“The listeners of these people are not very highly educated men. They are laboring men who, raised in poor families, did not have the benefits of a collegiate education; men who since that time worked at manual labor from the early morning until the late evening. They could not in the nature of things be very intelligent and highly cultivated and educated. Now, Fielden and Parsons and Spies could not talk to those men by stating to them abstract principles of social science; but they told them: ‘Here, look at this state of things. There is a man who owns three hundred million dollars; there is another man who owns one hundred million. You starve, you get starvation wages. Is that a just condition of things? Now, I tell you, Mr. Marshall Field, who owns twenty-five millions of dollars, has no right to own them. I tell you, you have a right to take from the property which he has accumulated; part of it belongs to you. By natural, by equitable laws this man is not entitled to live in a palace while you starve. I am going to lead you down, if you want me, at once, and we will supply our wants from there.’ What is that? Is that an offer to go there? Is that an advice to go there? It is an illustration, as you give it in school to a child which cannot understand abstract principles of science. When they say to them: ‘You have a right to take from Marshall Field and Kellogg,’ that means simply in the present state of society that is allowed, but this is not a just and equitable condition of affairs, and if it were as it ought to be you would have a right to share with Marshall Field what he owns. Take it in this common-sense view and don’t allow yourselves to be deceived by declamations on the part of the attorneys for the State.
“Can a revolution be made? A revolution is a thing which develops itself, but no single man nor a dozen of men can control the inauguration of a revolution. The social revolution was fixed for the 1st of May! Just think of it! The social revolution, the revolution by which the present state of proprietary conditions should be changed all over the world, was to be inaugurated by Mr. Spies and by Mr. Parsons and Mr. Fielden on the first day of May! Has ever a ridiculous statement like that been made to an intelligent jury? But all that is told you not because they believe it, but because they want to make you blind to the real issues in this case, by telling you that the social revolution was coming on the 1st of May, and that Inspector Bonfield by his cry, ‘Fall in, fall in,’ on the night of May 4th, saved the country from the social revolution; by that they want to deceive you, they want to scare you, they want to show you the monstrosity of these defendants. The social revolution to be brought about or inaugurated by the throwing of a bomb on the night of May 4th! What do you take these men for? Are they fools? Are they children? Don’t you see what their ideal is, and the last aim and end of theirs? It is the social revolution, yes, but not the social revolution brought about by the throwing of dynamite. It is the social revolution which will give the poor man more rights and which will do away with pauperism. And the means are left to the future; but for the present, in order that you may be strong and respected and be a power in the land, arm yourselves, organize. That is the meaning of it.”
Mr. Zeisler then touched on the preparation of bombs and dynamite for that social revolution, referring to the evidence showing the finding of dynamite and bombs in the Arbeiter-Zeitung office. He held that Linnemeyer, who calcimined the closet in which the bag of dynamite was found, had proven that there was nothing of the kind there when he went in to search for a brush just immediately preceding the arrival of the police. He also pointed to a contradiction in the testimony of one of the officers that the dynamite was found on a floor below that of the closet, in a room not used by Spies and not occupied by him at the time of the police search, but in the counting-room, and then the subsequent correction by the officer, on being recalled by the State, that the package was found in Spies’ editorial room. In reference to the bombs there was no secrecy, and Spies admitted that he had one more bomb than the police had discovered. That information was volunteered on the witness-stand, and the possession of those bombs explained.
“That is the testimony in regard to the arsenal of dynamite and bombs and weapons of destruction at 107 Fifth Avenue, and Mr. Spies bragged about three thousand revolutionists ready to throw bombs and to annihilate the police. What was it? Braggadocio; the same object which all these people had in advocating the use of force, in calling upon workingmen to arm themselves, to organize, to buy weapons and all that sort of thing; and the purpose for which they did it openly and publicly was the same purpose Mr. Spies had in bragging that there were three thousand revolutionists—to scare the capitalists, to scare them into yielding to the demands of the workingmen, to try to induce them to make concessions to the laboring classes, as Mr. Fielden said in his speech on the night of May the 4th. And remember, gentlemen of the jury, that it has been testified to by all the witnesses who spoke in regard to the speeches and articles of these men, that they always made the same argument. Now, Mr. Fielden made the same argument a hundred times before. ‘The employers will not like to see dissatisfied workingmen in the community, and the laborer can get some relief if the employers find that there are dissatisfied workingmen in the city.’ That was the reason why they told them, ‘Arm yourselves and organize.’ That was the reason why Mr. Spies bragged about the three thousand revolutionists and about the bombs ready to be thrown; that was the reason why he told Mr. Wilkinson all about their plans.”
Mr. Zeisler ridiculed the idea that a social revolution was to have been inaugurated with the dozens of bombs made by Lingg, and held there had been no preparation for it. Coming to the question of conspiracy, he said:
“What is a conspiracy? What were you used to understand by the word conspiracy all your lifetime? Isn’t in the first place secrecy the test of a conspiracy? Was there anything secret about the doings of these men, or about their teachings and writings? When they vented their feelings at 54 West Lake Street at the meeting of the American group and told the people to go to Marshall Field’s and Kellogg’s, and offered to head the procession, told them about their rights, told them to use force, told them to arm themselves and to organize, the next morning the daily press of the city of Chicago, which reaches five hundred thousand people, and the State’s Attorney’s office, and the Mayor’s office, and the office of every authority in the city of Chicago, were informed of it.”
The speaker then proceeded to define conspiracy, and said that to constitute a conspiracy “they must agree with one another to do an unlawful act; one must have communicated the purpose to another, and the others must have consented to it.” Nothing of this kind had been done. They had simply propounded principles and expressed truths from their standpoint.
“You remember the testimony of Officer Trehorn, who saw the dynamite and the caps and the fuse on the night of the inauguration of the Board of Trade building, and who the next morning says he went to Lieutenant Bedell of the Cottage Grove Avenue Station and told him all about it. If that was a conspiracy, and that conspiracy has existed for three years, why has the State’s Attorney, or his predecessor in office, yet not prosecuted those who are parties to that conspiracy? The law of the State of Illinois makes it his duty to prosecute every crime which comes to his knowledge. He may plead that he has not known of it. If he did not, then it was culpable negligence that he did not know it. If he will answer to you that as long as those people did not do any overt act there was no reason for him to interfere, then I say as long as these people have not done any overt act there was no conspiracy. There is no way of escaping this consequence, gentlemen of the jury; to every logical mind it is clear. Either the State’s Attorney himself must plead guilty to the charge of the murder of Mathias J. Degan, or every one of these defendants who cannot be shown to have actually thrown or lighted the bomb must be acquitted. If it was not conspiracy then, if they had committed a crime up to the 4th of May for which it was the duty of the State’s Attorney to prosecute them, then what have they added to make their doings murder—to make them amenable to the law on a charge for the highest and gravest offense, the most heinous crime known to law?”
Mr. Zeisler next turned his attention to the special conspiracy entered into by a number of persons at No. 54 West Lake Street and held that of all the defendants it had only been shown that Engel and Fischer were present. He denied that Lingg was there or that any evidence had been introduced to prove it. He scored Waller and reviewed some of his testimony, taking occasion to call the attention of the jury to the fact that the man testified that the signal word “Ruhe” was not mentioned in connection with the Haymarket meeting. Next he alluded to the places where some of the witnesses for the State and some of those present at 54 West Lake Street had been on the night of May 4, and spoke of Engel being at home enjoying a social glass of beer, and the others widely scattered. “The only evidence of a conspiracy was that of Seliger, who testified that Lingg had asked him if he should throw a bomb. Fischer and others who saw the word ‘Ruhe’ in the Arbeiter-Zeitung did not go to Wicker Park, but went elsewhere. What does Waller’s testimony say? It says that on the appearance of the word ‘Ruhe’ all should go to their meeting-places in the outskirts of the city, and that none of them were to be at the Haymarket except the observation committee.”