The next day the grand jury entered upon its work. A great many witnesses appeared before it, but many of them were not required at the trial, as their testimony would neither add to nor detract from the strength of the case. Facts were brought out under the latitude allowed in a grand jury room that could not, under court procedure, be brought into a cause on trial because of their not bearing directly on the charges, or not tending to supply some material connecting link in the chain of evidence. Some of this testimony, while not serving to throw any special light upon the conspiracy, may yet illustrate some phases of Anarchy growing out of the propagation of Anarchistic ideas and features incidental to the cause celebre; and for that purpose I have carefully scanned over the official grand jury reports and selected such omitted points as will serve to give a better general idea of the whole subject.
The sale and circulation of Anarchistic literature in Chicago was one of the matters into which inquiry was made. Anton Laufermann, a Division Street bookseller, testified that Most had written “The Solution of the Socialistic Question,” “The Movement in Old Rome, or Cæsarism,” “The Bastile at Platzensee,” and other works, including “The Science of War.” It appeared that these Anarchistic books were not, as a rule, handled by booksellers.
Edward Deuss, city editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, told the grand jury that the dynamite book—Most’s “Science of War”—was usually sold by men at picnics and similar gatherings, and that a book-store would be the last place to look for it. The men who peddled this literature were volunteers who made no money out of the sales.
This evidence was corroborated by other persons. The plan seemed to be to scatter Most’s works quietly among the people, thus avoiding any of the difficulties or dangers which might follow from open and undisguised sale. The main source of supply was manifestly the Arbeiter-Zeitung office. The books were easy to get: nearly all the arrested Anarchists had copies of the dynamite book in their possession. One of the most persistent colporteurs was Muntzenberg. The hundreds of copies of incendiary books and pamphlets were passed around from one man to another, and it is out of the question to attempt to estimate the amount of injury they have done. The evidence upon this point—so much, at least, as came from the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung—was unsatisfactory. This, however, was to have been expected when the character and peculiar beliefs of the witnesses is considered. For instance, Gerhardt Lizius, an editorial writer on this paper, after being questioned, without satisfactory results, about the interior arrangements of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and various articles about the premises, was asked to define Anarchy and Socialism.
“A Socialist,” he said, “wants the State to regulate everything, while we don’t want any authority whatever. We want the people to associate themselves for production and consummation (of the highest good), according to their own desires.”
“How does it happen that capital is in your way?” asked Mr. Grinnell.
“Because the capitalist has taken something from us that is not his, that we have created.”
“What is the manner the Anarchists have adopted in reaching that which they have not got now?”
“We want to get it any way we can—peaceably if we can, and forcibly if we must.”