classes of this city who had read of the homeless and down-trodden and desperately poor of London creating the havoc and consternation that they had in the east end of London by throwing bricks through the Carleton Club windows, need not be surprised if the same causes here would bring out a mob which would march down Michigan avenue and throw a brick through the window of the Calumet Club. I said that the same causes existing here would produce the same results. A reporter of one of the morning papers came into the hall after I had got through, and was sitting down in the hall, and the next morning he stated that Samuel Fielden had said that he would lead a mob down Michigan avenue and he himself would throw a brick through the window of the Calumet Club. And it is on such testimony as this that I have been convicted of murder.
The Board of Trade meeting has been referred to, and it has been claimed by that intellectual class of people, the detectives, that that night I advised the people to go in there, and partake of their twenty dollar supper. Johnson, himself, though not the most truthful of persons, says he did not hear anything of that kind. I will say here for the edification of the gentlemen who have produced this conviction, I defy them to find a single report of that meeting in any of the morning papers that bears such a statement, and they all contained reports of it. They come in here and give evidence worse than their remarkable reports. Not one reporter in the next morning's papers reported me as having said anything of the kind. What I did say on that occasion, was that the Board of Trade of this city had received considerable eulogy from the press of this country for the grand structure they had erected in which to trade on the means of existence of the people of the country. It was claimed I said that that monument of architectural beauty had cost nearly $2,000,000. I repeat this now, because any of you who read the papers that morning will remember that you have seen this report. I said before it had been in existence many years as a Board of Trade, it would have cost the people of Chicago and the northwest two billion dollars. I said nothing about going in there. I said that the eulogy that had been given to these men should not go unrebuked; that the working classes, on whose substance the Board of Trade had been built, had been called to that meeting to discuss this question, and to get up a demonstration which would march around the Board of Trade and show them that not all the community was eulogizing them and their business; that there was an element in it which disapproved of Boards of Trade. That was all there was of that speech.
Much has been said of the American Group meetings. In the spring of 1880 a gentleman came here from Washington, and attended our meetings. He had studied the labor question. He listened to what we had to say, and disapproved our position. I challenged him to a public discussion. He came and stayed at the Palmer House, and the next Sunday we had a debate on the principles of Socialism, he claiming that these were not the means by which the condition of society would be renovated, and I claiming that they were. Since this trial has been in progress that gentleman has written a letter to us informing us that be was willing to come upon the stand here and testify that our meetings were not for the purpose of inciting people to riot, but merely for the discussion of economic questions. And that was all the
