The Chicago Martyrs by John P. Altgeld

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ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDBN.
was something that was worth while for me to use my energiesin propagating,
and I did it. I could not help it. There are sloths that are sometimes called
men who are never influenced by anytbing of tbat kind, but I was not of that
character and that is the reason that I am bere today. So intense and earnest
was I at that time that I was at one and tbe same time the Sunday school
superintendent of a little Sunday school, a class teacher, a local preacher, and
what was called an exhorter; held four different positions.
I came to the United States in 1868. I bave preached in Ohio, and I
came to Chicago in 1869. There are monuments of beauty, of stability, and
evidences of progress in the city of Chicago, and you can hardly go through a
street in this city that I have not dropped my sweat upon, that had been produced
by the labor of my hands. And just bere let me tell you that when the
indictment had been procured against me and my comrades here, it was
accompanied by the statement tbat tbese men had been deluding their dupes
in order to make money out of them. When the trial was in progress the
only man who could have answered the qupstion as to whether we had made
money out of our agitation was ZeIlpr, the secretary of the Central Labor
Union, and when he was asked the question whether we ever received any
money for speaking and organizing unions in that organization, the gentleman
who had been instrumental in attaching that to the indictment in orrIer
to prejudice the people against us before the trial should come on against DSfor
there is nothing in the world that can prejudice a man so much as to be
charged with having impoRed upon some one for mercenary motives, and this
is creditable to society-when the trial came on and this man who could have
testified to that, who could have substantiated it if it had been true, waR
asked the question, each one of the· gentlemen who were interested in its
being proven true for their side of the case at once sprang to their feet and
objected to the question being asked. We bave been tried by a jury that has
found us guilty. You will be tried by a jury now that will find you guilty.
Being of an inquiring disposition or turn of mind, and having observed
that there was something wrong in our social system, I attended some meetings
of workingmen and compared what they said with my own observation.
I knew there was something wi·ong. .
My ideas did not become settled as to what was the remedy, but when
they did, I carried the same energy and the same determination to bring abou t
that remedy that I had applied to ideas which I had possessed years before.
There is always a period in every individual's life when some sympathetic
chord is touched by EOme other person. That is the open sesame that carries
conviction. The ground may have all been prepared. The evidence may all
have been accumulated, but it has not formed any shape; in fact, the child
has not been born. The new idea has not impressed itself thoroughly when
that sympathetic chord is touched, and the person is thoroughly convinced
of the truth of the idea. It was so in my investigation of political economy.
I knew there was something wrong, but I did not know what the remedy was,
but discussing the condition of things and the different remedies one day, a
person said to me that Socialism meant equal opportunities-and that was
the touch. From that time I became a Socialist; I learned more and more
what it was. I knew that I had found the right thing; and I had found the
medicine that was calculated to cure the ills of 60ciety. Having found it I
had a ~ight to advocate it, and I did. The constitution of the United States,
when It says: "The right of free speech eha11 not be abridged," gives every
man the right to speak his thoughts..
I have advocated the principles of Socialism and social equality, and for
that and no other reason am I here, and is sentence of death to be pronounced
upon me. What is Socialism? Taking somebody else's property? That is
what Socialism is in the common acceptation of the term. No; but if I were
to answer it as shortly and as curtly as it is answered by its enemies, I would
say it is preventing somebody else from taking your property. '
But Socialism is equality. Socialism recognizes the fact that no man in
society is responsible for what he is; that all the ills that are in society are
the production of poverty; and scientific Socialism says that you must go to
the root of the evil. There is no criminal statistician in the world hut will acknowledge
that all crime, when traced to its origin, is the product of poverty.
It has been said that it was inflammatory for me to say that the present social
system degraded men until they became mere animals. Go through this city
into the lo~ lodging houses where men are huddled together into the smallest
possible space, living in an infernal atmosphere of death and disease and I
will ask you to draw your silks and broad-cloaths close to you when th~Be men
pass you. Do you think that these men deliberately, with a full knowledge
of what they are doing, choose to become that class of animals? Not one of
them. They are the products of conditions, of certain environments in which
they were born, and which have impelled them resistlessly into what they
are. And we have this loadstone. You who wish it could be taken from the
shoulders of society, what is it? When those men were children, put them.
into an environment where they would have had the best results of civilization
around them, and they would never have willfully chosen a condition
like that. Some cynic might say that this would be a very nice thing Jor
these men. Society, with its rapidity of production of the means of existence
is capable of doing that without doing an injury to a single individual; and
the great masses of wealth owned by individuals in this and the old world
have been produced in exactly the same proportion as these men have been
degraded-and they never could have been accumulated in any other way. I
do not charge that every capitalist willfully and maliciously conspires to bring
about these results, but I do charge that it has been done, and I do charge
that it is a very undesirable condition of things, and I claim that SocialisIIi
would cure the world of that ulcer.
These are my ideas in short on Socialism. The ultra patriotic sentiment
of the American people-and I suppose the same comparative sentiment is
felt in England, France and Germany-is that no man in this country need
be poor. The class who are not poor think so. The class who are poor are
beginning to think differently; that under existing conditions it is impossible
that some should not be poor.
Fortunes are made, and I will tell you ·how it is done. The Chicago T1'ib·lme,
in its New Year's issue of 1885, I believe, drew attention to the production
of the meane of human use and necessity in the city of Chicago during
til pr vious year. It carefully estimated the cost of the raw material, the
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