Labors Martyrs | Page 4

judges.
He helped choose the jury---to make sure it would convict. He
questioned men who stated they had already formed an opinion about
the case, had definite prejudices against Anarchists, Socialists and all
radicals, were not certain they could render an impartial verdict--and
ruled that they were not disqualified! He said from the bench that
"Anarchists, Socialists and Communists were as pernicious and
unjustifiable as horse thieves," and, finally, in charging the jury, that
even though the state had not proved that any of the eight men on trial
had actually thrown the bomb, they were nevertheless guilty of a
conspiracy to commit murder.
The bigoted speeches of the prosecutor Grinnell, and his aides, are
equalled only by the speeches of the prosecution in the Mooney case,
the Herndon case, the Scottsboro case. In other words, they established
a fine precedent for all anti-labor prosecutions to follow.

The trial lasted 63 days. The jury was out only three hours. That's all
the time they needed to examine the mountain of evidence presented in
those months. It is true that most of it was perjured, framed-up
evidence prepared by the prosecution, wild-eyed stories of the men
leaping from the wagon which was really a barricade, flaming pistols
aimed at the police, etc. The rest was quotations from their writings and
speeches made years before the Haymarket meeting was ever dreamed
of. The verdict was a foregone conclusion: death for all but Oscar
Neebe and for him 15 years in the penitentiary.
The judge thanked the jury from the bench and announced that there
were carriages outside the door waiting to take them home. The press
of the entire nation congratulated Chicago upon having such upright
and courageous citizens to serve on juries. Chicago papers collected a
purse of $100,000 to divide among them as a reward for work well
done.
The case was appealed to the Illinois State Supreme Court which, on
March 18, 1887, found no errors on which it could reverse the verdict.
This despite affidavits proving that the jury was chosen from a
carefully selected panel of enemies of the men by the bailiff and the
judge and many other flagrant violations of civil rights, too many to
enumerate.
And then came the appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Old as
they are, none of the present incumbents were then sitting on the bench.
But their worthy forerunners were equally reactionary. They found no
constitutional grounds for reversal! Of course not, even though the
right of free speech and assembly had been trampled underfoot at the
Haymarket Square, the right to a fair trial made into a cruel farce.
On November 11, 1887, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer
and George Engel were led out to the gallows. At the last moment,
yielding to the terrific pressure of protest which had been developed by
the defense in the last months, and a great wave of general sympathy
with the men throughout the country, Governor Oglesby commuted the
sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment. Two days
before the execution--when the defense committee had mobilized a

great movement in Chicago--tables for signing petitions to the governor
had been set up in the city streets, the able police of Chicago, worthy
ancestors of those police who murdered eleven steel strikers at the
Republic plant on Memorial Day, 1937, suddenly discovered a bunch
of "bombs" in the jail where the men were held. On the next day they
announced that Louis Lingg had committed suicide by blowing his own
head off with a small bomb!
Hitler used the Reichstag fire. Chicago used "bombs."
The men died bravely, like the heroes that they were. Spies' last words
spoken on the gallows were prophetic: "The day will come when our
silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today."
He was right, righter than he knew. That silence is making itself heard
in the auto factories of Michigan, in the steel mills of Pennsylvania and
Ohio, on the docks, in the mines, in textile factories. The eight-hour
day is a reality. The defense of the rights of labor is a reality. The great
movement for industrial unionism and democracy which they dreamed
of is a reality--in the C.I.O.
They did not die in vain. Taught by the lessons of the Haymarket
tragedy, such an organization as the International Labor Defense has
been built by the workers and progressive people of America, to stand
guard and prevent such legal murders today. Tom Mooney is still alive,
J. B. McNamara and Warren Billings; Angelo Herndon is free, four
Scottsboro boys are free--though all were threatened by the same fate
as the victims of the Haymarket martyrs. Reaction still takes a heavy
toll of victims, but it must reckon with the might of