Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/78

 70 chosen another path in life. I might be upon the avenue of the city of Chicago today, surrounded in my beautiful home with luxury and ease, with slaves to dо my bidding. But I chose the other road, and instead I stand here today upon the scaffold. This is my crime. Before high heaven this and this alone my crime. I gave been false and a traitor to the infamies that exist today in capitalistic society. If this is a crime in your opinion I plead guilty to it.

Now, be patient with me; I have been with you, or rather, I have been patient with this trial. Follow me, if you please, and look at the oppressions of this capitalistic system of industry. As was depicted by my comrade Fielden, this morning, every new machine that comes into existence comes as a competitor with the man of labor; as a drag and menace and a prey to the very existence of those who have to sell their labor in order to earn their bread. The man is turned out to stave, and whole occupations and pursuits are revolutionized and completely destroyed by the introduction of machinery, in a day, in an hour as it were. I have known it to be the case in the history of my own life—and I am yet a young man—that whole pursuits and occupations have been wiped out by the invention of machinery.

What becomes of these people? Where are they? They become competitors of other laborers made to reduce wages and increase the work hours. Many of them are candidates for the gibbet, they are candidates for your prison cells. Build more penitentiaries; erect new scaffolds, for these men are upon the highway of crime, of misery, of death. Your honor, there never was an effect without a cause. The tree is known by its fruit. Socialists are not those who blindly close their eyes and refuse to look, and who refuse to hear, but having eyes to see, they see, and having ears to hear, they hear. Look at this capitalistic system; look at its operation upon the small businessmen: the small dealers, the middle class. Bradstreet's tells us in last year's report that there were 11,000 small business men financially destroyed during the past twelve months. What became of those people? Where are hey, and why have they been wiped out? Has there been any less wealth? No; that which they possessed has simply been transferred into the hands of some other person. Who is that other? It is he who has greater capitalistic facilities. It is the monopolist, the man who can run corners who can create rings and squeeze these men to death and wipe them out like dead flies from the table into his monopolistic basket. The middle classes destroyed in this manner join the ranks of the proletariat. They become what? They seek out the factory gate, they seek in the various occupations of wage labor employment. What is the result? Then there are more men upon the market. This increases the number of those who employment. What then? This intensifies the competition, which in turn creates greater monopolists, and with it wages go down until the starvation point is reached, and then what? Your honor Socialism comes to the people and asks them to look into this thing, to discuss it, to reason, to examine it, to investigate it, to know the facts, because it is by this and this alone that violence will be prevented and bloodshed will be avoided; because as my friend here has said, men in their blind rage, in their ignorance not knowing what ails them, knowing that they are hungry, that they are miserable and destitute, strike blindly, and do as they did with Maxwell here, and fight the