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44
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.

meetings were for. I was not indicted for inciting to riot. If I bad been, I could have brought a good deal of this evidence in. Twenty men were in the witness room ready to testify to the Board of Trade meeting and the language used there on that and other occasions where we had spoken; but we thought we were being tried for murder. We found out afterwards we were being tried for Anarchy, and that was the reason we did not think it necessary to bring those men upon the stand. There was a separate indictment for inciting to riot, as well as the indictment for murder, and that evidence would have been proper to combat the charge of inciting to riot.

After the Board of Trade demonstration we came back to No. 107 Fifth avenue, and Mr. Parsons and Spies and I spoke from the window. I told the people on that occasion that they had shown that they disapproved of Boards of Trade; that they had possibly put a bee in the bonnet of the Board of Trade men. I advised them to go home and study political economy and learn what was their position in society, but not one word advising them to go to Marshall Field's. But it is very clear why there should have been so much testimony brought in here regarding Marshall Field. The foreman of the jury was one of Marshall Field's salesmen. He depended upon him for his daily wages; he depended on him for preferment. A witness was brought in here who testified before the coroner’s jury to hearing a conversation in Crane's alley previous to the Haymarket meeting, between Spies and Schwab, and got them held to the grand jury, and Marshall Field has given that man a job. This is brought in before the man on the jury, who is dependent on Marshall Field for his living. He has given a job to the man who gave such damaging testimony before the coroner’s jury in order to get our conviction. Why, was it not plain to anybody why there should have been so much Marshall Field lugged in here? When it was shown to the employee of Marshall Field, who is on the jury, that his employer has given a job to the principal witness against the prisoners, since giving his evidence against them at the coroner's inquest, was it not a hint to the juror as to what kind of a verdict his employer wanted? On no occasion, except as illustrating a point has anybody, at any Socialistic meeting that I ever attended, advised anybody to go to Marshall Field's and taking anything. We have pointed, perhaps to Marshall Field. I, on the lake front, have pointed to Pullman's building there to illustrate a point; and the English language might as well be changed to the Patagonian language if illustrations are not to be used. At the large demonstration at the Market Square, when there were 10,000 people there before they marched to Ogden's Grove, Parsons and I spoke there, and I distinctly told them that the Socialists did not propose the destruction of property or the robbing of houses. I pointed at the buildings, but did not propose anything of that kind. I have told them so many a time.

All the meetings of the American Group were for the purpose of discusing things. Of course, in the discussion the persons on the different sides always advocate their own views; therefore they were for the advocacy of anything, and the discussion of anything, and many men of different shades of opinion have been at those meetings, and know that there were no meetings of the American Group held for the purpose of treason or inciting to riot. You may have satisfied these twelve jurymen that there was, but these men outside know it was not so.