It has been evolutionary and revolutionary. The dividing line between evolution and revolution, or that interceptible boundary line where one begins and the other ends can never be designated. Who believed at the time that our fathers tossed the tea into Boston harbor that it meant the first act of the revolution separating this continent from the dominion of George III. and founding this republic here in which we, their descendants, live today? Evolution and revolution are synonymous. Evolution is the incubatory state of revolution. The birth is the revolution-its process the evolution.
What is the history of man with regard to the laboring classes? Originally the earth and its contents were held in common by all men. Then came a change brought about by violence, robbery and wholesale murder, called war. Later, but still way back in history, we find that there were but two classes in the world—slaves and masters. Time rolled on and we find a labor system of serfdom. This serf labor system existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and throughout the world the serf had a right to the soil on which he lived. The lord of the land could not exclude him from its use. But the discovery of America and the developments which followed that discovery and its settlement, a century or two afterwards, the gold found in Peru and Mexico by the invading hosts of Pizarro and Cortez, who carried back to Europe this precious metal, infused new vitality into the commercial stagnant blood of Europe and set in motion those wheels which have rolled on and on, until today commerce covers the face of the earth; time is annihilated and distance is known no more. Following the abolition of the serfdom system was the establishment of the wage labor system. This found its fruition, or birth, rather, in the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1793. It was then for the first time that civil and political liberty was established in Europe. We see, by a mere glance back into history, that the sixteenth century was engaged in a struggle for religious freedom and the right of conscience—mental liberty. Following that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the struggle throughout France which resulted in the establishment of the republic and the founding of the right of political liberty. The struggle today, which follows on in the line of progress and in the logic of events, is the industrial problem, of which we were the representatives, as the State’s attorney has said we were, selected by the grand jury because we were leaders, and are to be punished and consigned to an ignominious death for that reason, that the wage slaves of Chicago and of America may be horrified, terror-stricken, and driven like rats back to their holes, to hunger, slavery, misery and death. The industrial question, following on in the natural order of events, the wage system of industry is now up for consideration; it presses for a hearing; it demands a solution; it cannot be throttled by this district attorney, nor all the district attorneys upon the soil of America. Now, what is this labor question which these gentlemen treat with such profound contempt, for advocating which these distinguished "honorable" gentlemen would throttle and put us to an ignominious death and hurry us like rats into our holes? What is it? You will pardon me if I exhibit some feeling. I have sat here for two months, and these men have poured their vituperations out upon my head and I have not been permitted to utter a single word in my own defense. For two months they have poured their
