Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/91

 first months of his administration he had been brooding over this notable instance of injustice, and he had come to his decision. He knew the cost to him; he had just come to the governorship of his state, and to the leadership of his party, after its thirty years of defeat, and he realized what powerful interests would be frightened and offended if he were to turn three forgotten men out of prison; he understood how partizanship would turn the action to its advantage.

It mattered not that most of the thoughtful men in Illinois would tell you that the "anarchists" had been improperly convicted, that they were not only entirely innocent of the murder of which they had been accused, but were not even anarchists; it was simply that the mob had convicted them in one of the strangest frenzies of fear that ever distracted a whole community, a case which all the psychologists of all the universities in the world might have tried, without getting at the truth of it—much less a jury in a criminal court.

And so, one morning in June, very early, I was called to the governor's office, and told to make out pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab. "And do it yourself," said the governor's secretary, "and don't say anything about it to anybody."

I cannot tell in what surprise, in what a haze, or with what emotions I went about that task. I got the blanks and the records, and, before the executive clerk, whose work it was, had come down, I made out those three pardons, in the largest, roundest hand I could command, impressed them with the