The Chicago Martyrs by John P. Altgeld

54
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
ADDRESS OF SAMUEL FIELDEN.
55
wayside! I nave reference to the introduction of machinery-twenty out of
twenty-five turned out of employment. Arethey not tu'rned out upon the
wayflide? Any question about it? 1£ they were laws that did not turn men
out upon the wayside, and I knew that they did not, I would not tell anybody
that they did.
'
,. Thomas Cooper, a chartist in England, was once visited in his old ag~ by
a friend of his. A little girl came up to'him with a book in her hand with
pictures in it, opened the front of it and showed him the fly leaf, and she said,
"Mr. Cooper, write something for me." And Mr. Cooper wrote:
"Love truth, my child, love truth;
It will gladden thy morn of youth,
And in the noon of life,
'l'hough it cost 'thee pain and strife
To keep the truth in its brightness,
Still cleave to thy uprightness,"
If I am to be convicted-hanged for telling the truth-the little child that
kneels by its mother's side on the West Side today, and tells its motller that
she wants her papa to come home, and to whom I had intended, as soon as
its prattling tongue should commence to talk, to teach that beautiful sentitpent-that
the child had better never be taught to read; had better never be
taught that sentiment-to love truth. If we are to be convicted of murder
because we dare to tell what we think is the truth, then it would be better that
everyone of your school houses were reduced to the ground and not one stone
left upon another. If you teach l your children to read, they will acquire curiosity
from what they read. They will think, and they will search for the
meaning of this and that. Th'ey will'arrive at conclusions. And then, if they
love the truth, they must tell to each other what is truth or what they think
is the truth. That is the sum of my offending. It turns them out upon the
wayside' when it is used as it is.
'
Mr. Powderly, in his official address to a large assembly of tbe representatives
of labor at Richmond, Va., said the other day that Anarchy was the
legitimate product of monopoly. I have said you must abolish the private
property system. Mr. English said that I said "it had no mercy; so ought
you." Probably if I said" it had no mercy," I did not say the latter part of
the sentence in that way. I probably said, "So you ought not to have any
mercy." Is it doubted by anybody-that the system has no mercy? Does it
not pursue its natural course irrespective of whom it hurts or upon whom it
confers benefits? The private property system then, in my opinion, being a
system that only subserves the interests of a few, and can only subserve the
interests of a few, has no mercy. It cannot stop for the consideration of such
a sentiment. Naturally it cannot. So you ought,not to bavemercy on the
private property system, because it is well known that there are many people
in the community with prejudices in their minds. They have grown up under
certain social regulations,. and they believe that these social regulations are
right, just as Mr. Grinnell believes that everything in America is rigbt,
because he happened to be born here. And they have such a prejudice against
anyone who attacks those systems. Now, I say they ought not to have any
mercy upon a system that does not maintain their interests. They ought
not to have th~t respect for them that would interfere with their abolishing
ihetp. And that is all that they can possibly mean by any:kind of gymnastics.
When I say it does turn theIP out upon the wayside; when I know-and
Captain Schaack knows how many men there were last winter, and the win­
~r before that, who came to him and asked him if he would please allow
them to sleep on the station floor, to keep them from the inclemency of the
weather,-I say it has no mercy, And why should su~h 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 from the
sb~wers 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 were alive or not, I went home. 'fhe explosion
of the bomb was as much a surprise to me 8S it was to any policeman.
You can judge how I felt at that time, not knowing wbat 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 tinally
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 hun­
~reds 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 rilZht, I will'go with you." I have said here that I thought,
when the representatives 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 Jaw and
regardinll: 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 of 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 un,til he was proven guilty. I have received a great deal more con­
11derati'on since I have been proven guilty in this court than before I was so