Had the carpenter of Nazareth been in Chicago at the time He would have been on the side of the poor, the heavy-laden and sore at heart, and He would have denounced their oppressors and been sent to prison for contempt of court under President Cleveland’s administration.
President Cleveland says that we were put down because we had acted in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1890. Will he kindly state what other trusts were proceeded against and what capitalists were sentenced to prison during his administration?
A TRIBUTE TO ALTGELD.
He waited ten years to cast his aspersions upon the honor of John P. Altgeld, and if that patriotic statesman had not fallen in the service of the people, if he were still here to defend his official acts, it is not probable that the ex-President would have ventured to assail him.
Reluctantly, indeed, do I close without the space to incorporate his burning messages to President Cleveland and at least some extracts from his masterly speech on “Government by Injunction.”
His memory requires no defense, but if it did I could speak better for him than for myself. He never truckled to corporate wealth; he did not compromise with his conscience; he was steadfast in his devotion to truth and in his fidelity to right, and he sought with all his strength to serve the people and the people will gratefully remember him as one of the true men, one of the great souls of his sordid age.
The Chicago strike is not yet settled, and its “concluding pages” are YET TO BE WRITTEN.
You Railroad Men
Written for Appeal to Reason, February 3, 1906
FOREWORD