Then it must be for our enemies within. Now, then, do a contented, prosperous, and happy people leave their avocations and go out upon the streets to riot? Do young men and maidens who are marrying and given in marriage forsake the peaceful paths of life to become a riotous mob? Then who is this street-riot drill for? For whom is it intended? Who is to be shot? When the tramp of the military is heard, and grape and canister are sweeping four streets at a time, as is contemplated by this new-fangled drill which was so graphically described in the capitalistic paper which gave an account of it, it is certainly not for the purpose of shooting down the bourgeoisie, the wealthy, because this same press makes a stirring appeal to them to contribute liberally to a military fund to put them on a good footing and make the militia twice as strong as it is at present, because their services would soon be needed to shoot down the mob.' The speaker then read an extract from a capitalistic account of the street-riot drill on Thanksgiving day."
Your honor, this meeting was held the week following Thanksgiving day, and the drill took place on Thanksgiving day. This article, which is a description of the drill copied from a capitalistic paper, reads as follows: "As a conclusion the divisions were drawn up in line of battle and there was more firing by companies, by file and by batallion. The drill was creditable to the regiment, and the First will do excellent service in the streets in case of necessity. Opportunities, however, are needed for rifle practice, and Colonel Knox is anxious to have a range established as soon as possible. Instead of 400 members, the regiment should have 800 members on its rolls. Business men should take more interest in the organization and help put it in the best possible condition to cope with a mob, for there may be need for its service at no distant day." That article appeared either in the Times or Tribune of the next day. I don't know which. The speaker says: "What must be the thought of the oppressed in foreign lands when they hear the tramp of the militia beneath the folds of the stars and stripes? They who first hung this flag to the breeze, proclaimed that beneath its folds the oppressed of all lands would find, a refuge and a haven and protection against the despotism of all lands. Is this the case today when the counter-tramp of two millions of homeless wanderers is heard throughout the land of America; men strong and able and anxious and willing to work, that they may purchase for themselves and their families food; when the cry of discontent is heard from the working classes everywhere, and they refuse longer to starve, and peaceably accept a rifle diet and die in misery according to law, and order is enforced by this military drill? Is this military drill for the purpose of sweeping them down as a mob with grape and canister upon the street?" This is the language of the speaker at the meeting: "We working people hear these ominous rumblings, which create inquiry as to their origin. A few years ago we heard nothing of this kind; but great changes have taken place during the past generation. Charles Dickens, who visited America forty years ago, said that what surprised him most was the general prosperity and equality of all people, and that a beggar upon the streets of Boston would create as much consternation as an angel with a flaming sword. What of Boston today? Last winter, said a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, writing from that city, 30,000 persons were destitute, and there were whole streets of tenement houses where the possession of a cooking stove was regarded as a badge of aristocracy, the holes of which were rented to other less wealthy neighbors for a few pennies per hour.
"So, too, with New York, Chicago and every other industrial center in this broad land. Why is this? Have we had a famine? Has nature refused to yield her harvest? These are grave and serious questions for us, the producers and sufferers, to consider, at least. Take a glance at the wealth of this country. In the past twenty years it has increased over twenty billions of dollars. Into whose hands has this wealth found its way? Certainly not the hands of the producers, for if it had there would be no need for street-riot drills. This country has a population of 55,000,000, and a statistical compilation shows that there are in the cities of New York, Philadelphia and Boston twenty men who own as their private property over $750,000,000, or about one-twenty-sixth of the entire increase which was produced by the labor of the working class, these twenty individuals being as one in three millions. In twenty years these profit-mongers have fleeced the people of the enormous sum of $750,000,000, and only three cities and twenty robbers heard from. A government that protects this plundering of the people, a government which permits the people to be degraded and brought to misery in this manner is a fraud upon the face of it, no matter under what name it is called, or what flag floats over it; whether it be a republic or a monarchy, or an empire," said the speaker. "The American flag protects as much economic despotism as any other flag on the face the earth today to the ratio of population. This being the case, of what does the boasted freedom of the American workingmen consist? Our fathers used to sing,
"Come along, come along; make no delay;
Come from every nation, come from every way;
Come along, come along; don't be alarmed—
Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm."
The stars and stripes in those days floated upon every water as the emblem of the free, but today it obeys only the command, and has become the ensign оf monopoly and of corporations, of those who grind the faces of the poor and гоb and enslave the laborer. Could Russia do more than drill in its streets to kill the people? But alas! Americans creep and crawl at the foot of wealth and adore the golden calf. Can a man amass millions without despoiling the labor of others? We all know he cannot. American workingmen seem to be degenerating. They do not seem to understand w’hat liberty and freedom reallу consist of. They shout themselves hoarse on election day—for what? For the miserable privilege of choosing their master; which man shall be their boss and rule over them; for the privilege of choosing just who are the bosses and who shall govern them. Great privilege! These Americans—sovereigns—millions of them do not know where they could get a bed or a supper. Your ballot—what is it good for? Can a man vote himself bread, or clothes, or shelter, or work? In what does American wage slaves' freedom consist? The poor are the slaves of the rich everywhere. The ballot is neither a protection against hunger nor against the bullets of the military. Bread is freedom; freedom bread. The ballot is no protection against the bullets of those who are practicing the street-riot drills in Chicago. The ballot is worthless to the industrial slave under these conditions. The palaces of the rich overshadow the homes or huts of the poor, and we say with Victor Hugo, that the paradise of the rich is made out of the hells of the poor. The whole force of the organized power of the government is thrown against the workers, whom the so-called better class denominates a mob. Now, when the workers of America refuse to starve according to law and order, and when they begin to think and act, why, the street drill begins. The enslavers of labor see the coming storm. They are determined, cost what it may, to drill these people and make them their slaves by holding in their possession the means of life as their property, and thus enslave the producers. Workingmen—we mean women, too,—arise! Prepare to make and determine successfully to establish the right to live and partake of the bounties to which all are equally entitled. Agitate, organize, prepare to defend your life, your liberty, your happiness against the murderers who are practicing the street-riot drill on Thanksgiving day.
Should gorge the god Mammon, the tyrant, the spoiler,
Every foot has a logical right to the soil,
And the product of toil is the meed of the toiler.
The hands that disdain
Honest industry's stain
Have no share in its honor, no right to its gain,
And the falsehood of Wealth over Worth shall not be
In 'the home of the brave and the land of the free.'"
"Short addresses were made by comrades Fielden, Dr. Taylor, William Snyder, William Holmes, and others. This concluded the meeting, after criticisms."
Now, I challenge your honor, to find a sentence or an utterance in that meeting—and that is one of the fullest reported of the many meetings held by the American Group for public discussion of such matters as the Thanksgiving drill of the First Regiment—I challenge you to find a single word or utterance there that is unlawful, that is contrary to the constitution, or that is in violation of free speech, or that is in violation of free press, or that is in violation of public assembly or of the right of self-defense. And that is our position, and has been all the while. Imagine for a moment, the First Regiment practicing the street-riot drill as it was described—learning how to sweep four streets from the four corners at once. Who? The Tribune and Times say "the mob." Who are the mob? Why, dissatisfied people, dissatisfied workingmen and women; people who are working for starvation wages, people who are on a strike for better pay—these are the mob. They are always the mob. That is what the riot drill is for. Suppose a case like that occurs. The First Regiment is out with a thousand men armed with the latest improved Winchester rifles. Here are the mobs; here are the Knights of Labor and the Trades Unions, and all of the organizations without arms. They have no treasury, and a Winchester rifle costs $18. They cannot purchase those things. We cannot organize an army. It takes capital to organize an army. It takes as much money to organize an army as to organize industry, or as to build railroads; therefore, it is impossible for the working classes to organize and buy Winchester rifles. What can they do? What must they, do? Your honor, the dynamite bomb, I am told, costs six cents. It can be made by anybody. The Winchester rifle costs $18. That is the difference. Am I to be blamed for that? Am I to be hanged for saying this? Am I to be destroyed for this? What have I done? Go, dig up the ashes of the man who invented this thing. Find his ashes and scatter them to the winds, because he gave this power to the world. It was not I. General Sheridan—he is the commander in chief of the United States army, and in his report to the president and congress two years ago he had occasion to speak of the possible labor trouble that may occur in the country, and what did he say? In this report he says that dynamite was a lately discovered article of tremendous power and such was its nature that people could carry it around in the pockets of their clothing with perfect safety to themselves, and by means of it they could destroy whole cities and whole armies. This was General Sheridan. That is what he said. We quoted that language, and referred to it. I want to say another word about dynamite before I pass on to something else I am called a dynamiter. Why? Did I ever use dynamite? No. Did I ever have any? No. Do I know anything about dynamite bombs? No. Why then am I called a dynamiter? Listen, and I will tell you. Gunpowder in the fifteenth century marked an era in the world's history. It was the downfall of the mail armor of the knight, the freebooter, and the robber of that period. It enabled the victims of these highway robbers to stand off at a distance in a safe place and defend themselves by the use of gunpowder, and make a ball enter and pierce into the flesh of their robbers and destroyers. Gunpowder came as a democratic instrument. It came as a republican institution, and the effect was that it immediately began to equalize and bring about an equilibrium of power. There was less power in the hands of the nobility after that; less power in the hands of the king; less power in the hands of those who would plunder and degrade and destroy the people after that.
So today dynamite comes as the emancipator of man from the domination and enslavement of his fellowman. [The judge showed symptoms of impatience.] Bear with me now. Dynamite is the diffusion of power. It is democratic; it makes everybody equal. General Sheridan says "arms are worthless." They are worthless in the presence of this instrument. Nothing can meet it. The Pinkertons, the police, the militia, are absolutely worthless in the presence of dynamite. They can do nothing with the people at all. It is the equilibrium. It is the annihilator. It is the disseminator of power. It is the downfall of oppression. It is the abolition of authority; it is the dawn of peace; it is the end of war, because war cannot exist unless there is somebody to make war upon, and dynamite makes that unsafe, undesirable, and absolutely impossible. It is a peace-maker; it is man's best and last friend; it emancipates the world from the domineering of the few over the many, because ail government, in the last resort, is violence; all law, in the last resort, is force. Everything is based upon force. Force is the law of the universe; force is the law of nature, and this newly discovered force makes all men equal and therefore free. It is idle to talk of rights when one does not possess the power to enforce them. Science has now given every human being that power. It is proposed by the prosecution here to take me by force and strangle me on the gallows for these things I have said, for these expressions. Now, force is the last resort of tyrants; it is the last resort of despots and of oppressors, and he who would strangle another because that other does not believe as be would have him, he who will destroy another because that other will not do as he says, that man is a despot and a tyrant and unworthy to live.
Now, I speak plainly; I speak as an Anarchist; I speak as a Socialist; I speak as a wage slave, a workingman. Does it follow, because I hold these views, that I committed this act at the Haymarket? Does that follow? Why, you might just as consistently charge General Phil. Sheridan with the act, and for the same reason, for while he did not go into the matter perhaps as extensively in his encomium upon dynamite as I have done, yet he furnished me the text from which I have drawn my knowledge of this thing.
But, you say, my speeches were sometimes extravagant, unlawful. During the discussion of the question of the extension of chattel slavery into the new territories, into Kansas and the west, while Charles Sumner was yet a member of the United States senate, and that gallant man stood as the champion of freedom upon that floor, he was expostulated with on one occasion and reprimanded by a friend, who said to him: "Sumner, you are not expedient; you must have more policy about what you say, you should not express yourself in this manner; you should not be so denunciatory and fanciful against this slavery, this enslavement. I know it is wrong; I know it should be denounced, but keep inside of the law; keep inside of the constitution."
Your honor, I quote from the speech of Charles Sumner, that great American, in answer and in reply to that remark. Said he: "Anything for human rights is constitutional. No learning in books, no skill acquired in courts, no sharpness in forensic dealings, no cunning in splitting hairs can impair the vigor thereof. This is the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." I never said anything that could equal that in lawlessness. Go, gentlemen of the prosecution, dig up the ashes of Sumner and scatter them in disgrace to the winds, tear down the monument that the American peeple have erected to his honor, and erect thereon some emblem of your contempt!
I will read you now an extract from the Alarm, a little editorial: "Any pretense called freedom, however loudly heralded, which does not bring peace, plenty and comfort to all the members of the human race, is a lie and a fraud on the face of it." Another expression from the Alarm—a little editorial: "A man gets rich by meanness and poor because he is generous. How long can we tolerate the vile system which rewards meanness and starves generosity?"
Your honor, one of the most startling facts in connection with this trial, the labor movement, and the general situation of affairs is to be found in the fact that during the last two or three years at least one-half of the large industrial establishments of the United States, the larger corporations, monopolies, and industries, have been conducted under military supervision. A startling fact this is. Armed men, armed guards, either the Pinkertons or the police, the police of the municipalities in the cities, or the militia, or the United States army, as has been done in some cases, are supervising one-half of the industries of America, that is, the larger industries. It is a positive fact. Think of this! Who is doing this? Now, as an offset to this state of affairs, we find 1,200 delegates assembled in Richmond, Va., representing our American workingmen in the convention of the Knights of Labor. That congress, that organization is the reply which is being made by peaceable laborers to the rifle diet advice, the strychnine business, and the hand grenade business and club business advice by the Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other large papers in this country. These men are assembled in self-defense. The conflict is the struggle between liberty and authority—authority in any and every form. Those who are in authority tell the workingmen that if they want to enjoy the law and the protection of the law, they must render a cheerful obedience to the law. Why a man, when he flogs his slave for disobedience, tells him the same thing. Your honor, according to your construction of sentence, or the reason which you propose as a portion of the ground work upon which you expect to render your proposed sentence, you deny the right of Americans to defend themselves against the rifle diet, and to protest against these outrageous things, to object to the strychnine business. These are the things that have made us what we are. If there be any wrong in me I am the product of these conditions. I am the creature of circumstances; I am the effect of a cause. Now, where is that cause? What is that cause? But, if it comes to that, the right of free speech, the right of free press, the right of peaceable assemblage, and the right of self-defense is denied to the workingman; if that is going to be denied us by the courts of law, what is going to be the result? Why, the workingmen will immediately say as a matter of necessity, “Why, of what use to us is the law? What is the constitution for? Of what value is it to us? It certainly must belong to somebody. Yes, it is used for somebody else's benefit and protection, not surely for ours." This will be the natural conclusion, inevitably.
There was no evidence produced to implicate me with the Haymarket bomb. Why, the evidence that was produced only touched two of us, only implicated two of us, and that evidence, as your honor must know, was paid for. Everybody knows it. Your honor knows it. Your honor does not credit that testimony of Gilmer. You cannot do it. It was overwhelmingly and irresistibly impeached. This man is the slender thread that connects two of us with that Haymarket affair. Now, what are the facts about this Haymarket affair? On Tuesday evening, May 4, several thousand persons, working people, assembled at the Haymarket to discuss their grievances, namely the eight hour strike, and the attack and killing of several workingmen by the police the day before. Those citizens, thus assembled in the peaceable exercise of free speech, free press, and public assembly under their constitutional rights, were upon the eve of adjourning, it being after 10 o'clock, when they were charged upon by 200 armed police, and under pain and penalty of instant death and wholesale slaughter, commanded to disperse, ordered like slaves to sneak and cringe and crawl away from the presence of their masters. Now, was not that an affront? Was not that a most grievous outrage? Was not that a violation of all those principles for which our forefathers struggled in this country? At this juncture some unknown and unproven person throws a bomb among the police, killing several men. You say that I did it, or you say that I knew of it. Where is your proof, gentlemen of the prosecution? You have none. You didn't have any. Oh, but you have a theory, and that theory is that, no one else could have had any motive to hurl that missile of death except myself, and, as is the common remark of the great papers of the city, the police are never short of a theory. There is always a theory on hand for everything. A theory they have got, and especially the detectives; they hatch out a theory at once and begin to follow that up. There was a theory carried out during this trial. Let us examine that theory. I say that a Pinkerton man, or a member of the Chicago police force itself, had as much inducement to throw that bomb as I had, and why? Because it would demonstrate the necessity for their existence and result in an increase of their pay and their wages. Are these people too good to do such a thing? Are they any better than I am? Are their motives any better than my own? Let us look at this thing from every standpoint. Perhaps, on the other hand, the dread missile was hurled in revenge by some poor man or woman, or child even, whose parent or protector or friend was killed by the police in some one of their numerous massacres of the people before. Who knows? And if it was, are we seven to suffer death for that? Are we responsible for that act? Or, might it not be that some person with the fear of death in his eyes threw that bomb in self-defense? And if they did, am I responsible for that? Am I to be executed for that? Is it law to put me to death for that? And who knows? My own deliberate opinion concerning this Haymarket affair is that the death-dealing missile was the work, the deliberate work of monopoly, the act of those who themselves charge us with the deed. I am not alone in this view of the matter.
Let me first of all call your attention to the pre-existing conspiracy of monopoly against the American people, which I believe culminated in the Haymarket there. I will give you now a brief outline or history of this great crime; of the principles of the long antecedent conspiracy on the part of the Chicago Times and Tribune to use hand grenades, recommending the rifle diet for strikers, and arsenic and strychnine for the unemployed, as the outcome of Gould's admonition in the New York Tribune that it is soon that American workingmen must prepare to submit to the same wages as their European brethren that of the coercive policy of the hand grenade and rifle diet. This all resulted from the deliberate attempt of corporations to pay interest and dividends on bonds and stock which were clear water without a speck of dye in it, and, to keep up these double, treble and sometimes quadruple payments above the actual cash valuation of all the existing capital and innumerable corporations which girdle and reticulate the land, not only was production, transportation and telegraphic industry taxed four-fold, that it should bear in excess of ten per cent. upon actual cash cost, and this conducted on a contracted volume of money in order to enhance its purchasing power and usurious value and enable them to dictate the price of labor and its products; but the greatest crime of all: congress framed a bill by which, when bankrupted, the middle classes are brought to the verge of want by foreclosure of mortgage upon their farms. The managers of these corporations then turn their whole attention to the reduction of expenses, which follows as a direct blow at the wages of those by whose skill and labor the railroad, telegraph, and telephone and other corporations do their work, knowing that the overcrowded labor market would compel their employees to accept their wages to supply their wants or starve. An industrial war follows, because the wage system enables monopoly to do these things. Now, upon this the wage question has its basis. The crisis was reached when organized labor struck against long hours on the 1st of May, 1886 following the protest in April of the 15,000 employees of Gould's Missouri railway system of the southwest against the wages of fifty-five and seventy cents a day to which Gould's corporation and Manager Hoxie had reduced the army of skilled railroad operatives; but these events were precipitated on the first by the massed labor unions, and the latter by the district assemblies of the Knights of Labor of the southwest. What was the issue? On railroad stocks alone on all the roads within the United States at a cost of two billion dollars, there was a capitalization of six billions the effect of this false and fictitious value of labor, for skill and labor alone give any value to the stocks and bonds and enable these monopoly inflationists to build up vast incomes on that which has merely cost the paper on which these false calculations were issued. The employees of these public institutions and their patrons cannot understand why these holders, owners, and issuers of fictitious stocks and bonds regard it as a crime to strike. That was an issue in 1877, and it is an issue now in 1886 between the monopoly inflationists who hold that a strike for higher wages, which also aims to prevent other labor avocations from accepting the meager wage doled out to labor, is a blow struck at the liberty of contract, which is the only means left them to realize dividends and interest on their fictitious wealth. Noble and sacrificing! These monopolists care nothing for liberty, but everything for the power to contract with competing starving laborers.
Now, your honor, the victims of these wrongs are numbered by the millions in the United states, one million of whom it is officially reported by the Labor Bureau are out of employment.
The Chicago Tribune, about this time, published the following sentiment: The simplest plan probably when one is not a member of the Humane Society is to put arsenic in the supplies of food furnished the unemployed or the tramp. This produces death in a short time, and is a warning to other tramps to keep out of the neighborhood." The unemployed are kept for better uses now—to take the place of strikers. They don't want to kill them off with strychnine now. The Chicago Times used the same advice with reference to the same matter while the great railroad strike of 1877 was pending, and the president of the Pennsylvania Company—Tom Scott—says: "Give them the rifle diet and see how they like that kind of bread." I have spoken here of monopoly conspiracy. Now, to show my words are not extravagant I want to call your attention to the expressions of three senators on the floor of the United States senate in the last session of the American congress. They had a long discussion of the Bland silver bill and the currency question, and during the debate on that question Senator Teller used these words—he said: There is a conspiracy all over the world on the part of capital against labor, a conspiracy which does not exist in the United States alone, but in which this government is an active agent—a conspiracy for the purpose of increasing the value of the dollar and of decreasing the value of man's production everywhere in the world." "It is a conspiracy, as Mr. Teller said, for those who have power to take advantage of, and perpetuate the outrage and the wrong upon those who are helpless and powerless." Mr. Vest, in the discussion upon the floor of the senate, used these words. He said he also preferred the house resolutions. He said that the question was one between gold and silver, between gold and greenbacks; between the man who wanted to make money dear and the man who borrowed the money; and unless this trouble was terminated on equitable and fair grounds it would result in a sectional struggle between the east and the west. That was the plain meaning of the whole thing. It was a conspiracy! Senator Jones, of Nevada, discussing the same thing, said that his belief was "that the shrinking volumes of money had inflicted more evil, more suffering, more penalties upon the American people than they had ever suffered from war, pestilence, or famine. What the people want is money; not gold nor silver, but dollars and what liquidates the debt and keeps the red flag of the sheriff away from the window." Your honor will observe he did not refer to the red flag of the commune in that particular. Now, to the mind of this United States senator, the only red flag that is dangerous in the United States is the sheriff's—the flag of the auctioneer, denoting the death of what? Denoting the financial demise of some business man who has been destroyed by these conspiracies spoken of by Senator Vest, Senator Teller, and Senator Jones, of the United States senate. These organized, legalized conspiracies that are bringing about wholesale bankruptcies; conspiracies that inflate the railway stock of the country from two billion dollars to six billion dollars; which compel the people of this country to pay interest upon four billion dollars of watered stock upon railroads alone, compelling the workingmen of America to pay in wages for this inflation, for labor in the end must foot the bill. Now, these men urge this is a conspiracy. So do I, and so do the workingmen of this country. We agree with them. Now, this is a part of the programme culminating here in this Haymarket affair on the 4th of May last. This deplorable conspiracy to which I referred incidentally before, and which I now wish to give to the court in detail, to break down the eight hour movement and avenge itself upon the leaders of the labor movement, furnishes indisputable proof that we, the eight hour men, here at this bar, are the victims of that foul conspiracy to rob and enslave the American people.
What are the real facts of that Haymarket tragedy? Mayor Harrison, of Chicago, has caused to be published his opinion, because, mark you, this is all a matter of conjecture. It is only presumed that I threw the bomb. They have only assumed that some one of these men threw the bomb. It is only an inference that any of us had anything to do with it. It is not a fact, and it is not proven. It is merely an opinion. Your honor admits that we did not perpetrate the deed, or know who did it, but that we, by our speeches, instigated some one else to do so. Now, let us see the other side of this case. Mayor Harrison of Chicago, has caused to be published in the New York World, and which was copied in the Tribune of this city, this statement: "I do not believe there was any intention on the part of Spies and those men to have bombs thrown at the Haymarket. If so, why was there but one thrown? It was just as easy for them to throw a dozen or fifty, and to throw them in all parts of the city, as it was to have thrown one. And again, if it was intended to throw bombs that night, the leaders would not have been there at all, in my opinion. Like commanders in chief, they would have been in a safe place. No, it cannot be shown that there was any intention on the part of these individuals to kill that particular man who was killed at that Haymarket meeting." Now, your honor, this is the mayor of Chicago. He is a sensible man. He is in a position to know what he is talking about. He has first-rate opportunities to form an intelligent opinion, and his opinion is worthy of respect. He knows more about this thing than the jury that sat in this room, for he knows—I suspect that the mayor knows—of some of the methods by which most of this so-called evidence and testimony was manufactured. I don't charge it, but possibly he has had some intimation of it, and if he has he knows more about this case and the merits of this case than did the jury who sat here. There is too much at stake to take anything for granted. Your honor can't afford to do that.
Is it nothing to destroy the lives of seven men? Are the rights of the poor of no consequence? Is it nothing, that we should regard it so lightly, as a mere pastime? That is why I stand here at such length to present this case to you, that you may understand it; that you may have our side of this question as well as that of the prosecution. Now, this opinion of Mayor Harrison was based upon his personal observation on the ground at the Haymarket meeting. Mark you, he was there, and this is his opinion, both as to the character of the speeches and the both of the speakers and of the audience, on the night of the 4th of May, in which opinion Inspector Bonfield himself concurred with the mayor: that it was a peaceable meeting, calling for no interference to within ten minutes of the unlawful order to disperse the same by the guardians of the peace and the preservers of order. Now, the two witnesses for the prosecution, who are they? Waller and Schroeder, Those were the State's informers, called "squealer," upon whom the State attempted to base the proof and charged the conspiracy against us. Have they made out a case on the testimony of these men? Let us take the evidence for a moment. These men were the first witnesses called, and they absolutely and completely negative the idea, and not alone the idea, but the fact that itself, that the collision of the Haymarket was ever contemplated at that meeting, much less provided for by any perpetrator whatever. Now, that stands as a fact in the testimony here. It was not brought about by any person or by any individual, or by any member of the so-called armed group, and your honor won't claim that we have not a right to have an armed group. Your honor will not say it is unlawful to have an armed group. As I understand the law and the constitution, if we want an organized group we have the right to it. The constitution defines that treason against the government consists in the fact, only in the fact, of an overt act proven, indisputably proven, by at least two persons. This is what I, as an American, understood the constitution to mean. You say in your remarks upon the sentence that there can be no doubt but what this was an unlawful combination. Well, suppose it was. If I am a member of an unlawful combination, am I to be hung or that? Are seven men to be exterminated for that? Are there not surely some degrees in punishment? Because I belong to an unlawful combination am I to be put to death? Why, that would be cruel. That would be a verdict of hate. That would be a penalty of vengeance, not of justice, and it is not proven; it has not been alleged, even, nor has it been shown, that I was a member of an unlawful combination. That question has not been put in consideration in this court; it has not been here to be established by this jury whether or not I am now or ever was a member of an unlawful combination. Now, for proof of the charge to which I wish to call your honor's attention, that there was no conspiracy, and given out of the mouths of these witnesses of the State, I will cite the very words of the witness Waller himself. In reply to interrogatories by the State's attorney as to what was said at the meeting after he had called it to order, Waller said, "It was said that these men had been killed at McCormick's," referring to the strikers killed by the police the day before.
Engel brought forward a resolution at the April meeting, and what did Engel say? He said that if through the fall of the strikers the other men should come into conflict with the police, we should aid them. He then told us that the northwestern group had resolved to bring aid to these men; that if, on account of this work, something should happen to the police, we must assemble at the corners. What else did Engel say? He said that if tumults occurred in the city, then we should meet in Wicker Park; if the word should appear in the paper, that the northwestern group and the Lehr and Wehr-Verein should assemble in the park with arms. After Engel said this, a committee was appointed to watch the movements in the city and report to us if a riot should occur.
Now then, take into consideration this language. Just consider the situation. Look at the attitude of these capitalist papers for years toward the workingmen; and not only that, but the actual use of these armed hirelings at East St. Louis, at Saginaw, at Pittsburg, all over the country, and at McCormick's the day before. Look at the condition of affairs, and I ask you if these men were not justified in making some preparation by which they could defend themselves, because there is no proposition here to assault anybody. There is no proposition here to make war upon anybody, either their persons or their property:
Q. "Now, was anything said about having a meeting of workingmen the next day?"
A. "Yes, sir; I proposed that a meeting should be held the next afternoon, but that was rejected. It was decided to have a meeting in the evening, as more could come then."
Q. "Who proposed calling a meeting in the evening?"
A. "Fischer. He proposed having one at the Haymarket and it was finally resolved to call one at 8 o'clock."
Q. "Was anything said as to what should be done at that meeting?"
A. "It was intended to cheer up the workmen so that if anything should happen they should be prepared for a conflict. It was decided to call this meeting by means of hand bills. The getting up of this was intrusted to Fischer, but he did not say where they should be printed. It was decided that as a body we should not participate in the Haymarket meeting, but should meet at halls. While only a committee should be at the Haymarket, if the committee reported that something happened, we should attack the police where it was arranged for each group to do so; if necessary, in addition to the police, we would attack the militia and fire department."
Now, then, in the first part of this it says that in the case of the police coming upon the strikers, shooting the strikers down, destroying then), interfering with the people, interfering unlawfully, interfering with the right of the people to assemble, interfering with the right of the people to express their views, mark you, it was said in such a contingency they would defend themselves. Now, these men here upon the stand, Schroeder and Waller who were giving the testimony, used the word "attack." When it was translated "attack," you must not take that as a literal meaning of these men. It was defense. They meant by this word defense. If it had been literally translated as these men meant it, and as the spirit of the testimony shows, the word would not have been "attack," but would have been defense. In every instance the whole preparation and proof about it shows that it was for defense. What could they attack? What can a handful of men attack? There was only a handful of men there at best. What can they attack? Who can they attack? What could they capture? What could they take? Wouldn't it be ridiculous for them to undertake to attack the city of Chicago, to attack the authorities, to undertake to seize the city? Why, that would be nonesense. It would be ridiculous. Upon the very face of it, it is an absurdity. was for defense. They said that it was for defense, and for no other purpose, in the event that the police invaded the meetings of workingmen and unlawfully—as Judge McAllister had told the workingmen of the city, that the police of Chicago could not unlawfully invade their meetings, and break them up—Judge McAllister had told us this in his decision. We believed that that was what the law was. We believed that we had the constitutional right tо assemble. Now, why shouldn't we protect ourselves in such a contingency?
In this connection right here [Judge Gary indicated his impatience]—Please, bear with me for a few minutes. In 1877—to show you what the police will do, and what they will do unlawfully—they broke down the doors; they entered the hall at West Twelfth street Turner Hall, where the Furniture Workers' Union was in session considering the eight hour movement just as we were at the Haymarket that night, and the question of wages. They broke into that hall. They drove the people out with club and pistol, and fired among them, and they killed one of the people in that hall, and Judge McAllister, upon the trial afterward declared that that was an outrageous assault, that it was cruel, bloody murder, and that if every single policeman—and there were about twenty-five or thirty who went into that establishment—Judge McAllister said that if every policeman, if every single one of them had been killed on the spot, no one could have been harmed for doing it. This was the decision of the judge; that has stood as the law. These things had been done in Chicago. The police swept down through the lumber yards at McCormick's the day before. Those things were done all over the country and through the city to put down strikes everywhere. Now, where is the crime in our having said that we would, if no other remedy or redress was left us, that we would follow the law laid down by Judge McAllister and use our right, our constitutional right, our legal right to defend ourselves?
Well, now, mark you, this Schroeder and this Waller were witnesses for the State; they were what is called "squealers," and they were men—now, don't forget this point—these men were telling their story under a great bribe. What was that bribe? Liberty and life, two of the greatest and sweetest things known to man. Life and liberty were offered to Schroeder and Waller. Was it from the fact that they were given money, as was testified to by both of them, and uncontradicted by the prosecution? Aside from that fact, life and liberty were given to these men if they would tell a story that would fit a theory and carry out a certain line of the prosecution to bring about a certain verdict. They gave that kind of testimony. You will remember that Seliger's wife upon the stand testified that these men were kept by Captain Schaack in the station, under durance vile, and herself also, until both Seliger and Waller were compelled, under intimidation, to sign four different statements in writing; that is an uncontradictable statement. Consider the condition under which these men gave this testimony, and even with all that, they only testify that the meeting was for the purpose of defense, and not for any action at the Haymarket meeting, and had nothing to do with the Haymarket meeting, had no connection with the Haymarket meeting. This is the statement of the witnesses for the State on the part of the conspirators, so-called. On cross-examination the question was asked: "Well, didn't Engel say in reference to the plan of action agreed upon by the armed group on Monday night and on Sunday that it was to be carried out in case the police should interfere with your right of free speech and free assemblage?" "If the police should attack us, yes."
That this plan was to be followed only when the police would—I believe Captain Black asked this question—"would by brutal force interfere with your right of free assemblage and free speech?"
A. "It was said that we would use or resort to this plan or the execution of it whenever the police should attack us."
Now, listen to that, your honor. Up here, you understand, in one part of this testimony it is said we got ready to attack the police, and down here on the cross-examination it shows that the witness himself meant that we should defend ourselves—not attack the police. It was an absurdity—perfectly absurd—to talk about a handful of men attacking the authorities of this city. What, if they got the city of Chicago, wouldn't it be a white elephant? What, in the name of common sense, could they do with it? It reminds me of some people who are afraid that if the world should be made free and the workingmen should come into their liberty that they would steal the world and run off with it. What would they do with it if they did? It is an absurd proposition. Now, the statement of these men under cross-examination shows what their intention was, and they used the word "defense," whereas, in the direct examination, and by the translation of the district attorney, they are made in English to use the word "attack":
Q. "You say that nothing was said at the Monday night meeting with reference to any action to be taken by you at the Haymarket?"
A. "We said we would do nothing there; we were not to do anything at the Haymarket."
Q. "Was it not the plan that you should not be there at all?"
A. "Yes, sir."
These are the State's witnesses upon which they propose to show and prove a conspiracy against us, your honor.
Q. "And you also say that you did not anticipate that the policemen would come to the Haymarket?"
A. "No, we did not think the police would come to the Haymarket."
Q. "For this reason no preparations were made for meeting any police attack on the Haymarket square?"
A. "Not by them."
Q. "Was it not the sole purpose of the meeting at the Haymarket to protest against the action of the police in the shooting of the workingmen at McCormick's factory?"
A. "Yes, sir."
This was the testimony of the State's witness, Waller.
Mr. Schroeder, another witness upon whom the State rested to prove there was a concerted plot to entrap and destroy the police, swore: "Lingg was not present. We talked about the condition of the workingmen, and the remark was made that the members of the northwestern group should go to Wicker Park in case the police should make an attack on them"—you understand, your honor, police can make attacks. Judge McAllister says they can make unlawful and unconstitutional attacks. Now, shall it be held by you that the police, like the kings of old, can do no wrong, because forsooth, there happens to be here upon this trial eight poor men, eight workingmen, eight men without money or friends? Are we to be offered up and immolated as a sacrifice upon the altar of Mammon to satisfy the vindictive hatred and greed of the monopolists of this city? For that is the sum total of what it amounts to, your honor.
Q. "How should they defend themselves? Was anything said about dynamite?"
A. "No; as well as anyone could, if anyone had anything with him."
Q. "How long were you at Greif's Hall on that Monday night previous to the Haymarket meeting?" (This is Schroeder.)
A. "Three-quarters of an hour."
Q. "What was discussed there?"
A. "If the police made an attack upon the workmen"—now, your honor, keep this in mind: the prosecution has tried to make out that there was a meeting held; that there was a conspiracy entered into, and that it was resolved upon to atack the police. Their own witnesses here, their own testimony, shows that there was nothing of the kind intended—"if the police made an attack upon the workmen they would help the workmen to help themselves."
Q. "Was anything said about bombs?"
A. "No."
Q. "At any of the meetings?"
A. "No; not while I was present."
Q. "Well, while you were present at the Monday night meeting they talked about how they would help the workmen defend themselves?"
A. "Yes, sir."
Q. "And nothing was said about throwing bombs on Monday night, or at any other time?"
A. "No."
Q. "Was it not talked about throwing bombs at the Haymarket meeting?"
A. "No; not while I was there."
Q. "Then it was talked about throwing dynamite to destroy the police at the next meeting at the Haymarket?"
A. "There was nothing said about it while I was there."
Q. "You went to the Haymarket meeting?"
A. "Yes, sir; I was in a saloon when the bomb exploded."
Q. "Did you go there with any dynamite in your pocket?"
A. "I don't know what dynamite is; don't know dynamite."
Q. "Did you know there would be trouble at that meeting?"
A. "Well, I know that much, that when the police should attack the workingmen that each one should help themselves as best they could."
Q. "At the time you left the meeting, the meeting was quiet and peaceable?"
A. "Yes."
And this is the testimony, your honor, which was relied upon to prove a conspiracy on my part. Now, I did not belong to this meeting; I did not know that there was such a meeting. In fact, I was not in Chicago. I was in Ohio and the meeting was conducted in German; I cannot speak German; I do not know the German language; I do not understand it. I do not know these men. I never saw Schroeder or Waller in my life until I saw them on the witness stand here. Lingg, the first time I ever saw him in my life was when I came into this court room and surrendered for trial, and saw him sitting in the prisoner’s box. Why, your honor, it is ridiculous. It is an absurdity; it is a misconception of the whole situation and conjunction of circumstances in connection with this whole affair when I was away from the city, and this is a sentence passed upon me for being connected with a conspiracy which, the prosecution claims, was organized for the purpose and resulted in the daeth of Mathias Degan at the Haymarket square on the 4th of May.
Referring again to the informer Waller's testimony; the State's attorney is reported by the Herald, of July 17, as saying after the adjournment: "This man's testimony is going to convict the prisoners;" that is, Waller. How preposterous! The two informers disclosed no fact that bore the semblance of a conspiracy, which in law is an agreement to do a criminal act. Now, I was not there. I did not know anything about it. I do not speak German. I do not know these men. I never saw them before. I don't know who the men were at the meeting. The only man that I know that is connected with this matter, I believe, is Engel; him I have met before, I don't know whether he was at the meeting or not. I did not know there was such a meeting. I never requested it to be called. Now, the State's attorney says that this man's testimony is the thread upon which he proposed to connect me with this conspiracy to do an unlawful thing, which resulted in the death of Mathias Degan at the Haymarket on the 4th of May. How preposterous! These informers disclose no fact that bears the semblance of a conspiracy, but on the contrary, their testimony simply revealed a noble and a fraternal and a patriotic purpose; that—quoting the language of Schroeder himself—"if the police made an attack upon the workingmen unlawfully again, they would help the workingmen to resist it, or to defend themselves." Waller testified in chief, and reiterated it in cross-examination, that Engel and Fischer, these noble and brave Germans, offered a resolution at Greif's Hall on the announcement that six men had been wantonly and brutally murdered by the police at McCormick's, that if other men should come into enconuter with the police we should aid them, and further swore that this plan was to be followed only when the police, by brutal force, should interfere with the workman's right of free assemblage and free speech.
Now, then, where is the foul and dastardly criminal conspiracy here? Where is it? So preposterous was it on its face to call such a noble compact to do a lawful thing a conspiracy, that it became necessary, in the face of a dozen witnesses, both for the prosecution and the defense, to swear that the bomb came from the pavement on Desplaines street, south of the alley, between the alley and Randolph street, a statement made by Bonfield himself to reporters about half an hour after the tragedy occurred, and published in the Times on May 5, the following morning—Louis Haas, Bonfield's special detective on the ground, at the coroner's inquest, swore the bomb was thrown from the east side of Desplaines street and about fifteen feet, he believed, south of the alley, a statement confirmed by the witness Burnett, for the defense, who located it fifteen feet even further south than Haas or Bonfield did—still, on the impeached testimony of Gilmer, who swore the bomb was thrown from within the alley, we are convicted, because he was also willing to perjure himself bу swearing that Spies lit the fuse of the fatal missile. The idea of a man striking a match in an alley to light a bomb in the midst of a crowd, the people and police standing all around him! It seems to me that such a statement as that ought to, among sensible men, on the face of it, carry its own refutation. Perfectly absurb! If this statement bore the semblance of truth with regard to Gilmer, or was the truth, not one of these defendants would shrink from the responsibility of the right of self-defense, your honor, and of free speech, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble. It is because this is not the work of the Anarchists or of the workingmen, that we repel the charge, which proves there was no concerted action, and that it was none of the plans of these groups. It is not unlawful to repel an invasion of our meetings. In the case of the People vs. Miller the learned Judge McAllister expounded the law of Illinois under which the people had the right to assemble at the Haymarket. He said they were entitled to be as free from molestation as in our castle and our homes. We were not obstructing the traffic on the highway. As there is no travel thereon at night there was and can be no pretense on that score, because the mayor of the city of Chicago was present and did not interfere, and, in fact, directed the inspector of police, after 10 o'clock, that there was no occasion for police interference. He, therefore, as the sole judge, under the law, recognized that assemblage not only as a lawful assemblage, but more, a peaceful assemblage, within the law and the constitution of both the State and the Federal government, and entitled to the protection of both, which we have here and now claimed in vain, as this court refuses in this instance, or has up to this time, to enforce the right of the people. For these reasons I ask the suspension of your sentence, for the reasons that have been stated here; that there was no conspiracy, that it was an organization for defense; that the meeting was peaceable; that it was a lawful meeting, as the mayor of the city of Chicago declared it upon the stand to be, and as Bonfield and Haas both said, the morning after the Haymarket tragedy, that the bomb did not come from the alley, but south of it. I ask your honor to suspend your judgment and give us innocent men a chance, in a new trial, to prove these facts beyond any question. The meeting, your honor, was sacred from intrusion or trespass—as sacred as a man's home, which is his castle; even more, for an assemblage of the people, your honor, is the primary seat of action on their part, of all authority on their part in a republic, and is guarded by the first amendment to the constitution of the United States from any abridgment, as it is also by the constitution of the State of Illinois, now violated by this unconstitutional verdict. You have read the decision of Judge McAllister in this case; I have it here. It would consume time before this court to read it, and I will just submit it to your honor. Your honor has read it, of course, and I will not take up your time with the reading of it. I offer it, however, as a part of the statement that I wish to make in connection with our view of our defense, and our appeal to you for a new trial in this case.
Now, then, I want to call your attention to what I regard as the origin of this bomb at the Haymarket. I believe it was instigated by eastern monopolists to produce public sentiment against popular movements, especially the eight hour movement then pending, and that some of the Pinkertons were their tools to execute the plan. To sustain this accusation I submit to you the following facts: Just exactly four days before the grand strike for eight hours throughout the United States, and only one week before the Haymarket tragedy, the New York Times, one of the leading organs of railroad, bank, coal, telegraph and telephone monopoly, published the following notice, under date of April 25, 1886, in an editorial on the condition of the market and the causes of the existing decline and the panicky symptoms which existed. The New York Times says: "The strike question is, of course, the dominant one, and is disagreeable in a variety of ways. A short and easy way to settle it is urged in some quarters, which is to indict for conspiracy every man who strikes and summarily lock him up. This method would undoubtedly strike a wholesome terror into the hearts of the working classes. Another way suggested is to pick out the leaders and make such an example of them as would scare others into submission." This was the 25th of April, an editorial in the New York Times, written in view of the contemplated strike on the 1st of May for eight hours. The New York Tribune, now no longer the oracle of the great American tribune, Horace Greeley, that defender of oppressed humanity, but the servile organ of the most oppressive forms of monopoly, said just about this time in an editorial: "The best policy would be to drive workingmen into open mutiny against the law." The New York Herald, at that date suggested by its contemporaries to make examples of the leaders in the short hour movement, said: "Two hours taken from ten hours of labor throughout the United States by the proposed short hour movement would make a difference annually of hundreds of millions in value, both to the capital invested in industries and to existing stock." The issue of the hour, then, with the New York and Chicago Stock Exchanges and Board of Trade and Produce Exchanges was how to preserve the steadiness of the market and maintain the fictitious values then and there rapidly falling under the paralyzing influence of the simultaneous eight hour demand throughout the United States.
Your honor, so common is this impression among people, so common is this belief among the labor organizations and workingmen of this country that I wish to impress upon you the view which I present. I am a member of the Knights of Labor, that is an organization of nearly a million and a half American workingmen. I am a member of my union, the Printers' Union, and have been for fourteen years in the city of Chicago. This is a national and international organization with some sixty odd thousand members in the United States. These organizations publish a great many newspapers in America, and every single one of them believes that that bomb at the Haymarket was instigated by the monopolists to break drown the eight hour movement. Hear our side. You have heard the Citizens' Association's side of this question, you have heard the bankers' side, you have heard the railway magnates' side, you have heard the Board of Trade's side; I ask you now to listen also to the side of the workers. I might read you here extract after extract from these papers to show you that what I state is true. I will read you one among the many I have. The Knights of Labor, a paper printed in the city of Chicago by the Knights of Labor, says: "It would seem that Pinkerton's Detective Agency has contracted to carry out this policy, and to at least make the public believe that workingmen are rebels against the law. It may not be long until people will see that those detective gangs, instead of being gangs of peace, are really the agencies of monopolists to trump up charges and produce public sentiment against the popular movements of the people." Now, on this subject, a paper printed at Marinette, Wis., the Marinette Eagle, says: "The blowing up of the street cars in St. Louis by dynamite during the strike there last summer was directly traceable to Pinkerton's agents, who put up the job. Gould's officials once tore down and destroyed a telegraph pole, and the Satanic press made but a feeble remonstrance while the perpetrators of the dastardly act were never prosecuted, and yet the wage earners are called Anarchists." As I said before, I could quote and take up a great deal of time in quoting and reading the setiments of anti-monopoly, greenback, labor, knights of Labor, Trade Union and Socialist newspapers, holding the monopolists responsible for this act in the United States. I will not take up your time, but I will call your attention in this connection to one thing.
In the strike down here at East St. Louis last summer, where the railroad companies called for "men of grit," and advertised to pay men of grit "that meant business" five dollars a day, they got a lot of men, and these men fired upon people that were walking along peaceably on a railroad track in East St. Louis, and killed seven men and one woman. Those men were in the pay of this pool of railways. The grand jury of St. Louis refused to indict those men even, you understand, refused even to indict them; and they were sent home with pay and honor. But here in Chicago a mass-meeting of workingmen occurs, and at that meeting there is a bomb thrown; some men are killed. The deed is fastened upon the men who spoke at that meeting, and they are made responsible for it, and they are brought in here and railroaded through in double-quick time to the scaffold, and, your honor, will you now refuse to give us a chance to have this matter heard fairly, to give us a chance in a new trial? The charge made by the labor papers that the monopolists were at the bottom of the Haymarket tragedy, and that the Pinkertons were employed to carry it out, supplies the key to the solution of the mystery as to who did throw that bomb, for it has not been proven upon one of these defendants, without contradicting the history of that night, as given by Bonfield to the Times reporter, and also by Lieutenant Haas, Whiting, Allen, the reporter, and seven witnesses, all told, for the State, and Burnett, Taylor and Simonson, and a number of witnesses, for the defense. It rests solely upon the impeached, unsupported, the perjured, paid-for testimony of the perjured villain, Gilmer. That is all the thread that connects it. Now, who will believe his silly story that one of these men or myself had any knowledge of the party who hurled the deadly bomb on its awful mission of death? It rests on Gilmer's testimony alone.
The New York Times of April 27, urged as an easy way to settle the eight hour movement to pick out the leaders and make such an example of them as to scare the others into submission. The wicked cabal of monopolists, with an organ capable of making such an utterance and giving such atrocious advice, is capable of putting it into execution, and force was to be used if blood flowed and the innocent perished. The McCormick difficulty of the day before, where unarmed working people were attacked by the police, transpired within five days of this threat in the east. Stocks went down. The great commercial stock centers were convulsed with apprehensions of a swift decline in values if the eight hour strike succeeded. The wheels of industry remained paralyzed by the thousands of laborers who were out making the strike in favor of the eight hour movement. Something must be done to stop this movement, and it was felt that its strongest impluse was at the west, where forty thousand men were on a strike for eight hours in the city of Chicago, and in order to make such an example of them—to quote the language of the Times—as to scare the others into submission, I repeat, that the men in New York, capable of making such a suggestion, are capable of carrying it out, of putting it into execution. Now, isn't that a fair presumption? Was it not worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them annually to have it done? Pinkerton's agency, in my opinion, contracted to carry it out; they have done such things on previous occasions. Often before have they done such things; it has been proven on them in numerous parallel cases of conspiracy to bring odium upon popular movements in all parts of the country, and I read to you that official circular of Pinkerton's offering himself to monopolists who wanted just such conspirators and schemes as were laid down by the Herald of New York, and the Times, Tribune and other papers. The Pinkertons, in their circular addressed to these monopolists, said they had the men ready; they were prepared to furnish the information, and they could build up and provide a conspiracy that would break down any contemplated effort on the part of the men to receive better pay or an improvement in their condition. That is Pinkerton's own circular. He would carry out that which he proposes to carry out. He offers himself for sale to do that kind of work; he openly declares in the circular that that is his business; that he makes his living and his money by that occupation.
Nor are we wanting in the clear links of circumstantial evidence to point to the culprits who will yet call upon the rocks to hide them from the wrath of an outraged people. There is in the possession of this court in this case on file the sworn testimony of John Philip DeLuce of Indianapolis, a saloon keeper, whose story was printed in the papers at the time he first made it public, in May of this year. He swears that at 7 o’clock one morning in May, this year, an unknown man wearing a mustache, dressed in dark clothes five feet five or five feet six inches in height, came to his place, and setting a small satchel on the bar, asked for a drink. Taking a drink, the customer said he came from New York, was on his way to Chicago, and the stranger closed with the remark that the saloon keeper would shortly hear of trouble in Chicago. Pointing to his satchel he said: "I have got something in there that will work; you will hear of it." Turning at the door as he departed he held up his satchel, and, pointing at it, remarked: "You will hear of it soon." Shortly after this episode the news of the Haymarket tragedy reached DeLuce. The deponent appeals to a certain Oscar Smith as a witness to this conversation, and Smith follows with an affidavit to the truth of this statement; that was away back in May. Now, if this is to be a case of conjecture, if this is to be a case of opinion, I submit if that man's testimony is not as worthy of the consideration of this court as is the testimony of Harry Gilmer. Or, if your honor still assumes that we instigated some one else to hurl the bomb, I submit if the threats of the monopolist papers, and the proposals of Pinkerton to carry them out, do not show that some mercenary in their employ performed the deed resulting in the Haymarket tragedy. The Pinkerton force advertises to carry on this kind of work. Pinkerton advertises in his circular that lie is ready to do this kind of a job. The New York Herald, and New York Times say the market is going down in consequence of the contemplated strike on the first of May, and say that the leaders must be arrested and thrust into prison, and thus terrify the others into submission by making examples of the leaders. This is what the Times says; this is what Pinkerton says. About this time some one, as testified to by three reputable witnesses, stopped at Indianapolis: that was in May; the Haymarket tragedy was the fourth. This man testifies to that fact. A stranger stops there. He says: "I am going to Chicago. I have something that will work. You will hear from it." The man was in his cups, no doubt; probably he drank too much. The Pinkertons are not all temperance men; they sometimes take a little, and sometimes possibly take a little too much; possibly he talked a little more than he ought to have talked; possibly he didn't care, but at any rate it is sworn to that be said it; he came to Chicago, and the bomb was heard from and heard around the world. Your honor, is this an unreasonable assumption? It is far more likely, much more reasonable than your honor's surmise that I instigated some one to do it. Is this not within the possibility of human events? Might this not be the case? Is it proven, your honor, incontestibly and uncontrovertibly, that it was not done by this man, that it was not done by a Pinkerton? Is it proven beyond any possibility of a doubt that I and some of these men here threw that bomb, or knew of its being thrown? It is not, your honor. It is not established. The testimony does not show it.
These squealers for the State, Waller and Schroeder, both state that this meeting was for defense, that it had no reference to the Haymarket, had nothing to do with it; they were not even to go there; there was no difficulty expected there. These are the State's own witnesses and against the testimony of Gilmer, that Spies lit the bomb, which is ridiculous in itself, absurd, the very idea of such thing. Mr. Bonfield and Lieutenant Haas said that the bomb was thrown south of the alley about fifteen feet, and Burnett comes upon the stand—a man who is unimpeached—and swears that he stood by the man who did throw the bomb, and saw him light and throw it. All this against Gilmer, the affidavit of DeLuce, and the statements of the witnesses on the part of the prosecution. I submit that we, for this reason are entitled, and have a right to stand here and claim a new hearing before you. I am told that it is a statement from the prefecture of the Paris police, that the police themselves instigate troubles often to bring about certain results. In police circles such persons are known as procurators or provocatives. I don't know whether this is true or not. You are a judge and a court; you are familiar with these things. Now, this description of the stranger dressed in dark clothes, and not tall in height, exactly corresponds with Burnett's description of the man he saw, both light and hurl the bomb, and Burnett stood here. You remember it; Burnett was standing right about here when he testified; he said that he was standing by the side of the man and saw the man light the bomb, and hurl it in that direction. It tallies with the man sworn to here by John Philip DeLuce, the man called for by the New York Times, Herald, and Tribune, by implication at least, that this thing must be stopped. Pinkerton comes out in a circular and offers to do this kind of work. It is the hand of the police. Now, is it anything beyond human reason that these men could not carry out that which they said they were ready to do—to do that which they themselves claimed it would be worth to them millions to do? I am not putting statements in their mouths. They stated here that they were ready to do such work; perhaps they may have overdone the work; perhaps they killed more men than they intended to kill; perhaps that may be true. Perhaps they did not intend that it should be so great a sacrifice as it was; but I will continue with reference to this; Burnett's description of the identical man he saw both light and hurl the bomb thirty-five feet south of the alley, show that the prediction of the stranger from Chicago, "You will hear from it," was verified within twenty-four hours, because it was not a dynamite, but an infernal bomb, of which this stranger boasted in his cups when pointing to the satchel and saying, "I have something in here that will work; you will hear of it; you will shortly hear of trouble in Chicago," speaking of the pending troubles in this city.
Within twenty-four hours after this incident at Indianapolis, as sworn to before this court, the something in that satchel was heard from, and its detonation is still ringing in the ears of a startled world. The day following, the 5th of May, the Daily News of Chicago published the first description in print of the man who threw the bomb, from one who swore he was neither a Socialist, an Anarchist, nor a Communist, but a mere idle and curious spectator at the meeting. The News said on May 5: "The police have a good description of the man who threw the bomb at the Anarchists' meeting last night. The fellow stood in front of John Burnett, a candy maker in the employ of Mr. Berry, at the corner of Washington and Sangamon streets, and was seen by him to throw the missile of death. The atrocious murderer was a young man, a little above medium height, and well dressed. He was seen to take the bomb from his pocket and light it just as the police drew near. Burnett said he stood within two feet of the man, and would certainly be able to identify him should he meet him again. Hardly a moment elapsed after the bomb was lighted until the man lifted his arm preparatory to casting it from him. Every detail of this performance was witnessed by Burnett, who did not know what to make of this strange action. Presently the fuse attached to the bomb commenced to burn, and then, for the first time, Burnett realized what was about to happen. The man, with a quick jerk of his arm, sent the bomb flying through the air, and the next instant turned to run. Burnett attempted to follow, but a stray bullet struck him in the arm and he fell to the sidewalk. When he got up all was confusion. The foregoing is the substance of the story told the reporter this morning. Detectives were sent out to hunt for Burnett, but they were unable to find him."
Your honor, this was the fifth day of May, the day following the Haymarket affair. Mr. Burnett was found and repeated the above facts to the district attorney, reaffirming the statement to which he subsequently swore in court for the defense, that the strange man stood thirty-five feet south of the alley; that be saw him light the fuse and then throw the bomb; that he wore dark clothes; and it was proven on trial that Rudolph Schnaubelt, the man Gilmer implicated, wore light clothes that night, and this Pinkerton man had a mustache and no chin or side whiskers, while Schnaubelt, the Anarchist, had both; and he was a man of medium size, whereas Schnaubelt is noted for his great height ; he is six feet two inches. The district attorney had to stultify his own witnesses by the unsupported, manufactured, perjured evidence of Gilmer, because for forty pieces of silver, he was willing to swear that Spies lit the fuse while another man threw the bomb—a very tall man in height, in light clothes, with a light or sandy beard. Gilmer swore that when Fielden was speaking he was looking for a party he expected to find there, "and I went back in the alley between the Crane building and the building on the south of it. I stopped in the alley and noticed some parties in conversation across the alley on the south side. Some one said: 'Here come the police.' There was a man who jumped from the wagon down to the parties somewhere standing on the south side of the alley, and lit a match and touched oil something or other, and the man gave a couple of steps forward and tossed it over into the street." Side by side with this, we give the precise words of Mr. Bonfield, as published in the Chicago Times of May 5, to a knot of reporters gathered around him at the station house half an hour after the tragedy occurred. He is reported in the Times of May 5 to have said: "The exact scene of the explosion is near the center of the street and exactly opposite the alley on the east side which separates No. 9 South Desplaines street from Crane Brothers' foundry. At intervals between this alley and Randolph street there are large, heavy, box-like frames at the edge of the sidewalk, and it is here that the bomb was thrown." Lieutenant Haas located the spot there also as some fifteen feet south of the alley, not in the alley, as Gilmer would have it. Yes, the prediction of the Indianapolis stranger was verified. The bomb was heard from, and heard around the world. The purpose avowed in the New York city papers to pick out the leaders and make such examples of them as to scare the others into submission, was put into successful execution, and well was the diabolical and nefarious plot executed. Eight men—"leaders"—three labor editors and five labor organizers and orators—now before you, are here to receive sentence of death in pursuance of that vile plot, of which the Haymarket tragedy, in the hands of a Pinkerton detective, was the entering wedge; and Gilmer's testimony is but a part of a scheme to divert attention from the evidence of twelve witnesses, exclusive of Bonfield's, to the Times reporter, that the infernal machine was hurled from fifteen to thirty-five feet south of the alley, just where the short man in dark clothes actually stood when the angel of death was sped on its infernal mission, not only to sacrifice purposely the lives of the policemen on the ground, but that the labor leaders might be arrested and doomed to death under a charge of the commission of the offense, in order, as avowed by the New York Times, the agent and representative of the falling stock markets of the east, to scare the other workingmen into submission and frighten them back into the acceptance of the ten hour plan.
Your honor, if you please, I would like to take a short recess. I am much fatigued. I have a few more words to say, and I will finish them this afternoon.
The Court—I had intended not to have but one session of the court today; there has been now two hours and three-quarters this morning and an hour yesterday, three hours and three-quarters of time spent upon that which, as the speaker and the auditors know, has had very little to do with the question that is before me, and it does not seem to me that I ought to have repeated sessions of court in listening to repetitions from newspapers, etc., which never could be used upon any trial, never could have been, and never can be. I would very much prefer to finish up the matter. I shall not restrict you as to time.
Mr. Parsons—I will say, your honor, I am now in the midst of that part of my statement which refers more directly to the Haymarket matter.
The Court—Go on, say all that you wish to say.
[It was plain to be seen, however, that the speaker was physically unable to "go on."]
Mr. Parsons—The absolute proof that the missile thrown was not dynamite, but what was known in the late civil war as an infernal bomb, is in the evidence of every surgeon who testified that all incisions were clean, and that the flesh was torn as from an explosive in the interior. It was testified by these scientific men, your honor, that dynamite is percussive, and had a shell the size of Lingg's manufacture, on exhibition in evidence, been thrown in the closed ranks of the police, as was this infernal machine, instead of killing but one on the spot, and wounding a few others, it would have blown to unrecognizable fragments the platoons in the vicinity, and the wounds, where there were wounds, would have been as clean as with solid projectiles.
This was an infernal bomb from New York, brought there by the Indianapolis traveler, and not a dynamite bomb, the descriptions in its effects upon its victims, exactly corresponding with the description of those explosives, when once used in battle on the Potomac. The hollow bullets within the shell, after entering the victim, exploded, lacerating the flesh and inflicting ugly internal and really infernal wounds.
But, dynamite is an explosive which annihilates its victims. All experiment and experience demonstrates that fact. The State of Illinois, to convict any man for using a dynamite bomb at the Haymarket, must show that it was dynamite; because the absolutely necessary link to connect these defendants with the explosion, (and especially Lingg, whom they charge, and are going to hang, for merely its supposed manufacture by him) is the proof that it was a dynamite bomb, and not an infernal machine, as they were called in war times. The positive proof that it was not such a bomb as Lingg made lies in the fact that but one man was killed outright, and others being merely wounded, though the bomb fell between two close platoons of heavily massed men.
Mark, sir, dynamite is an explosive which annihilates its victims. A pound displaces the air within a radius of one thousand feet. The adjacent platoon would have been blown, as we have already said, into unrecognizable atoms, had it been a Lingg dynamite bomb. I cite the case of France, and Doran, and Berrige, at Warren, Pennsylvania. In each case the singular characteristic of their death, is the fact of the complete annihilation of matter, especiallу of the human body. Beside human, the iron frames of wagons, and even ponderous nitro glycerine safes, have been removed from human vision as effectually as if they had never been formed.
This is not merely circumstantial evidence. It is proof positive that it was not a dynamite bomb, such as the alleged conspirators distributed at the Monday night meeting of the armed group, which did not attend the Haymarket, Lingg himself being absent some miles distant. It is confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ that the agency used to destroy our lives and the eight hour movement was a new New York infernal machine.
Six of these condemned men were not even present at the Haymarket meeting when the tragedy occurred. One of them was five miles away at the Deering Harvester Works in Lake View, addressing a mass meeting of 2,000 workingmen. Another was at home in bed and knew not of the meeting being held at all until the next day. These facts, your honor, stand uncontradicted before this court. Only one witness—Gilmer—and his testimony is overwhelmingly impeached, as I remarked before—connected the other two—two only—of these men with the tragedy at the Haymarket at all.
Now, with these facts, the attempt to make out a case of conspiracy against us is a contemptible farce. What were the facts testified to by the two so-called informers? They said that two of these defendants were present at the so-called conspiracy meeting of Monday night. What then have you done with the other six men who were not members—who were not present, and did not know of the meeting being held Monday night? These two so-called informers testified that at the so-called conspiracy meeting of May 3, it was resolved that in the future, when police and militia should attack and club and kill workingmen at their meetings, then, and then only, they were in duty bound to help defend these working people against such unlawful, unrighteous, and outrageous assaults. That was all that was said or done. Was that a conspiracy? If it was, your honor, it was a conspiracy to do right and oppose what is wrong.
But your sentence says that it is criminal for the workingmen to resolve to defend their lives and their liberties and their happiness against brutal, bloody and unlawful assaults of the police and militia.
Look at this jury for a moment, observe the material of which it was composed. There was Juryman Todd; when he was accepted on the jury he described himself as a clothing salesman, and a Baptist. As soon as the verdict had been rendered he was, of course, interviewed. He said:
"This was a picked jury; they were all gentleman. You see, Major Cole, who was the first juror accepted, and myself took the other jurors in hand as soon as they were accepted." Major Cole, you will remember, described himself as a bookkeeper, and an Episcopalian. Todd, in his interview, went on to tell how, notwithstanding their virtuous professions, when they went to the jury room they played cards; they also played the fiddle and guitar and piano, and sang songs. In fact, these gentlemen had a very merry time of it while engaged in the trial of the seven Anarchists for their lives, and they had to bring a verdict as becomes gentlemen, of course. What with songs, music, carriage drives and high life at a fashionable hotel, parlor theatricals in the evening, these twelve gentlemen managed to kill their time, and finally returned a verdict to kill these abominable seven Anarchists, these workingmen, whose lives, of course, were beneath the serious consideration of the elegant gentlemen—these nice gentlemen.
Before the trial began, during its prosecution, and since its close, a satanic press has shrieked and howled itself wild like ravenous hyenas for the blood of these eight workingmen. Now this subsidized press, in the pay of monopoly and of labor enslavers, commanded this court and commanded this jury and this prosecution to convict us.
As a fitting climax to this damnable conspiracy against our lives and liberty, what follows? [The speaker raised his arms and pointed his finger to the statue of the blind "Goddess of Justice" over the judge's stand.] Oh! hide your eyes now; hide them! hide them! It is well that your eyes are bandaged and your vision obscured, for could you have witnessed the corruption and infamy practiced in your name during this trial, you would have fled from this temple forever! As a fitting climax to this damnable conspiracy against our lives and liberty some of Chicago's millionaires proposed to raise a purse of $100,000 and present it to the jury for their verdict against us. This was done, as everybody knows, in the last days of the trial, and since the verdict, so far as anybody knows to the contrary, this blood money has been paid over to that jury; besides, these jurymen, since the rendition of their verdict, have been feted. They have been wined, and dined, and banqueted, and costly gifts have been bestowed upon them with a lavish hand by the enemies of human rights and human equality. "Oh! shame, where is thy blush! Oh, virtue, hast thou fled to brutish beasts!"
No man was permitted to serve on this jury who was tainted with the slightest sympathy for the working class in their struggles against monopoly. But to every one of the 1,139 men, who were summoned as jurors by the State's attorney, the State's attorney put these questions: "Are you a member of a trade and labor union? Are you a member of the Knights of Labor? Have you any sympathy with Communists, Anarchists, and Socialists?" And every one who answered in the affirmative was summarily told that he was excused. Only five persons out of 1,200 jurymen who were summoned were among the list; I mean there were only five workingmen of the 1,200 called. The deputy sheriff, Mr. Rice—I believe that is his name—it has been sworn to in our plea for a new trial, your honor, that he summoned this jury, and the affidavit is on file before you that Deputy Sheriff Rice, who had charge of the summoning of the jurymen, declared he would summon those who would hang us to death. Such infamy is unparalleled.
The jury was a packed one; the jury was composed of men who arrogate to themselves the right to dictate and rob the wage workers whom they regard as their hired men; they regard workingmen as their inferiors and not "gentlemen." Thus a jury was obtained, whose business it was to convict us of Anarchy whether they found any proof of murder or not. The whole trial was conducted to condemn Anarchy. "Anarchy is on trial," said Mr. Ingham. "Hang these eight men and save our institutions," shouted Grinnell; "these are the leaders; make examples of them," yelled the prosecution in addressing the court and jury. Yes, we are Anarchists, and for this, your honor, we stand condemned. Can it be that men are to suffer death for their opinions? "These eight defendants," said the State's attorney to the jury, "were picked out and indicted by the grand jury. They are no more guilty than are the thousands who follow them. They were picked out because they were leaders." "Convict them and our society is safe," shouted the prosecution. And this in America, the land for which our fathers fought and freely shed their blood that we, their posterity, might enjoy the right of free speech, free press, and unmolested assemblage.
This diabolical conspiracy against man's inalienable rights, finds its best portrayal in the words of State's Attorney Grinnell, himself one of the chief actors in this gigantic crime. At the conclusion of the trial he was interviewed by the agent of the Associated Press, who sent out a full report from which I quote as follows:
"Do you propose to go ahead at once and bring other leaders of Anarchy to the halter?" Mr. Grinnell replied: "We intend to leave the Anarchists alone for a time, and see whether they have now learned what the right of free speech means in this country, and whether they still hold it to mean that they may incite men to riot, murder, and plunder. But I will say this: We have had in this trial men who were called 'squealers' and 'informers,' three or four of them. From these men we have obtained the names of all the principal Anarchists in Chicago. We have them on the list, and the Anarchists don't know it. I want them to know it now; I want them to know that they are marked men, and if ever a hand is raised to injure a hair of the heads of any juror or person connected with the trial that is now over, every Anarchist might as well consider that his death knell is sounded. We have their names and will bring every one of them to the gallows. Let them understand that."
I suppose your honor has attended the opera bouffe called "The Mikado." You will recollect that the lord high executioner of the mikado of Japan, like Grinnell, had them all "on the list." Grinnell proposes to continue to perpetrate acts which Mayor Harrison says could not be done in any monarchical country with safety, and which, if done in London, would shake Queen Victoria's throne itself. Mr. Grinnell proposes to keep this racket up, to continue it ad infinitum. This man, clothed with a little brief authority, spreads himself like a green-bay tree and gasconades with the fulsomeness of an autocrat. He would with the mailed hand of power silence the people's discontent and preserve law and order with silence of the graveyard and the order that reigned in Warsaw. At the behoof of this petty usurper the Alarm, the paper of which I was an editor, was seized and suppressed. This man seized it; he destroyed the files and the documents connected with the office. He did the same with the German workingmen's daily paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and for several weeks, yes, several weeks, this man compelled its publishers and its editor to submit their editorials to him for his press censorship, he running his blue pencil through such articles as his majesty Grinnell saw fit to interdict.
In an interview concerning this matter, published in the Chicago papers, Grinnell said: "Very rigid measures will be adopted toward the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Any reference to alleged bribery of the jury or other incendiary utterances will cause its instant suppression. We are going to see this matter clear through."
Thus the men who are selected to enforce the law and who are sworn and paid to obey it and enforce it trample the law and the constitution under their feet at the behest of a few rich men when they find it convenient to punish the poor. Thus the blasphemous conspiracy against free speech, free press and public assemblage was concocted, engineered and consummated.
In the effort of the prosecution to hold up our opinions to public execration they lost sight of the charge of murder. Disloyalty to their class, and their boasted civilization is in their eyes a far greater crime than murder. Anarchy, in the language of Grinnell, is simply a compound of robbery, incendiarism and murder. Now, your honor, this is the official statement of Mr. Grinnell, and against his definition of Anarchy I would put that of Mr. Webster. I think that is pretty near as good authority as that gentleman's.
What is Anarchy? What is the nature of the dreadful thing—this Anarchy, for the holding of which this man says we ought to suffer death? The closing hours of this trial, yes, for five days the representatives of a privileged, usurped power of despotism sought to belie, misrepresent, and vilify the doctrine in which I believe. Now, your honor, let me speak of that for a moment. What is Anarchy? What are its doctrines—
General Parsons—For which your are called upon to die.
Mr. Parsons—For which I am called upon to die. First and foremost it is our opinion, or the opinion of an Anarchist, that government is despotism; government is an organization of oppression, and law, statute law, is its agent. Anarchy is anti-government, anti-rulers, anti-dictators,anti-bosses and drivers. Anarchy is the negation of force; the elimination of all authority in social affairs; it is the denial of the right of domination of one man over another. It is the diffusion of rights, of power, of duties, equally and freely among all the people. But Anarchy, your honor, like many other words, is defined by Webster's dictionary as having two meanings. In one place it is defined to mean, "without rulers or governors." In another place it is defined to mean, "disorder and confusion." Now, this latter meaning is what we call "capitalistic Anarchy," such as is now witnessed in all portions of the world and especially in this court room; the former, which means without rulers, is what we denominate Communistic Anarchy, which will be ushered in with the social revolution.
Socialism is a word which covers the whole range of human progress and advancement. Socialism is defined by Webster—I think I have a right to speak of this matter, because I am tried here as a Socialist. I am condemned as a Socialist, and it has been of Socialism that my friend Grinnell and these men had so much to say, and I think it right to speak before the country, and be heard in my own behalf, at least. If you are going to put me to death, then let the people know what it is for. Socialism is defined by Webster as "a theory of society which advocates a more precise, more orderly, and more harmonious arrangement of the social relations of mankind than has hitherto prevailed." Therefore everything in the line of progress, in civilization in fact, is Socialistic. There are two distinct phases of Socialism in the labor movement throughout the world today. One is known as Anarchism, without political government or authority, the other is known as State Socialism or paternalism, or governmental control of everything. The State Socialist seeks to ameliorate and emancipate the wage laborers by means of law, by legislative enactments. State Socialists demand the right to choose their own rulers. Anarchists would have neither rulers nor law makers of any kind. The Anarchists seek the same ends by the abrogation of law, by the abolition of all government, leaving the people free to unite or disunite, as fancy or interest may dictate, coercing no one, driving no party.
Now, your honor, we are supported in this position by a very distinguished man indeed no less a man than Buckle, the author of "The History of Civilization." He states that there have been two opposing elements to the progress of civilization of man. The first of these two is the Church; the Church which commands what a man shall believe. And the other is the State, which commands him what to do. Now, sir, Buckle says that the only good laws passed in the last three or four hundred years have been laws that repealed other laws. That is the view exactly of Anarchists. Our belief is that all these laws should be repealed, and that is the only good legislation that could possibly take place.
Now, law is license, and consequently despotic. A legal enactment is simply something which authorizes somebody to do something to somebody else or for somebody else that he could not do were it not for the statute. Now then, the statute is the divestment and the denial of the right of another, and we hold that to be wrong; we consider that the invasion of a man's natural right. Mark you, we do not object to all laws; the law which is in accordance with nature is good. The constitution of the United States, when it guarantees me the right of free speech, a free press, and of unmolested assemblage, and the right of self-defense, is good, because it sanctions it. Why? Because it is in conformity with natural law. It doesn't require any statute law to provide such a safeguard as that: that is inalienable, and it is a natural right, inherited by the very fact of my existence, and the mere fact that it is embraced in the constitution does not make it any more sacred at all. On the contrary it shows how foolish it is to do by constitution that which kind mother Nature has already freely and graciously done for us. The more we are governd the less we are free. I do not believe your honor will deny that.
The law abiding citizen, especially if he is called upon to do something under a law that enslaves him, is an uncomplaining slave to the power that governs him. Imagine a chattel slave down south who was law-abiding, who was obedient; what does that mean? That means he did not have any objection; he did not have anything to say against the law that makes him another man's slave. Now, the workingman today in this country who says nothing, who makes no objection to any of these enactments, with no protests to make at all against these infamous things that are practiced by legislation, that workingman is a law abiding, obedient workingman. He is a nice, quiet, peaceful, genteel citizen.
Anarchists are not that kind. We object to those laws. Now, whether the government consists of one over the million, or a million over one, an Anarchist is opposed to the rule of majorites as well as minorities. If a man has a right he has a right, whether that right be denied by a million or by one. Right is right, and the majority that sets itself up to dictate to minorities simply transform itself into tyrants; they become usurpers; they deny the natural right of their fellowmen. Now, sir, this would put an end to the law factory business. What would become of your law makers? Why, a human law maker, your honor, in my humble judgment, is a human humbug. Yes, sir, just think of these law factories that we have throughout the country, the legislatures of our states and the union, where they manufacture laws just as we go to a factory to manufacture a pair of boots! Why, your honor, the same pair of boots won't fit every man; how can you make a law that will apply to the individual cases of each one?
Now, your honor, I suppose that you would hold, like they did in the days of old—I don't know whether you will or not, but there are some men who would hold—that a man who would adhere to this kind of opinions ought to die; that this world has got no use for him. Well, that remains to be seen.
The natural and the imprescriptible right of all is the right of each to control oneself. Anarchy is a free society where there is no concentrated or centralized power, no State, no king, no emperor, no ruler, no president, no magistrate, no potentate of any. character whatever. Law is the enslaving power of man. Blackstone defines the law to be a rule of action. I believe that is it. Colonel Foster, I would like to ask your opinion if that quotation is correct. Blackstone describes the law to be a rule of action, prescribing what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. Very true. Now, Anarchists hold that it is wrong for one person to prescribe what is the right action for another person, and then compel that person to obey that rule. Therefore, right action consists in each person attending to his business and allowing everybody else to do likewise. Whoever prescribes a rule of action for another to obey is a tyrant, a usurper, and an enemy of liberty. This is precisely what every statute does. Anarchy is the natural law, instead of the man made statute, and gives men leaders in the place of drivers and bosses. All political law, statute and common, gets its right to operate from the statute; therefore all political law is statute law. A statute law is a written scheme by which cunning takes advantage of the unsuspecting, and provides the inducement to do so, and protects the one who does it. In other words, a statute is the science of rascality or the law of usurpation. If a few sharks rob mankind of all the earth, turn them all out of house and home, make them ragged slaves and beggars, and freeze and starve them to death, still they are expected to obey the statute because it is sacred. This ridiculous nonsense that human laws are sacred and that if they are not respected and continued we cannot prosper, is the stupidest and most criminal nightmare of the age. Statutes are the last and greatest curse of man, and when destroyed the world will be free. The statute book is a book of laws by which one class of people can safely trespass upon another. Without this book one person would never dare to trespass upon the rights of another. Every statute law is always used to oppose some natural law. (I am reading a few extracts from an editorial in the Alarm). A statute is always used to oppose some natural law, or to sustain some other equally vicious statute. The statute is the great science оf rascality by which some few trample upon and enslave the many. There are natural laws provided for every work of man. Natural laws are self-operating. They punish all who violate them, and reward all who obey them. They cannot be repealed, amended, dodged, or bribed, and it costs neither time, money, nor attention to apply them. It is time to stop legislating against them. We want to obey laws, not men, not the tricks of men. Statutes are human tricks. The law—the statute law—is the coward's weapon; the tool of the thief, and more: the shield and buckler of every gigantic villainy, and frightful parent of all crimes. Every great robbery that was ever perpetrated upon a people has been by virtue of and in the name of law. By this tool of thieves the great mass of the people who inhabit our planet have been robbed of their equal right to the use of the soil and of all other natural opportunities. In the name of this monster (statute law) large sections of our race have been bought and sold as chattels; by it the vast majority of the human race are today held in the industrial bondage of wage slavery, and in its name our fair earth has been times without number deluged in human blood. By the instrumentality of this tool, cowards and thieves, tyrants and usurpers are robbing their fellows of their substance, despoiling them of their natural rights, and depriving them of liberty. Man's legal rights are everywhere in collision with man's natural rights; hence the deep rooted and widespread unrest of modern civilization. The only sacred right of property is the natural right of the workingman to the product, which is the creation of his labor. The legal right of the capitalist to rent and interest and profit is the absolute denial of the natural right of labor. Free access to the means of production is the natural right to labor. Free access to the means of production is the natural right of every man able and willing to work. It is the legal right of the capitalist to refuse such access to labor, and to take from the laborer all the wealth he creates over and above a bare subsistence for allowing him the privilege of working.
A laborer has the natural right, to life, and as life is impossible without the means of production the equal right to live involves an equal right to the means of production. The legal right of the capitalist is virtually the assertion that one man has a greater right to life than another man, since it denies the equality of natural conditions. Our present social system, therefore, is based upon the legalization of robbery, slavery, and murder. The laborer who does not get more than a bare subsistence as the fruit of his toil is robbed. The laborer who is forced to beg for work and has to accept it on any terms or starve is a slave. The laborer who, being unable to get work, but who in turn has too much manhood to beg, steal, or become a pauper, is by the refined process of slow starvation murdered.
Laws—just laws—natural laws—are not made, they are discovered; law enacting is an insult to divine intelligence; and law enforcing is the impeachment of God's integrity and his power. I make, as an Anarchist, this declaration for the benefit of our Christian ministry, who, while professing loyalty to God's laws, never forget to pray and work for the supremacy of man's laws and man's government—those pious frauds who profess their faith in the "power" of God, while they employ the police, the militia, and other armed hirelings to enforce their man-made laws and maintain their "power" over their fellowmen. Oh, consistency, indeed thou art a jewel! These hypocrites, always did, and do today, employ brute force to compel their fellowmen to obey and serve them, while they whine and snivel behind their sanctimonious masks about their "love of man and the power of God." I hope some of them will preach in their pulpits next Sunday morning on this topic.
In the opinion of an Anarchist, the sum total of human life is expressed in one word—authority. The economic regulates and controls the social status of man; the mode and manner of procuring our livelihood affects our whole life; the all-pervading cause is economic, not political, moral, or religious, and social institutions of every kind and degree result from, grow out of, and are created by the economic or industrial regulations of society. Every human being, consciously or unconsciously, is affected and controlled by it in what they think, or say or do. There is no escape; no evasion from its consequences. It is logic. It is cause and effect. Evil exists on every hand; the well disposed, philanthropic, and generous, and the good seek relief from these evil influences by moral suasion, by self-denial, by religion, by politics, etc. etc., but in vain, in vain! The evils remain, and not only remain, but grow worse and worse. Why, if the fountain is corrupt, can the stream be pure? If the cause remains, must not the effects follow? Jails, judges, and executioners, police, armies and navies, pestilence, misery and ignorance and debauchery, and evils of all kinds of high and low degree, all flow from one fountain; that flowing fountain of human woe is the economic or industrial subjection and enslavement of man to man. Every human ill is produced by the denial or the violation of man's natural rights or by the neglect or refusal of man to conform his life to the requirements of nature. Wickedness, wretchedness, ignorance, vice, crime, poverty are the penalties which nature inflicts upon her disobedient children. The natural man is a happy man. He is virtuous and right; truly so. Whoever violates the right of another, sooner or later punishes himself. Nature is inexorable. From her penalty there is no escape. But in a court of law—of so-called "justice"—if you are a member of the Citizens' Association, or if you have a big bank account, in other words, if you are a member of the propertied class, you crawl out of anything you want to, for law is for sale; that is to say, whoever can purchase the lawyers, stock the jury and bribe the court, can win. There is only one law for the poor, to wit: Obey the rich.
The existing economic system has placed on the market for sale man's natural rights. What are these rights? Well, among the many I will enumerate one or two. The right to live, for instance, is an inalienable right. So, too, is the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, how can I possess these rights and enjoy them, when the very condition and the means for their procurement are owned by and belong to another?
Shakespeare makes Shylock say at the bar of the Venetian court, "You do take my life when you take the means whereby I live." Now, the means of life are monopolized; the necessary means for the existence of all have been appropriated and monopolized by a few. The land, the implements of production and communication, the resources of life are now held as private property, and its owners exact tribute from the propertyless. In this way the privileged class becomes millionaires. They deny the equal right of every one to freely use our natural inheritance, the earth. The denial of that right is death to whom it is denied. The right to live is made a privilege by law, granted by law, which is granted or denied by the possessor to the dispossessed. Human rights are for sale. "If thou wilt not work, neither shalt thou eat," says the scripture. This finds immunity among those who can pay for it. Those who work eat not; and those who eat work not. They do not have tol they hire some hungry, poor devil to work for them. The hired man whom the capitalist press gloats on the idea of, and whom the pious frauds declare is the dispensation of divine providence, whom we will always have among us a social fungus, the outgrowth of a rotten, corrupt industrial regime.
In conclusion I will say, compulsion is slavery, and those disinherited of their natural rights must hire out and serve and obey the oppressing class or starve. There is no other alternative. Some things are priceless, chief among which is life and liberty. A freeman is not for sale or hire.
You accuse the Anarchists of using or advising the use of force; it is false, "Out of your own mouth you stand condemned." The present existing state of society is based upon and maintained and perpetuated by force. This capitalistic system that we have today would not exist twenty-four hours if it were not held together by the bayonets and the clubs of the militia and police. No, sir, it would not! Now, sir, we object to this. We protest adjust it. But you accuse us, or the prosecution here accuses us, of that very thing which they themselves are guilty of. It is the old, old story of Æsop's fable, the lamb standing in the water and the wolf above him; he looks up; the water has run down, the wolf stands above him; he looks down there toward the lamb, as says, "Ho, there! you are making the water muddy." The lamb observes, "My friend, I am below you, in the stream." "That doesn't matter; you are my meat, anyhow." And he goes for him and eats him up. That is just the way of the capitalist toward the Anarchist. You are doing the very thing you accuse us of, and against which we protest. Now, any institution that is based upon force is self-condemned; it does not need any argument, in my opinion, to prove it.
The political economy that prevails was written to justify the taking of something for nothing; it was written to hide the blushes of the rich when they look into the faces of the poor. These are they who brand Anarchy as a compound of "incendiarism, robbery and murder;" these are they who despoil the people; they who love power and hate equality; they who dominate, degrade and exploit their fellowmen, they who employ brute force, violence and wholesale murder, to perpetuate and maintain their privileges.
On July 14, Juryman Hamill took his seat in the box here, and the question was asked him:
Q. "Do you believe in Socialism, Anarchism or Communism?"
A. "Some of the principles I believe in."
Lawyer Ingham will remember the juryman said that.
Q. "Do you believe in capital punishment, or hanging for murder?"
A. "I do not."
Q. "Do you believe in self-defense?"
A. "Yes, sir."
Q. "Then, don't you believe that society has a right to protect itself?"
A. "Not to take life."
Challenged for cause by Mr. Ingham.
Now, you see that this is proof positive that the capitalistic system is upheld by force, is perpetuated by force. Lawyer Ingham calls it in a generic term, society. What do you mean by "society?" What is "society?" Why, a wage worker is no part of society, except to build the palaces for the fellows who run society, to live in, and furnish them with fine clothes and nice wines, with luxury and ease, and so on. They—the workers—are no more part of that society than the slave was of the plantation in the south. They are part of the society as the mud-sills who do the work, but have no part of the benefits. That is the society to which my friend Ingham refers.
Now, we do not want to obey—we Anarchists; we do not want to obey this society—this generic society. What is Vanderbilt, Gould, Mr. Phil Armour, and a lot of that kind? They are the parasites, the leeches, who take all and cry for more. That is society. That constitutes the present society. Now, we do not like those fellows; we do not want to obey them. We do not want to serve them; we do not want to be slaves to them, and by golly, they are going to take our lives because we do not want to obey them; because we are Anarchists, for Anarchy simply means disobedience. Now is that not infamous—is that not ridiculous? The present society is the slavery of labor.
Now, every juryman was asked these questions by, I believe, Mr. Grinnell—or Mr. Ingham—one or the other:
"Do you believe in the enforcement of the law?"
"Do you believe that society has a right to protect itself by law?"
"Have you any sympathy for any person or class whose object is the overthrow of the law, or whose object is to overthrow law and government by violence?"
Now, your honor, what is government but violence? What is it? Force. The last resort of every law is force. They have in reserve, always in reserve, you understand, the police and the militia, always; as long as nobody questions the law, of course nothing is said about the club or the bayonet. But let a strike take place; let the working class object to overwork, starvation wages, or compulsory idleness, then out come the police, the militia, and the Pinkerton army to preserve "law and order," to force, to drive the workers into submission, and "protect" society. Thus labor is enslaved by law. Oh, you sly rogues! Oh, you sly fellows! Why, it is you who cause the workingman—especially if he is an Anarchist like me—to occupy this position. He is damned if he does, and he is damned if he doesn't. So it is tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, whichever position you take with these gentlemen upon that question.
Now, Juryman Ames, on July 8, said he was a hat and cap merchant. He took a seat in the box. In reply to the question whether he held any prejudice against Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists, he said: "Well, my early education and bringing up is entirely against anything of this kind."
State's Attorney Grinnell then rose and objected to asking jurors as to their prejudice against Anarchy, Communism, and Socialism. You see, Mr. Grinnell thought it he could only get that man—that kind of a fellow—on the jury, wouldn't it be a fine thing? He doesn't want that kind of a man asked the question. A fellow that was against all this sort of stuff and this kind of thing—he knew that that kind of a man would be solid for hanging a man that held such ideas. I suppose that was his idea; I don't know what else he could have objected for. Mr. Grinnell said in that connection: "This is a charge of murder. This question of Anarchy is here too much." You remember this, gentlemen. "We are here to try these men for murder, and not because they are Anarchists." This was the second day of the trial, mind you. That was Mr. Grinnell; but he was careful to ask every one of the jurymen if they had any sympathy, to ask them if they were in favor of the labor movement; if they were members pf a labor union; if they were members of a trades union—he was very particular to find that out—and in arguing the case before the jury he and his assistants finally declared that Anarchy was on trial and that was the thing we must he convicted of.
H. E. Graves was a railroad superintendent.
Q. "Are you opposed to labor unions or prejudiced against members of labor organizations?"
A. "I am; I am opposed to labor organizations of any and all descriptions."
Judge Gary inquired of him as follows:
Q. "You believe in individualism—that is, every one, whether a capitalist or a laborer, acting for himself, do you—you are opposed to combination?"
A. "Yes, sir."
Attorney Foster—"Do you believe in railroad pools?"
A. "Yes, sir."
He was laughed out of the court room. Now, Judge Gary, in his questions to this man, teaches us individualism. Now, that is Anarchy, pure and simple.
The Court—Do you take that from any short-hand report?
Mr. Parsons—Yes, sir.
Mr. Foster—That is true, so far as the answer of the witness is concerned.
The Court—It don't sound like anything I would say.
Mr. Parsons—Do you believe in individualism, every one, whether capitalist or laborer, acting for himself, do you? Your honor, I took that down at the time you said it. I did not take it from the short-hand reports.
The Court—I don't care. Go on.
Mr. Foster—What I have reference to is what the juror answered.
The Court—My own language is cited there. I don't remember it now, but it is of no consequence. Go on.
Mr. Parsons—If every one acted for himself, as the judge says, that would be liberty, and liberty is the end of authority, of government and of statute laws.
July 13.—Juryman Reed, a State street music dealer. Attorney Ingham says: "If the prisoners are guilty you want them convicted; and if they are innocent yon want them acquitted, do you not?" Then, "can't you listen to the testimony fairly and impartially and decide whether they are guilty or innocent?"
Juryman Reed said:
"When they do not teach a doctrine that undermines the law, that don't break the law, then there is no objection to the labor organizations. There could not be any. I have a prejudice against any man who seeks to undermine the social and political laws of the country. I am a Freethinker."
Now, this man condemned us to death, because we seek to undermine the social and political laws of the country. He is a Freethinker; we accepted him for that reason, because we thought that, as he claimed the right of free thought on religious matters, he would certainly be consistent and give us the right of free thought on political and social questions. But alas! Juryman Reed is a Boston man. That is the country where they used to burn witches and condemn religious heretics to death. The right to free thought has been acquired after a century of bloodshed and struggle, and now, because we, the Anarchists, are social and political heretics, he strangles us on the gibbet. Juryman Reed concedes the right of free thought while he denies us the right of free action. What is the one worth without the other? What a mockery to say to the slave, "You are free to think you ought to be free, but you have no right to be free." To compel me to work and to suffer for your benefit, and then console me with the assurance that I am free to think what I please about it, is the very mockery of liberty. This is the fruit of authority, of force, of government. Juror Reed would have been hung one hundred years ago. He hangs me today. Do you wonder that I am an Anarchist?"
I will read from the Alarm an article headed "White Slaves—The Bitter Cry of Poor Working Girls—A True Picture of Civilization Under the Infamies of Capitalism—Life, Liberty, and Happiness in America—Facts for Fathers and Mothers to Consider." Then follows a two column article in the New York Evening Telegram, a capitalistic newspaper, descriptive of the life of the sewing girls in New York city—American girls—the future mothers of American citizens. I will not take up the time of the court in reading it in full. I will read a short extract as follows:
"It must be confessed that the outlook for labor in all its branches of industry is most discouraging, and revives the idea of that terrible story in Blackwood, where a prison of iron has been so constructed as to gradually contract until it becomes an iron shroud that crushes the prisoner within to a shapeless pulp. Labor is encircled by an iron shroud made of two factions, the tendency of capital to concentrate itself in few hands and the undeniable fact that the number of laborers will always increase in greater ratio than the amount of employment for them. These items alone would, if not counteracted by some system that is vital, reduce the working class in time to a condition far worse than slavery. In fact, slavery has been in all past ages the one remedy for the overpowering woes of labor, but a remedy that undermined and ruined each civilization in its turn. In the meantime, it is to be hoped that the women of America will take up the cause of their sex and publicly denounce the monsters who propose to young girls to work sixty hours a week for less than will feed and clothe them. Young as is the American nationality, it stands front to front today with the wonderful problem of civilization. The cause of the striking girls at Wallack's shirt factory is not only the cause of womanhood throughout the world; it is also the entering wedge for the great problem, 'What are rights of labor?' It must be obvious to every senator and congressman and to every dabbler in political economy that life is not worth living when honest girls cannot support themselves by sixty hours of intense labor. It is idle to prate about the great laws of supply and demand in the face of this present fact that an honest girl, who works ceaselessly throughout the week, has not enough wages to pay for her board and clothes. In America we change conditions and right wrong by inquiry. In Europe a social revolution is brewing, however, before which the great revolution of France will pale."
I merely quoted this article in order to show that class of people who are crying out that our grievances are imaginary—that these grievances are facts—not imaginary.
Well, now, I come to consider our city of Chicago. Take the management of the political affairs of the city, your honor. They are noted for their political corruption. Take these policemen—now, I do not abuse the policemen; the policeman is a workingman the same as I am. Now, a man's standing on the police force, it is notorious, depends entirely upon his ability and his willingness to club, and club often—hit everything that comes along and drag it in. The policemen have to get their positions through the aldermen. It is notorious that they have to use corrupt methods to do it, and when a man is once on the force, imagine how subject he is to his higher officials. Whatever his superior hands him to do he must do. He must obey. He must do it or he will lose his job. I do not blame the police. It is not individuals that I blame at all. I say here as I said at the Haymarket—it is not individuals, it is not against the man, but it is against the system that produces these things that we contend. We object to that.
The charge is made that we are "foreigners," as though it were a crime to be born in some other country.
My ancestors came to this country a good while ago. My friend Neebe here is the descendant of a Pennsylvania Dutchman. He and I are the only two who had the fortune, or the misfortune, as some people may look at it—I don't know and I don't care—to be born in this country. My ancestors had a hand in drawing up and maintaining the Declaration of Independence. My great great grand-uncle lost a hand at the Battle of Bunker Hill. I had a great great grand-uncle with Washington at Braddywine, Monmouth and Valley Forge. I have been here long enough, I think, to have rights guaranteed at least in the constitution of the country. I am an internationalist.
My patriotism covers more than the boundary lines of a single State; the world is my country, all mankind my countrymen. That is what the emblem of the red flag signifies; it is the symbol of the free, of emancipated labor. The workers are without a country. In all the lands they are disinherited, and America is no exception. The wage slaves are the dependent hirelings of the rich in every land. They are everywhere social pariahs without home or country. As they create all wealth, so also they fight every battle, not for themselves but for their masters. There is an end to this self-degradation. In the future labor will fight only in self-defense and work for itself and not for another. Every government is a conspiracy to enslave the laborer.
Take the morality of the capitalistic system and look at it. In the morality of the capitalistic system everything is for sale. Love, honor, liberty, everything is for sale; everything has its price, under this modern system of commercialism: profit and loss; meum et teum, and this trains every man to be a liar and a hypocrite. Men are taught to be hypocrites, to carry a mask on their face, to lie, to misrepresent everything. No man can be honest and succeed in business or make money. It is impossible. Honesty is punished with poverty, while dishonesty revels in every luxury.
Now, sir, is it fair to try a man by a class jury for disloyalty to that class? A verdict of guilty from such a source is a foregone conclusion. Do you call such a trial as that a fair, impartial, or unprejudiced trial? Nonsense. I believe if there had been some workingmen on that jury they would have understood something about this question ; they would have considered the matter quite differently. They would, at least, have given our side a fair chance.
The coal monopoly has been touched upon. Why, the capitalistic papers of Chicago say: "Strangle it." That is what Fielden said on the Haymarket. The trouble is that the moment this thing is touched you sling open the door of Socialism and in they pile pell-mell. It is no use talking. Three coal kings met in the parlor of a New York hotel—this was done last year—they advanced the price of coal, which is a free gift of nature to all her children as much as air and fire and water are; it belongs to the people alone, as Socialism maintains and will consummate, even if this court should carry out and baptize in blood an a tempt on the part of the people, peaceably and lawfully and constitutionally, to do and accomplish this result. I say these coal monopolists advanced the rate of coal fifty cents a ton, the equivalent of an advance of $30,000,000 from the needy people of the United States.
But a few days ago the same coal monopoly met again and advanced the price of anthracite fifteen cents per ton, and by limiting the output they still farther advanced the price of what remains on their hands in the market, and practically put a tax for this prime necessity of life upon the people west and east, and turned the hundred thousand miners out to freeze and starve.
Last year I was in the west. I was sent for by the Knights of Labor in Kansas on the 4th day of July, last July a year ago, to address them. While traveling that section I went throughout Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, and among the places I visited were the coal mines. I went down into the mines. I saw the manner in which this coal business was carried on. They dig up the coal out of the ground; they bring it up to a place which they call the screening. There are several kinds of coal, three kinds, the lump the nut, and the screenings. Now the screenings is the portion of the coal which falls through a certain sifter, or selve, and among it is the dust, little lumps of coal an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. This coal constitutes, the miners tell me, about one-fourth of a ton to each ton. Well, the miner receives nothing for that at all, he doesn't get a cent; it is not paid for. Last Fourth of July I witnessed these things while traveling throughout the States, and when I returned home, I was hard up. I did not have money enough to buy a ton of coal at once. I had to buy my coal by the scuttle, and I paid 10 cents a scuttle for coal that winter, and the coal that I bought was this screening coal which the miners did not get a cent for. It cost me $9 a ton, and the miners did not get a cent for it. And yet there are people here who say that these grievances are imaginary, and that there is nothing in them.
Well, now, here is a nice thing to be read in this country, in this age. A man was interviewed the other day by the Chicago papers. His name was Lord Shastakoff, a minister of the Russian navy, traveling in America for his health. This minister, this master of the czar's council, met the reporters. He says: "Have you hanged your Nihilists?" referring to the condemned Anarchists. On being told that all were condemned and in prison, but they were not yet hanged, he expressed the hope that the execution would take place at an early day, and strongly discountenanced any delay in the matter. Talk about foreigners—you fellows that are talking about foreigners; I think that is a pretty good one. You are going to hang these men on this theory, because they are foreigners. Actually it was made a point to the jury—urged upon the jury by the State's attorney—that we were foreigners, and that we were hostile to the great and glorious institutions of our America. "They were no born here;" and they actually tried to make the jury believe that none of us were born her—that all of us were imported; and it did sway that jury; it did have its effect upon that jury. Now, here comes this fellow from the czar's dominions.
He says, "Gentlemen, that has been a good job; carry it out; don't give them any show at all."
Now, I denounce this thing. But you say we are revolutionists. Well, if we are, who made us such? Are not the labor exploiters, the monopolists, the mine, factory and workshop czars creating a revolution? They are the revolutionists.
I am only a "kicker." I object, I say "No! take your yoke off my neck, take it oft, I will not have it on there," and they reply, "You stand still, now, and let me put in this coupling pin, and you'll carry that yoke well enough—if you don't I will have you carried oft to the police station; if you make any noise about it, I will have you hung!" Sir, our execution will be a legal notification to the American workingmen to be warned by our fate that they must not expect to have any of their "imaginary" grievances, as it were, remedied or rectified.
Now, your honor, I have gone into this matter for the reason that you said there was nothing in extenuation for these utterances and this kind of an organization. I believe you used language something like that. I have gone into this matter as extensively as I have for the purpose of showing that, if your honor was laboring under a misapprehension, I wanted to remove that misapprehension; that has been the object of what I have said or had to say outside of the matter or mere record of the trial. Now, before I conclude on this point of extenuation, I want to read an editorial in the Chicago Daily News of September 25. What is this? Is it October?[1]
General Parsons—Yes, the 9th of October.
Mr. Parsons—Yes. It is concerning this workingmen's movement: "The strong probability of Mr. George’s election in New York has also a meaning for the so-called capitalistic class of this community. A brief summary of the inception and progress of the Anarchists' movement, which terminated at the Haymarket on the 4th of May last, will make this clear.
"Following the great railroad strikes of 1877 came the failures of savings banks; the unpunished defalcations of the trustees of the poor, and the enormous immigration, increasing competition for work and bringing with it a large element of the victims of Bismarck and of Bismarck's servility, soured with life and ready for desperate deeds. Under such inauspicious circumstances workingmen's parties were formed and tickets put in the field; some were captured, others disorganized, some fell into the hands of the Socialists, who found time to form a party which elected Frank Stauber to the city council from the fourteenth ward." I was a prominent actor, your honor, in all of this matter that has been related here in the News.
"Stauber was subsequently re-enforced by the election of Alpeter in the sixth ward and another one in the fourteenth and Chris Mayer in the fifteenth, while the Socialistic labor candidates for the fifth and seventh wards were only defeated by a small majority. Alpeter and Stauber and his colleagues refused all overtures from the ring which then as now controlled these politics I hey were proof alike against bribery and intimidation and the party which they faithfully and honorably represented was becoming powerful and troublesome as an opponent to the ring. At the city election following a flagrant violation of the ballot box was perpetrated in the sixth ward by 'Cabbage' Ryan, through which Alpeter was defrauded of a seat, and the offender was sheltered from punishment, his case being dismissed without a hearing in some manner. This was followed the next year by the breaking open of the box in the second precinct of the fourteenth ward and the fraud and perjury by which Stauber was kept out of his seat for twenty three months, fraud and perjury which were condoned by the courts. It was upon the same day and at the same election that Cullerton succeeded by a suspicious majority of not over twenty votes over a Socialist by the name of Bauman, and the council practically denied the contestant an opportunity to present his rights. One оf these frauds was perpetrated in the interest of the Republican party the other in the interest of the Democratic. The record needs no comment, but it is no small wonder that the party was driven from the field, unable to cope with the rascals of both the other parties."
Then he goes on to show that it was such things as this that brought about Anarchy and produced the Haymarket affair; brought that affair about—that is, he is assuming, your honor, that we, the men alleged, the men convicted by the jury, are guilty of that thing which we specifically now and here deny. But even if true, the editor of the News alleges, that there were extenuating circumstances: that there was someone else connected with the moral responsibility, even though we were personally guilty of the offense. Now, on the idea of extenuation, Mayor Harrison, about three weeks ago, was asked: "How do you like the verdict in the Anarchist case?" "Well, I don't care to talk about it. We have punished these people who violated the law, and now it remains for us to cure the disease." What does this mean, your honor? Why, that we are an effect; Mayor Harrison says we are an effect. Now it is a funny doctor that would go to work to cure the effect of a disease. You would never get rid of the disease, would you? You never would touch the cause. The mayor of the city of Chicago says we are the effect. I submit this here as an extenuating circumstance, and as a part of my plea for a new trial. The mayor said: "There is a wide discontent among the working people—there is no doubt about that; it cannot be cured with bullets or policemen's clubs. We have got to remove the cause. That is the task that is before the thinking men, the law makers, today. There is no doubt but that the working people have reason to be discontented all over the country. Legislation in the interest of the big corporations and the monopolies is the fact, and no law making for the laboring classes. That is what makes the laboring man discontented. You must change all that, and legislators must be elected who cannot be bought by the corporations, or what will happen? The people will rise up in mobs, some day, and will have to be subdued with the bullet, and that would be the end of free government." Why, your honor, that is precisely what I have said a hundred, and perhaps a thousand times. That is all I have ever said—go and fetch Harrison—bring him here. He is as much legally guilty on those words as I am this afternoon. I offer that as showing that there are extenuating circumstances, even though we be guilty as charged, which we deny. Mayor Harrison says there is "wide discontent among the working people which cannot be cured with bullets and policemen's clubs." Now, I want to ask this court if it thinks that that discontent can be cured by hanging us?
Take the governor of this State—Governor Oglesby. He made a speech not long ago on monopoly. He said that we stood upon a social volcano. What did he mean? If he had made that remark at the Haymarket he would be in this box here today, and turned over to the hangman. If he happened to be at the Haymarket meeting and made that remark—if there had been a conjunction of circumstances which would have brought him to the Haymarket, such would have been his fate.
None of the men were ever arrested before, not one of us; and I never was arrested. I came to the court of my own accord. The other seven were never arrested before, never were drunk, never were disorderly. Sober, steady, industrious, intelligent, upright, honorable, decent workingmen; there is not a spot, a blemish, nor a single stain against any one of the eight.
Now as to this Gilmer and Burnett matter. I, as a man here on trial wishing to know what your decision is to be with reference to my having a chance to prove my innocence, being convicted upon the testimony of a man like Gilmer, offered the man Burnett as an offset to Gilmer. He was unimpeached. No one questioned his veracity. He stood here as an honest man. Gilmer did not. The State's attorney, in his eagerness to produce this result—and, by the way, right here I want to say, it is no particular credit for the prosecution to bring about this verdict. All the rules of evidence and procedure were reversed on this trial. Instead of being considered innocent until our guilt was established, we have been held guilty unless we could establish our innocence. Why, the whole capitalistic press, the whole of the police, the bankers, millionaires, etc., everything was against these poor men. We had no money, influence, or friends. It was not difficult to bring that about at all, and if they did not have a case they could make one easily. That was an easy matter for them to do—a very, very easy thing for them to do. Now, Mr. Grinnell must have known that Gilmer's testimony was false. I don't know whether he did or not. But it seems to me he ought to have known it, because it was clearly demonstrated by the witness Burnett, who stood upon the stand, and whose testimony is unimpeached, that he called upon and had talks with Attorney Grinnell as early as May 6, and had a number of interviews with him for the express purpose of having him identify Schnaubelt's picture and fasten the deed upon Schnaubelt. Burnett refused to do that. He said: "No, no; that ain't the man. Besides, it was not that way. He was further down. It was not up at the alley." Now, Burnett's testimony contradicted every statement of Gilmer, and Burnett is unimpeached and Gilmer is impeached. If the district attorney knew of this fact, if he knew the fact that Burnett was an honest man, and called at his office and refused to identify Schnaubelt, your honor, did not the district attorney lend himself to a very bloody piece of work? I do not see how he is going to get clear of that. It may be he will, but it seems to me that if this verdict is to be carried out then our blood will be on his head for subornation of perjury. I may be mistaken, your honor; I do not impugn any man's motives. I don't know, but it seems to me it is the only construction which could be put upon this testimony.
Two witnesses, since this verdict was made, came forward voluntarily and made an affidavit that they had been in Gilmer's company the night of May 4, at another place, and that Gilmer was not at the Haymarket. Then Mr. Bonfield, the chief of detectives, who is Mr. Grinnell's right hand man—he takes these two men in his charge, and by bribery or intimidation, or by some other means, I don't know what, he induces them to retract their sworn statement. Wasn't that a scaly transaction, worthy of the villainy and corruption of the detective department?
Your honor, I have got what would take me an hour and a half, possibly two hours, at least, to say. I am used to an active, outdoor life, and until my incarceration here I have never been deprived of personal activity, and the close confinement in a gloomy cell—I only have about two hours and a half exercise each day, practically about two hours of the twenty-four—and of course it has deteriorated my physical system somewhat; and then, the long mental strain of this trial in addition to it. I thought if your honor could possibly give me a little rest for lunch, if we could adjourn until 2 o'clock—it is now 1 o'clock—I don't think I could get through under two hours. Still, if your honor insists, I am ready to proceed.
The Court—I do not think I am under any obligation to have repeated adjournments of the court for the purpose of listening to the reading of newspapers or disquisitions upon political economy, the question only being in this case, whether the defendants killed Mathias Began. That is the only question in the case.
Mr. Parsons—Yes, sir; of course.
The Court—Not whether they did it with their own hands, but whether they set causes at work which did end in his death.
Mr. Parsons—Well, your honor, I am proposing to show you here that by a new trial, by a suspension of the judgment and sentence of death, we can establish our innocence; that is what I am proposing here to do; that is why I am offering this. You quoted our speeches and read many articles from our labor papers to prove that we "set causes at work which did end in his (Degan's) death." Now, sir, I am showing you by the very same kind of testimony taken from the speeches and newspapers of monopolists that they and not we "set causes at work which did end in his death." And, sir, I leave the world to judge if our testimony against them is not as strong or stronger than is your testimony against us. Of course it is not sworn to; it cannot be. I cannot get witnesses in here to swear them. I cannot swear to it myself; that is the purpose I have in view. But you did not have our speeches and newspaper articles sworn to. You took them for granted. Now, sir, against these I put the utterances and newspaper articles of the monopolists. Now, my long review of the labor question was made for the express purpose of having your honor understand the motives that were actuating us in this labor movement; that you might see that labor had grievances; that it had reasons for organizing; that it was not a matter of mere peevish discontent, as we are charged by some unthinking people, or that the grievances of the workingmen are imaginary, as alleged by those people who do not feel any interest in this matter.
In over-ruling the motion for a new trial, your honor used this language: "Whether these defendants, or any of them, did participate or expect the throwing of the bomb on the night of the 4th of May is not a question which I need to consider, because the instructions did not go upon that ground. The jury were not instructed to find them guilty if they believed that they participated in the throwing of the bomb, or encouraged or advised the throwing of that bomb, or had knowledge that it was to be thrown, or anything of that sort. The conviction has not gone upon the ground that they did have any actual participation in the act which caused the death of Degan, but upon the ground, under the instructions, that they had generally, by speech and print, advised a large class to commit murder, and had left the occasion, time and place to the individual will, whim and caprice of the individuals so advised; and that in consequence of that advice and in pursuance of it, and influenced by it, somebody not known did throw the bomb that caused Degan's death. Now, if that is not a correct principle of law, then the defendants are entitled to a new trial. This case is without precedent. There is no example in the law books of a case of this sort. No such occurrence has ever happened before in the history of the world." Now, your honor, you, by these words, frankly admit that we have not been convicted for any act done, but simply because of speeches made and of opinions expressed. I am, therefore, showing you that that bomb was hurled by labor's enemies at the instigation of the monopolists, and not by us. Their speeches, their utterances, their newspapers openly counseled and advised by "speech and print" just such things. Did they not? Then are they not the guilty perpetrators? The question, to use your honor's language, is "not whether they did it with their own hands, but whether they (the monopolists) set causes at work which did end in the Haymarket tragedy." By their own proposals I have shown you that they did.
Socialism, your honor, means the abolition of wage slavery, because it allows the people to carry on production and consumption by means of a system of universal co-operation. That is what I said at the Haymarket. I pointed out at the Haymarket the fact that the workingmen were being deprived, according to Colonel Wright, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States. He proves by the statistics that they were producing values to the extent of $10 a day, and receiving $1.15; that they were being deprived of $8.85. Now, I said to them: "Here," said I, "Socialism will give you that $8.85; under Socialism you would get that whole $10, whereas under the wage system you receive $1.15 of it. But that is not all: Socialism will make your labor saving machinery a blessing instead of a curse to you; by it wealth will be increased, and drudgery diminished indefinitely. Socialism is simple justice, because wealth is a social, not an individual product, and its appropriation by a few members of society creates a privileged class—a class who monopolize all the benefits of society by enslaving the producing class." Now, your honor, this is what makes the monopolists mad at the Anarchists. This angers the corporation men. See what they say. The result is that a verdict must be brought against Socialism; because, as the district attorney states here, the law, and the government, and Anarchy are upon trial. That is the reason. Not for what I did, but it is for what I believe. It is what I say that these men object to. The verdict was against Socialism, as said by the Chicago Times the day after the verdict.
"In the opinion of many thoughtful men the labor question has reached a point where blood-letting has become necessary," says the Chicago Iron-Monger.
"The execution of the death penalty upon the Socialist malefactors in Chicago will be in its effect the execution of the death penalty upon the Socialistic propaganda in this country.
"The verdict of death pronounced by a Chicago jury and court against these Socialist malefactors is the verdict of the American people against the crime called Socialism,” says the Chicago Times. By the American people the Times means the monopolists.
In more familiar words, as used heretofore by the Times, "other workingmen will take warning from their fate, and learn a valuable lesson." The Times in 1878 advised that "hand grenades (bombs) should be thrown among the striking sailors," who were striving to obtain higher wages, "as by such treatment they would be taught a valuable lesson, and other strikers would take warning from their fate."
So it seems, "hand grenades for strikers," and "the gallows for Socialists," are recommended by the organ of monopoly, as a terror to both.
Socialism aims not at the lives of individuals but at the system which makes paupers and millionaires possible. Socialism aims at the death of no man nor the destruction of property, and the capitalistic press lies, and they know it, when they make such charges against Socialists. They lie about us in order to deceive the people; but the people will not be deceived much longer. No, they will not. The monopolist organs of our cities have advised hand grenades, strychnine, arsenic and lead instead of bread, for the unemployed and those seeking to better their condition, long enough. It is time for this to stop. When will it stop? In the sermon on the mount Christ said: "What man is there of you who, if his son shall ask him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for fish will give him a serpent? All thins, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." It was, however, reserved for the close of the nineteenth century, of the Christian era, in the city of Chicago, and by the editor and proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, to permit to be said, unrebuked, in his paper: "When a tramp"—an unemployed and starving laboring man—"asks you for bread put strychnine or arsenic on it and he will not trouble you any more, and others will keep out of the neighborhood." I suppose, your honor, this was said by a law-and-order pharisee.
This verdict, as it now stands, proclaims to the world that he who throws a bomb and kills a score of people is safe, while he who speaks or writes or works to organize labor and peaceably remove—because I deny the charge of any organization to attack anybody; the proof does not show it, nor sustain it, nor maintain it—to peaceably remove the cause of the people's discontent is in danger of dungeons and of the scaffold.
Every man called upon to act upon the jury, swore that he was an enemy to the labor movement, was prejudiced against the idea of Socialism or free labor. Not satisfied with such a jury, the enemies of free rights resorted to perjury and other inhuman acts to bring about a conviction. A few days ago, in an interview in the New York World and copied in the Chicago papers, Mayor Harrison said: "Right here I would like to say there has been the heartiest co-operation between Mr. Grinnell and myself from first to last, for without me he would never have been able to get certain evidence to obtain which I did that which, if it had been done in the city of London, would upset the throne of Victoria; that which could be done in no monarchical country with safety was done here; because in full sympathy with the people as a servant of the people I did precisely what I knew the people wanted done and would sustain, something which, if wrong, they could easily rectify." Now, your honor, there were wrongs done here. The mayor says so. You can rectify them. Suspend your sentence. Give us a chance in a new trial. Now, here is the officer highest in the city, who frankly admits that he employed unlawful means in order to arrest us, because the people wanted him to do it. Has this court, has the State's attorney and the police done the same thing in order to convict us? Mayor Harrison refers to the arrest of persons, the seizure of property, the searches of homes and places of business without warrant, and in admitted disregard of constitutional and legal guarantees of personal liberty and right, which was done by the city police immediately after the meeting of May 4, 1886. As proof of what he said, there followed that night in this city an era of official lawlessness in these respects, which according to Mayor Harrison, would not have been tolerated in any other civilized country in the world, and which if done in the city of London would have upset the throne of Victoria, and which the mayor said could not have been done in any monarchical country with safety. The mayor's confession is charmingly frank, and is significant. Is it then true that in this land, which boasts of its liberty, private right can be more safely disregarded in obedience to public clamor than in any other civilized country? Is it true that the ruling, the moneyed class can set aside the law with impunity? Is it true that we are in an era when only property is sacred, and not the liberty or right of the common citizen; when the poor man may be arrested, or a hated minority hung with impunity, but to touch the institution of property is sacrilege? Is it true that the processes which resulted in this verdict were as illegal as those original proceedings against us were high-handed, unauthorized, and unconstitutional, as confessed by the mayor? Is it true that the verdict itself is the result of the same public sentiment which sustained the unauthorized, unlawful conduct spoken of by Mayor Harrison? Can these things be true? See the methods employed to cook up testimony against us. On the 22d day of August, 1886, the day following the verdict, at the conclusion of the trial, Captain Michael Schaack, who is credited with manipulating the evidence against us, made a statement which was sent out by the Associated Press as follows: He was asked if the police were now through with their labors. "Through," said he, "why, they have barely commenced. We mean to have others who are liable to the same charge indicted. I tell you the Anarchist business in Chicago is only commenced and before it is through we will have them all in jail, hanged or driven out of the city." "Did you place any men under arrest yesterday?" "That I do not wish to state." "The report is made that there are warrants out for a large number of persons." "If you think a moment you will see how foolish the idea would be. We have no room for a large number of persons in the jail, and it would be a needless expense to arrest many at once. We can get them as fast as we want them. We do not need to arrest them now. They may try to leave the city. Time enough to arrest them when they do." "Will any women be arrested?" "Why not? Some of them are a mighty sight worse than the men." "Do you think" said the captain, continuing, "that if I had told the newspapers what I was doing when the Anarchist trial was going on that the jury would have brought in the verdict of yesterday? No, sir, a thousand times, no! Every prisoner would have gone free. Every reporter who came to me got nothing. I was making up the evidence, piece by piece, little by little, putting it where it belonged. If I had told all I knew as fast as I got the points the defense would have known what evidence was to be brought against them, and would have been prepared to meet it."
Now, your honor, it was claimed throughout this trial—the State's attorney claimed throughout the trial that he relied confidently on a verdict of guilty. They maintained that there was no doubt about it. I wish to call your attention to the declaration of Schaack: "No, sir, a thousand times no! Every prisoner would have gone free had I told all I knew as fast as I got the points. The defense would have known what evidence was to be brought against them, and would be prepared to meet it." This is equivalent to a declaration that if the accused persons had known what evidence was to be brought against them they would have brought evidence that would have been sufficient to acquit them "a thousand times" over. Here, then, is an explicit confession that we were condemned to death by evidence that was kept secret from both us and the public, and finally sprung upon us at the trial. See how Gilmer was sprung upon us. The district attorney, when he opened his case, said that he had nothing to conceal; he was going to be fair, and square and honest about the thing; going to tell us what he was going to prove, and in the middle of the trial he brings up this man Gilmer, a wholly unexpected thing to us, and that was the hair upon which hung the thread which connected us with Mathias Degan, and the instrumentality by which the verdict was brought about. The State's attorney said he was not going to conceal anything and then concealed the very thing that was material.
Now, your honor, this confession that certain testimony was sprung upon us at the trial, this Gilmer matter, for instance, when no earthly opportunity was given us to meet it, and Captain Schaack's admission, that we would have been acquitted a thousand times over, if we had known this evidence and then been permitted to contradict it and explain it; this confession, says Boston Liberty, commenting upon this infamous proceeding, is equivalent to a confession that we were innocent and that Captain Schaack knew we were innocent, or what is the same thing, that he knew that there was evidence that would have acquitted us a thousand times over if we had been allowed to produce it; but he glories in the fact that he was too smart for us; that by keeping this evidence secret from us and the public he was enabled to bring us into the trap; a trap, your honor, a trap which he and one other man—I suppose he refers to the State's attorney—had prepared for us, and thus secured our conviction.
Now, if this is not a confession that Captain Schaack and one other man, an accomplice, set themselves deliberately to work to procure the judicial murder of seven innocent men, men whom they declare themselves to be innocent men, known by him and his accomplice to be innocent, then what is it? Plainly, it is nothing else. Schaack's confession that our evidence was such that, if permitted to be introduced it would have acquitted us a thousand times over, is equivalent to a confession that it is true, and that to procure our conviction by the suppression of this evidence was to procure the judicial murder of innocent men. And this work, says Captain Schaack, is to go on until he has all the Anarchists in jail, hung, or driven out of the city.
Your honor, I would like to make a remark right here. What stronger evidence can be required to prove the infamous character of what are called our criminal courts? Evidently, the courts are criminal, whether the persons they convict are criminal or not. Under such a condition of things as this, manifestly, a trial can have no color of justice or reason or be anything else than a conspiracy to convict a man, whether he be innocent or guilty, unless he is permitted to know what it is that they propose to prove upon him. This would be just, but justice and law are quite different things.
Now, as a part of this foul conspiracy the district attorney sprung his witness, Gilmer, upon us when it was too late for us to prove him to be a suborned, perjured liar, and the confession of this man Schaack is one that concerns the American people. They are bound to take notice of it. This trial, your honor, is not simply the trial and condemnation of seven Anarchists, but it is the trial of the government of the State of Illinois, as represented by the gentlemen in this prosecution, and the government of the United States itself. The oppressions of which we complain are such as the government of the United States is responsible for, and such as many millions of people, in fact, nearly all the people in the United States, are crying out against. You need not think that we stand alone. Some are crying out in more desperate tones than others, but all in tones that it will not do for any government, much less a government—a pretended government—of the people—to disregard.
Now, in this state of things a murder is committed by some one. Not by us, nor by any of us but by some one as yet unknown. We are confessed by the chief agent in procuring our conviction to be innocent, and have had abundant proof of our innocence, or if we had been permitted to do so we could have proved ourselves innocent "a thousand times over," says Captain Schaack. But the government which, in the opinion of the despairing millions, whose woes and whose miseries we voice here today—the government is responsible for their wrongs, but the government does not brook any forcible resistance by even so much as a single man. It regards this single man as a torch that may explode vast numbers of others. It, therefore, demands not only a victim, but victims. Victims they must have, whether they be innocent or whether they be guilty. The innocent will answer for examples as well as the guilty. "Away with them! Victims are what we want," say monopoly and corporations. So, being unable to discover the guilty man, the machinery is set to work to convict seven innocent men in his stead.
Your honor, there has been a great deal said in the trial of this case about the "Board of Trade demonstration," and the red and black flags.
In your refusal to grant us a new trial you allege as one of the reasons why Oscar Neebe should be sent to the penitentiary for fifteen years that he presided at mass meetings of workingmen and organized several Trades Unions. You say:
"As to Neebe's part, there is the evidence of witnesses that he presided at meetings called by the class of people from whom this combination was drawn, and that he called meetings of the people who were engaged in the movement. There is evidence that he marched in the Board of Trade procession, the object of which was said to be the demolition of that building."
Now, sir, do you hold it to be a crime for a man to organize the working people to defend themselves against "rifle diet, police clubs, strychnine," etc., or to preside at mass meetings of workingmen? You say that the object of the Board of Trade demonstration was "the demolition of the building." Who told you so? Where did you get your information? There is no evidence before this court to that effect. Not a particle. You say that our purpose was "to sack the Board of Trade." Ridiculous! Where did your honor get such an idea from? There is no testimony here to that effect. What right has your honor to assume what our motives were to charge us with intentions contrary to the proof? Now, sir, I deny it.
Your honor, you say, in overruling our motion for a new trial, that our purpose was "the demolition of the building," to "sack it." Where is the proof? The article I have just read giving an account of the demonstration says it was intended as a protest against the practices of these monopolists; that was all. It was intended as a manifestation of the working people's discontent with the existing order of things; a protest against the practices of the class which the Board of Trade represents. Now, sir, is this the kind of testimony upon which you intend to deprive us of our lives and liberty? Is this the great crime for which we must suffer death? Because we have held such meetings, and made such speeches, you claim that we are responsible for the action of the person who threw the bomb at the Haymarket. If this is law, then every dissatisfied workingman and woman in America could be convicted for the same reason.
Your honor, this was a class verdict. I will admit one thing: I believe the jury were to a large extent imposed upon. Now, when the State's attorney comes in and brings the gory garments of the police, clotted with blood and filled with holes, and exhibits these garments to the jury—nobody denies that these men were killed—what was that done for? To prove that the policemen had been killed? Nobody denies that, what was it done for? It was done to prejudice that jury, to inflame that jury, and, in the language of Mr. Grinnell when he closed his speech, he says: "Let these things steel your hearts against these miserable wretches and scoundrels."
Suppose this Indianapolis man, sent by monopolists, came here and threw the bomb, and these gory garments are to be thrown around here in the court room before the jury for the purpose of steeling their hearts to bring about the conviction of eight innocent men. I ask your honor—I ask you for another trial.
Lawyer Ingham with clenched fist, swollen neck and blood-shot eyes exclaimed to the jury: "The State of Illinois is strong enough to hang every one of these Anarchists!" Well, who said it was not? But who would believe it mean enough to do so just because it can? The burly brute rapes his helpless victim simply because he is mean enough and strong enough to do so. The bourgeoisie society is not itself, however, unless it commits wholesale outrages upon the proletariat and afterwards gloats over its victims.
The ballot. Your honor, you have heard of this Law and Order League in these United States. It has been organized in Chicago and called a conservators' league or association. It is an organization of big tax-payers, if you have heard of it, and they come out and openly declare that they do not intend to permit the Knights of Labor and the workingmen to come into power through the ballot box. That is their own declaration, made in the papers here at their meetings, in their reports. Of course I don't know anything further about it. But I want to ask you this question, viz.: Don't you think a man who is not able to control his bread—and you know what I mean by that—has a poor chance to control his vote; not a very good chance to control his vote? In other words, don't you think those who control the industries of the country can and do control the votes that country? Don't you think that a man who must sell his labor or starve will sell his vote when the same alternative is presented? Does politics control wealth or wealth politics? Are the economically enslaved politically free? Your honor, political liberty without economic freedom is an empty phrase. The wage slave is a political freeman; yes, he is free to choose from among his economic masters the one who shall rule and govern him. A choice of masters, that is all. So this "Law and Order" League proposes to control the ballots of their wage slaves.
Now, then, the Haymarket, what of it? I had been away to Cincinnati. I went to Cincinnati Saturday night, May 1. I spoke there Sunday morning or during the day, at a great labor demonstration, an eight hour demonstration, a picnic of the workingmen at Cincinnati. They sent for me to come down. I stayed there Sunday. I went to their grove Sunday night, and I started back to Chicago Monday night, reached there Tuesday morning, May 4, and went home about 8 o'clock and saw my wife. I took a nap on the lounge. About 10 o'clock she woke me, then she says to me, "We had a very interesting meeting last Sunday of the tailor girls, the sewing girls of Chicago, a large mass meeting. I spoke to them, addressed the meeting; they were anxious to organize, and I think we ought to do something to help those sewing women to organize and join the eight hour movement, because they work harder than anybody; these great tailor machines are very hard to work." So ended the conversation. She showed me the importance of having a meeting called at once and doing something for the eight hour movement for the girls. Well, I went on my way down town and I went to Greif's Hall. All the halls were occupied; this was during the eight hour strike. All the halls were occupied. A great many meetings were being held. I could get a hall nowhere else and the meeting was to be a business meeting anyway. It was not to be a general meeting, it was merely to appropriate money and take action and appoint a committee to get up hand bills and get some hall and so forth. That was all, so it did not require much; any ordinary room, any little room, anywhere, would have done for that, and the offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitumg, at 107 Fifth avenue, suited that purpose; so I announced it in the News about 12 o'clock, I believe, and it was in the News in the afternoon of that day, not stating what the meeting was for, only it was important business. So at 8 o'clock or about half-past seven that night—my wife and Mrs. Holmes left my home at No. 245 West Indiana street, accompanied by my two little babes—you have seen them here; a little girl of five and a boy of seven; you have seen them in the court room often. It was a nice evening and we walked down town; we walked until we got to Randolph and Halsted streets—however, in the afternoon, late in the afternoon, at the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, I learned that there was going to be a meeting at the Haymarket. But the meeting at No. 107 Fifth avenue had already been called, and I could not attend it; I could not go over there. At half-past seven I left home with my wife, Mrs. Holmes and the children. We got to Halsted street. Two reporters, seeing me, thought there was a chance to get an item and came over to me—the Times man and the Tribune man; I forget their names.
"Hello, Parsons, what is the news?" says one.
"I don't know anything."
"Going to be a meeting here tonight?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"Going to speak?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"I have got another meeting on hand tonight."
And some playful remark was made. I slapped one of them on the back. I was quite well acquainted with the men and we made one or two brief remarks and, as they testified on the stand, I got on the car right then and there with my wife and two children, in company with Mrs. Holmes and they saw that. I went down to Fifth avenue. When I got down there I found four or five other ladies there and about—well, probably, twelve or fifteen men. It was about 8:30 o'clock when we opened—I guess it was. We stayed there about half an hour. We settled the business. About the time we were through with it a committee came from the Haymarket, saying: "Nobody is over there but Spies. There is an awful big crowd, 3,000 or 4,000 people. For God's sake send somebody over. Come over, Parsons; come over, Fielden." Well, we went there. The meeting was adjourned and we all went over there together—all of us; my wife, Mrs. Holmes, two other ladies, and my two little children, went over to the Haymarket meeting. And these ladies sat ten feet behind the wagon from which I spoke.
Your honor, is it possible that a man would go into the dynamite-bomb business under those conditions and those circumstances? It is incredible. It is beyond human nature to believe such a thing possible, absolutely.
Well, the next day—I related on the witness stand all that I saw—the next day I saw that they were dragging these men to prison, treating them in a shameful manner. I left the city. I went to Geneva, Ill., for a couple of days; stayed there with my friend Holmes. Then I went to Elgin, Ill.; stayed there a couple of days. Then I left there and went to Waukesha, Wis., where I obtained employment as a carpenter and afterward as a painter, and remained for over seven weeks in Waukesha. My health was debilitated, and I went to the springs when I was thirsty. The house I was working on was only a half a block from the springs, and I needed the recreation and the rest, the pure air, and the water besides. When I saw the day fixed for the opening of this trial, knowing I was an innocent man, and also feeling that it was my duty to come forward and share whatever fate had in store for my comrades, and also to stand, if need be, on the scaffold, and vindicate the rights of labor, the cause of liberty, and the relief of the oppressed, I returned. How did I return? It is interesting, but it will take time to relate it, and I will not state it. I ran the gauntlet. I went from Waukesha to Milwaukee. I took the St. Paul train in the morning at the Milwaukee depot and came to Chicago; arrived here at 8:30, I suppose, in the morning. Went to the house of my friend, Mrs. Ames, on Morgan street. Sent for my wife and had a talk with her. I sent word to Captain Black that I was here and prepared to surrender. He sent word back to me that he was ready to receive me. I met him at the threshold of this building and we came up here together. I stood in the presence of this court. I have nothing, not even now, to regret.
- ↑ [Note—I was greatly exhausted from physical and mental exertions, having spoken two hours the day before and over four hours consecutively that day, the judge denying me a short respite at noon. At many times during the speech the judge had indicated his impatience by his actions and looks, to the discomfiture of the speaker. When I asked this question I felt my memory fail me.