Fielden maintained that the throwing of the bomb at the Haymarket was a complete surprise to him; that he felt that he would be held in some respect, at least responsible, yet he resolved not to attempt flight; continuing:

“I have said here that I thought when the representatives of the State had inquired by means of their policemen as to my connection with it, I should have been released. And I say now, in view of all the authorities that have been read on the law and accessory, that there is nothing in evidence that has been introduced to connect me with that affair. * * * The great Socialist who lived in this world nearly 1,900 years ago, Jesus Christ, has left these words, and there are no grander words in which the principles of justice and right are conveyed in any language. He said: ‘Better that ninety-nine guilty men should go unpunished than that one innocent man should suffer.’ Mr. Grinnell, I should judge from his statements here, is a Christian. I would ask him to apply that statement of the Great Teacher to the different testimony that has been given here, and the direct contrary in other places in the investigation of this case. Your Honor, we claim that this is a class verdict. We claim that the foulest criminal that could have been picked up in the slums of any city in Christendom, or outside of it, would never have been convicted on such testimony as has been brought in here if he had not been a dangerous man in the opinion of the privileged classes. * * * If my life is to be taken for advocating the principles of Socialism and Anarchy, as I have understood them and honestly believe them to be in the interests of humanity, I say to you that I gladly give it up; and the price is very small for the result that is gained. * * * We claim that so far as we have been able to find out in trying to find a cure for the ills of society, we have not found out anything that has seemed to fit the particular diseases which society in our opinion is afflicted with to-day, better than the principles of Socialism. And your Honor, Socialism, when it is thoroughly understood in this community and in the world, as it is by us, I believe that the world, which is generally honest, prejudiced though it may be, will not be slow to adopt its principles. And it will be a good time, a grand day for the world; it will be a grand day for humanity; it will never have taken a step so far onward toward perfection, if it can ever reach that goal, as it will when it adopts the principles of Socialism. * * * To-day, as the beautiful autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze the cheek of every free man, I stand here never to bathe my head in its rays again. I have loved my fellow men as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend. It will live to repent of it. But, as I have said before, if it will do any good, I freely give myself up. I trust the time will come when there will be a better understanding, more intelligence, and above the mountains of iniquity, wrong and corruption, I hope the sun of righteousness and truth and justice will come to bathe in its balmy light an emancipated world. I thank your Honor for your attention.”

A. R. Parsons.

A. R. PARSONS.

Parsons made a speech addressed in the main to working men, starting out with the recital of a poem by George Heinig, entitled “Bread is Freedom.” He continued:

“Your Honor, if there is one distinguishing characteristic which has made itself prominent in the conduct of this trial it has been the passion, the heat, and the anger, the violence both to sentiment and to feeling, of everything connected with this case. You ask me why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon me, or, what is tantamount to the same thing, you ask me why you should give me a new trial in order that I might establish my innocence and the ends of justice be subserved. I answer you, your Honor, and say that this verdict is the verdict of passion, born in passion, nurtured in passion, and is the sum totality of the organized passion of the city of Chicago. For this reason I ask your suspension of the sentence, and a new trial. This is one among the many reasons which I hope to present to your Honor before I conclude. Now, your Honor, what is passion? Passion is the suspension of reason; in a mob upon the streets, in the broils of the saloon, in the quarrels on the sidewalk, where men throw aside their reason and resort to feelings of exasperation, we have passion. There is a suspension of the elements of judgment, of calmness, of discrimination requisite to arrive at the truth and the establishment of justice. I hold, your Honor, that you cannot dispute the proposition that I make that this trial has been submerged, immersedimmersed in passion from its inception to its close, and even at this hour, standing here upon the scaffold as I do with the hangman awaiting me with his halter, there are those who claim to represent public sentiment in the city, and I now speak of the capitalistic press—that vile and infamous organ and monopoly of hired liars, the people’s oppressors.” Parsons claimed to have been for thirty years identified with labor interests, and said: “And in what I say upon this subject relating to the labor movement or to myself as connected in this trial or before this bar, I will speak the truth, though my tongue should be torn from my mouth and my throat cut from ear to ear, so help me God.” The speaker then went into statistics, claiming that 9,000,000 out of the 12,000,000 voters in the United States were actual wage workers. He attacked the citizens’ Association as an organization of millionaires, and claimed that the Court should stand between the accused and their persecuterspersecutors. “Where,” he asked, “are the ends of justice observed, and where is truth found in hurrying seven human beings at the rate of express speed upon a fast train to the scaffold, and an ignominious death? Why, if your Honor please, the very method of our extermination, the deep damnation of its taking off, appeals to your Honor’s sense of justice, of rectitude, and of honor. A judge may also be an unjust man. Such things have been known. We have in our histories heard of Lord Jeffreys. It need not follow that because a man is a judge he is also just. * * * Now, I hold that our execution, as the matter stands just now, would be judicial murder, and judicial murder is far worse than lynch law—far worse. But, your Honor, bear in mind please, this trial was conducted by a mob, prosecuted by a mob, by the shrieks and the howls of a mob, an organized powerful mob. The trial is over. Now, your Honor, you sit there judicially, calmly, quietly, and it is now for you to look at this thing from the standpoint of reason and from common sense. * * * Now, the money-makers, the business men, those people who deal in stocks and bonds, the speculators and employers, all that class of men known as the money-making class, they have no conception of this labor question; they don’t understand what it means. To use the street parlance, with many of them it is a difficult matter for them to ‘catch onto’ it, and they are perverse also; they will have no knowledge of it. They don’t want to know anything about it, and they won’t hear anything about it, and they propose to club, lock up, and if necessary strangle those who insist on their hearing this question. Now, your Honor, can you deny that there is such a thing in the world as the labor question? I am an Anarchist. Now strike! But hear me before you strike. What is Socialism, briefly stated? It is the right of the toiler to the free and equal use of the tools of production, and the right of the producer to their product. That is Socialism. The history of mankind is one of growth. It has been evolutionary and revolutionary.”

Parsons went into an explanation of the wage question and the relations of capital and labor, asserting that employers in owning capital and leaving nothing to the wage slave but the price of his work, had produced a conflict which would intensify as the power of the priviledgedprivileged classes over the non-possession of property classes increased. He continued:

“We were told by the Prosecution that law is on trial; that government is on trial. That is what the gentlemen on the other side have stated to the jury. The law is on trial, and government is on trial. Well, up to the conclusion of this trial we, the defendants, supposed that we were indicted and being tried for murder. Now, if the law is on trial, and the government is on trial, who has placed it upon trial? And I leave it to the people of America whether the prosecution in this case have made out a case; and I charge it here now, frankly, that in order to bring about this conviction the Prosecution, the representatives of the State, the sworn officers of the law—those whose duty it is to the people to obey the law and preserve order—I charge upon them a willful, a malicious, a purposed violation of every law which guarantees every right to every American citizen. They have violated free speech. In the prosecution of this case they have violated a free press. They have violated the right of public assembly. Yea, they have even violated and denounced the right of self-defense. I charge the crime home to them. * * * My own deliberate opinion concerning this Haymarket affair is that the death-dealing missile was the work, the deliberate work of monopoly—the act of those who themselves charge us with the deed. I am not alone in this view of this matter. What are the real facts of that Haymarket tragedy? Mayor Harrison of Chicago has caused to be published his opinion, in which he says: ‘I did not believe that there was any intention on the part of Spies and those men to have bombs thrown at the Haymarket.’ He knows more about this thing than the jury that sat in this room, for he knows—I suspect that the Mayor knows—of some of the methods by which some of this evidence and testimony might have been manufactured. I don’t charge it, your Honor, but possibly he has had some intimation of it, and if he has he knows more about this case and the merits of this case than did the jury who sat here. * * * Before the trial began, during its prosecution, and since its close, a Satanic press has shrieked and howled itself wild, like ravenous hyenas, for the blood of these eight working men. Now, this subsidized press, in the pay of the monopoly and of laborers and slavers, commanded this Court and commanded this jury and this Prosecution to convict us. As a fitting climax to this damnable conspiracy against our lives and liberty, what follows? O hide your eye now! hide it! hide it! As a fitting climax to this damnable conspiracy against our lives and liberty some of Chicago’s millionaires proposed to raise a purse of $100,000 and present it to the jury for their verdict of guilty against us. This was done, as everybody knows, in the last days of the trial, and since the verdict so far as anybody knows to the contrary, this blood money has been paid over to that jury. * * * Condemned to death! Perhaps you think I do not know what for? Or maybe you think the people do not understand your motives? You are mistaken. I am here, standing in this spot awaiting your sentence, because I hate and loathe authority in every form. I am doomed by you to suffer an ignominious death because I am the outspoken enemy of coercion, of privilege, of force, of authority. It is for this you make me suffer. Think you the people are blind, are asleep, are indifferent? You deceive yourselves. I tell you, as a man of the people, and I speak for them, that your every word and act and thoughts are recorded. You are being weighed in the balance. The people are conscious of your power—your stolen power. They know you; that while you masquerade as their servants you are in reality playing the role of master. The people—the common working people—know full well that all your wealth, your ease and splendor, have been stolen from them by the exercise of your authority in the guise of law and order. I, a working man, stand here and to your face, in your stronghold of oppression, and denounce to you your crimes against humanity. It is for this I die, but my death will not have been in vain. I guess I have finished. I don’t know as I have anything more to say. Your Honor knows all I know about this case. I have taken your Honor’s time up that I might be able to lay this thing, the whole thing, before you, reserving nothing; opening my mind and heart, telling you the truth, the truth, and the whole truth. I am innocent of this offense. I had no connection with that Haymarket tragedy. I know nothing of it. I am not responsible for it. I leave the case in the hands of your Honor.”