“Well, I am very sorry for my dear husband, but now my words are coming true. He would take the last cent out of the house and run to meetings every night. Instead of leaving the money at home to buy clothing with for the children and medicine for myself, he would spend the last cent in saloons. At times when I heard him and others talk about capitalists, about an equal division of everything, I thought it all very foolish, and I would tell my husband so. The only answer he would give me was:
“‘Oh, you old women don’t know anything. You come to our meetings, and there you will be enlightened and learn how we are going to have things before long.’
GUSTAV LEHMAN.
From a Photograph.
“I often told him, ‘You will have things so that you all will be locked up and beg for mercy and be glad to go to work and let other people alone.’ One day he didn’t work; he wanted to go to a meeting on the West Side. I reasoned with him and asked him to stay at home. I was afraid they would all be arrested for their foolish undertakings. Gustav got mad at me and said:
“‘Now is our time or never. Before one month is over we will have things our own way. We have already got the capitalists, the militia and the police trembling in their boots. We are prepared, and, as soon as we strike the first blow, they will run away. Those that don’t run we will kill. We don’t expect to give them quarter.’”
The poor woman had clearly foreseen the outcome, and with rare judgment and fine instinct, in spite of her lowly station in life, she had sought early and late to instill into her husband’s mind some practical ideas of life. Within the limited lines of her observation she had grasped the problem of social existence, its struggles, its sufferings and its rewards, and she intuitively knew that such changes as her husband and others of his ilk desired could never be brought about by revolution in a free country. She loved her husband tenderly, and would have made any sacrifice for him. But he, rather than forego attendance at a single meeting, preferred that wife and children should suffer want. He kept his family in constant suspense and ranted like a madman.
Lehman was a man about forty-five years of age, weighed two hundred pounds, and, although he had only the use of one eye, he was a good mechanic.
When he was brought to the station he was asked his name.