Alexander Quasso said he was present when Howard spoke but heard no violence counseled except some reference by Mr. Howard to the justice of hanging Pullman.
Vice President Howard now took the stand and testified regarding his speech at Blue Island. He said:
"I want to begin by saying that among railroad men particularly trainmen, it has been a constant habit and practice and has been for years, to use a certain class of expressions which literally are very offensive in the lightest and most ordinary way, and without meaning anything in particular about them. Every old railroad man can bear me out in this. A railroad man will address his best friend with a most offensive epithet uttered in a most cordial way and intended to express cordiality, so that the term I applied to Pullman, has among railroad men a technical meaning, very broad it is true and expressing according to the circumstances very different sentiments. But its use is so common and I may say usual, that it has altogether lost the meaning it has, among others than railroad men.
"I was telling them the condition of things at Pullman. I told them of incidents that have been testified to before this commission. I was trying to array them against Pullman. I used the language of railroad men and I applied to Mr. Pullman the epithet I am charged with using. But I used it in the railroad sense. I said he ought to be hung, that is another railroad expression.
"I did not say that I would like to take part in the hanging or lead a party to hang him. As to the coupling pin expression, what I said at Blue Island, I have said at hundreds of other places, it was this I told them, it was often said that capital would always defeat labor. I denied this. I said that capital could only whip labor when it could divide it, and make labor defeat itself. That in the last few years a wave of religious intolerance had swept over this country, and the representatives of the railroads had taken advantage of it as a means of dividing labor. I gave instances where some emissary of the railroads would come in, and going to the protestant members, instill distrust in their minds of the Roman Catholic members, and then going to the Roman Catholics and creating distrust of the Protestants. I urged them not to allow themselves to be divided in the labor movement by questions of religious differences, and I said that if any of those sleuths, and I may have said sleuths of hell, come into this movement to array you against each other in a question of religion, I hope some one will have the nerve to hit him on the head with a round end coupling pin and send him to his last long sleep.
"I said nothing about injuring men who came to take their places. I told them if they struck, to put on their good clothes and keep away from the railroad property. If the railroads could get men to run their roads, let them, but if the men stood together, were united, the roads couldn't get men and would have to yield.
"Far from advising violence, I have always advised against it. I have some questions I would like the commission to put to the general managers, either here, or in Washington. They are these:
"1st. Were not the general managers whipped on July 5, before there had been any violence to array public opinion against the strikers, and before the troops were here and by their presence provoked violence?
"2d. Did your company have a contract with the government to carry the mails?
"3d. Was the contract dependent upon your ability to carry Pullmans?