JUDICIAL MURDER OF LABOR'S LEADERS.
The details of the trial will not be gone into here. The trial itself is now everywhere recognized as having been a tragic farce. The jury, it is clear, was purposely drawn from the employing class, or their dependents; of a thousand talesmen summoned, only five or six belonged to the working class. The malignant class nature of the trial was revealed by the questions asked of the talesmen; nearly all declared that they had a prejudice against Socialists, Anarchists and Communists. Soon the blindest could see that the conviction of the group was determined upon in advance, and that it was but the visible evidence of a huge conspiracy to terrorize the whole working class.
The theory upon which the group was prosecuted was that they were actively engaged in a conspiracy against the existing authorities, and that they advocated violence and bloodshed. No jurist would now presume to contend that the slightest evidence was adduced to prove this. But all were rushed to conviction: Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887, after fruitless appeals to the higher courts; Lingg committed suicide in prison, and Fielden, Neebe and Schwab were sentenced to long terms in prison. The four executed leaders met their death with the heroic calmness of martyrdom. "Let the voice of the people be heard!" were Parsons' last words. Fielden, Neebe and Schwab might have rotted away in prison, were it not that one of the noblest-minded and most maligned men of his time, in the person of John P. Altgeld, was Governor of Illinois in 1893. Governor Altgeld pardoned them on these grounds, which he undoubtedly proved in an exhaustive review: (1) The jury was a packed one selected to convict; (2) the jurors were prejudiced; (3) no guilt was proved; (4) the State's attorney had admitted no case against Neebe, yet he had been imprisoned; (5)the trial judge (Gary) was either so prejudiced or subservient to class influence that he did not or could not give a fair trial. Even many of those who denounced Altgeld for this action, now admit that his grounds were justified.