LINGG’S SUICIDE BOMBS.—From a Photograph.
Made of gas-pipe, six inches in length, and with a notched bolt, as shown, inserted in the bottom of each. These were found in Lingg’s cell, and are similar to the bomb with which he took his life. The fuse is so short that explosion ensues in one second after lighting, making them fitted for self-destruction only.
Louis Lingg was in no gentle frame of mind when he advanced to enter his objection at the bar of the court. After a thrust at the court, he said that he had been accused of murder and been convicted; and “what proof,” he defiantly asked, “have you brought that I am guilty?” He acknowledged that he had helped Seliger to make bombs; “but,” he stoutly maintained, “what you have not proven—even with the assistance of your bought ‘squealer,’ Seliger, who would appear to have acted such a prominent part in the affair—is that any of those bombs were taken to the Haymarket.” He referred to the testimony of the experts as simply showing that the Haymarket bomb bore “a certain resemblance to those bombs of his,” and that was the kind of evidence, he held, upon which he had been convicted. He had been convicted of murder, but it was Anarchy on which the verdict was based. “You have charged me with despising ‘law and order,’” he said. “What does your ‘law and order’ amount to? Its representatives are the police, and they have thieves in their ranks.” He then opened fire on me because the detectives I had sent out had broken into his room, as he claimed, to effect his arrest, and insisted that he had not been at the Monday night meeting, but at Zepf’s Hall, at that time, which I had stated to be false.
Lingg next turned his attention to Mr. Grinnell, and accused him of having “leagued himself with a parcel of base, hireling knaves, to bring me to the gallows.” Then the Judge came in for a scoring. “The Judge himself,” he held, “was forced to admit that the State’s Attorney had not been able to connect me with the bomb-throwing. The latter knows how to get around it, however. He charges me with being a ‘conspirator.’ How does he prove it? Simply by declaring the International Workingmen’s Association to be a ‘conspiracy.’ I was a member of that body, so he has the charge securely fastened on me. Excellent!” He concluded as follows:
“I tell you frankly and openly, I am for force. I have already told Captain Schaack, ‘If they use cannon against us, we shall use dynamite against them.’ I repeat that I am the enemy of the ‘order’ of to-day, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, ‘If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.’ You laugh! Perhaps you think, ‘You’ll throw no more bombs,’ but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope do I say to you: ‘I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority.’ Hang me for it!”
George Engel appeared the least concerned of all when it came his turn to respond to the court’s question as to any reasons he might have against the infliction of the death penalty. He opened by setting forth his arrival in America in 1872 and gave some reasons which had prompted him to espouse Anarchy. It was “the poverty, the misery of the working classes.” People here in a free land, he said, were “doomed to die of starvation.” He had read the works of Lassalle, Marx and George, and after studying the labor question carefully he had come, he said, to the conclusion that “a workingman could not decently exist in this rich country.” He had sought to remedy the inequalities through the ballot-box, but after a time, he said, it had become clear to him “that the working classes could never bring about a form of society guaranteeing work, bread and a happy life by means of the ballot.” He had labored for a time in the interest of the Social-Democratic party, but, finding political corruption in its ranks, he had left it.
“I left this party and joined the International Working People’s Association, that was just being organized. The members of that body have the firm conviction that the workingman can free himself from the tyranny of capitalism only through force—just as all advances of which history speaks have been brought about through force alone. We see from the history of this country that the first colonists won their liberty only through force; that through force slavery was abolished, and just as the man who agitated against slavery in this country had to ascend the gallows, so also must we. He who speaks for the workingmen to-day must hang. And why? Because this republic is not governed by people who have obtained their office honestly. Who are the leaders at Washington that are to guard the interests of this nation? Have they been elected by the people, or by the aid of their money? They have no right to make laws for us, because they were not elected by the people. These are the reasons why I have lost all respect for American laws.”
Engel then alluded to the displacement of labor by machinery and held that the amelioration of the workingmen’s condition could only be effected through Socialism. As to his conviction, he declared that he was not at all surprised. He had learned long ago that the workingman had no more rights here than anywhere else in the world. His crime, he insisted, consisted simply in having labored to “bring about a system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard millions, through the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and misery.” He believed that inventions should be free to all and touched on the aims of Anarchy. In his opinion “Anarchy and Socialism were as much alike as one egg is to another.” Whatever difference existed was in tactics.