Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/83

 Rh to bear arms? I stand upon that right. Let me see if this court will deprive me of it.

Let me call your atttentionattention [sic] to another point here. For some of these articles that appear in the Alarm, I am no more responsible than is the editor of any other paper. And I did not write everything in the Alarm, and it might be possible that there were some things in that paper which I am not ready to endorse. I am frank to admit that such is the case. I suppose you could scarcely find an editor of a paper in the world, but what could conscientiously say the same thing. Now, am I to be dragged up here and executed for the utterances and the writings of other men, even though they were published in the columns of a paper of which I was the editor? Your honor, you must remember that the Alarm was a labor paper, published by the International Working People's Association, belonging to that body. I was elected its editor by the organization, and, as labor editors generally are, I was handsomely paid. I had saw-dust pudding as a general thing for dinner. My salary was eight dollars a week, and I have received that salary as editor of the Alarm for over two years and a half—$8 a week! I was paid by the association. It stands upon the books. Go down to the office and consult the business manager. Look over the record in the book and it will show you that A. R. Parsons received $8 a week as editor of the Alarm for over two years and a half. This paper belonged to the organization. It was theirs. They sent in their articles—Tom, Dick and Harry; everybody wanted to have something to say, and I had no right to shut off anybody's complaint. The Alarm was a labor paper, and it was specifically published for the purpose of allowing every human being who had a wrong to ventilate it; to give every human being who wore the chains of monopoly an opportunity to clank those chains in the columns of the Alarm. It was a free press organ. It was a free speech newspaper.

But your honor says: "Oh, well, Parsons, your own language, your own words, your own statements at these meetings—what you said." Well, possibly I have said some foolish things. Who has not? As a public speaker probably I have uttered some wild and possibly incoherent assertions. Who, as a public speaker, has not done so? Now, consider for a moment. Suppose, as is now the case with me, here I see little children suffering, men and women starving. There I see others rolling in luxury and wealth and opulence, out of the unpaid-for labor of the laborers. I am conscious of this fact. I see the streets of Chicago, as was the case last winter, filled with 30,000 men in compulsory idleness; destitution, misery and want upon every hand. I see this thing. Then on the other hand I see the First Regiment out in a street-riot drill, and reading the papers the next morning describing the affair, I am told by the editor of the capitalistic newspaper that the First Regiment is out practicing a street-riot drill for the purpose of mowing down these wretches when they come out of their holes that the prosecution talks about here in this case; that the working people are to be slaughtered in cold blood, and that men are drilling upon the streets of the cities of America to butcher their fellowmen when they demand the right to work and partake of the fruits of their labor. Seeing these things, overwhelmed as it were with indignation and pity, my heart speaks. May I not say some things then that