Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/50

 42 they were right or wrong, and to compare their views with the views of gentlemen who continually asserted that they were wrong. Those gentlemen were invited there to discuss the question, and would have been given an opportunity and as much time as any Socialistic speaker in that meeting to reply to the creed of Socialism. I do not think it was claimed that I said anything very inflammatory at that meeting. The city was placarded with bills inviting the professional and business men to come there and discuss those questions with us. They did not come in any great force. I was charged with having, at Mueller's Hall, as chairman of the meeting, called upon the audience to dispute with the Socialists and controvert anything that might have been said in behalf of private capitalism, as this would be the last opportunity before we began to take their property. The man who testified to that knows under what circumstances it was said. It was said because the critics on Socialism had charged us with a desire to take the property of others, instead of examining into our position; and the audience understood it was a joke as a sort of a take-off on the criticisms on Socialism.

It is well known that the reporters of the papers are a most intelligent (?) class of men. I do not know any class of people among whom I have found so many stupid people, and 1 have a very extensive acquaintance with them. With regard to what was stated about me at one time, when I was charged with making inflammatory statements here, I wish to say that at that time I was in Cincinnati, and I can prove it by a thousand persons of Cincinnati. Mr. Spies went with me to the depot the night before and bought me a ticket. I will speak a little further about my friends, the reporters, because the reporters have been depended upon to produce the conviction in this case. It is well known in this and every reading community that reports in the newspapers cannot be depended upon. There is not a public speaker in this country but what has had cause to complain of the reports of his speeches in the newspapers. So intolerable has this become that the chief magistrate of this country, less than a year ago, stated—and it was published all through the country—that there never was an age in the world in which newspaper lying existed to the extent that it does now, and there never was a country in which it existed to the extent that it does in this. Since my incarceration in jail, Mr. Harrison has been so utterly disgusted with the promises of the reporters to correctly report news, that he has given orders to his subordinates at the headquarters of the city department to refuse to give them any more news "It is no use; you will lie about it. I have tried you and tried you, and you have lied about it, and I will give you no more news," he has said. And yet we have been convicted on this kind of testimony. Reporters have been brought here to prove that I was a conspirator and was intending to sack Michigan avenue, intending to create a riot and revolt in this city, by quotations from my speeches. I have shown you, my friends—I am speaking to you as well as to the court, and I am speaking to the country—that reports of newspapers cannot be depended upon, and a man whose life is placed in jeopardy on the bare report of a newspaper reporter, is as liable to be murdered as not. At Twelfth street Turner Hall I made a speech concerning the riot in London. On that occasion I stated that the same causes in Chicago would produce the same results that we had seen in London, and that the privileged