such meetings, and made such speeches, you claim that we are responsible for the action of the person who threw the bomb at the Haymarket. If this is law, then every dissatisfied workingman and woman in America could be convicted for the same reason.
Your honor, this was a class verdict. I will admit one thing: I believe the jury were to a large extent imposed upon. Now, when the State's attorney comes in and brings the gory garments of the police, clotted with blood and filled with holes, and exhibits these garments to the jury—nobody denies that these men were killed—what was that done for? To prove that the policemen had been killed? Nobody denies that, what was it done for? It was done to prejudice that jury, to inflame that jury, and, in the language of Mr. Grinnell when he closed his speech, he says: "Let these things steel your hearts against these miserable wretches and scoundrels."
Suppose this Indianapolis man, sent by monopolists, came here and threw the bomb, and these gory garments are to be thrown around here in the court room before the jury for the purpose of steeling their hearts to bring about the conviction of eight innocent men. I ask your honor—I ask you for another trial.
Lawyer Ingham with clenched fist, swollen neck and blood-shot eyes exclaimed to the jury: "The State of Illinois is strong enough to hang every one of these Anarchists!" Well, who said it was not? But who would believe it mean enough to do so just because it can? The burly brute rapes his helpless victim simply because he is mean enough and strong enough to do so. The bourgeoisie society is not itself, however, unless it commits wholesale outrages upon the proletariat and afterwards gloats over its victims.
The ballot. Your honor, you have heard of this Law and Order League in these United States. It has been organized in Chicago and called a conservators' league or association. It is an organization of big tax-payers, if you have heard of it, and they come out and openly declare that they do not intend to permit the Knights of Labor and the workingmen to come into power through the ballot box. That is their own declaration, made in the papers here at their meetings, in their reports. Of course I don't know anything further about it. But I want to ask you this question, viz.: Don't you think a man who is not able to control his bread—and you know what I mean by that—has a poor chance to control his vote; not a very good chance to control his vote? In other words, don't you think those who control the industries of the country can and do control the votes that country? Don't you think that a man who must sell his labor or starve will sell his vote when the same alternative is presented? Does politics control wealth or wealth politics? Are the economically enslaved politically free? Your honor, political liberty without economic freedom is an empty phrase. The wage slave is a political freeman; yes, he is free to choose from among his economic masters the one who shall rule and govern him. A choice of masters, that is all. So this "Law and Order" League proposes to control the ballots of their wage slaves.
Now, then, the Haymarket, what of it? I had been away to Cincinnati. I went to Cincinnati Saturday night, May 1. I spoke there Sunday morning or during the day, at a great labor demonstration, an eight hour demonstration, a picnic of the workingmen at Cincinnati. They sent for me to come
