HIS SPEECHES WERE ALL RIGHT.
“Now as to my speeches—all of them, with one exception purporting to be my utterances at the Haymarket, are given from the excited imaginations and
prevertedperverted memories of newspaper reporters. Mr. English, who alone took shorthand notes and swore to their correctness, reports me as saying. ‘It is time to raise a note of warning. There is nothing in the eight-hour movement to excite the capitalist. Don’t you know that the militia are under arms and agatlingGatling gun is ready to mow you down? Was this Germany, or Russia, or Spain? [A voice: “It looks like it.”] Whenever you make a demand for eight hours’ pay or increase of pay the militia and the deputy sheriffs and the Pinkerton men are called out and you are shot and clubbed and murdered in the streets. I am not here for the purpose of exciting anybody, but to speak out, to tell the facts as they exist even though it shall cost me my life before morning!’ Mr. English continuing, said: ‘There is another part of it (the speech) right here. It behooves you, as you love your wife and children, if you don’t want to see them perish with hunger, killed, or cut down like dogs on the street—Americans, in the interest of your liberty and your independence, to arms; arm yourselves!’“This, be it remembered, is a garbled extract, and it is a matter of record that Reporter English testified that he was instructed by the proprietor of his paper to report only the inflammatory portions of the speeches made at the meeting.