“It is true, I am acquainted with several of my fellow-defendants; with most of them, however, but slightly, through seeing them at meetings, and hearing them speak. Nor do I deny that I, too, have spoken at meetings, saying that, if every workingman had a bomb in his pocket, capitalistic rule would soon come to an end.
“That is my opinion, and my wish; it became my conviction when I mentioned the wickedness of the capitalistic conditions of the day.
“Can any one feel any respect for a government that accords rights only to the privileged classes, and none for the workers? We have seen but recently how the coal barons combined to form a conspiracy to raise the price of coal, while at the same time reducing the already low wages of their men. Are they accused of conspiracy on that account? But when workingmen dare ask an increase in their wages, the militia and the police are sent out to shoot them down.
“For such a government as this I can feel no respect, and will combat them, despite their power, despite their police, despite their spies.
“I hate and combat, not the individual capitalist, but the system that gives him those privileges. My greatest wish is that workingmen may recognize who are their friends and who are their enemies.
“As to my conviction, brought about, as it was, through capitalistic influence, I have not one word to say.”
Samuel Fielden entered into a long disquisition on the troubles of the working classes all over the world, and covered much of the ground traversed by him when on the witness-stand. He spoke of his having been in England a Sunday School superintendent, a local preacher of the Methodist Church, and an exhorter, and then chronicled his change of convictions after his arrival in the United States in 1868. He branched out into an exposition of Socialism and cited instances of the oppression practiced on working people by capitalists. He then reviewed some of the points in the testimony against him and sought to show wherein his speeches at various meetings had been incorrectly reported in the newspapers. He had neither said at the Haymarket meeting, “Here come the bloodhounds,” nor had he fired a revolver. He claimed that the meeting had been a peaceable one, and held that there had been no indication of trouble, and that his language had not been incendiary. He said:
“I am charged with having said, ‘Stab the law.’ No one claims but that it was in connection with my conception of the meaning of Foran’s speech, and the word ‘stab’ is not necessarily a threat of violence upon any person. Here at your primary elections you frequently hear the adherents of different candidates state before the primaries are called that they will ‘knife’ so and so. Do they mean that they are going to kill him, stab him, take his life away from him? They are forcible expressions—very emphatic expressions. They are adjectives which are used in different ways to carry conviction, and perhaps make the language more startling to the audience, in order that they may pay attention.”
In speaking of his arrest he said:
“I didn’t attempt to run away. I had been out walking around the street that morning, and there was plenty of opportunity for me to have been hundreds of miles away. When the officer came there I opened the door to him. He said he wanted me. I knew him by sight and I knew what was his occupation. I said: ‘All right; I will go with you.’ I have said here that I thought, when the representatives of the State had inquired by means of their policemen as to my connection with it, that I should have been released. And I say now, in view of all the authorities that have been read on the law and regarding accessories, that there is nothing in the evidence that has been introduced to connect me with that affair. One of the Chicago papers, at the conclusion of the State’s Attorney’s case, said that they might have proved more about these men, about where they were and what they were doing on the 2d and 3d of May. When I was told that Captain Schaack had got confessions out of certain persons connected with this affair, I said: ‘Let them confess all they like. As long as they will tell only the truth, I care nothing for their confessions.’”