That poem epitomizes the

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

born in passion, nurtured in passion, and is the sum totality of the organized passion of the city of Chicago. For this reason I ask your suspension of the sentence and 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, standing where I do, with my seven condemned colleagues, 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 these 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 report that there are in the United States 16,200,000 wage-workers. These are the persons who, by their industry,

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. A wage-worker is one who works for wages and who has no other means of subsistence than by the selling of his 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

of the means of subsistance-capital-before their right to live at all or the opportunity to do so 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, 9,000,000 of these voters are wage-workers. The remainder of the 16,200,000 is composed of the women, boys and girls-the 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

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

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.

and I ask you 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 hands. You are expected to look neither to the right nor to the left, but to that by which justice, and justice alone, shall be subserved. The conviction of a man, your 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 upon a fast train to the

scaffold and an ignominious death? Why, if your honor please, the very method of our extermination, the deep damnation of its 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.

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 corporation 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

prosecuted by a mob, by the shrieks and the 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 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

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

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 question; 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 have no knowledge of it.

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 be any longer 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 imperceptible 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 the Boston harbor that it meant the first revolt 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

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

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 with 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

This found its fruition, or birth, rather, in the French revolution 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, the industrial problem, which is here in this court room, of which we are the the representatives, and of which the State's Attorney has said we were, by the grand jury selected because we were the leaders of it, 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;

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, which these distinguished "honorable" gentlemen would throttle and put to ignominious death, and hurry us like rats to 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

For two months they have poured their poison upon me and upon my colleagues. For two months they have sat here and spit 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-vilified, 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,

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 the why we will 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

Capital is the stored-up and accumulated surplus of past labor; capital is the product of labor. Its function is-that is 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

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 by selling their labor to capitalists. Capitalism is maintained, fostered, and perpetuated by law; in fact,

Now, briefly stated, for I will not take your time but a moment, what is labor? Labor is a commodity and wages is the price paid for it. The owner of this commodity-of labor-sells it, that is, himself, to the owner of capital in order to live. Labor is the expression of energy, the power of the laborers' 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

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-oh, no. The only thing he produces for himself is his wage, and the silk, the ores and the palace which he has built are simply transformed for him into a certain kind of means of existence, namely, a cotton shirt, a few pennies, and the mere tenantcy 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 produces this conflict. This conflict intensifies as the power of the privileged classes over the non-possessing or propertyless classes increases and intensifies,

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 is 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

Formerly the master selected the slave; today the slave selects his master, and he has got to find one or else he is carried down here to my friend, the goaler, and occupy 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 has stated positively that the change was a decided benefit to the former chattel slave owners who would not exhange 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-a 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 gives you 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

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 statictics would show today that as many chattel slaves escaped from their bondage under that system as can, and as many as do escape to-day from the wage bondage into the 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

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 and slaves to do 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 is my crime. I have been false, I have been untrue, and I am 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 there as a competitor with the man of labor. Every machine under the capitalistic system that is introduced into industrial affairs comes as a competitor, 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 starve 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

What becomes of these people? Where are they? They become competitors of other laborers and are 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 business men; 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 the past twelve months.

Where are they, and why have they been wiped out? Has there been any less wealth? No; that which they possessed has simply transferred itself into the hands of some other person. Who is that other? It is he who has greater capitalistic facilities. It is the monopolist,

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 for employment. What is the result? Then there are more men upon the market. This increases the number of those who are applying for 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

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 these things. It is only the manner and methods of employing it

that we object to. That is all. It is the manipulation of these things in the interests of a few; it 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

and made his servant, his 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, and 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 me and I speak out. We plead for the little 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

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.

Your honor, I concluded last evening at that portion of my statement before you 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 and 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

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 same influences are likewise at work among the farming classes. According to statistics

of America are today under mortgage. The man who a few years ago owned the soil that he worked, is today a tenant, at will 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 fruits for human sustenance-even while this man is asleep the interest upon the 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 the market will bear. The Board of Trade sharks run their 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-well, for

and there was a balance due the commission man on the freight of three dollars 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 ocean to find Lord Lietrim's rackrenters, 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 has 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 it is to the people to obey the law and preserve order-I charge upon them

of every law which guarantees every right to every American citizen. 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 stand condemned. They are the real Anarchists in this case,

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

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 be 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

The 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 your honor is 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

the eight-hour movement was talked of, that this movement which they advocated was but a means in their estimation toward the ends which they sought, and the movement itself was not primarily of any consideration at all. Now, your honor, I submit that you are sitting now in judgment not alone upon my acts, but also upon my motives. Now, 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 for you to assume to state what my motives were in the eight-hour movement; that I was simply using it for another purpose. How do you know that? Can you read my heart and order my actions? If you go by the record, the record 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, said he was instructed to do by the proprietor of the Tribune, when he attended labor meetings. It was the custom of the head editors of the large dailies to instruct those who went to these labor meetings to

and inciting passages of the speaker's remarks at the meetings. That is precisely the scheme laid out by the prosecution. They 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 and is not 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-my name is-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 Mary

land to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I have traversed the States for the past ten years, and I am known by hundreds and thousands who have seen and heard me. Possibly I had better stop a little, just a moment, here, 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, if there is anything for which I am well known it is my advocacy of the eight-hour system of labor, and 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 a 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

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

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 that 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 the 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 case of unlawful attacks of the police." Why, the very article that you quote in the Alarm-a 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 yours, provide that protection, and give me, their descendant, that right? Does not the Constitution say that

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 attention to another point here. These articles that appear in the Alarm, for some of them I am not responsible any more 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.

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

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. I see others rolling in luxury and wealth and opulence,

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 this 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 fellow men 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?

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

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

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 rather than 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."

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

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 strikes, against men who were simply seeking to improve their condition-to ameliorate 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

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, even before any strike at all, 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,

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 the of the neighborhood-that is the Chicago Tribune-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 justifition for these, what you denominate violent speeches? Did not these monopolists bring about the inception of this language? Did they not originate it?

to say: "Throw dynamite bombs among the strikers, and thereby make a warning for 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

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

In this connection I want to call your attention to the way armed men, militiamen and Pinkerton's private army, is used against workingmen, strikers; the way it is 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

and employ the 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

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 organization, 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

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

with them"-"discovering the ring-leaders," 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

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,

worms itself into the 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; he is set down as a ring-leader, and these spies go to work and put up a job on him. If they can not 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

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 ringleader 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

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 read to you from the Alarm, of 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

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

at a time, as is contemplated by this new-fangled drill which was so graphically described in the capitalistic press which gave an account of it, it is certainly not for the purpose of shooting down the Bourgeoise, 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 battallion. 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 hundred members, the regiment should have 800 members on its rolls.

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 and 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

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 everwhere, 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 tenant-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

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

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, a monarchy, or an empire," said the speaker. "The American flag protects as much economic despotism as any other flag on the face of the earth to-day to the ratio of population. This being the case, of what does the boasted freedom of the American workingman consist? Our fathers used to sing,

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

of those who grind the face of the poor and rob 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 can not. American workingmen seem to be degenerating. They do not seem to understand what liberty and freedom really consist of. They shout themselves hoarse on election day-for what? For the miserable privilege of choosing their master; which men 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

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 denominate 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

by holding in their possession the means of life as their property, and thus enslave the producers. Workingmen-we mean the 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.

"'Tis the shame of the land that the earnings of toil,
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.

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 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 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 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 can not organize an army. It takes capital to organize an army. It takes as much money

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 eighteen dollars. That is the difference.

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 me. 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 detroy 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 one? No Do I know anything about them? No.

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 he 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

from the domination and enslavement of his fellow-man. [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 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 all 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

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 he would have him, he who will destroy another because that other will not do as he says, that man is a

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,

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:

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 of forensic dealings, no cunning in splitting hairs can impair the vigor thereof.

anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." I never said anything that could equal that in lawlessness. I never was as lawless in my expressions as that. Go, gentlemen of the prosecution, dig up the ashes of Sumner and scatter them in disgrace to the wind, tear down the monument that the American people have erected to his honor, and erect thereon some emblem of your contempt.

I 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

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 off-set 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,

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

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 circumstance; 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 workingmen; 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?

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. Now

that connects two of us with that Haymarket affair. Now, what are the

facts about this Haymarket affair? On Tuesday evening, May 4th, 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, and as these men are upon the eve of adjourning, it being after 10 o'clock, 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

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 of 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;

at once and begin to follow that out. 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 any 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 now 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 parents or protector or friend was killed by the police in some one of their

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 it? 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

against the American people, which I believe culminated in the Haymarket there. I give you now a brief outline or history of this great crime. 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 this 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.

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

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. Now, imagine the effect of this false and fictitious value of labor, for skill and labor alone gives any value to the stocks and bonds and enables these monopoly inflationists to build up vast incomes on that which has merely cost the paper on which these false calculations were issued. The employee's of these public institutions and their patrons can not understand why these holders, 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 aimes to prevent other labor a vocations 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 of this period, about this time, published the following sentiment: "The simplest plan probably when one is not a member of the Humane Society is to

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 dabate on that question Senator Teller used these words-he said: "There was a conspiracy all over the world on the part of capital against labor, a conspiracy which did not exist in the United States alone, but in which this government was 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."

as Mr. Teller said for those who had power to take advantage of, and perpetuate the outrage and the wrong upon those who were 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 greenback. 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 wanted was money; not gold nor silver, but dollars and what liquidated the debt and kept the

away from the window." Your honor will observe he did not refer to the red flag of the commune in that particular. Now, this United States senator, to his mind, 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

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, your honor, 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 that 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,

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, in which he says: "I do not believe that 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

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 the Mayor's personal observation on the ground at the Haymarket meeting. Mark you, he was there, and this is his opinion, both as to the

and the deportment 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 "squealers," 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 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

to have an armed group. Your honor will not say it is unlawful to have an armed group if we want it. 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 for 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;

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 und 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, you understand, in making some preparation

because there is no proposition here to assault anybody. There is no proposition here to make war upon anybody, either their person 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 the meeting 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

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 them, 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, Schraeder and Waller, who were giving the testimony, used the word attack. When it was translated attack, you must not take that as the 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 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 nonsense. It would be ridiculous. Upon the very face of it, it is an absurdity. It 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

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

to 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

with club and pistol, and fired among them, and they killed one of the people in that hall, and Judge McAlister, 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,

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 Schrader 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

What was that bribe? Liberty and life, two of the greatest and sweetest things known to man. Life and liberty were offered to Schrader 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

compelled under durance vile, 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?"

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,

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 an 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

in the shooting of the workingmen at McCormick's factory?

A. "Yes, sir."

This was the testimony of the state's witness, Waller.

Mr. Schraeder, 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 grop 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 attacks. Judge McAllister says that

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 Schraeder.)

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 attack the police.

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."

"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 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 do 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.

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 death 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 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, was Engel; him I have met before, I don't know whether he was at the meeting or not. I did not know anything about it. 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

that "if quoting the language of Schraeder 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 encounter with the police we should aid them, and further swore that this plan was to be followed

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 face of a dozen witnesses, both for the prosecution and the defense, who 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 Bernett, for the defense, who located it

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 by 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 absurd. If this statement bore the semblance of truth with regard to Gilmer, or was the truth,

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 traffic on the highway. As there is no travel theron 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,

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 this 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

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 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

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 Pinkerton's 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,

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

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

against the law." The New York Herald, at the 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

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 believe that that bomb at the Haymarket was instigated by the monopolists to break down 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

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

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 sentiments 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 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

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,

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.

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.

to stop this movement and it was felt that its strongest impulse 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