them. And that is all that they can possibly mean by any kind of gymnastics. When I say it does turn them out upon the wayside; when I know—and Captain Schaack knows how man men there were last winter, and the winter before that, who came to him and asked him if he would please allow them to sleep on the station floor, to keen them from the inclemency of the weather—I say it has no mercy. And why should such men have mercy upon it as to keep it in existence? Why should they not destroy it as long as it is destroying them?
Your honor, after the Haymarket meeting, after I had escaped form the showers of bullets with a slight wound, and after I had been around, as I told you on the witness stand, trying to find my comrades who had been at the meeting, to find out whether they whether they were alive or not, I went home. The explosion of the bomb was as much a surprise to me as it was to any policeman. You can judge how I felt at that time, not knowing what damage had been done, the suddenness of such a calamity coming down upon one, and knowing, as I must have, that I should be held in some respect, at least, responsible. After getting my wound dressed I went home. It was late. My mind was racked with the thought of what would occur on the morrow, and I finally resolved, as any innocent man would have done, if they wanted me to explain my connection with this catastrophe, let them come and ask me to do so. Mr. Slayton has testified here that, when he came to my house, I was sitting in my room.
I didn't attempt to run away. I had been out walking around the street that morning, and there was plenty of opportunity for me to have been hundreds of miles away. When he came there I opened the door to him. He said he wanted me I knew him by sight and I knew what was his occupation. I said: "All right, I will go with you." I have said here that I thought when the represent»byes of the State had inquired by means of their policemen as to my connection with it, that I should have been released. And I say now, in view of all the authorities that have been read on the law and regarding accessories that there is nothing in the evidence that has been introduced to connect me with that affair. One of the Chicago papers, at the conclusion о the State's attorney's case, said that they might have proven more about these men, about where they were and what they were doing on the 2d and 3d of May. When I was told that Captain Schaack had got confessions out of certain persons connected with this affair, I said: "Let them confess all they like. As long as they will tell only the truth, I care nothing for their confessions." I had nothing to do with it, no knowledge of it, and the gentlemen there know it.
I am going to speak about something that has not come out in the testimony I have a right to tell it now. I do not do it with any vindictive feeling I do not do it to hurt anybody, but in the hope that, in the last few days that I have to live, I may do some good by telling it, and I hope what I am going to state will have the tendency to do some good. I was arrested and brought to the Central Station. I had always understood that a man who was arrested on suspicion of having committed a crime was to be considered innocent until he was proven guilty. I have received a great deal more consideration since I have been proven guilty in this court than before I was so
