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Title: The Proposed Slaughter Author: Lucy E. Parsons Date: March 4, 1905 Language: en Topics: class struggle, working class Source: The Liberator Notes: Chicago
Is it to be another slaughter of innocent working men like the one which
took place in Chicago twenty years ago, at the behest of the
capitalistic class, who wished to put men out of the way whom they
regarded as dangerous to their reign of robbery?
The conspiracy entered into by the Mine Owners’ Association of the
states of Colorado and Idaho, acting through their tools—the governors
of the above-named states—in kidnaping Charles H. Moyer, William D.
Haywood and George Pettibone, and spiriting them out of the state of
Colorado when the shadows of night had fallen, when no one might witness
the conspiracy save the armed conspirators, savors so much of deeds of
“dark ages”, long, long gone by, that one in reading it in this
twentieth century is forced to tap one’s self on the forehead and shake
one’s self, so to speak, to make sure that they are not dreaming!
What, pray, in the face of such an infamy, becomes of the boasted rights
of American citizens under its constitution?
If such an outrage had been perpetrated in a foreign country, the
American Navy would have been set in motion, and diplomatic relations
would have been “strained”; “Teddy” would be talking loudly about the
“rights” of American citizens. But how different all this is when the
rights of the American citizen is ruthlessly set aside by the czars of
his own country, if he happens to belong to the working class!
There is such a similarity between the present “great dynamite
conspiracy” now being staged for action in Idaho, and that conducted by
the capitalistic class in the “Anarchists’ Trial” in Chicago nearly
twenty years ago, that a brief recapitulation is not out of place.
In the present case, as in the former, the Pinkerton lying thug bobs up
with his “evidence.” Then there are other detectives of less luminous
degrees, to be used as supernumeraries in filling out the less important
parts of the tragedy. In the present, as in the former case, dynamite
bombs have been planted by the “conspirators” and conveniently found by
the detectives, and too, like the former case, the “conspiracy” is to
date back a few years. This is done to keep the public in breathless
expectancy, like the clown in the circus who announces in clarion tones
the wonders soon to be brought forth! The governor of Idaho, chief clown
just now, begins to talk loudly about “a conspiracy that is going to
shock civilization.”
This is decidedly Ă la mode Bonfield, Schaack, Grinell, etc. People of
America—citizens, brothers and sisters, lovers of liberty and
justice—are you going to stand idly by and see these men murdered by the
Mine Owners’ Association of the states of Idaho and Colorado because
they want them out of the way—because they are “troublesome characters”?
If you do not wish to see American soil again stained with the blood of
innocent workingmen; if you do not wish to again hear the sound of the
accursed gallows as it strangles their voices and forever silences them,
then waste not an hour, bestir yourselves! Act now!
Let your voices be heard in protest from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
from Maine to Mexico. Serve notice upon the murderous capitalistic class
that you will not again stand idly by and see your brothers made victims
because they so will it, and they will dare not do it!
Show by your action, your strength and your determination that the
people are more powerful than a few rich conspirators.