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Title: The Haywood Trial Author: Lucy E. Parsons Date: September 4, 1907 Language: en Topics: class struggle, working class Source: The Demonstrator Notes: Lakebay, WA
There has been no event in recent years which has shown the advance made
in class-conscious labor organizations more distinctly than the class
trial just ended in Boise, Idaho, and its comparison with the trial of
the Anarchists at Chicago in 1886.
The Anarchist trial was a class trial—relentless, vindictive, savage and
bloody. By that prosecution the capitalists sought to break the great
strike for the eight-hour day which was being successfully inaugurated
in Chicago, this city being the storm-center of that great movement; and
they also intended, by the savage manner in which they conducted the
trial of these men, to frighten the working class back to their long
hours of toil and low wages from which they were attempting to emerge.
The capitalistic class imagined they could carry out their hellish plot
by putting to an ignominious death the most progressive leaders among
the working class of that day. In executing their bloody deed of
judicial murder they succeeded, but in arresting the mighty onward
movement of the class struggle they utterly failed.
So, too, in the trial just ended at Boise, Idaho, they wished to break
up that magnificent organization, the Western Federation of Miners, by
foully murdering, under the forms of law, its valiant officers and
champions—Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone.
The stage-setting, preparatory for the enactment of this capitalistic
conspiracy, was about the same as it was in the case of the Chicago
Anarchists. There was the Pinkerton liar with his pockets bulging out
with “evidence.” In the Anarchists’ case it was the eight-hour movement
to be suppressed; in the Haywood case it was the Western Federation of
Miners they were after, and they wanted to make an example of its
leaders.
But, lo and behold, the class-conscious wage class, which has come into
existence since 1886, had not been reckoned with by the conspirators,
and the radical press, which was to keep them posted, had also been
overlooked. The capitalistic class began to juggle around in the law
courts. This proved their undoing, because it gave the working class
time to get together and take council, and then the workers realized in
what great peril their brothers stood, and began to understand what a
great consolidation of capitalistic interests they must make a stand
against. They also realized it was money, and plenty of it, that must be
collected, and the best legal talent secured, and that they should have
a press which would truthfully report the proceedings of the case.
All these were denied our comrades in 1886–87. The only papers friendly
to them were seized and suppressed by the authorities. The labor
organizations were young, undisciplined, and had no money in their
treasuries. The capitalistic press and pulpit thundered their foul
slander against these victims until they succeeded in blinding the eyes
and closing the ears of the public to reason, and they completed the
conspiracy by packing the jury and obtaining one of the most prejudiced
judges who ever presided at a trial.
Under these circumstances is it any wonder that our comrades were
railroaded to the scaffold? Why, it only took that precious jury three
hours to bring in a verdict of “guilty,” sending eight innocent men to
the gallows. The presiding judge had the brazen effrontery to tell the
jury from the bench that they deserved to be compensated for the
verdict!
How changed is the public conscience in these times of the year of 1907,
all owing to the growing intelligence of the working class and their
alertness in coming to the rescue of their brothers. To verify this
fact, let anyone who cares to take the trouble contrast the charge of
Judge Gary, in the Anarchists’ case, with that of Judge Wood in the
Haywood trial. Gary’s was prejudiced and vindictive to the last degree,
while Judge Wood’s was calm, cool and fair. The attorneys in the case of
the Anarchists requested Gary to instruct the jury in regard to the
degrees of murder—murder in the second degree, manslaughter, etc.—but
the bloodthirsty old villain would have nothing but murder in the first
degree.
The last twenty years of my life—since that dark, sad November 11, 1887,
when my dear husband and his comrades fell victims to a capitalistic
conspiracy—have suddenly become a great pleasure to me, because I see in
the Haywood verdict the tendency of the advanced thought of these times,
and I realize that their lives were not sacrificed in vain. They only
lived twenty years too soon.
For the first time in American history the working class was united and
stood shoulder to shoulder. They became “class conscious” in recognizing
the fact that it was not Haywood the mine- owners were really after, but
the labor organization that he represented.
While we are holding our jubilees over the complete routing of the whole
“bunch,” let us not forget that we still have to deal with a crafty,
cunning, unprincipled set of rascals who, smarting from their defeat,
are still thirsting for innocent blood. Let us remember that Moyer and
Pettibone are still in their clutches and the Pinkerton plague is still
at large in society, and possibly there is another Orchard in the
perspective. While we rejoice over the Haywood verdict, let us be ever
watchful lest these, our brothers, fall victims of class war.