The men are now working ten hours a day instead of fourteen and sixteen hours, and instead of being compelled to eat slops like the dogs, and sleep on the stairways or in the barn, they can sleep and work whenever they please. I have helped to establish that, your honor. That is another crime. And I committed a greater crime than that. I saw in the morning when I drove away with my team that the beer brewers of the city of Chicago went to work at 4 o'clock in the morning. They came home at 7 and 8 o'clock at night. They never saw their families or their children by daylight. I said to myself: "If you organize these men they can live like men. Yon can help to make good citizens of them." And everybody said: "They are down low; they are drunkards." I went to work and organized them. I rented a hall and issued an appeal for them, and got them to come, and I organized the men. On Saturday, May 1 or May 2, I was conferring with the beer brewer bosses of Chicago and we had a meeting. I was the chairman of the committee, and I asked the beer brewer bosses to reduce the hours of labor down to ten hours a day, and they did it. On the Monday after I committed that great crime—that was Saturday—I was in session with the beer brewers the whole day. In the evening I took my supper and went to the North Side Turner Hall, where the Union men, over eight hundred strong, were, and I don't know anything about McCormick's, or what Spies had done or said. I entered the hall. I went on the platform and presented the Union with a document signed by every beer brewer of Chicago, guaranteeing ten hours labor and $65 wages—$15 more wages per month, and no Sunday work, to give the men a chance to go to church, as many of them are good Christians. There are a good many Christians among them. So, in that way, I was aiding Christianity—helping the men to go to church.
After the meeting I left the hall, and stepped into the front saloon, and there were circulars lying there called the "revenge" circular. I picked up a couple of them from a table and folded them together and put them in my pocket, not having a chance to read them, because everybody wanted to treat me. They all thought it was by my efforts that they got $15 a month more wages and ten hours a day. Why, I didn't have a chance to read the circulars. From there I went to another saloon across the street, and the president of the Beer Brewers' Union was there; he asked me to walk with him, and on the way home we went into Heine's saloon. He was talking to Heine about the McCormick affair, and I picked up a circular and read it, and Heine asked me: "Can you give me one?" I gave him one and he laid it back on his counter.
That is my statement. You can believe it or not; but Heine didn't testify any other way. Mr. Grinnell indicted me for murder. That is the whole story in short of what I had to do with this Haymarket affair. So you see I had nothing to do with it, and didn't know anything about it. The next day I read in the paper that Attorney Walker—certainly an honorable man—was in the saloon. It was kind of dangerous for him evidently, for he subsequently denied being there. However that may have been, I was there.
And, your honor, I committed another crime. I saw that the grocery clerks and other clerks of this city worked until 10 and 11 o'clock in the evening. I issued a call and rented a hall, and paid for the hand-bills, and called
