Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/60

 52 about a year ago. There was quite a lively quarrel between them and the box-nailers. I understand that after the introduction of those box-making machines only one man was required to do the work that was formerly done by two and a half—two persons could do the work of five. Now, I claimed in public speeches and discussions that these men who fought about the introduction of the box machines did not understand the real question at issue. Improved machinery—I claim now what I have claimed all along in the discussion of this industrial problem—is calculated to benefit all classes of humanity and society. But it is the use to which they are put. If they can be bought by one person and used in the interests of that person, so that he can hire labor cheap, or dispense with labor, they are a benefit to no person save the man who has money enough to purchase a machine, and they are a direct injury under such regulations to those who cannot purchase a machine. It is ridiculous to argue that it rt quires men to make machines and it makes work in that way. If it required as much labor to make them and as much expenditure to make them as it did away with labor, there would be no object in a man's buying the machine. That answers itself. So that under the present regulations,—and this language of mine will bear the interpretation which I have given, when you take everything into consideration, and I think it is the more plausible interpretation—and I will say to you here that, when Mr. English brought this report, he admitted it to be but a garbled report of my speech—my conception of justice is this, that a man ought never to be allowed to testify against a man who is on trial for his life, when he admits, before he gives his testimony, that it is incorrect. I do net think that it is in the interest of justice that such testimony should be given. Mr. English admits that before he left the Tribune office that night to go to that meeting, he was advised not to bring a correct report. If he had brought a correct report he might have been discharged. He was instructed not to do it. That was his work for that night, to only take what he considered the inflammatory or incendiary portions of the speeches. You can take no speech delivered by any person and do it justice by extracting what you consider the inflammatory portion. I have heard men make speeches in my time, and I have bad to pay very close attention to know what they were driving at. They would take an hour to prove a position. If you judged them in half an hour you would not get at all the position they were trying to prove. It is often the case when listening to public speakers that I have noticed they will speak along and along, and then in the last few minutes of the speech they will show exactly what they mean. There will be some language used there that modifies your conception of their meaning, and opens it all up, and you see the beauty of the whole argument. Maybe you would not have seen it if it hadn’t been for that unlocking of the secret.

I am charged with having spoken of rebellion. But before I speak of that, I will refer again to some of the words which have been introduced here I am charged with having said "stab the law." No one claims but that it was in connection with my conception of the meaning of Foran's speech, and the word "stab" is not necessarily a threat of violence upon any person. Here at your primary elections you frequently hear the adherents of different candidates state before the primaries are called that they will "knife" so and so