OBJECTS TO THE PINKERTON MEN.
“Now, I defy any one to show from the record the proof that I wrote more than one of the many articles alleged to have been written by me. Yet the Supreme Court says that I wrote and am responsible for all of them. Again—concerning the alleged speeches—they were reported by the Pinkerton detective Johnson, who was, as the record shows, employed by Lyman Gage, president of the First National Bank, as the agent of the Citizens’ Association, an organization composed of the millionaire employers of Chicago.
“I submit to a candid world if this hired spy would not make false reports to earn blood-money. Thus, it is for speeches I did not make, and articles I did not write I am sentenced to die, because the court ‘assumes’ that these articles influenced some unknown and still unidentified person to throw the bomb that killed Degan. Is this law? Is this justice?
“The Supreme Court, in affirming the sentence of death upon me, proceeds to give further reasons, as follows: ‘Two circumstances are to be noted. First, it can hardly be said that Parsons was absent from the Haymarket meeting when he went to Zepf’s Hall. It has already been stated that the latter place was only a few steps north of the speakers’ wagon and in sight from it. We do not think that the defendant Parsons could escape his share of the responsibility for the explosions at the Haymarket because he stepped into a neighboring saloon and looked at the explosion through a window. While he was speaking men stood around him with arms in their hands. Many of these were members of the armed sections of the international groups. Among them were men who belonged to the International Rifles, an armed organization in which he himself was an officer, and with which he had been drilling in preparation for the events then transpiring.’
“The records of the trial will show that not one of the foregoing allegations is true. The facts are these: Zepf’s Hall is on the northeast corner of Lake and Desplaines streets, just one block north of the speakers’ wagon. The court says ‘it was only a few steps north of the speakers’ wagon.’ The court says further that ‘it can hardly be said that Parsons was absent from the Haymarket meeting when he was at Zepf’s Hall.’ If this is correct logic, then I was at two different places a block apart at the same instant. Truly the day of miracles has not yet passed. Again, the record will show that I did not ’step into a neighboring saloon and look at the explosion through a window.’ It will show that I went to Zepf’s Hall, one block distant, and across Lake street, accompanied by my wife and another lady, and my two children (a girl of five and a boy of seven years of age), they having sat upon a wagon about ten feet from the speakers’ wagon throughout my speech; that it looked like rain; that we had started home and went into Zepf’s Hall to wait for the meeting to adjourn, and walked home in company with a lot of friends who lived in that direction. Zepf’s building is on the corner and opens on the street with a triangular door six feet wide. Myself and ladies and children were just inside the door. Here, while waiting for our friends and looking toward the meeting, I had a fair view of the explosion. All this the record will show.