Now, then, I want to call your attention to what I regard as the origin of this bomb at the Haymarket. I believe it was instigated by eastern monopolists to produce public sentiment against popular movements, especially the eight hour movement then pending, and that some of the Pinkertons were their tools to execute the plan. To sustain this accusation I submit to you the following facts: Just exactly four days before the grand strike for eight hours throughout the United States, and only one week before the Haymarket tragedy, the New York Times, one of the leading organs of railroad, bank, coal, telegraph and telephone monopoly, published the following notice, under date of April 25, 1886, in an editorial on the condition of the market and the causes of the existing decline and the panicky symptoms which existed. The New York Times says: "The strike question is, of course, the dominant one, and is disagreeable in a variety of ways. A short and easy way to settle it is urged in some quarters, which is to indict for conspiracy every man who strikes and summarily lock him up. This method would undoubtedly strike a wholesome terror into the hearts of the working classes. Another way suggested is to pick out the leaders and make such an example of them as would scare others into submission." This was the 25th of April, an editorial in the New York Times, written in view of the contemplated strike on the 1st of May for eight hours. The New York Tribune, now no longer the oracle of the great American tribune, Horace Greeley, that defender of oppressed humanity, but the servile organ of the most oppressive forms of monopoly, said just about this time in an editorial: "The best policy would be to drive workingmen into open mutiny against the law." The New York Herald, at that date suggested by its contemporaries to make examples of the leaders in the short hour movement, said: "Two hours taken from ten hours of labor throughout the United States by the proposed short hour movement would make a difference annually of hundreds of millions in value, both to the capital invested in industries and to existing stock." The issue of the hour, then, with the New York and Chicago Stock Exchanges and Board of Trade and Produce Exchanges was how to preserve the steadiness of the market and maintain the fictitious values then and there rapidly falling under the paralyzing influence of the simultaneous eight hour demand throughout the United States.
Your honor, so common is this impression among people, so common is this belief among the labor organizations and workingmen of this country that I wish to impress upon you the view which I present. I am a member of the Knights of Labor, that is an organization of nearly a million and a half American workingmen. I am a member of my union, the Printers' Union, and have been for fourteen years in the city of Chicago. This is a national and international organization with some sixty odd thousand members in the United States. These organizations publish a great many newspapers in America, and every single one of them believes that that bomb at the Haymarket was instigated by the monopolists to break drown the eight hour movement. Hear our side. You have heard the Citizens' Association's side of this question, you have heard the bankers' side, you have heard the railway magnates' side, you have heard the Board of Trade's side; I ask you now to listen also to the side of the workers. I might read you here extract after extract from these papers to show you that what I state is true. I will read
