Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/89

 among some musty documents the worms were eating up away down in the foundations of the State House.

My work in the office of the secretary of state involved the care of the state's archives. The oldest of these were stored in a vault in the cellar of the huge pile, and the discovery had just been made that some kind of insect, which the state entomologist knew all about, was riddling those records with little holes,—piercing them through and through. In consequence a new vault was prepared, and steel filing cases were set up in it, and the records removed to this safer sanctuary.

It was a tedious and stupid task, until we came one day to file what were called the papers in the anarchist case. Officially they related to the application for the commutation of the sentences of the four men, Spies, Engel, Fischer, and Parsons, who had been hanged, and for the pardon of the three who were then confined in the penitentiary at Joliet, Fielden and Schwab for life, and old Oscar Neebe for fifteen years. Fielden and Schwab had been sentenced to death with the four who had been killed, but Governor Oglesby had commuted their sentences to imprisonment for life; Neebe's original sentence had been for the fifteen years he was then serving. The papers consisted of communications to the governor, great petitions, and letters and telegrams, many sent in mercy, and some in the spirit of reason, asking for clemency, many in a wild hysteria of fear, and the hideous hate that is born of fear, begging the governor to let "justice" take its course.