ABOUT THE BOMB.
“It would seem that, according to circumstances, a block is at one time ‘a few steps’ or a ‘few steps’ is more than a block, as the case may suit. The logical as well as the imaginative faculties of the Supreme Court are further illustrated in a most striking manner by the credence of the court to the ‘yarn’ of a ‘reporter,’ who testified that Spies had described to him the ‘Czar’ bomb, and the men who were to use them as follows. ‘He spoke of a body of tall, strong men in their organization who could throw bombs weighing five pounds 150 paces. He stated that the bombs in question were to be used in case of conflict with the police or the militia.’
“The court gives this sort of testimony as proof of the existence of a conspiracy to murder Degan. Wonderful credulity. To throw a five-pound bomb 150 paces or yards is to throw it 450 feet or a quarter of a mile.
“Gulliver, in his travels among the Brobdingnag race, tells us of the giants he met, and we have also heard of the giants of Patagonia. But we did not know until now that they were mere Lilliputians as compared with the ‘anarchist Swedes’ of Chicago.
“The court proceeds to say, ‘While he (Parsons) was speaking, men stood around him with arms in their hands.’ The record as quoted by the court shows that only one man flourished a pistol, not a number of men. Again, the court says, ‘Most of the men were members of the armed sections of the “International groups,”’ thus making it appear that many of these men (when there was only one who was even alleged to have exhibited a pistol) were armed.
“The court says: ‘Among them were men who belonged to the “International Rifles,” an armed organization in which he himself was an officer, and in which he had been drilling in preparation for the events then transpiring.’
“Now I
Cchallenge the Supreme Court or any other honorable gentleman to prove from the record that there ever existed such an organization as the armed section of the American group, known as the ‘International Rifles.’ It cannot be done. The record shows that some members of the American group did organize the ‘International Rifles,’ which never met but four or five times; was never armed with rifles or any other weapons, and was disbanded nearly a year before the 4th of May, 1886.“The Pinkerton man Johnson says that dynamite bombs were exhibited ‘in the presence of the “International Rifles.”’ It will take corroborative testimony before the American people will credit the statements of such a man engaged for such a purpose; and it is well known that Supreme courts have decided that the testimony of detectives should be taken with great caution.