ham. "Hang these eight men and save our institutions," shouted Grinnell; "these are the leaders; make examples of them," yelled the prosecution in addressing the court and jury. Yes, we are Anarchists, and for this, your honor, we stand condemned. Can it be that men are to suffer death for their opinions? "These eight defendants," said the State's attorney to the jury, "were picked out and indicted by the grand jury. They are no more guilty than are the thousands who follow them. They were picked out because they were leaders." "Convict them and our society is safe," shouted the prosecution. And this in America, the land for which our fathers fought and freely shed their blood that we, their posterity, might enjoy the right of free speech, free press, and unmolested assemblage.
This diabolical conspiracy against man's inalienable rights, finds its best portrayal in the words of State's Attorney Grinnell, himself one of the chief actors in this gigantic crime. At the conclusion of the trial he was interviewed by the agent of the Associated Press, who sent out a full report from which I quote as follows:
"Do you propose to go ahead at once and bring other leaders of Anarchy to the halter?" Mr. Grinnell replied: "We intend to leave the Anarchists alone for a time, and see whether they have now learned what the right of free speech means in this country, and whether they still hold it to mean that they may incite men to riot, murder, and plunder. But I will say this: We have had in this trial men who were called 'squealers' and 'informers,' three or four of them. From these men we have obtained the names of all the principal Anarchists in Chicago. We have them on the list, and the Anarchists don't know it. I want them to know it now; I want them to know that they are marked men, and if ever a hand is raised to injure a hair of the heads of any juror or person connected with the trial that is now over, every Anarchist might as well consider that his death knell is sounded. We have their names and will bring every one of them to the gallows. Let them understand that."
I suppose your honor has attended the opera bouffe called "The Mikado." You will recollect that the lord high executioner of the mikado of Japan, like Grinnell, had them all "on the list." Grinnell proposes to continue to perpetrate acts which Mayor Harrison says could not be done in any monarchical country with safety, and which, if done in London, would shake Queen Victoria's throne itself. Mr. Grinnell proposes to keep this racket up, to continue it ad infinitum. This man, clothed with a little brief authority, spreads himself like a green-bay tree and gasconades with the fulsomeness of an autocrat. He would with the mailed hand of power silence the people's discontent and preserve law and order with silence of the graveyard and the order that reigned in Warsaw. At the behoof of this petty usurper the Alarm, the paper of which I was an editor, was seized and suppressed. This man seized it; he destroyed the files and the documents connected with the office. He did the same with the German workingmen's daily paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and for several weeks, yes, several weeks, this man compelled its publishers and its editor to submit their editorials to him for his press censorship, he running his blue pencil through such articles as his majesty Grinnell saw fit to interdict.
