“These defendants have the right to discuss the great wrongs of the working people. They have the right to try their remedy. They say that private property is robbery. That may be false. There is not a Catholic organization that is not founded on the idea of common co-operation. It was Plato’s dream that the means of existence should be the common property of all. The Anarchist or Socialist was said to believe that every law of man was a bone of contention, intended for the benefit of one class only. The fact that these defendants are Anarchists is not a fact which would justify the jury in taking their lives. These men are not the lazy fellows pictured by the state.”
Julius S. Grinnell.
STATE’S ATTORNEY JULIUS S. GRINNELL FOR THE PROSECUTION.
State’s Attorney Grinnell closed for the State, and he began his remarks by criticising counsel for the defense for making heroes of the prisoners. The Anarchists were compared to the fathers of our country; they were pictured as martyrs, as men who sacrificed themselves for the welfare of human kind. If that be so, songs of praise should be sung, and the Anarchists ought to be garlanded with flowers. Captain Black had said that society was discriminating against the poor; that the struggle for existence was daily becoming harder. That was not true, for civil liberty was never before as widespread as it is at present. Mr. Grinnell said the case had received his entire attention since May 5. Government was on trial. Murder had been committed. It was sought to know who was responsible. For a few days after the Haymarket riot it was not thought it was more far-reaching than the results of the inflammatory speech-making. It was not until after the magnificent efforts of Captain Schaack that a conspiracy was developed. Then Schnaubelt was discovered. It was not until after Spies was arrested that it became apparent that a man was capable of the hellish act in which he was concerned. A mistake had been made. It was said the State would show who the bomb thrower was. This had not been done, owing to the inability of certain witnesses to make good on the stand the statements they had before made to the officers. These men were not Socialists, but Anarchists, and their creed is no government, no law. Until placed on the stand these men never hedged on that definition. It was sought to be shown that the defendants were barking dogs that would not bite. These men were on trial, law was on trial, Anarchy was on trial for treason. The penalty of treason is death. A man can commit an overt act of treason, and not kill anybody. Is it any the less treason because seven men are killed and sixty wounded? There is no statute of limitation for threats, when repeated threats resulted in the commission of the deed. For years past, on the Lake front and at the different so-called Socialistic halls in the city, these men had preached the use of dynamite, poison and daggers as a means of effecting the social revolution. The thing should have been stopped long ago. But that was foreign to the case. The men were here now on trial for murder. Their threats had been carried out. It did not matter whether any police officers had overstepped their duty; the jury had nothing at all to do with that. The accused were on trial for murder.
On the Lake front the Anarchists were wont to assemble under the red flag, which they described as the emblem of universal liberty. But there was but one flag of liberty—that was the Stars and Stripes; and it would always remain such if the gentlemen of the jury had the courage to npholduphold the law. Threats had been mouthed, dire vaporings were spread from one group to another to fill the people with terror, so that the social revolution might the more easily be accomplished. Mr. Grinnell holds that Spies wrote the “Revenge” circular premeditatedly. He reads it to the jury commenting on various passages contained therein, and makes it plain to the jury that Spies had an ulterior and sinister purpose in view when he penned the famous dodger. There were only two officers at McCormick’s when the mob Spies was addressing broke loose and attacked the non-union men. The police were called, but why? To protect the McCormick property and the two officers from the fury of the mob as well as to save the non-union men from being killed. It was this sight—the coming of additional police—that made the blood of the valorous Spies boil. Knowing that no fatalities had taken place, or not knowing that any had occuredoccurred, Spies posted down town, and the “Revenge” circular was written by him and in the hands of the printer before 5 o’clock that same afternoon. Balthazar Rau’s name was mentioned every day, time and time again by the defense, but he was not called as a witness. They were afraid to put him on the stand. It was Rau who invited Spies to address the Haymarket meeting, and he was present when Spies made his speech. That was a kind of Marc Antony address, and to be understood one must read it between the lines. It was artfully calculated to inflame. It was a significant opening. The working men were told to come armed. Waller did come armed. The police should have broken up the meeting in its incipiency. If Bonfield had not gone down there at the time he did the riot would have been general. The reason more bombs were not thrown was that the other fellows in the conspiracy had not time to reach the scene. The man who threw the bomb obtained it from Lingg or Spies, and hurled it according to directions received from one or other of these men. Did Fielden shoot that night? For years past he has called the police bloodhounds; he said he would march down Michigan avenue with the red flag or the black flag, and preached “death to the capitalists and the police, our despoilers.” This must be understood above all things; that the bomb was thrown in furtherance of the common design, no matter who threw it. Gilmer said Spies handed the bomb to Schnaubelt. Is that improbable? For years he preached the throwing of bombs. An article over his own signature is in evidence, and in this he gives directions as to the manner in which bombs should be ignited and hurled at the enemy. Who was Schnaubelt? Schwab’s brother-in-law. He is the man who was arrested before the conspiracy was known and let go, then shaved off his whiskers, and has not been seen since. A peculiar circumstance, and the most significant of the case, was that when Spies was arrested he left the traces of his crime in his office. Bonfield arrested him. Spies said he went over to the Central station unsuspectingly. Had he known what was going to have happened he would have destroyed the “Ruhe” manuscript. It was the little mistakes that brought the criminal to justice, and there never was a criminal, big or little, that did not leave traces of his crime behind him.
Mr. Grinnell concluded by saying his labor was over; the jury’s was just begun. They had the power to exact the lives of some of the prisoners, to others they might give a term of years in the penitentiary, and some again they might acquit. He would not ask the jury to take the life of Oscar Neebe. He would not ask the jury to do what he would not do himself. The proof was not sufficient to convict Neebe, but some of them, Spies, Fischer, Lingg, Engel, Fielden, Parsons and Schwab, ought to have the extreme penalty administered to them.
“Personally,” said Mr. Grinnell, “I have not a word to say against these men. But the law demands that they be punished. They have violated the law, and you, gentlemen of the jury, stand between the living and the dead. Do your duty. Do not disagree.
