The Chicago Martyrs by John P. Altgeld

48
.A:DDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
49
I do not suppose that there ever was a cnminal asked to state why death
should not be passed upon him, that ever succeeded in convincing the judge
that it should not. I do not expect that this will be any exception to the
rule. I can only conclude that the reason ·this is asked of each l'risoner is
that he may, having failed to convince the jury that has tried him, convince
the great jury that will sit upon his case when he is gone, that he is not guilty.
I expect to succeed in convincing the latter, though I have failed in the former.
I claim here now, on a reasonable interpretation of the language which
I have used at the Haymarket, and which I have admitted I have used, and
there is not a man in the row by the State's attorney who will claim that I
have shown a desire on this witness stand to deny anything that I have done
-everything that I have done has been open and above-board. If there is
, anything that I have hated in this world ever since I knew anything at all, it
was trickery. If I had been a trickster I could have possibly been somewhere
else today. .
I have been charged with having said: "Throttle the law!" Your honor
will bear in mind that I had quoted from Foran's speech when I said that,
and it was a deduction, assuming that Foran spoke the truth. If it is true, as
Foran says, that nothing can be got by legislation-legislation is supposed to
btl for the interests of the community-if it is not for their interest, it certainly
operates against t'hat portion of them whose interests it does not subserve.
Legislation cannot be made that will not affect somebody'in Bome particular
way. It must affect them in some way. Then if nothing can be got by
legislation, and hundreds of men are paid every year to legislate for the community,
it is a foregone fact, and its logic cannot be disputed, that if that portion
of the coummunity which can receive no benefit from legislation does not
throttle that law which is doing this legislation it will throttle them. The
word" throttle" is supposed to be a terrible word. There would not have
• been anybody in this community who would have claimed that the word is a
bad word to use if the bomb had not been thrown on the night of May 4. It
is a word widely used as meaning to abolish; if you take the metaphors h'om
the English language, you have no language at all. It is not necessary, your
honor, that because a man says" throttle the law" he means" kill the policemen."
There is no such necessary connection. If I were to advise a man to
kill Phil. Armour, would you conclude by that tbat I advised somebody to kill
•
his seivan.t or somebody employed by him? I was speaking of these laws
which could do no benefit to the working classes, and which have been
referred to by Foran. Now, policemen generally are not men of very intellectual
calibre. They are not men who ought in any civilized community to
be made the censors of sptoech" or of the press. If I, on that night, had used
languag.. which could reasonably have been interpreted as being incendiary,
how is it that every witness on both sides of this case has testified that the
meeting was getting on more peaceful during the d~livery of my speech?
Surely that shows that the meeting did not understand it as inciting to riot,
and t_hat it had no such effect upon the m-eeting.
_
• .When Harrison left Mr. Bonfield; it is claimed by both of them that Hiurison.said
to Bonfield, "I guess there is no danger. There will be no trouble."
, And'Bonfield says, "Well; I will keep the police· here and see if there will be
I
any trouble." The testimony 88 to.. the character of the meeting shows that it,
became more quiet during the delivery of Fielden's speech. Where was the
daiJger then that ~ustifiedthe marching of 200 armed police upon it? If I had
said something that should not have been said-something that was an incitement
to'riot, there was still no necessity of these policemen provoking a riot
that. nij:(ht, because there w.as no indication that there was going to be trouble.
It has never been claimed by the prosecution that we had anything to do with
what they had heard as to the possible blowing up of the freight house. They
could have let the meeting disperse peaceably,- of its own volition, and they
could have come to my house and arrested me for that incendiary language,
if it had been such. There was no necessity for provoking a collision that
night, because the meeting has been proven overwhelmingly to have been a
peaceful meeting up to the close, and I claim that the language, reasonably
interpreted, was not necessarily incendiary. A newspaper of this city is discussing
the coal monopoly, as it is called-perhaps that is incendiary langua~e.
The constitution of t.he United States has never clearly defined what
incendiary l!lnguage is, that I know of. If it had I should have informed
'myself of what it was, and tried to keep myself within the bounds.
A recess was taken until two o'clock.
Upon the reconvening of the court in the afternoon, Mr. Fielden continued
his speech.
Your honor: When we adjourned for dinner I was speaking to you about
my version of the meeting, of the language used at the Haymarket on May 4.
~ was speaking to you about the character of ~hat meeting and the unjustifiable
interruption of it. I was trying to point out to you and show you by the
~vidence that it was a peaceable meeting; that there was no indication in the
demeanor of the crowd of a desire to comIIlit any act which would make them
liable tq arrest and punishment. I was giving you my version of the sentence,
"Throttle the law." I told you that it was a deduction based upon an assumptiori,
and, in my opinion was a logical deduction, that if laws are enacted
for the community, which cannot benefit one class in that comm]lnity, it is
the interest of that class that the laws should be abolished and the law-making
machines' discontinued. I ought to know, myself, what I meant. Your
honor has put an interpretation on the expression, "throttle the law," that it .
.meant to kill the police because they were the servants of the law; and that
throttlJng the law could not mean what I said in its literal sense, it being an
intangible thing to do. Now, in the light of the principles that have been
eworn to on this stand by witnesses for the State, I say in the definition which
Parsons gave of the intentions and objec.ts of the Socialists, in addressing the
'meeting at the Haymarket, it was not the intention of that organization to
take any man's life; that it was merely the system that made such men' 'poseible
that we are aimipg at. When we consider that it has been provE;jn by
witnesses on both sides that that was the object of the organization to which
Mr. Parsons and I belonged, will not t):J.e words, "throttle the law," bear another
interpretation, and ll. more plausible one? The law is an institution;
tb policemen are a necessary part of it. It is' the doing away with the insti~
tl\t1on, not the policeman-and I defy anyone to prove that, on a fair iIiter-