Major Montooth closed for the defense. He contended that the substitution of Mr. Patterson, the attorney hired by the Carnegie Company, in the place of the public prosecutor was sufficient reason why Hugh O'Donnell should be acquitted. Mr. Robb interrupted to ask the court if this was good law. Judge Stowe answered in the negative. Nevertheless, the shaft had been too well aimed to miss its mark because of this interference, and the point made by Major Montooth was undoubtedly appreciated by the jury.
Judge Stowe charged the jury briefly and to the same effect as in the Clifford case. The jurors stayed out from 7 o'clock in the evening until 9:30 o'clock on the next morning. When they filed into court there was nothing in their faces to indicate whether they brought good or bad news for the defendant. O'Donnell was quite cool and collected, nodding pleasantly to his wife and niece when he was brought in from the jail, and betraying no sign of emotion except a slight heaving of the chest at the moment when the foreman of the jury drew the sealed verdict from his pocket. "We find the prisoner not guilty," were the words that rang out upon the death-like stillness of the court-room—welcome words to almost everybody present. A murmur of approval was heard, but was hushed when the court officials rapped for order. The jury was dismissed without comment. Then O'Donnell, with tears of joy coursing down his cheeks, turned to his faithful wife and embraced her tenderly, while friends thronged around to proffer their congratulations. O'Donnell was recommitted to jail, pending a hearing on the remaining charges against him, but was shortly afterward released on bail. His was the last of the Homestead cases brought to trial. Realizing that it was impossible to obtain the conviction of any of the Homestead men, the attorneys for the Carnegie Company made overtures to their opponents which resulted in the dropping of all prosecutions on both sides. Ex-Burgess McLuckie protested vigorously against abandoning the case against H. C. Frick, in which he himself was the principal prosecutor, but his protest was overruled and, aside from the trials of Dempsey and Beatty, Homestead was heard of no more in the criminal court.
The anarchists, Carl Knold and Henry Bauer, whose arrest in connection with Berkman's attempt on the life of Mr. Frick was mentioned in an earlier chapter, were brought to trial a few days before Hugh O'Donnell on indictments charging them with conspiracy and with being accessories to Berkman's crime. It was shown that Berkman was harbored by Knold at the residence of Paul Eckert, in Allegheny City, a rendezvous for anarchists; that the anarchist circulars distributed at Homestead were printed at Eckert's and taken to Homestead by Bauer and Knold, and that the two defendants had counseled and guided Berkman in his assault on the Carnegie chairman. Berkman was brought in from the penitentiary to testify, but proved a recalcitrant witness. The solitary sensational feature of the trial was a speech delivered by Colonel W. D. Moore, counsel for the defense, in which he lauded the doctrine of anarchy and traced its origin back to the Redeemer of Mankind. Judge Slagle, in his charge to the jury, expressed profound regret at the enunciation of such objectionable views by a member of the legal profession. Bauer and Knold were found guilty on both indictments and sentenced five years to the penitentiary. At the same time the rioters arrested at Duquesne during the strike at that place were sentenced to the work-house for terms ranging from two to six months.
[CONCLUSION.]
Although ignobly routed in the courts, the Carnegie Company lost not a foot of the ground gained at Homestead. On the contrary, it has since doubly re-inforced itself, for not only is the spirit of unionism stamped out among the employees of the firm, but fully three-fourths of the former union men are now working, most of them at their old jobs, without exhibiting a trace of the independence which was once their pride, or making any pretensions to a voice in the determination of their wages.
The re-employment of so many of the old hands was one of the fruits of the substitution of Mr. Schwab for Mr. Potter as general superintendent. Mr. Potter, having received the non-union men who came in during the strike and guaranteed them permanent work, would have become a stumbling-block when the time arrived for treating with the defeated union men and was, therefore, removed just before the crisis came. Mr. Schwab was bound by no pledges of his own and refused to recognize those made by his predecessor. Hence but a short time elapsed after the collapse of the strike until most of the green hands were discharged and their places filled by ex-strikers, whose experience rendered their services almost indispensable.
The active leaders of the strike were, of course, excluded from the amnesty, and few of them have since been able to secure employment at their trade. They are the victims of a form of ostracism; blacklisted as dangerous agitators in every steel and iron mill in the country.
Hugh O'Donnell left Homestead to travel as manager of a concert company and subsequently became connected with a weekly journal published in Chicago.