OSCAR NEEBE.
“Your Honor: I have found out during the last few days what law is. Before I didn’t know it. I did not know that I was convicted because I knew Spies and Fielden and Parsons. I have met these gentlemen. I have presided at a meeting, as the evidence against me shows, in the Turner hall, to which meeting your Honor was invited. The judges, the preachers, the newspaper men, and everybody was invited to appear at that meeting for the purpose of discussing Anarchism and Socialism. I was at that hall. I am well known among the working men of the city, and I was the one elected chairman of that meeting. Nobody appeared to speak, to discuss the question of Labor and Anarchism or Socialism with laboring men. No, they couldn’t stand it. I was chairman of that meeting; I don’t deny it. I had the honor to be marshal of a labor demonstration in this city, and I never saw as respectable a lot of men as I saw that day.
“They marched like soldiers, and I was proud that I was marshal of those men. They were the toilers and the working men of this city. The men marched through the city of Chicago to protest against the wrongs of society, and I was marshal of them. If that is a crime, I have found out—as a born American—what I am guilty of. I always thought I had a right to express my opinion, to be chairman of a peaceable meeting, and to be marshal of a demonstration. My friends, the labor agitators, and the marshals of a demonstration—was it a crime to be marshal of a demonstration? I am convicted of that. I suppose Grinnell thought after Oscar Neebe was indicted for murder the Arbeiter Zeitung would go down. But it didn’t happen that way. And Mr. Furthmann, too—he is a scoundrel, and I can tell it to you to your face. There is only one man that acted as a lawyer, and he is Mr. Ingham, but you three fellows have not.
“I established the paper and issued it to the working men of the city of Chicago, and inside of two weeks I had enough money from the toilers—from hired girls, from men who would take the last cent out of their pocket to establish the paper—to buy a press. I could not publish the paper because the honorable detectives and Mr. Grinnell followed us up, and no printing house would print our paper, and we had to have our own press. We published our own paper after we had a press, bought by the money of the working men of the city. That is the crime I have committed—getting men to try and establish a working man’s paper that will stand to-day, and I am proud of it. They have not got one press—they have got two presses to-day, and they belong to the working men of this city. When the first issue came out, from that day up to the day now, your Honor, we have gained 4,000 subscribers. There are the gentlemen sitting over there from the Freie Presse and Staats Zeitung—they know it. The Germans of this city are condemning these actions. They would not read our paper. There is the crime of the Germans. I say it is a verdict against Germans, and I, as an American, must say that I never saw anything like that.
“Those are the crimes I have committed after the 4th of May. Before the 4th of May I committed some crimes. I organized trades unions. I was for the reduction of the hours of labor and the education of laboring men and the re-establishment of the Arbeiter Zeitung. There is no evidence to show that I was connected with the bomb-throwing, that I was near it or anything of that kind. So I am only sorry, your Honor, if you can stop it or help it, I will ask you to do it—that is, to hang me, too; and I think it is more honor to die certainly than to be killed by inches. I have a family and children, and if they know their father is dead they will bury him. They can go to the grave and kneel down in front of it; but they can’t go to Joliet and see their father convicted of a crime that he hasn’t anything to do with. That is all I have got to say. Your Honor, I am sorry I do not get hung with the rest of the men.”
Louis Lingg.