The Chicago Martyrs by John P. Altgeld

50
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
51
pretation of the language used that !;light, ,there was anything in that speech
that could reasonably be called incendiary.
You will ,bear in mind that I said" Men in their blind ra~e attacked Mc­
Cormick's, and the police shot them down." Now, certainly a man who
charges a class of people with(toing something" in their blind rage," cannot
be said to approve of their acts; cannot be said to he encouraging tbat blindness,
and the fact that I said" in their blind rage," shows that I did not
approve of attacking McCormick's; that there was an underlying meaning to
it, which, when read between the lines, explains all that it should logically
have meant. "When men in their blind rage attacked McCormick's, the
, police shot them down." There was a conflict' between these men. As I have
claimed here al,ld elsewhere in the city, these men did it in their ignorance.
They did not understand it. They looked upon McCormick as a cause of their
trouble. We have been represented-or at least they had drawn that inference
from disputes which had occurred with McCormick in the last year or
two-that it was such men as McCormick that were the cause of their trouble,
and in their blindness and their ignorance they attacked McCormick's building.
It is not disputed that Isaid the words Just quoted. Now, if these men
had understood, as Sociaiists understand it, this industrial question, th~y
would have known that it was foolish and ridiculous to think that the\' could
better tbeir condition by attacking a person's property. If they had'understood
this social question as Socialists understand it, they would have understood
that it was the system and not the instrument of the system, not the
victim of that system. I claim that McCormick, Jay Gould, and William H.
Vanderbirt are as much the victims of the system which obtains, and which I
claim is an unjust'one, as are the beggars who walk the streets and crowd the
station houses to keep themselves from being frozen to death in the winter.
And it is these particular classes that are arrayed against each other. True,
one of the victims gets a better share of the profits of the system than the
other. They are no less the victims, and the conflicts and quarrels that exist
among them affect them both more or less. Therefore I say that when I said,
"Men in their blind rage attacked McCormick's, and the police shot them
down," it Wll:S carrying out that idea, which was intended to be conveyed to
these people, that it was the system which protected McCormick's inter-ests.
But, as I went on, I said: "When McCormick attacked their interests, the
police did not attack McCormick." I had claimed that the present social
system is sustained more in the interests of one class than in the interests of
another. I claim that it is necessarily so. Now, McCormick's factory may
be said to be his tools, if you please-his means of getting a living. And certainly
when the rioters attack his factory they attack his means of livelihood.
The police came to McCormick's defense. I believe, your honor-and I am
, well acquainted with the policemen in the district in which I live-that there
is not one of them who believes that I entered into a conspiracy to kill a
policeman. I have no better friends than the poli\::emen who have traveled
that beat•. And I do not say that policemen go to attack rioters because it is
their desire to do so. It is because they are the preservers of peace under the
present social relations, and they were sent there to keep these men from
destroying the means of livelihood of McCormick.,
" I have frequently said that there was a conflict between two classes of
_Iociety. They must necessarily come fnto contact with each other under the
present regulations. And there are times when McCormick, in his blind c~n·
ception of what he thinks is his interest, attacks the means of livelihood of
those who have no property and no machines. I said that when this side of
the case was presented to the present organization, which maintains the present
social relation, there was nobody that came to the assistance of the classes'
which were attacked by McCormick. I drew the inference that the arrange-
, ments were wrong, because of the fact that those who protect McCormick
when he is attacked, do not protect the working classes when they are
attacked by McCormick. They will necessarily come in conflict under these
regulations. How? Sometimes McCormick has reduced wages. Wages are
the means of existence to those wbo have no property, and who are compelled
to live by the sale of their labor. It is their machinery, and the police have
never come to the assistance of the working classes, when their means of living
have been attacked in that way. Sometimes they' are attacked by a machine.
',Do not understand me to say that I blame McCormick for buying a machine,
because under the present social and- industrial system men have the right to
buy machines, if the system is right. But if the system is wrong, they have
DOt; and it is the system that is responsible, and not they.
, I am given to understand, and I believe it to be true, that about a year
ago McCormick introduced some moulding machines into his factory. McCormick
employed about 125 moulders before the introduction of these machines.
• Before that time he had a strike of his men owing to a dispute about wages, or
about the regulationsof the Union to which these moulders belonged. MeCor-
, mick had acceded to certain terms. He had to do it because of the strength
of the Union. He could not get any moulders to do his work because the
Union resolved that it would not work except its terms were acceded to. But
there was something else which McCormick found out that was Dot subject to
any Union. That was a moulding machine. And when McCormick had got
possession of the moulding machine he had got possessionof machinery which
did with the assistance of twenty-five men what it had required 125 men to
do before. Don't you think, your honor; that that was an attack upon the
interests of these twenty men out of twenty-five, or 100 out of 125? It would
, not inake any difference whether he had a right to do it. I am not speakill'g
of that phase of the question. These men had families after the introduction
of those machines as they had before. The families cried for bread. The
children cried for shoes, and the ~omen cried perhaps for a sewing machine.
These hundred men were tUIlled out, and then McCormick said: "Now I am
'mallter of the situation. I will take back all the conditions that I have m'ade
with my men when I needed 125 of them."
The rate of wages is regulated by the number of men who are out of emp~oyment.
' When four men out of five are turned out of employment, there is
Dothing in the world for these fonr men to do but to bid and see how much
lower each one can work on that man's job who is retained than the others.
It- tends to a rednction of wages. And the introduction of machinery in that
way is a direct attack upon the interests of those who have no means and can­
DQt have any. Maxwell Brothers introduced' 80me box-m\lo!ring machines