Haymarket (36 page)

June 27

Our wives have been present in court every day, though the strain on them is terrible. Our children are allowed only a brief moment on our knees before being yanked away by a guard. Judge Gary seems hugely pleased with himself for allowing us to glimpse our children each day. He’s presented it as a magisterial act of generosity and mercy, oblivious to what a cruel mercy it is.

June 28

Two more days of jury examination. Still only three jurors impaneled. What with the oppressive heat and fitful sleep at night, I can hardly keep focused on the proceedings. The tedious questioning, the blurred procession of men, the repetition, have made me numb. My mind wanders back to Waukesha, to Spence’s Hill overlooking the valley, the budding spring foliage, the clean air … Schwab, on the other hand, who sits next to me, seems utterly absorbed. He leans forward intently lest he miss a single word. A scholar in all things …

June 29

Lucy has visited faithfully every day. The only absent wife is Meta Neebe, a fragile soul who’s taken her husband’s imprisonment hard and has fallen
ill. We’re rarely allowed to be alone with our wives in our cells, and must mostly talk through the grate or sit, in full view of the guards, in the small alcove at the end of the corridor. Still, it’s a great comfort just to hold Lucy’s hand and feel her warmth. Ever a believer in action, she’s been doing battle, working closely with the Defense Committee to organize picnics and raffles to raise money, writing articles for the labor press—or what’s left of it, the police having shuttered the
Alarm
as well as the
Arbeiter
. When I ask her about the children, I can tell by the way she avoids my eyes that she’s trying to spare me.

“Oh, they’ve long since gotten used to your being away,” she said today, “since you’re always off giving speeches or the like …”

“Do they understand what a prison is?” I asked, knowing full well that seven-year-old Albert Jr. surely does.

“I tell them the truth,” Lucy said, “that the bad people have put you here because of your struggle to help the poor.”

“And what does Albert say to that?”

“He asked if they are poorer than us.” Lucy made an effort to laugh, but it came out constricted, almost like a gargle. She did tell me that she’s been losing customers at the dress shop at a rapid clip and that we might have to consider moving to a cheaper flat. That she would mention the possibility means it’s a foreordained conclusion.

June 30

More stuporous monotony; still only four jurors have been chosen. Two days ago Judge Gary announced the appointment of one Henry Ryce as a special bailiff to seek out and summon men who might qualify as jurors. “A necessary expedient for speeding up the selection process.” But Captain Black tells us that Ryce has privately boasted that he intends to summon only such men as will force Black to use up all of his peremptory challenges, and that this is the real reason Judge Gary has appointed him.

July l

Bailiff Ryce has been doing his masters’ work well. He had the gall today to summon a man who’s kin to M. D. Flavin, one of the policemen killed at Haymarket, and then called a close friend of another dead officer’s family! In both cases Gary overruled Captain Black’s challenge for cause—as he did with a man who said flat out, “I hardly think you could bring proof enough
to change my negative opinion of these anarchists.” But the most outlandish moment came when one potential juror admitted that he believed we were guilty and felt his belief would prove a “handicap” in hearing evidence impartially; to which Judge Gary replied, “Nonsense! The more a man is aware of his handicap, the more he will be on guard against it.” Such blatant bias on the part of a presiding judge is nearly beyond belief, were I not already familiar with the lengths to which the propertied class and its minions will go in defending their privilege.

Foster told me that before I turned myself in, he had already tried arguing before the bench that the trial was taking place far too soon after the deaths in Haymarket and entirely too near the home of the families of the policemen who were killed. But Judge Gary turned a deaf ear to him.

July 2

Louis Lingg deeply intrigues me. Before the trial, we’d never met. Since he speaks little English, and I no German, we can’t talk together. Yet from simply watching him, I’ve gotten a strong sense of his admirably fierce, independent character. He sits in court hour after hour reading a book or staring idly ahead, not deigning to acknowledge the activity around him, making the clear point that he doesn’t accept the court’s legitimacy. His defiance is made more impressive still by his remarkable physical presence. He has a powerful build (Spies says he’s a dedicated gymnast) and exudes a kind of smoldering, volcanic energy. He has as handsome a head as I’ve ever seen: curly chestnut hair, pale white skin and piercing blue eyes. A veritable Greek god—a contemptuous, wrathful one.

July 3

I was allowed a visit today with Lizzie and William, a short one because both are “notorious radicals.” During the whole of it, a guard stood directly outside my cell. Lizzie, dear soul, was fighting back tears the entire time. I tried to convince her that I remain cheerful and that despite the prejudicial way jury selection is proceeding, I remain confident that I’ll be able to establish my innocence. Lizzie smiled wanly and started to say something, but I saw her catch herself mid-sentence, fearful of dampening my spirits.

William told me that in the wake of Haymarket, eight-hour strikes have been failing almost everywhere; workers are more fearful and the
police quicker to use their muscle. These cycles are inevitable, I said, and a temporary downturn mustn’t be viewed as a permanent defeat. We’re on the right side even if, at a given moment, it’s the losing one. I must believe that nothing in “human nature”—that grab-bag phrase for whatever can’t otherwise be explained—prevents like-minded people from discovering their common interests and acting together to secure them.

I asked Lizzie for her frank assessment of how Lucy and the children are faring, and she assured me that I need never worry about Lucy: she’s steadfast in her optimism and formidable in her energetic pursuit of my vindication. As for the children, Lizzie thinks they’re basically doing well, though Albert Jr. is of an age where he has some understanding of what’s at stake, and concomitant fears for his father’s safety. Lizzie thinks it would be advisable to send both the children to Waukesha until the trial is over. “But wouldn’t they then be bereft of both father and mother?” I replied. Lizzie says they’d be in good and loving hands and that the distance is not so far that Lucy couldn’t visit often. In Waukesha the children would be given little or no news of the trial, and therefore not be subject to constant frights. Besides, their absence would free up Lucy’s time for advocacy. I can see some merit to the plan, but I’m not convinced. A loving mother close at hand seems to me the best stay against dread.

July 4

Independence Day. We had a shortened court session so that Judge Gary, chief prosecutor Grinnell and other Defenders of the Republic could go off and perform their various patriotic duties—from saluting the state militia as it parades by to responding to toasts of congratulation at the Union League Club for having corralled the wild-eyed terrorists bent on destroying Our Sacred Liberties (like the liberty to pay starvation wages so they can erect their second marble palace). How they’d laugh at the suggestion that true patriots concern themselves with the welfare of the whole people …

July 7

The tedious process of jury selection grinds on, in stifling heat and in still more stifling monotony. Hundreds upon hundreds of men have been summoned over the past few weeks and yet only seven have been seated. Not that those seven could be called impartial; each has admitted to varying
degrees of distaste for socialists and anarchists, and shown considerable gullibility about what they’ve read in the mainstream press about us.

Counselor Zeisler explained to me why we persist in challenging for cause when it’s obvious Judge Gary will continue to overrule: “To make a strong case, should the jury convict, for an appeal to the Supreme Court to set aside the verdict because of Gary’s erroneous rulings.” That word “convict” made me swallow hard. Knowing our innocence—though it’s true I can’t vouch for Lingg—and the enormous weight of evidence that supports it, I’ve been pretty steadily optimistic up to now. I’ve always known that conviction was a possibility, since the “weight of evidence” has no influence with tyrants. Zeisler isn’t one to overdramatize.

July 10

Today a juror was accepted who admitted that he thought the
accusation
of guilt is presumptive evidence of its truth! Captain Black withheld a peremptory challenge, deciding that an uninformed mind was preferable to one filled with fixed convictions. Alanson Reed, a merchant of considerable standing in the city, has also been seated, even though, under questioning, he declared a strong aversion to socialism. Black has some slight acquaintance with Reed and has from time to time heard rumors that he’s something of a free-thinker—at least as defined within entrepreneurial circles! Thus has Bailiff Ryce cleverly shrunk our range of choice. It was either Reed or the candidate who proudly declared earlier today, “If I am seated on this jury, I will hang all the damned buggers.”

July 12

I had a strange dream last night. I was a young boy back in the Brazos River Valley on my brother’s ranch, riding bareback on a wild Mexican mustang. I was all alone and full of joy. I suddenly caught sight of a woman lying by the side of a hill. Kneeling down beside her, I discovered it was my beloved Aunt Ester, the slave and house servant in my brother’s family who mostly raised me. She woke up, took me in her arms, and gently rocked me back and forth. A huge crow suddenly landed on her face and began clawing at it. When I tried to fight the crow off, it turned into a rattler and bit me on the neck. Screaming out in pain, I woke up. The guard was banging his stick against the mesh of my cell. I couldn’t understand where I was. “Parsons!” the guard kept calling out, not unkindly. “Parsons—wake up,
wake up! You’ve roused the whole cellblock with your yelling.” By then I’d come to my senses, but as I lay awake in the dark I felt profoundly shaken. Aunt Ester’s face has remained before me all day.

The dream follows on a letter I had yesterday from my brother, announcing his intention of coming to Chicago to attend the trial once it begins. The news came as a great surprise and stirred up conflicting emotions. William and I haven’t seen each other in some fifteen years, and during the Reconstruction period we sharply differed in our politics. He once announced his intention of writing a book warning against the dangers of the superior white race submitting to “mongrelization.” My marriage to Lucy put an end to all contact between us.

Yet now he writes that he’s had a change of heart politically. In Virginia, where he currently lives, he’s joined the Knights and has written a pamphlet denouncing Northern monopolists who manipulate the economy for their own advantage, determined to prevent the South from rebuilding (so he hasn’t changed beyond recognition!). He tells me straight out that he doesn’t share my “extreme” views, yet he’s apparently gone out of his way to contradict reports in the press that he’s repudiated me.

“I’ve issued a statement,” William writes, “declaring my belief that you are fighting for principle and applauding you for having the courage of your convictions. I have also expressed my anger and amazement that your voluntary surrender has not won you more credit. Speaking as a general in the Confederacy, I’ve declared that among belligerents in actual war, such an act of intrepidity as yours would have insured your honorable discharge; and that among savage tribes such a surrender would have insured your elevation to the chieftainship.”

He even sends regards to Lucy, and expresses his anticipated pleasure in making her acquaintance and getting to know our children. When I told all this to Lucy today, I thought she might be dismissive and say something along the lines of “too little, too late.” But instead she seemed merely indifferent, brushing off the news of my alienated brother’s reappearance as being about as significant as the addition of sugar water to the prison diet.

July 15

This morning Captain Black used up his last peremptory challenge. The seating of the very next, and twelfth, juror was therefore a foregone
conclusion. The gentleman turned out to be one H. T. Sanford, who said he had no reason to believe that newspaper accounts of our guilt were false, and gratuitously added, “I have an opinion in my own mind that the defendants encouraged the throwing of that bomb.”

It has taken twenty-one days and the processing of
931
candidates to produce this jury of “twelve good men and true”—which is to say, a jury with only one man born on foreign soil, and with no industrial workers. Mr. F. S. Osborne, a head salesman for the Marshall Field department store, has been chosen as foreman. At the announcement that the jury process had been completed, cheers filled the courtroom. With so partisan a jury, there’s understandable cause for gloom, and some of our comrades have given way to it (especially poor Schwab, who is as tender as a dove). Yet I go with Captain Black in his conviction that if the verdict goes against us, it’ll never stand up in a higher court. Besides, he doesn’t believe the verdict will go against us.

Immediately after the jury was seated, State’s Attorney Grinnell leapt to his feet—as if a jack-in-the-box had been sprung—and launched full steam into his opening remarks. That he aims for melodrama above truth was instantly apparent. “For the first time in the history of our country, people are on trial for their lives for endeavoring to make anarchy the rule, and ruthlessly and awfully destroying life.”

As if he begins to understand what Anarchism means! He equates it, or wants the jury to, with nihilism and violence, which in fact are the polar opposites of what we actually stand for. We believe that human beings are innately social and that once freed from the tyranny of traditional pieties and institutionalized authority would form communities based on mutual affinity and assistance. Anarchy is a belief in human possibilities. The Grinnells of the world want us to believe that slavish obedience to authority is all that protects us from our own bestial nature. Dutiful sons of Calvin, they see life as the war of each against all. We stress the responsibility of each for all and insist that human nature, inherently compassionate and companionable, makes such a social goal feasible. I suppose that does make us “traitors” of a sort—traitors to the ingrained American view that success in life is best measured by the accumulation of status and goods, and that an individual’s “failure” is caused solely by his own moral deficiencies.