Samuel Fielden

“ But Socialism is equality. Socialism recognizes the fact that no man in society is responsible for what he is; that all the ills that are in society are the production of poverty; and scientific Socialism says that you must go to the root of the evil. There is no criminal statistician in the world but will acknowledge that all crime, when traced to its origin, is the product of poverty. It has been said that it was inflammatory for me to say that the present social system degraded men until they became mere animals. ”

“ Go through this city into the low lodging houses where men are huddled together into the smallest possible space, living in an infernal atmosphere of death and disease, and I will ask you to draw your silks and broad-cloaths close to you when these men pass you. Do you think that these men deliberately, with a full knowledge of what they are doing, choose to become that class of animals? Not one of them. They are the products of conditions, of certain environments in which they were born, and which have impelled them resistlessly into what they are. ”

“ Neebe has told you of the advantages that have been gained by classes of workingmen in this city through his organization of Trades Unions for the purpose of getting a reduction of the hours of labor. If we have succeeded to the extent that he has told you, our lives will not have been spent in vain.
And whatever may be our fate—and there seems to be but one conclusion on that question—we feel satisfied that we have not lived in this world for nothing; that we have done some good to our fellowmen, and done what we believe to be in the interest of humanity and for the furtherance of justice. ”

“ I have advocated the principles of Socialism and social equality, and for that and no other reason am I here, and is sentence of death to be pronounced upon me. What is Socialism? Taking somebody else's property? That is what Socialism is in the common acceptation of the term. ”

“ They are principles that ignore no man. They are the principles that consider the interest of everyone. They are the principles which will do away with wrong, and injustice and suffering will be reduced at least to a minimum under such an organization of society. As compared to the present struggle for existence, which is degrading society and making men, as I have said in the Haymarket speech, merely things and animals, Socialism will give them opportunities of developing the possibilities of their nature. ”

“ Ingham has not got the intelligence to perceive it—that the greatest security to human happiness depends upon the widespread happiness of those around you. You have no security for your fortunes. You can have no security for your comforts as long as there is around you a dissatisfied, a despoiled, and suffering community. I assert here as a fact, that Vanderbilt and Jay Gould would be happier men today if they had but $20,000 to their names and every employee who is now in their employment were above want and above the danger of want. ”

“ And yet we have been convicted on this kind of testimony. Reporters have been brought here to prove that I was a conspirator and was intending to sack Michigan avenue, intending to create a riot and revolt in this city, by quotations from my speeches. I have shown you, my friends—I am speaking to you as well as to the court, and I am speaking to the country—that reports of newspapers cannot be depended upon, and a man whose life is placed in jeopardy on the bare report of a newspaper reporter, is as liable to be murdered as not. ”

“ I thought of the time when I was a child on the hills of Thrace, of a little boy that belonged to a neighbor, and who shared with me my humble meal as we tended our separate flocks on the hillsides, and when I lifted the cowl of the gladiator that I had killed, I found that it was the comrade of my youth. Why should it be that we should struggle? Why should it be that we should fight? ”

“ If I am to be convicted—hanged for telling the truth—the little child that kneels by its mother's side on the West Side today, and tells its mother that she wants her papa to come home, and to whom I had intended, as soon as its prattling tongue should commence to talk, to teach that beautiful sentiment—that the child had better never be taught to read; had better never be taught that sentiment—to love truth. ”

“ Outside are the men who are suffering; men with appetites, men with passions; men with desires; men with sentiments as fine, perhaps, some of them, as those of some of the most intelligent portions of the community; men being driven to the wall. They will continue to be unless the system is changed. When I have told you, or indicated, rather, how the people's means of existence have gradually been concentrated into the hands of the smaller quantity and number of the community, it is an indication that points unerringly to a danger. ”

“ Is it doubted by anybody that the system has no mercy? Does it not pursue its natural course irrespective of whom it hurts or upon whom it confers benefits? The private property system then, in my opinion, being a system that only subserves the interests of a few, and can only subserve the interests of a few, has no mercy. ”

“ And I say here and now that the man who can look upon such conditions as these and not know that society is bringing itself to the verge of a crisis which is terrible to think of, is blind; and the man who can look upon suffering like this and not feel stirred to do something to change such conditions, has not got anything in his heart but the feelings of the tiger, hungry for prey. In this city of Chicago children are working at very tender ages. ”

“ That in a year's time each man working as a wage laborer in the city of Chicago had added to the wealth of this city—by whomsoever it was possessed makes no difference—$2,764. The average wages paid for that average product of each worker was $457—a little more than one-sixth. And yet the political economists of the free trade and the protective schools were asking: "Why is it that we have overproduction?" ”

“ It cannot stop for the consideration of such a sentiment. Naturally it cannot. So you ought not to have mercy on the private property system, because it is well known that there are many people in the community with prejudices in their minds. They have grown up under certain social regulations, and they believe that these social regulations are right, just as Mr. Grinnell believes that everything in America is right, because he happened to be born here. And they have such a prejudice against any one who attacks those systems. ”

“ We claim that so far as we have been able to find out in trying to find a cure for the ills of society we have not found out anything that has seemed to fit the particular disease which society, in our opinion, is afflicted with today better than the principles of Socialism, and, your honor, Socialism, when it is as thoroughly understood in this community and in the world as it is by us, I believe that the world, which is generally honest, prejudiced though it may be, will not be slow to adept its principles. ”

“ I trust the time will come when there will be a better understanding, more intelligence, and, above the mountains of iniquity, wrong and corruption. I hope the sun of righteousness and truth and justice will come to bathe in its balmy light an emancipated world. I thank your honor for your attention. ”

“ I was born, as I have told you, in Lancashire, and if there is a place—I know that the so-called patriots of this country have from mercenary motives of their own, tried to create a quarrel between England and America from time to time in order to gain a certain vote, and I know that there is some justification behind it—but if there is a place on this footstool that Americans ought to look to with gratitude, it is Lancashire. ”

“ These are my ideas in short on Socialism. The ultra patriotic sentiment of the American people—and I suppose the same comparative sentiment is felt in England, France and Germany—is that no man in this country need be poor. The class who are not poor think so. The class who are poor are beginning to think differently; that under existing conditions it is impossible that some should not be poor. ”

“ Having found it I had a right to advocate it, and I did. The constitution of the United States, when it says: "The right of free speech shall not be abridged," gives every man the right to speak his thoughts. ”

“ Ingham has said that while other people were making their fortunes these men were advocating sedition or drinking beer. It is as noble a thing for a man to drink beer as it is for a man to make his fortune off other people's labor; and I tell you that a man is of no use to this world, of no use to society or the neighborhood in which he lives, who has no other object in view than making a fortune for himself and his family, little caring what becomes of those around him. ”

“ Society, with its rapidity of production of the means of existence, is capable of doing that without doing an injury to a single individual; and the great masses of wealth owned by individuals in this and the old world have been produced in exactly the same proportion as these men have been degraded—and they never could have been accumulated in any other way. ”

“ When it was shown to the employee of Marshall Field, who is on the jury, that his employer has given a job to the principal witness against the prisoners, since giving his evidence against them at the coroner's inquest, was it not a hint to the juror as to what kind of a verdict his employer wanted? On no occasion, except as illustrating a point has anybody, at any Socialistic meeting that I ever attended, advised anybody to go to Marshall Field's and taking anything. ”

“ Today as the beautiful autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze the cheek of every free man, I stand here never to bathe my head in its rays again. I have loved my fellowmen as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty, and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend. ”

“ And it will be a good time, a grand day for the world; it will be a grand day for humanity; it will never have taken a step so far onward towards perfection, if it can ever reach that goal, as it will when it adopts the principles of Socialism. ”

“ Then if nothing can be got by legislation, and hundreds of men are paid every year to legislate for the community, it is a foregone fact, and its logic cannot be disputed, that if that portion of the community which can receive no benefit from legislation does not throttle that law which is doing this legislation it will throttle them. ”

“ The lawyers can give technical definitions, I suppose, but the general idea of the duties of a prosecuting attorney is—and I do not call in question the fact that they are necessary under our present social regulations—to see to it that no guilty man shall escape, if he can possibly prevent it. It is also the duty of the prosecuting attorney, as much as it is of the defendant's attorney, to see to it that no innocent man should suffer for any crime. ”

“ I tell them now that I do not advise any man to commit any act which would render himself liable to the law or to punishment; but I say to those who have the means of existence in their possession, that there may come a time when the people will no longer be crowded together, when the rate, as Mr. Grinnell has said, will come out of their holes. ”

“ I do not charge that every capitalist willfully and maliciously conspires to bring about these results, but I do charge that it has been done, and I do charge that it is a very undesirable condition of things, and I claim that Socialism would cure the world of that ulcer. ”

“ They only knew the blind rage of an enraged tiger to kill something—to destroy something, when their condition had become so desparate that life was no longer desirable and death had no terrors. It is a lesson of history. No man ever willfully throws his life away. ”

“ I say, my friends, as you draw the line tighter and tighter, the conflicts that are going on and will go on between these men, will array them against their masters. If I can say anything in the interests of humanity, in the interests of liberty, equality, and fraternity, I would say it now. ”

“ Parsons, in his testimony, repeated what he had said at the Haymarket on the night of May 4, when he stated that this was an American question, because the patriotic tricksters who have been telling the people to worship the American flag, while they quietly put their hands in their pockets and robbed them—they have said that this merely a European question. It is an American question and the close contact of nations cemented by the facilities of civilization, is bringing all the question, that affect one to affect all people equally all over the world. ”

“ But often when I have gone into communities, when I would have to depend upon those communities for paying my way, I have often come back to this city with money out of my pocket which I had earned by hard labor, and I had to pay for the privilege of my agitation out of the little money I might have in my possession. ”