Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/156

 148 of the stairway leading from the hall down to the street, who applied their clubs to them as they passed, seemingly with all the violence practicable under the circumstances.

"Mr. Jacob Beiersdorf, who was a manufacturer of furniture, employing some 200 men, had been invited to the meeting and came, but as he was about to enter the place where it was held, an inoffensive old man, doing nothing unlawful, was stricken down at his feet by a policeman's club.

"These general facts were established by an overwhelming mass of testimony, and for the purpose of the questions in the case, it is needless to go farther into detail.

"The chief political right of the citizen in our government, based upon the popular will as regulated by law, is the right of suffrage, but to that right two others are auxiliary and of almost equal importance:

"First: The right of free speech and of a free press.

"Second: The right of the people to assemble in a peaceable manner to consult for the common good.

"These are among the fundamental principles of government and guaranteed by our constitution. Section 17, article 2, of the bill of rights, declares: 'The people have a right to assemble in a peaceable manner to consult for the common good, to make known their opinions to their representatives, and apply for redress of grievances.' Jurists do not regard these declarations of the bill of rights as creating or conferring the rights, but as a guarantee against their deprivation or infringement by any of the powers or agencies of the government. The rights themselves are regarded as the natural and inalienable rights belonging to every individual, or as political, and based upon or arising from principles inherent in the very nature of a system of free government.

"The right of the people to assemble in a peaceable manner to consult for the common good, being a constitutional right, it can be exercised and enjoyed within the scope and the spirit of that provision of the constitution, independently of every other power of the State government.

"Judge Cooley, in his excellent work on 'Torts,' speaking (p. 296) of remedies for the invasion of political rights, says: "When a meeting for any lawful purpose is actually called and held, one who goes there with the purpose to disturb and break it up, and commits disorder to that end, is a trespasser upon the rights of those who, for a time, have control of the place of meeting. If several unite in the disorder it may be a criminal riot.'"

So much for Judge McAllister.

Now, it is shown that no attention was paid to the judge's decision; that peaceable meetings were invaded and broken up, and inoffensive people were clubbed; that in 1885 there was a strike at the McCormick Reaper Factory, on account of a reduction of wages, and some Pinkerton men, while on their way there, were hooted at by some people on the street, when they fired into the crowd and fatally wounded several people who had taken no part in any disturbance; that four of the Pinkerton men were indicted for this murder by the grand jury, but that the prosecuting officers apparently took no interest in the case, and allowed it to be continued a number of times, until the witnesses were sworn out, and in the end the murderers went free; that after this there was a strike on the West Division Street railway, and that some of the police,