The Chicago Martyrs by John P. Altgeld

86
ADDRESS OF ALBERT R. PARSONS.
ADDRESS OF ALBERT R. PARSONS.
87
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knows? My own deliberate opinion concerning this Haymarket affair is that
the death-dealing missile was the work, the deliberate work of monopoly,
the act of those who themselves charge us with the deed. I am not alone in
this view of the matter.
Let me first of all call your attention to the pre-existing conspiracy of monopoly
against the American people, which I believe culminated in the Haymarket
there. I will give you now a brief outline or history of this great crime'
of the principles of the Ion!!: antecedent conspiracy on the part of the Chicag~
Times and Tribune to use hand grenades, recommending the rifle diet for strikers,
and arsenic and strychnine for the unemployed, as the outcome of Gould's
admonition in the New York Tribune that ~t is soon that American working.
men must prepare to submit to the same wages as their European brethren,
that of the coercive policy of the hand grenade and rifle diet. This all resulted
from the deliberate attempt of corporations to pay interest and dividends.on
bonds and stock which were clear water without a speck of dye in it, and, to
keep up these double, treble and sometimes quadruple payments above the
actual cash valuation of all the existing capital and innumerable corporations
which girdle and reticulate the land, not only was production, transportation
and telegraphic industry taxed four-fold, that it should bear in excess of ten
'per cent. upon actual cash cost, and this conducted on a contracted volume
of money in order to enhance its purch,asing power and usurious value, and
e~able them to dictate the price of labor and its products; but the greatest
cnme of all: congress framed a bill by which, when bankrupted, the middle
classes are brought to the 'lArge of want by foreclosure of mortgage upon their
farms. The. managers of these corporations then turn their whole attention
to the reduction of expenses, which follows as a direct blow at the wages of
those by whose skill and labor the railroad, telegraph, and telephone, and
other corporations do their work, knowing that the overcrowded labor market
would compel their employees to accept their wages to supply their wants or
starve. An industrial war follows, because the wage system enables monopoly
to do these things. Now, upon this the wage question has its basis. The
crisis wa"s reached when organized labor struck against long hours on the 1st
of .May, ?88~, following the protest in April of the 15,000 employees of Gould's
M1SSOUfl ratlway system of the southwest against the wages of fifty-five and
seventy cents a day to which Gould's corporation and Manager Hoxie had
~educed the army of skilled railroad operatives; but these events were precip­
Itated on the first by the massed labor unions, and the latter by the district
assemblies of the Knights of Labor of the· southwest. What was the issue?
On railroad stocks alone on all the roads within the United States at a cost of
two billion dollars, there was a capitalization of six billions. N~w, imagine
the effect of this false and fictitious value of labor, for skill and labor alone
give any value to the stocks and bonds and enable these monopoly inflation~
ists to build up vast incomes on that which has merely cost the paper on
:wbi?h t~ese fal5e cal?ulations were issued. . The employees of these public
lDStItutlODS and theIr patrons cannot understand why these holders owners
and issuers of fictitious stocks and bonds regard it as a crime to strik~. That
:was a.n i~sue in 1871, and it is an issue now in 1886 between the monopoly
lDflatlODlste who hold that a strike for higher wages, which also aims to pre-
ent other labor avocations from accepting the meager wage doled out to
abor, is a blow struck at the liberty of contract, which is the only means left
them to realize dividends and interest on their fictitious wealth. Noble and
sacrificing! ,These monopolists care nothing for liberty, but evercything for
the power to contract with competing starving laborers.
Now, your honor, the victims of these wrongs are numbered by the millions
in the United States, one million of whom it is officially reported by the
Labor Bureau are out of employment.
The Chicago Tribune, about this time, published the following sentiment:
"The simplest plan probably: when one is not a member of the Humane Society
is to put arsenic in the supplies of food fu!nished the unemployed or the
tramp. This produces death in a short time, and is a warning to other tramps
to keep out of the neighborhood." The unemployed are kept for better uses
]JOw-:-to take the place of strikers. They don't want to kill them off with
strychnine now. The Chicago Times used the same advice with reference to
t~e same matter while the great railroad strike of 1877 was pending, 'and the
president of the Pennsylvania Company-Tom Scott-says: "Give them the
rifle diet and see how they like that kind of bread."· I have spoken here of
monopoly conspiracy. Now, to show my words are not extravagant I want
to call your attention to the expressions of three senators on the floor of the
United States senate in the last session of the American ~ongress. They
had a long discussion of the Bland silver bill and the currency question, and
during the debate on that question Senator Teller used these words-he said ~
"There is a conspiracy all over the world on the part of capital against
labor, a conspiracy which does not exist in the United States alone, but in
whi