the testimony fairly and impartially and decide whether they are guilty or innocent?"
Juryman Reed said:
"When they do not teach a doctrine that undermines the law, that don't break the law, then there is no objection to the labor organizations. There could not be any. I have a prejudice against any man who seeks to undermine the social and political laws of the country. I am a Freethinker."
Now, this man condemned us to death, because we seek to undermine the social and political laws of the country. He is a Freethinker; we accepted him for that reason, because we thought that, as he claimed the right of free thought on religious matters, he would certainly be consistent and give us the right of free thought on political and social questions. But alas! Juryman Reed is a Boston man. That is the country where they used to burn witches and condemn religious heretics to death. The right to free thought has been acquired after a century of bloodshed and struggle, and now, because we, the Anarchists, are social and political heretics, he strangles us on the gibbet. Juryman Reed concedes the right of free thought while he denies us the right of free action. What is the one worth without the other? What a mockery to say to the slave, "You are free to think you ought to be free, but you have no right to be free." To compel me to work and to suffer for your benefit, and then console me with the assurance that I am free to think what I please about it, is the very mockery of liberty. This is the fruit of authority, of force, of government. Juror Reed would have been hung one hundred years ago. He hangs me today. Do you wonder that I am an Anarchist?"
I will read from the Alarm an article headed "White Slaves—The Bitter Cry of Poor Working Girls—A True Picture of Civilization Under the Infamies of Capitalism—Life, Liberty, and Happiness in America—Facts for Fathers and Mothers to Consider." Then follows a two column article in the New York Evening Telegram, a capitalistic newspaper, descriptive of the life of the sewing girls in New York city—American girls—the future mothers of American citizens. I will not take up the time of the court in reading it in full. I will read a short extract as follows:
"It must be confessed that the outlook for labor in all its branches of industry is most discouraging, and revives the idea of that terrible story in Blackwood, where a prison of iron has been so constructed as to gradually contract until it becomes an iron shroud that crushes the prisoner within to a shapeless pulp. Labor is encircled by an iron shroud made of two factions, the tendency of capital to concentrate itself in few hands and the undeniable fact that the number of laborers will always increase in greater ratio than the amount of employment for them. These items alone would, if not counteracted by some system that is vital, reduce the working class in time to a condition far worse than slavery. In fact, slavery has been in all past ages the one remedy for the overpowering woes of labor, but a remedy that undermined and ruined each civilization in its turn. In the meantime, it is to be hoped that the women of America will take up the cause of their sex and publicly denounce the monsters who propose to young girls to work sixty hours a week for less than will feed and clothe them. Young as is the American nationality, it stands front to front today with the wonderful problem of civilization.
