“Was there a conspiracy? Was there a conspiracy to culminate on or about the 1st day of May? Were the defendants members of that conspiracy? Was the conspiracy unlawful? Was the bomb thrown in pursuance of the common design? Let us investigate the facts and answer each proposition.”
Mr. Walker went into the peculiar fact that the bullets found in the bodies of the officers were 22 and 44-caliber; the officers carried 38-caliber. The witnesses who had appeared for the defense in this case were armed with pistols of the first-named sizes.
He read to the jury many remarkable extracts from Most’s writings, pointing out the peculiar and criminal teachings of that Anarchist leader, and showing how Spies and the others had in every detail of their connection with the police, after the Haymarket murders, followed the printed advice given.
FRANCIS W. WALKER.
From a Photograph.
Following is one of the extracts from Most’s book:
“Shield your person as long as there is a possibility to preserve it for future deeds, but when you see that you are irredeemably lost, then use the short respite to make the most of it for the propaganda of your principles. We have regarded it our duty to give you these instructions, the more so as we see from day to day even people who are expert in revolutionary matters violating even the plainest rules. May their lives be the last which are necessary in this regard.
“I read you, gentlemen, this, so that we may start out from the proper standpoint and position, before we argue as to the merits of the testimony of the defendants’ witnesses in this case. Who are they? Who is their advisor? Why, they have started out in social life agreeing to swear to perjury. They belong to the Social Revolution. There is not one of them, gentlemen, that bears upon his face the stamp of sensibility or of heart, and there can be no argument made when they talk about the motive to justify murder and the advice of murder, only from the malignant heart. Here they picture murder and gloat over it. They feast over the description of how to poison easiest, as the hyena does over the corpse of the dead.
“Most laughs in his own book. He tells to the ‘mere compositor’: ‘Use a dagger with grooves in it; the poison will stay on it the more readily.’ And a file is adopted for the purpose.
“Gentlemen, we have found without any further analysis the reason why the defendant Parsons converted the witness-stand into a propaganda. It took him an hour by the clock here to repeat the substance of the speech that he delivered in less than three-quarters of an hour upon the Market Square. He endeavored to deny the conspiracy by an alibi; and I mean by that the conspiracy upon the night of May 4th. He only said he was in Cincinnati on Sunday, and did not get back until Tuesday morning. They never asked him if he knew what ‘Ruhe’ meant. They did not ask Schwab if he knew what ‘Ruhe’ meant. The only defendant that they have asked as to his personal knowledge of ‘Ruhe’ is the defendant Fielden—the only one, the only one from the beginning to the close of this case.