down. I stayed there Sunday. I went to their grove Sunday night, and I started back to Chicago Monday night, reached there Tuesday morning, May 4, and went home about 8 o'clock and saw my wife. I took a nap on the lounge. About 10 o'clock she woke me, then she says to me, "We had a very interesting meeting last Sunday of the tailor girls, the sewing girls of Chicago, a large mass meeting. I spoke to them, addressed the meeting; they were anxious to organize, and I think we ought to do something to help those sewing women to organize and join the eight hour movement, because they work harder than anybody; these great tailor machines are very hard to work." So ended the conversation. She showed me the importance of having a meeting called at once and doing something for the eight hour movement for the girls. Well, I went on my way down town and I went to Greif's Hall. All the halls were occupied; this was during the eight hour strike. All the halls were occupied. A great many meetings were being held. I could get a hall nowhere else and the meeting was to be a business meeting anyway. It was not to be a general meeting, it was merely to appropriate money and take action and appoint a committee to get up hand bills and get some hall and so forth. That was all, so it did not require much; any ordinary room, any little room, anywhere, would have done for that, and the offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitumg, at 107 Fifth avenue, suited that purpose; so I announced it in the News about 12 o'clock, I believe, and it was in the News in the afternoon of that day, not stating what the meeting was for, only it was important business. So at 8 o'clock or about half-past seven that night—my wife and Mrs. Holmes left my home at No. 245 West Indiana street, accompanied by my two little babes—you have seen them here; a little girl of five and a boy of seven; you have seen them in the court room often. It was a nice evening and we walked down town; we walked until we got to Randolph and Halsted streets—however, in the afternoon, late in the afternoon, at the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, I learned that there was going to be a meeting at the Haymarket. But the meeting at No. 107 Fifth avenue had already been called, and I could not attend it; I could not go over there. At half-past seven I left home with my wife, Mrs. Holmes and the children. We got to Halsted street. Two reporters, seeing me, thought there was a chance to get an item and came over to me—the Times man and the Tribune man; I forget their names.
"Hello, Parsons, what is the news?" says one.
"I don't know anything."
"Going to be a meeting here tonight?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"Going to speak?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"I have got another meeting on hand tonight."
And some playful remark was made. I slapped one of them on the back. I was quite well acquainted with the men and we made one or two brief remarks and, as they testified on the stand, I got on the car right then and there with my wife and two children, in company with Mrs. Holmes and they saw that. I went down to Fifth avenue. When I got down there I found four or five other ladies there and about—well, probably, twelve or fifteen
