outrage. He urged the workers to come prepared to defend themselves. About 3,000 attended the meeting, which was addressed by August Spies, Albert R. Parson and Samuel Fielden, in the order named. Carter H. Harrison, Sr., Mayor of Chicago, attended the meeting. A heavy rainstorm thinned the crowd to a few hundred. When the crowd was thus reduced a force of 180 policemen marched upon it. Fielden cried out to the captain in charge: "This is a peaceable meeting." A bomb was thrown, by whom has never been learned, and a sergeant of police was killed. Eight men were tried for murder, found guilty of being anarchists, and seven were sentenced to be hanged. Spies, Fisher, Engels and Parsons were hanged; Fielden and Schwab had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Oscar Neibe got 15 years penal servitude. Ling is alleged to have committed suicide.
- 154. Did they have a fair trial?
- Of course not. When Governor Altgeld pardoned Fielden, Niebe and Schwab he scored the unusual and prejudiced manner in which the jury had been drawn. Here is how the jury was selected. Judge Joseph E. Gary appointed a special constable, who selected such men as he, the bailiff, shose instead of drawing them out of a box that contained hundreds of names. (It is said that every man who sat on the jury had pledged himself to find the defendants guilty.) Altgeld also stated that the judge by his ruling had made it extremely difficult for the defendants' lawyer to get consideration for the charge; that the jury had been packed; that the judge connived at getting men on the jury who admitted prejudice against the defendants, including a relative of one of the victims of the bomb; that the judge admitted he ruled without precedent when he denied a motion for a new trial; and that the personal bearing of the judge had been extremely unfair throughout the trial. Fair trial! their execution was judicial murder.
- 155. Was there no protest by labor?
- Labor's best protests are not verbal. In the hearts of the workers there is still protest for what was done. The American Federation of Labor convention pleaded for mercy for the men, but Powderly threw his influence against any sympathic expression by the General As-
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