Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - A Wave of Horror (1912).djvu/7

 the men live and prove exemplary prisoners they will come under the operation of the parole law in seven years," that all these things may appear strange and extraordinary, I will not here discuss.

We can do a lot of guessing and that is all. Only future developments, and they may fail, can unravel this most mysterious of criminal cases, from the kidnapping at Indianapolis to the sensational confessions at Los Angeles.

I rest on the premise that James McNamara blew up the Times building and slaughtered 21 men because he says he did.

I admit the savor of "a nigger in the woodpile," but at present nobody outside the star chamber can smell him out.

What I wish to call attention to is the fact that this Wave of Horror swept the land over the confession of a workingman that he did this killing.

It's quite a rarity, is this wave of horror sentiment over wholesale murder. We understand now why it is a rarity—it is because workingmen are not in the habit of doing wholesale murder on their own account.

Wholesale and retail murder to get an enemy out of the way has always been the pleasant pastime of the ruling class.

No particular wave of horror accompanies their bloody game.

Nay, statues are erected, and lauding histories are written of the ruling class murderers.

War for plunder has been just as respectable as Sunday schools in the eyes of Christian rulers for nineteen centuries.

No Wave of Horror when the trusts wanted the Philippine Islands and the only way to get them was to murder the natives into subjection.