THE TRIAL OF THE ANARCHISTS

The terror of good citizens—Henry Iverson Dround—Righteous indignation—Leaders of industry get together "to protect society"—A disagreeable duty—Selecting the jury—The man from Steele's—What is evidence?—What is justice?—In behalf of society—Life is for the strong—All there is in it!—I take my side

The morning after the fourth of May the city was sizzling with excitement. From what the papers said you might think there was an anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the police, having nothing better, fed them lies. At the Yards, men were standing about in little groups discussing the rumors; they seemed really afraid to go into the buildings.

In front of our office a brougham was drawn up—an unusual sight at any time, and especially at this hour. It was standing close to the door, and as I picked my way through the crowd I looked in at the open window. My eyes met the eyes of a woman, who was leaning against the cushioned back of the carriage. She was dressed in a white, ruffled gown that appeared strange there in the yards, and her eyes were half closed, as if she were napping or thinking thoughts far removed from the agitated city. But when I came closer she gave me the sharpest look I ever saw in a woman's eyes. It was a queer face, dark and pale and lifeless—except for that power of the eyes to look into you. I stopped, and my lips opened involuntarily to speak. As I went on upstairs, I wondered who she could be.

My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:—

"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very foundations of our free country—"

"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around in a nest of rattlers."

"Let them do their worst! Let them blow up this building! Let them dynamite my house! I should call myself a craven, a poltroon, if I wavered for one moment in my duty as a citizen."

Carmichael sighed and bit off the end of a fat cigar that he had been rolling to and fro in his mouth. He seemed to give his boss up, as you might a talkative schoolboy.

Henry Iverson Dround was a tall, dignified gentleman, with thick gray hair, close-cut gray whiskers, and a grizzled mustache. He always dressed much better than most business men of my acquaintance, with a sober good taste. The chief thing about him was his manners, which, for a packer, were polished. I knew that he had been to college: there was a tradition in the office that he had gone into the business against his will to please his father, who had begun life as a butcher in the good old way and couldn't understand his son's prejudices. Perhaps that explains why all the men in the house thought him haughty, and the other big packers were inclined to make fun of him. However that might be, Mr. Dround had a high reputation in the city at large for honorable dealing and public spirit. There was little set afoot for the public good that Henry I. Dround did not have a hand in.

I had met the chief once or twice, big John having called his attention to me, but he never seemed to remember my existence. To-day Mr. Dround blew out of the manager's office pretty soon and brushed against my desk. Suddenly he stopped and addressed me in his thin, high voice:—

"What do you think, Mr. Harrington, of this infernal business?"

My answer was ready, pat, and sufficiently hot to please the boss. He turned to Carmichael, who had followed him.

"That is what young America is thinking!"

Carmichael put his tongue into his cheek instead of spitting out an oath; but after Mr. Dround had gone, he growled at me:—

"That's all right for young America, but I am no damn fool, either! My father saw the riots back home in Dublin. It's no good sitting too close on the top of a chimney—maybe you'll set the house on fire. The police? The police are half thieves and all blackguards! They got this up for a benefit party, most likely. Why, didn't they kill more'n twice as many men over at McCormick's only the other day, just because the boys were making a bit of a disturbance? And nobody said anything about it! What are they kicking for, anyway?"

Mr. Dround's view, however, was the one generally held. That very evening there was a meeting of the prominent men of the city to take counsel together how anarchy might be suppressed with a strong hand. We little people heard only rumors of what took place in that gathering, but it leaked out that there had been two minds among those wealthy and powerful men—the timid and the bold. The timid were overridden by the bolder-hearted. Good citizens, like Strauss and Vitzer, so Carmichael told me with a sneer, talked strong about encouraging the district attorney to do his duty, and raised a fund to pay for having justice done.

"It means that some of those rats the police have been ferreting out of the West Side saloons will hang to make them feel right. The swells are bringing pressure to bear, and some one must be punished. It's grand!"

He chuckled bitterly at his own wit. But the swells meant business, and when Henry I. Dround was drawn for the grand jury, to indict those anarchists that the police had already netted, big John swore:—

"He needn't have done that! There are plenty to do the fool things. It's his sense of duty, I s'pose, damn him! It's some of his duty to come over here and help us make enough money to keep his old business afloat!"

The Irishman thought only of the business, but Henry I. Dround was not the man to let any personal interest stand in the way of what he considered his duty to society. Perhaps he was a little too proud of his sacrifices and his civic virtues. Some years later he told me all about that grand jury. All I need say here is that this famous trial of the anarchists was engineered from the beginning by prominent men to go straight.

The hatred and the rage of all kinds of men during those months while the anarchists were on our hands, before they were finally hanged or sent to prison, is hard to understand now at this distance from the event. That bomb in its murderous course had stirred our people to the depths of terror and hate: even easy-going hustlers like myself seemed to look at that time in the face of an awful fate. The pity of it all was—I say it now openly and advisedly—that our one motive was hate. Stamp this thing out! that was the one cry. Few stopped to think of justice, and no one of mercy. We were afraid, and we hated.

Finally it came time for the trial; the venire for the jury was issued. One night, to my consternation, I found a summons at the house. When I showed it to a fellow-clerk at the office the next morning, he whistled:—

"I thought I saw the bailiff in here yesterday, looking around for likely men. They are after a safe jury this time, sure!"

I asked Carmichael to use his influence to get me excused, as I knew he usually did for the boys when they were summoned for jury duty. But all he said was:—

"You're a nervy youngster. You'd better do the thing, if you are accepted."

"It means weeks, maybe months, off," I objected.

"We'll make that all right: you won't lose nothing by it. But you mustn't mind finding a stick of dynamite under your bed when you go home after the trial," he grinned.

"I guess there's no trouble with my nerve," I said stiffly, thinking he was chaffing me. "But I don't want the job, all the same."

"Well, you'll have to see the old man this time. Maybe he can get you off."

So I went into Mr. Dround's private office and made my request. The chief asked me to take a chair and handed me a cigar. Then he began to talk about the privileges and duties of citizenship. From another man it might have been just slobber, but Henry I. Dround meant it, every word.

"Why don't you serve?" I asked him pretty bluntly.

He flushed.

"I haven't been drawn. Besides, it has been thought wiser not to give the jury too capitalistic a character. This is a young man's duty. And I understand from Mr. Carmichael that you are one of the most energetic and right-minded of our young men, Mr. Harrington."

He stood facing the window and talked along for some time in a general way. His talk was rather simple and condescending, but kind. He spoke of the future before me, of my having the right influence in the community. When I left him I knew perfectly well that the house expected me to serve on that jury if I was chosen, and that Mr. Dround would take personally the warmest interest in a young man who had the courage to do his duty "in behalf of society," as he kept saying.

Still I hoped to escape. I was tolerably far down the list. So day after day I listened to the wrangle among the lawyers over the selection of the jurors. It was clear enough from the start that the State wanted only one kind of man on that jury—an intelligent, well-to-do clerk or small manufacturer. No laboring man need apply: his class was suspect. As a clerk in Steele's store said to me while we waited our turn:—

"That bailiff came into our place and walked down past our department with the manager. I heard him say to Mr. Bent: 'I'm running this case. Let me tell you there won't be no hung jury.'"

"Do you want to serve?" I asked the man from Steele's.

"Well, I do and I don't." Then he leaned over and whispered into my ear: "It looks to me that there might be a better place for me at Steele's if everything goes off to suit and I am a part of it!" He nudged me and pulled a straight face. "I guess they ought to be hanged, all right," he added, as if to square himself with what he was ready to do.

After the defence had used up its challenges, which naturally was pretty soon, the real business of getting the jury began. Much the same thing happened in every case. First the man said he was prejudiced so that he couldn't render a fair verdict on the evidence. Then his Honor took him in hand and argued with him to convince him that his scruples were needless. His Honor drove him up and down hill until the man was forced to admit that he had some sense of fairness and could be square and honest if he tried hard. And then he was counted in. In every case it went pretty much as it did in the case of the man from Steele's.

"I feel," so the man from Steele's said, "like any other good citizen does. I feel that some of these men are guilty; we don't know which ones, of course. We have formed this opinion by general report from the newspapers. Now, with that feeling it would take some very positive evidence to make me think that these men were not guilty, if I should acquit them.... But I should act entirely upon the testimony."

"But," said the defence, "you say that it would take positive evidence of their innocence before you could consent to return them not guilty?"

"Yes, I should want some strong evidence."

"Well, if that strong evidence of their innocence was not introduced, then you want to convict them?"

"Certainly!"

Then the judge took him in hand, and after a time his Honor got him to say:—

"I believe I could try the case on the evidence alone, fairly."

And so they took him, and they took me in the same way, when it came my turn.

This is scarcely the place to tell the story of that famous trial. It has kept me too long as it is. The trial of the anarchists was an odd accident in my life, however, which, coming, as it did, when I had my foot placed on the ladder of fortune, had something to do with making me what I am to-day. Up to this time I had never reflected much upon the deeper things of life. The world seemed good to me—a stout, hearty place to fight in. I had made money in the scheme of things as they are, and I found it good. I wanted to make some more money, and I had little patience with the kickers who tried to upset the machine. But I had not reasoned it out. There in the court room, and later shut up in the jury quarters, day after day, cut off from my usual habits, I thought over some of the real questions of our life, and made for myself a kind of philosophy.

To-day, after the lapse of eighteen years, I can see it all as I saw it then: the small, dirty court room; the cold, precise face of the judge; the faces of the eight men whom the police had ferreted out of their holes for us to try. There wasn't much dignity in the performance: some pretty, fashionably dressed girls sat up behind the judge, almost touching elbows with his Honor. They came there as though to the play, whispering and eating candy. There was the wrangling among the lawyers, snarling back and forth to show their earnestness. But my eyes came back oftenest to the faces of those eight men, for whose lives the game was being played. Two were stupid; three were shifty; but the other three had an honest glow, a kind of wild enthusiasm, that came with their foreign blood, maybe. They were dreamers of wild dreams, but no thugs!

From the start it seemed plain that the State could not show who threw that fatal bomb, nor who made it, nor anything about it: the best the State could do would be to prove conspiracy. The only connection the lawyers could establish between those eight men and the mischief of that night was a lot of loose talk. His Honor made the law—afterward he boasted of it—as he went along. He showed us what sedition was, and that was all we needed to know. Then we could administer the lesson. Now that eighteen years have passed, that looks to me like mighty dangerous law. Then I was quick enough to accept it.

When we filed into the court room the last morning to listen to the judge's charge, the first face I saw was that of Hillary Cox. A big red scar, branching like a spider's web, disfigured her right cheek. It drew my eyes right to her at once. All her color and the plump, pretty look of health had gone for good. She looked old and sour and excited. And I wished she hadn't come there: it seemed as though she was waiting for her revenge for the loss of her youth and good looks. She was counting on me to give it to her! Ed sat beside her, holding her hand in a protecting way. He was an honest, right-feeling sort of fellow, and I guessed that her loss of good looks would make no difference in his marrying her.

Near the district attorney sat Mr. Dround. He listened to the judge's charge very closely, nodding his head as his Honor made his points and rammed conviction into us....

"In behalf of society"—his phrase ran in my head all through the trial. That was the point of it all—a struggle between sensible folks who went about their business and tried to get all there was in it—like myself—and some scum from Europe, who didn't like the way things are handed out in this world. We must hang these rebels for an example to all men. To be sure, the police had killed a score or two of their kind—"rioters," they were called: now we would hang these eight in a proper, legal, and ordinary way. And then back to business! I suppose that the world seemed to me so good a place to hustle in that I couldn't rightly appreciate the complaint of these rebels against society. And at any rate I was convinced that we sensible folks who had the upper hand could not tolerate any bomb foolishness. "In behalf of society"—yes, before we had left our seats in the court room my mind was made up: guilty or not, these men must suffer for their foolish opinions, which were dead against the majority.

Thus I performed my duty to society.

When our verdict was ready, and we came in to be discharged, I saw Hillary Cox again. As the foreman rose to give our verdict, her scarred face flushed with excitement, and an ugly scowl crept over her brow. I turned away. Queer thoughts came into my mind—for the bad air and the weeks of close confinement had made me nervous, I suppose.... Society! I seemed to see old Strauss with his puffy, ashen face, and his broad hands that hooked in the dollars, dirty or clean, and Vitzer, who kept our honorable council on his pay-roll for convenience, and the man who had been with Lou Pierson that night, and many others. Were they better men before the eyes of God these eight misguided fools whom we were about to punish? Who did the most harm to society, they or that pale-faced Fielden, who might have been a saint instead of an anarchist?...

The judge was still making remarks; the jury were listening restlessly; the prisoners at the bar seemed little interested in the occasion. I kept saying to myself: "Society! In behalf of society! I have done my duty in behalf of society." But what was this almighty society, anyhow, save a lot of fools and scamps with a sprinkling of strong souls, who were fighting for life—all of them fighting for what only a few could get? My eyes rested on Hostetter's face in the crowd. His jaw was hanging open, and he was staring at the judge, trying to understand it all. Poor Ed! He wouldn't have much show in the scramble if society didn't protect him. Suddenly a meaning to it all came to me like a great light. The strong must rule: the world was for the strong. It was the act of an idiot to deny that truth. Yes, life was for the strong, all there was in it! I saw it so then, and I have lived it so all my life....

"My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night."