The Last Scene in Court—Reasons Against the Death Sentence—Spies’ Speech—A Heinous Conspiracy to Commit Murder—Death for the Truth—The Anarchists’ Final Defense—Dying for Labor—The Conflict of the Classes—Not Guilty, but Scapegoats—Michael Schwab’s Appeal—The Curse of Labor-saving Machinery—Neebe Finds Out what Law Is—“I am Sorry I am not to be Hung”—Adolph Fischer’s Last Words—Louis Lingg in his own Behalf—“Convicted, not of Murder, but of Anarchy”—An Attack on the Police—“I Despise your Order, your Laws, your Force-propped Authority. Hang me for it!”—George Engel’s Unconcern—The Development of Anarchy—“I Hate and Combat, not the Individual Capitalist, but the System”—Samuel Fielden and the Haymarket—An Illegal Arrest—The Defense of Albert R. Parsons—The History of his Life—A Long and Thrilling Speech—The Sentence of Death—“Remove the Prisoners.”

AFTER motion in arrest of judgment had been overruled by Judge Gary, Spies was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. The prisoner rose, with pallid cheeks and distended eyes, and advanced toward the bench with a hesitating tread. The moment he faced the court he recovered his equanimity and proceeded with much deliberation to give his reasons why he should not be sent to death on the gallows. He spoke in a firm, almost a menacing tone of voice, and seemed bent on posing as a martyr to the cause of the laboring classes. In his very opening sentence he desired to have that understood. “In addressing this court,” he said, “I speak as the representative of one class to the representative of another. I will begin with the words uttered five hundred years ago, on a similar occasion, by the Venetian Doge Falieri, who, addressing the court, said, ‘My defense is your accusation. The cause of my alleged crime is your history.’” He then referred to his conviction, holding that there was no evidence to show that he had any knowledge of the man who threw the bomb, or that he had had anything to do with its throwing. There being no evidence to establish his legal responsibility, he maintained, his “conviction and the execution of the sentence would be nothing less than willful, malicious and deliberate murder, as foul a murder as may be found in the annals of religious, political or any sort of persecution.” He charged that the representative of the State had “fabricated most of the testimony which was used as a pretense to convict,” and that the defendants had been convicted “by a jury picked out to convict.”

“I charge,” he continued, “the State’s Attorney and Bonfield with the heinous conspiracy to commit murder.” Having thus proved the truth of the old adage that “no rogue e’er felt the halter draw with good opinion of the law,” Spies next paid his compliments to the Citizens’ Association, the Bankers’ Association and the Board of Trade, attributing to them the inspiration for the attack on the Haymarket meeting, and he proceeded to give an account of his movements on the night of that meeting in the company of Legner. He again repeated that, “notwithstanding the purchased and perjured testimony of some,” the prosecution had not established the defendants’ legal responsibility, and insisted that those who had brought about their conviction were the “real and only law-breakers.” When he approached this part of the subject Spies’ anger scarcely knew any bounds. He rose in a towering passion and characterized the proceedings of the trial as “rascalities perpetrated in the name of the people.” He continued:

“The contemplated murder of eight men, whose only crime is that they have dared to speak the truth, may open the eyes of these suffering millions; may wake them up. Indeed, I have noticed that our conviction has worked miracles in this direction already. The class that clamors for our lives, the good, devout Christians, have attempted in every way, through their newspapers and otherwise, to conceal the true and only issue in this case. By simply designating the defendants as ‘Anarchists,’ and picturing them as a newly-discovered species of cannibals, and by inventing shocking and horrifying stories of dark conspiracies said to be planned by them, these good Christians zealously sought to keep the naked fact from the working people and other righteous parties, namely: That on the evening of May 4 two hundred armed men, under the command of a notorious ruffian, attacked a meeting of peaceable citizens! With what intention? With the intention of murdering them, or as many of them as they could. I refer to the testimony given by two of our witnesses. The wage-workers of this city began to object to being fleeced too much—they began to say some very true things, but they were highly disagreeable to our patrician class; they put forth—well, some very modest demands. They thought eight hours’ hard toil a day, for scarcely two hours’ pay, was enough. This lawless rabble had to be silenced! The only way to silence them was to frighten them, and murder those whom they looked up to as their ‘leaders.’ Yes, these foreign dogs had to be taught a lesson, so that they might never again interfere with the high-handed exploitation of their benevolent and Christian masters. Bonfield, the man who would bring a blush of shame to the managers of the Bartholomew night—Bonfield, the illustrious gentleman with a visage that would have done excellent service to DorÉ in portraying Dante’s fiends of hell—Bonfield was the man best fitted to consummate the conspiracy of the Citizens’ Association of our patricians. If I had thrown that bomb, or had caused it to be thrown, or had known of it, I would not hesitate a moment to state so. It is true a number of lives were lost—many were wounded. But hundreds of lives were thereby saved! But for that bomb there would have been a hundred widows and hundreds of orphans where now there are few. These facts have been carefully suppressed, and we were accused and convicted of conspiracy by the real conspirators and their agents. This, your honor, is one reason why sentence should not be passed by a court of justice—if that name has any significance at all.”

Spies then adverted to the fact of his having published articles on the manufacture of dynamite and bombs, and wanted to know what other newspapers in the city had not done the same thing. He forgot to show, however, that other papers had never urged the people to use dynamite to the destruction of the lives and property of the people.

Spies claimed that his only offense was in espousing the cause of “the disinherited and disfranchised millions,” and asked what they had said in their speeches and publications.

“We have interpreted to the people their condition and relations in society. We have explained to them the different social phenomena and the social laws and circumstances under which they occur. We have, by way of scientific investigation, incontrovertibly proved and brought to their knowledge that the system of wages is the root of the present social iniquities—iniquities so monstrous that they cry to heaven. We have further said that the wage system, as a specific form of social development, would, by the necessity of logic, have to make room for higher forms of civilization; that the wage system must prepare the way and furnish the foundation for a social system of coÖperation—that is, Socialism. That whether this or that theory, this or that scheme regarding future arrangements were accepted, was not a matter of choice, but one of historical necessity, and that to us the tendency of progress seemed to be Anarchism—that is, a free society without kings or classes—a society of sovereigns in which the liberty and economic equality of all would furnish an unshakable equilibrium as a foundation and condition of natural order.”

After some further explanation of Socialism, he said:

“I may have told that individual who appeared here as a witness that the workingmen should procure arms, as force would in all probability be the ultima ratio, and that in Chicago there were so and so many armed men, but I certainly did not say that we proposed to inaugurate the social revolution. And let me say here: Revolutions are no more made than earthquakes and cyclones. Revolutions are the effect of certain causes and conditions. I have made social philosophy a specific study for more than ten years, and I could not have given vent to such nonsense! I do believe, however, that the revolution is near at hand—in fact, that it is upon us. But is the physician responsible for the death of the patient because he foretold that death?”

If the opinions of the court were good, Spies held there was “no person in this country who could not be lawfully hanged,” and maintained that they ought to be exempted from responsibility because they had sought to bring about reforms. Then he turned to the labor movement and pronounced his anathema against the wealthy classes.

He then scored the capitalistic class, and referred to the strikes in the Hocking Valley, East St. Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago. Reverting again to the prosecution, he continued:

“‘These men,’ Grinnell said repeatedly, ‘have no principle; they are common murderers, assassins, robbers,’ etc. I admit that our aspirations and objects are incomprehensible to some, but surely for this we are not to be blamed. The assertion, if I mistake not, was based on the ground that we sought to destroy property. Whether this perversion of facts was intentional, I know not. But in justification of our doctrines I will say that the assertion is an infamous falsehood. Articles have been read here from the Arbeiter-Zeitung and Alarm to show the dangerous character of the defendants. The files of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and Alarm have been searched for the past years. Those articles which generally commented upon some atrocity committed by the authorities upon striking workingmen were picked out and read to you. Other articles were not read to the court. Other articles were not what was wanted. The State’s Attorney, upon those articles (who well knows that he tells a falsehood when he says it), asserts that ‘these men have no principle.’”

What a perversion of facts! Some of the articles did comment on some alleged atrocity, but those taken at various dates and published in a preceding chapter show that force by the use of dynamite was continually being agitated. However, in his criticism of the prosecution Spies seemed to overlook a great many points. He repeated what he had said to the Congregational ministers at the Grand Pacific Hotel, on the 9th of January, 1886, with reference to Socialism, and then stated that he had seen Lingg only twice before he was arrested, but had never spoken to him. With Engel he had not been on speaking terms for at least a year, and Fischer had gone about making speeches against him. The article in the Arbeiter-Zeitung with reference to the Board of Trade demonstration, he claimed, he had not seen until he had read it in the paper. In conclusion he said:

Michael Schwab had very little to say, but what he did say was that it was “idle and hypocritical to think about justice” having been done to them. He criticised the acts of the prosecution in securing his conviction “for writing newspaper articles and making speeches,” and contended that they had engaged in no conspiracy, as “all they did was done in open daylight.” He seemed rather vindictive toward Mr. Furthmann for having had the articles in the Arbeiter-Zeitung translated, and excused his own inflammatory utterances by holding that after the mayoralty election, in the spring of 1885, Edwin Lee Brown, president of the Citizens’ Association, had urged the people, in a public speech, “to take possession of the Court-house by force, even if they had to wade in blood.” Schwab touched on the labor problem, drawing largely from his own experience while living among the poor in Europe, and then spoke of the condition of laborers in Chicago, holding that they lived in miserable, dilapidated hovels, owned by greedy landlords. He continued:

“What these common laborers are to-day, the skilled laborer will be to-morrow. Improved machinery, that ought to be a blessing for the workingman, under the existing conditions turns for him to a curse. Machinery multiplies the army of unskilled laborers, makes the laborer more dependent upon the men who own the land and the machines. And that is the reason that Socialism and Communism got a foothold in this country. The outcry that Socialism, Communism and Anarchism are the creed of foreigners, is a big mistake. There are more Socialists of American birth in this country than foreigners, and that is much, if we consider that nearly half of all industrial workingmen are not native Americans. There are Socialistic papers in a great many States, edited by Americans for Americans. The capitalistic newspapers conceal that fact very carefully.”

In conclusion Schwab said:

“If Anarchy were the thing the State’s Attorney makes it out to be, how could it be that such eminent scholars as Prince Krapotkin and the greatest living geographer, ElisÉe Reclus, were avowed Anarchists, even editors of Anarchistic newspapers? Anarchy is a dream, but only in the present. It will be realized. Reason will grow in spite of all obstacles. Who is the man that has the cheek to tell us that human development has already reached its culminating point? I know that our ideal will not be accomplished this or next year, but I know that it will be accomplished as near as possible, some day, in the future. It is entirely wrong to use the word Anarchy as synonymous with violence. Violence is one thing and Anarchy another. In the present state of society violence is used on all sides, and therefore we advocated the use of violence against violence, but against violence only, as a necessary means of defense. I never read Mr. Most’s book, simply because I did not find time to read it. And if I had read it, what of it? I am an agnostic, but I like to read the Bible nevertheless. I have not the slightest idea who threw the bomb on the Haymarket, and had no knowledge of any conspiracy to use violence on that or any other night.”

Oscar Neebe followed. In his opening sentence he very correctly diagnosed the situation when he said: “I have found out during the last few days what law is. Before I didn’t know.” He, more than all the other defendants, except Parsons, ought to have known the law. He was a citizen, and as such he should have known the law of the land long before he engaged in the inculcation of force. He spoke of his having presided at Socialistic meetings, having headed the Board of Trade procession, and how he happened to drive to the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung after learning on May 5 that Spies and Schwab had been arrested.

The rest of his statement consists simply of abuse of the prosecution, laudation of his own acts in endeavoring to ameliorate the condition of the workingmen and in continuing the publication of the Arbeiter-Zeitung after May 4, and a disavowal of his having distributed the “Revenge” circular. In speaking of his having organized the Beer-brewers’ Union and attended a meeting at the North Side Turner Hall to announce the result of his conference with the bosses, he said:

Adolph Fischer rose with some signs of nervousness and proceeded slowly and deliberately with his protest. “I was tried here in this room,” he said, “for murder, and I was convicted of Anarchy.” He objected most vigorously to the charge that he was a murderer, and insisted that he had had nothing to do with the throwing of the bomb. He confessed to having made arrangements for the Haymarket meeting, to having been present, but urged that it had not been called for the purpose of committing violence or crime. He said he had been present at the Monday evening meeting,] of which Waller was chairman, but aside from volunteering to have hand-bills printed for the Haymarket meeting he had not done anything. He had invited Spies to speak at the Haymarket, and in the original copy he had had the line put in, “Workingmen, appear armed!” His reason for this was, he said, that he “did not want the workingmen to be shot down in that meeting as on other occasions.” He then entered into some details as to his movements on the night of the Haymarket gathering and again launched into a protest against the jury’s verdict. He said that the verdict against him was because he was an Anarchist, and “an Anarchist,” he explained with a defiant toss of his head, “is always ready to die for his principles.” He concluded as follows:

“The more the believers in just causes are persecuted, the more quickly will their ideas be realized. For instance, in rendering such an unjust and barbarous verdict, the twelve ‘honorable men’ in the jury-box have done more for the furtherance of Anarchism than the convicted have accomplished in a generation. This verdict is a death-blow to free speech, free press and free thought in this country, and the people will be conscious of it, too. This is all I care to say.”

Louis Lingg was in no gentle frame of mind when he advanced to enter his objection at the bar of the court. After a thrust at the court, he said that he had been accused of murder and been convicted; and “what proof,” he defiantly asked, “have you brought that I am guilty?” He acknowledged that he had helped Seliger to make bombs; “but,” he stoutly maintained, “what you have not proven—even with the assistance of your bought ‘squealer,’ Seliger, who would appear to have acted such a prominent part in the affair—is that any of those bombs were taken to the Haymarket.” He referred to the testimony of the experts as simply showing that the Haymarket bomb bore “a certain resemblance to those bombs of his,” and that was the kind of evidence, he held, upon which he had been convicted. He had been convicted of murder, but it was Anarchy on which the verdict was based. “You have charged me with despising ‘law and order,’” he said. “What does your ‘law and order’ amount to? Its representatives are the police, and they have thieves in their ranks.” He then opened fire on me because the detectives I had sent out had broken into his room, as he claimed, to effect his arrest, and insisted that he had not been at the Monday night meeting, but at Zepf’s Hall, at that time, which I had stated to be false.

Lingg next turned his attention to Mr. Grinnell, and accused him of having “leagued himself with a parcel of base, hireling knaves, to bring me to the gallows.” Then the Judge came in for a scoring. “The Judge himself,” he held, “was forced to admit that the State’s Attorney had not been able to connect me with the bomb-throwing. The latter knows how to get around it, however. He charges me with being a ‘conspirator.’ How does he prove it? Simply by declaring the International Workingmen’s Association to be a ‘conspiracy.’ I was a member of that body, so he has the charge securely fastened on me. Excellent!” He concluded as follows:

“I tell you frankly and openly, I am for force. I have already told Captain Schaack, ‘If they use cannon against us, we shall use dynamite against them.’ I repeat that I am the enemy of the ‘order’ of to-day, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, ‘If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.’ You laugh! Perhaps you think, ‘You’ll throw no more bombs,’ but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope do I say to you: ‘I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority.’ Hang me for it!”

George Engel appeared the least concerned of all when it came his turn to respond to the court’s question as to any reasons he might have against the infliction of the death penalty. He opened by setting forth his arrival in America in 1872 and gave some reasons which had prompted him to espouse Anarchy. It was “the poverty, the misery of the working classes.” People here in a free land, he said, were “doomed to die of starvation.” He had read the works of Lassalle, Marx and George, and after studying the labor question carefully he had come, he said, to the conclusion that “a workingman could not decently exist in this rich country.” He had sought to remedy the inequalities through the ballot-box, but after a time, he said, it had become clear to him “that the working classes could never bring about a form of society guaranteeing work, bread and a happy life by means of the ballot.” He had labored for a time in the interest of the Social-Democratic party, but, finding political corruption in its ranks, he had left it.

“I left this party and joined the International Working People’s Association, that was just being organized. The members of that body have the firm conviction that the workingman can free himself from the tyranny of capitalism only through force—just as all advances of which history speaks have been brought about through force alone. We see from the history of this country that the first colonists won their liberty only through force; that through force slavery was abolished, and just as the man who agitated against slavery in this country had to ascend the gallows, so also must we. He who speaks for the workingmen to-day must hang. And why? Because this republic is not governed by people who have obtained their office honestly. Who are the leaders at Washington that are to guard the interests of this nation? Have they been elected by the people, or by the aid of their money? They have no right to make laws for us, because they were not elected by the people. These are the reasons why I have lost all respect for American laws.”

Engel then alluded to the displacement of labor by machinery and held that the amelioration of the workingmen’s condition could only be effected through Socialism. As to his conviction, he declared that he was not at all surprised. He had learned long ago that the workingman had no more rights here than anywhere else in the world. His crime, he insisted, consisted simply in having labored to “bring about a system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard millions, through the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and misery.” He believed that inventions should be free to all and touched on the aims of Anarchy. In his opinion “Anarchy and Socialism were as much alike as one egg is to another.” Whatever difference existed was in tactics.

Samuel Fielden entered into a long disquisition on the troubles of the working classes all over the world, and covered much of the ground traversed by him when on the witness-stand. He spoke of his having been in England a Sunday School superintendent, a local preacher of the Methodist Church, and an exhorter, and then chronicled his change of convictions after his arrival in the United States in 1868. He branched out into an exposition of Socialism and cited instances of the oppression practiced on working people by capitalists. He then reviewed some of the points in the testimony against him and sought to show wherein his speeches at various meetings had been incorrectly reported in the newspapers. He had neither said at the Haymarket meeting, “Here come the bloodhounds,” nor had he fired a revolver. He claimed that the meeting had been a peaceable one, and held that there had been no indication of trouble, and that his language had not been incendiary. He said:

“I am charged with having said, ‘Stab the law.’ No one claims but that it was in connection with my conception of the meaning of Foran’s speech, and the word ‘stab’ is not necessarily a threat of violence upon any person. Here at your primary elections you frequently hear the adherents of different candidates state before the primaries are called that they will ‘knife’ so and so. Do they mean that they are going to kill him, stab him, take his life away from him? They are forcible expressions—very emphatic expressions. They are adjectives which are used in different ways to carry conviction, and perhaps make the language more startling to the audience, in order that they may pay attention.”

In speaking of his arrest he said:

“I didn’t attempt to run away. I had been out walking around the street that morning, and there was plenty of opportunity for me to have been hundreds of miles away. When the officer came there I opened the door to him. He said he wanted me. I knew him by sight and I knew what was his occupation. I said: ‘All right; I will go with you.’ I have said here that I thought, when the representatives of the State had inquired by means of their policemen as to my connection with it, that I should have been released. And I say now, in view of all the authorities that have been read on the law and regarding accessories, that there is nothing in the evidence that has been introduced to connect me with that affair. One of the Chicago papers, at the conclusion of the State’s Attorney’s case, said that they might have proved more about these men, about where they were and what they were doing on the 2d and 3d of May. When I was told that Captain Schaack had got confessions out of certain persons connected with this affair, I said: ‘Let them confess all they like. As long as they will tell only the truth, I care nothing for their confessions.’”

Fielden next dwelt upon his treatment at the Central Station, and criticised the searching of houses without warrant. With reference to the trial he said:

“We claim that the foulest criminal that could have been picked up in the slums of any city of Christendom, or outside of it, would never have been convicted on such testimony as has been brought in here, if he had not been a dangerous man in the opinion of the privileged classes. We claim that we are convicted, not because we have committed murder. We are convicted because we were very energetic in advocacy of the rights of labor. I call your attention to a very significant fact—that on this day, at this time when the sentence of death is going to be passed on us, the Stock-yards employers have notified their employÉs that they will be required to work ten hours next Monday or they will shut down. I think it is a logical conclusion to draw that these men think they have got a dangerous element out of the way now, and they can return again to the ten-hour system. I know that I had considerable to do with the eight-hour question, although I only spoke once in that neighborhood, every man there being a stranger to me—but I went down there in March previous and made an eight hour speech and formed the nucleus of an eight-hour organization there, and the Stock-yards succeeded in starting the eight-hour system, though they have not been able to keep it up in its entirety. We claim that we have done much.”

He predicted that it would be a grand day when everybody adopted Socialism, and then touched on his own case, denying that he had entered into a conspiracy. Fischer, Lingg and Engel, he said, were men with whom he had not associated for a year, and therefore, he maintained, he could not have been conspiring with them. He had never, he said, seen a dynamite bomb till he saw one in the court-room, and had never known that dynamite was kept at the Arbeiter-Zeitung office. In concluding his speech Fielden said:

Your honor, I have worked at hard labor since I was eight years of age. I went into a cotton factory when I was eight years old, and I have worked continually since, and there has never been a time in my history that I could have been bought or paid into a single thing by any man or for any purpose which I did not believe to be true. To contradict the lie that was published in connection with the bill by the grand jury charging us with murder, I wish to say that I have never received one cent for agitating. When I have gone out of the city I have had my expenses paid. But often when I have gone into communities, when I would have to depend upon those communities for paying my way, I have often come back to this city with money out of pocket, which I had earned by hard labor, and I had to pay for the privilege of my agitation out of the little money I might have in my possession. To-day as the beautiful autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze the cheek of every free man, I stand here never to bathe my head in its rays again. I have loved my fellow-men as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend. It will live to repent of it. But, as I have said before, if it will do any good, I freely give myself up. I trust the time will come when there will be a better understanding, more intelligence, and above the mountains of iniquity, wrong and corruption, I hope the sun of righteousness and truth and justice will come to bathe in its balmy light an emancipated world.”

Albert R. Parsons consumed a great deal of time in the delivery of his speech. He began by declaring that the trial had been conducted with “passion, heat and anger,” and pronounced the verdict as one of “passion, born in passion, nurtured in passion, and the sum totality of the organized passion of the city of Chicago.” For that reason he asked for a suspension of sentence and a new trial. He said:

“Now, I stand here as one of the people, a common man, a workingman, one of the masses, 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.”

Parsons acknowledged being an Anarchist and proceeded to show the ends Anarchy sought. Then he asked:

“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 a single word in my own defense. For two months they have poured their poison upon me and my colleagues. For two months they have sat here and spat like adders the vile poison of their tongues, and if men could have been placed in a mental inquisition and tortured to death, these men would have succeeded here now—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, it is a stern economic fact, a stubborn and immovable fact.”

He entered into a long explanation of the capitalistic system and pointed to the troubles experienced by the laboring classes under the present conditions. He spoke of capitalistic combinations and “corners,” touched on landlordism, discoursed on the eight-hour movement, and then reviewed some of the evidence against him. Referring to the Alarm, of which he had been editor, he said:

“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. The identical article shows it. You forgot 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 two hundred and sixty years, provide that protection, and give me, their descendant, that right? Does not the Constitution say that I, as an American, have a right to keep and to bear arms? I stand upon that right. Let me see if this court will deprive me of it. Let me call your 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 indorse. I am frank to admit that such is the case. I suppose that you can scarcely find an editor of a paper in the world but that could conscientiously say the same thing. Now, am I to be dragged up here and executed for the utterances and writings of other men, even though they were published in the columns of a paper of which I was the editor? Your honor, you must remember that the Alarm was a labor paper, published by the International Working People’s Association, belonging to that body. I was elected its editor by the organization, and, as labor editors generally are, I was handsomely paid. I had saw-dust pudding as a general thing for dinner. My salary was eight dollars a week, and I have received that salary as editor of the Alarm for over two years and a half—eight dollars 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 eight dollars 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.”

He then offered some reasons to justify his utterances on labor questions. He quoted from newspapers to show their hostility to the interests of labor, and he dwelt on various strikes in the United States and endeavored to show how the men had been treated by corporations. The tramp question was next handled, and Parsons maintained that the present social system was responsible for the fact that millions did not know where to get a bed or supper. He continued:

“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 eighteen dollars. They cannot purchase those things. We cannot organize an army. It takes capital to organize an army. It takes as much money to organize an army as to organize industry, or as to build railroads; therefore, it is impossible for the working classes to organize and buy Winchester rifles. What can they do? What must they do? Your honor, the dynamite bomb, I am told, costs six cents. It can be made by anybody. The Winchester rifle costs eighteen dollars. That is the difference. Am I to be blamed for that? Am I to be hanged for saying this? Am I to be destroyed for this? What have I done? Go dig up the ashes of the man who invented this thing. Find his ashes and scatter them to the winds, because he gave this power to the world. It was not I.”

Coming to the Haymarket meeting and referring to the presence of the police as an affront, he said:

Parsons then referred to attacks of the police on workingmen’s meetings, and reviewed some of the evidence against himself, insisting that he had never seen Lingg until he saw him in the court-room.

Parsons again returned to Anarchy and defined its doctrines at some length. In concluding his remarks, which consumed two hours on Friday and six hours on Saturday, he said:

“The next day I saw that they were dragging these men to prison, treating them in a shameful manner. I left the city. I went to Geneva, Ill., for a couple of days; staid there with friend Holmes. Then I went to Elgin, Ill.; staid there a couple of days. Then I left there and went to Waukesha, Wis., where I obtained employment as a carpenter and afterwards as a painter, and remained for over seven weeks in Waukesha. My health was debilitated, and I went to the springs when I was thirsty. The house I was working on was only half a block from the springs, and I needed the recreation and the rest, and the pure air, and the water besides. When I saw the day fixed for the opening of this trial, knowing I was an innocent man, and also feeling that it was my duty to come forward and share whatever fate had in store for my comrades, and also to stand, if need be, on the scaffold, and vindicate the rights of labor, the cause of liberty, and the relief of the oppressed, I returned. How did I return? It is interesting, but it will take time to relate it, and I will not state it. I ran the gauntlet. I went from Waukesha to Milwaukee. I took the St. Paul train at the Milwaukee depot and came to Chicago; arrived here at 8:30, I suppose, in the morning; went to the house of my friend Mrs. Ames, on Morgan Street, sent for my wife and had a talk with her. I sent word to Captain Black that I was here and prepared to surrender. He sent word back to me that he was ready to receive me. I met him at the threshold of this building, and we came up here together. I stood in the presence of this court. I have nothing, not even now, to regret.”

The speeches of the defendants occupied three days—the 7th to the 9th of October, inclusive—and when Parsons had finished the court proceeded to pronounce sentence. Judge Gary said:

Thus closed the most remarkable trial which ever engaged the attention of a judge and jury in America. It was begun, as stated, on the 21st day of June, 1886, and ended on the 20th day of August, thus occupying exactly two months. I cannot close this chapter without paying a deserved tribute to Mr. E. F. L. Gauss, who acted as interpreter throughout the trial. A very large proportion of the witnesses testified in foreign tongues, but in all the mass of testimony rendered into English by Mr. Gauss, not a syllable of the translation was ever challenged.

Chief Bailiff Henry Severin, with his staff of twenty-six men, had charge of the eight defendants. It was his duty to bring the prisoners from and to the court, to preserve order in the crowded court-room, and to guard the jury, escorting them to and from their hotel and in their walks, and watching out to prevent any attack by the malcontents upon the officers of the court.