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Victor
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The
Cripple Creek
Strike:
a History of
Industrial Wars
in Colorado,
1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
pages 510 to 525
DARROW DIAMONDS.
THE PLEA TO THE JURY.
"Gentlemen, I need not tell you how important this case is. How important to the man on trial and to those who still must be placed where he is today. How important to his family and his friends. How important to society. How important to a great movement which represents the hopes and the wishes and the aspirations of all men who labor to sustain their daily life. You know it! You could not have sat here day after day so long as you have without understanding it, and grasping it, and excusing us if in our haste and zeal we seemed to say things we should not have said, and forgot things we should have spoken of to you.
"And, gentlemen, we are here as aliens to you. Our client and the men who are with him down here in this jail have been brought fifteen hundred miles to be tried by a practically foreign, alien jury, a jury unfamiliar with their method of thought, a jury unfamiliar with their methods of life, a jury who has not viewed life from the standpoints of industry as these men have viewed it; I am here, two thousand miles from home, unacquainted with you, with your life, with your methods of reasoning—all of us are brought here in an alien country, before people, if not unfriendly, whom at least we do not know, and we are here met by the ablest counsel that the state of Idaho ever produced—the peer of any counsel anywhere; and, more than that, we are here in the home of the man who was killed in the most ruthless, cowardly, brutal way that any man could meet his death.
"We are here, strangers, aliens, if not regarded by you as enemies, to meet an accusation of the murder of a man whom you all know, whom many of you voted for, maybe, whom one of you at least did business with, a man in whose house one juror lived for two long years. We are trying this case to a jury that is almost the-family of the man who is dead. We are trying it to a community that has no community of interest with the men whom we defend. We are defending these men for what seems to you almost an assault upon your own home, and your own fireside, and we must be contented with results. We can only appeal to you, gentlemen, to lay aside those common feelings which possess the minds of all men, to not be governed by passion or feeling or prejudice, but to look at us as if we were of you, to try to find out the standpoints from which these men acted, to give us that same fair, impartial trial that should be given to a defendant if you did not know the deceased or as if you knew the defendant and stood equally between him and the law.
MEN CONTROLLED BY ENVIRONMENTS.
"More than that, gentlemen, we are all human. We have come into this court room and into this community, a community that has been deliberately poisoned for a year and a half, a community where feeling, and sentiment, and hatred have been deliberately sown against this defendant and his friends; a community where lie after lie has been sent broadcast like poison to infect the minds of men. We have come here after a year and a half of that, and must submit our case to a jury that has been fed upon this poison for all these months. We have no redress. We ask for none. You have sat here for two months, and you know the lies that have been scattered broadcast on the leaflet of every paper, almost that is circulated in this community. You have heard it from the witness stand, and you know it, and they could not have failed to have influenced this jury and this court. Men cannot rise above their environments. We are all alike, and if I were to tell this jury that I believed they were great enough and wise enough and strong enough to overcome the environments in which they live, and if I were to say to this Court that he could do what no other judge in Christendom ever did, rise superior to his environments and his life, you would know I was lying to you. You would understand that, if you did not understand anything else. We are all human, we are all influenced alike, moved by the same feelings and the same emotions, a part of the life that is around us, and It is not in the nature of things that this Court or this jury would not to some degree have been influenced by all that has gone before. But, gentlemen, as men go, as we see our neighbors and our friends, I have no doubt that you twelve men before me intend to carefully guard and protect the rights, the hopes, the interests and the life of this defendant. I have no doubt that you mean to give to him the same honest trial, the same benefit of the law, that you would expect twelve men to give you, if by some trick of Chance or by some turn of the wheel of Fate your life was hanging in the balance and twelve of your fellowmen were passing upon it.
* * *
ASKS NO COMPROMISE.
"Gentlemen of the jury, one thing more: William O. Haywood is charged with murder. He is charged with having killed ex-Governor Steunenberg. He was not here. He was fifteen hundred or a thousand miles away, and he had not been here for years. There might be some member of this jury who would hesitate to take away the life of a human being upon the rotten testimony that has been given to this jury to convict a fellow citizen. There might be some who still hold in their minds a lurking suspicion that this defendant had to do with this horrible murder. You might say, we will compromise; we cannot take his life upon Orchard's word, but we will send him to the penitentiary; we will find him guilty of manslaughter; we will find him guilty of murder in the second degree instead of the first.
"Gentlemen, you have the right to do it if you want to. But, I want to say to you twelve men that whatever else you are, I trust you are not cowards, and I want to say to you, too, that William Haywood is not a coward. I would not thank this jury if they found this defendant guilty of assault and battery and assessed a five-dollar fine against him. This murder was cold, deliberate, cowardly in the extreme, and if this man, sitting in his office in Denver, fifteen hundred miles away, employed this miserable assassin to come here and do this cowardly work, then, for God's sake, gentlemen, hang him by the neck until dead. Don't compromise in this case, whatever else you do. If he is guilty—if, under your conscience and before your God, you can say that you believe that man's story, and believe it beyond a reasonable doubt, then take him—take him and hang him. He has fought many a fight—many a fight with the persecutors who are hounding him in this court. He has met them in a battle in the open field, and he is not a coward. If he is to die, he will die as he has lived, with his face to the foe. This man is either innocent or guilty. If he is guilty, I have nothing to say for him.
* * *
"Mr. Hawley tells you that he is a friend of the union. There cannot be any doubt about that! He told you in his opening statement that this labor union was a criminal conspiracy from the beginning, and that Ed Boyce, who led it in its earliest troubles, and its early triumphs, who organized this great mass of unorganized labor, that they might look up in the face of their master and demand a portion of what they earned, that he was a criminal—that he is guilty; and all you would need to do would be to go to Mr. Van Duyn and get him to sign his name, and Hawley could get him to bring Boyce in here, too, and charge him with this murder as well.
"He told us how from the beginning it was a criminal organization, and yet he organized it himself—and he admits it after we have proved it—and he organized it while the leaders of this union, or a large part of them, lived, from that day to this, down here in the jail. He organized it where for conscience sake these men were confined in the cells down below. He said to them, 'You have your poor, weak individual organizations all over; you have one in Butte, you have them in Idaho, you have them in Colorado; there is nothing on earth but to get together into one great Federation so you can fight together.' That was good advice wasn't it? And he went out here in the jail yard and he told them about it, and when he got through and they got out, released for a crime which the court said did not exist, after they had suffered eight months' imprisonment for a crime which was not a crime, there was no way to give them their liberty back, any more than there is a way to give Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone the eighteen months they have spent here in the Boise jail. These are all a part of the premium that one gets, and has always received, for his services to his fellow man. For the world is the same now that it always was, and if a man is so insane that he wants to go out in the wilderness and preach and work for the poor and the oppressed and the despised, for the men who do not own the tools, the newspapers, and the courts, and the machinery, and organization of society, these are the wages that he receives today, and which he has received from the time the first foolish man commenced to agitate for the uplifting and the upbuilding of the human race.
"But Mr. Hawley took their money; he organized them; he fought their battles; he was their first attorney; and he says to this jury, I have always been a friend of labor unions.'
"Yes, gentlemen, Mr. Hawley has always been a friend of labor unions —when they got their cash to his office first. But when they did not they had better hunt some other friends. Mr. Hawley is advising the state in this case—he had better stick to the state and let the labor unions be taken care of by some one of their own choice.
SOME KNOTS IN THIS STRING.
"Let us see, now, gentlemen: I will give you a specimen. When I opened this case I said to this jury that before the first witness left the stand I would convince Mr. Hawley that his precious client had lied upon one important fact. Now, I want to apologize to the the jury—I did not. That is because I did not understand Mr. Hawley. I thought he had some sense. Let me tell you who was the first witness in this case—you may have forgotten it, it was so long ago; it was Mrs. King. Do you remember Mrs. King? Let us hold an inquest on Hawley's sanity for a minute, and let us see whether he is sane or insane. Now, gentlemen, Mrs. King was a matronly woman of perhaps 55 or 60 years of age; she was not a member of the Western Federation of Miners; she did not work in the mines at all. She has two sons working in the mines and they are both scabs, so she would not favor us on that account; both of them are working there now, neither one belonging to the union or having ever belonged to the union.
"I submit there has not been a witness placed upon this stand in this trial who had more of the appearance of truth and candor and integrity than Mrs. King. Is there any doubt about it? Is there any man in this jury box that would not as soon doubt his own wife, except for the fact that she is his own wife, as Mrs. King? I do not believe it. Will you tell me what license this lawyer has, for a few paltry deficiency warrants, to say to this jury that Mrs. King is a perjurer to get the blood of Mr. Haywood; and yet you twelve men are expected to take that sort of talk so you can get his blood and accommodate Mr. Hawley with another scalp at his belt in his declining years!
"Mrs. King swore that she kept a rooming house and that Mr. Sterling the detective of the Mine Owners' Association, occupied a front room, and she saw Harry Orchard come there at least six or eight times, and he came up the back stairs at any time, and she only saw him when she happened to see him. She does not stand alone, for her daughter, a bright, intelligent, comely girl, who is not a member of this organization, swears that she saw him four or five times, and she is a perjurer, too, and it is a wonder that Mr. Hawley doesn't swear out a warrant for them before they leave the state; in these hot days and hot times—you could expect Mr. Hawley to do most anything.
ORCHARD'S MOCKERY OF RELIGION.
* * *
"I want to say a few words for the benefit, not of this jury, but of those sickly slobbering idiots who talk about Harry Orchard's religion. If I could think of any stronger term to apply to them I would apply that term. The English language falls down on Orchard and likewise upon all those idiots who talk about Orchard's regeneration. Now I am going to take a chance and talk about that for a few minutes.
"There is one thing that is well for them to remember right at the beginning, and that is that at least a month before Dean Hincks persuaded him to lay his sins on Jesus, Father McParland had persuaded him to lay his crimes on Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. You might remember that in starting. It is on a par with the character of a characterless man—I am referring to Orchard now, so there will be no mistake. It is a smooth game of shifty Harry. You are asked to give him immunity and to give immunity to everyone of his kind. You are askeA to say to the old and to say to the youth, you may kill, you may burn, you may lie, you may steal, you may commit any crime or any act forbidden by God or forbidden by man, and then you can turn and throw your crimes on somebody else, and throw your sins on God, and the lawyers will sing your praises. All right, gentlemen. If in your judgment public policy demands it, go ahead and do it. Don't stop for a little matter like Bill Haywood's neck.
"Shifty Harry meets McParland. He has lived a life of crime and been taken in his deeds, and what does he do? Why, he saves his soul by throwing the burden on Jesus, and he saves his life by dumping it onto Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. How can you beat that game, gentlemen? Can you beat it? And you twelve men are asked to set your seal of approval on it and to make that contract good so it may go out to every youth in the land. You may need to do it, but it should be a mighty strong necessity that would lead you to do it, should it not?
AN ELOQUENT TRIBUTE TO RELIGION.
"Now, gentlemen, like Brother Hawley and I know like Senator Borah, I, too, have a profound regard for religion. Mine may be broader than Brother Hawley's. I don't want to say to these twelve men that I think the Christian religion is the only religion that the world has ever known. I do not believe it for a moment. I have the greatest respect for any religion or any code of ethics that would do anything to help man, whatever that religion may be. And for the poor black man who looks into the black face of his wooden idol and who prays to that wooden idol to make him a better man and a stronger man, I have the profoundest respect. I know that there is in him, when he addresses his prayers to his wooden idol, the same holy sentiment, and the same feeling that there is in the breast of a Christian when he raises his prayer to the Christian's God. It is all one. It is all a piece of ethics and a higher life, and no man could have more respect for it than I have. In the ways of the world and in the language of the world I am not a professed Christian. I do not pretend to be. I have had my doubts, my doubts about things which to other men's minds seem plain. I look out on the great universe around me, at the millions and millions of stars that dot the firmament of Heaven in the night time; I look out on all the mysteries of Nature, and the mysteries of life, and I ask myself the solution of the riddle, and I bow my head in the presence of the infinite mystery and say, 'I do not know.' Neither do I. I cannot tell. But for that man who understands it all and sees in it the work of a Supreme Being, who prays to what he honestly believes to be this higher power, I have the profoundest regard; and any communion with him, any communion of that poor, weak mortal with that higher power, that power which permeates the universe and which makes for good, any communion that lifts a man higher and higher and makes him better, I have regard for that. And, if Orchard has that religion, well and good. I am willing that he should have it. I hope that he has it. I would not deny that consolation and that solace to him, not for a moment. But I ask you whether he has it, and what it means to him? I have no desire to injure Harry Orchard. I am not made that way. I might have once when the blood in me was warmer and my feelings were stronger. But I, like Hawley, have been tempered by years, and I have no desire to hurt even Harry Orchard, despicable as I think he is I have no desire to take his life. I am not responsible for his being. I cannot understand the purposes of the infinite God who fashioned his head as he saw fit to fashion it. I cannot understand the purpose of that mysterious power who molded Harry Orchard's brain as he pleased. I am willing to leave it to him to judge, to Him who alone knows.
A PLEA FOR ORCHARD, THE UNFORTUNATE.
"I never asked for a human being's life and I hope that I may never ask for a human life to the end of my days. I do not ask for his. And if the time should ever come that somebody pronounces against him the decree of death and nobody else asks to save his life, my petition will be there to save it, for I do not believe in it. I do not believe in man tinkering with the work of God. I do not believe in man taking away the life of his fellow man. I do not believe that I understand, I do not believe that you understand, I do' not believe that you and I can say in the light of Heaven that if we had been born as he was born, If our brain had been moulded as his was moulded, if we had been surrounded as he has been surrounded, we could say that we might not have been like him.
* * *
THE KILLING OF HEROES.
"To kill him, gentlemen! I want to speak to you plainly. Mr. Haywood is not my greatest concern. Other men have died before him. Other men have been martyrs to a holy cause since the world began. Wherever men have looked upward and onward, forgotten their selfishness, struggled for humanity, worked for the poor and the weak, they have been sacrificed. They have been sacrificed in the prison, on the scaffold, in the flame. They have met their death, and he can meet his, if you twelve men say he must. But, gentlemen, you short-sighted men of the prosecution, you men of the Mine Owner's Association, you people who would cure hatred with hate, you who think you can crush out the feelings and the hopes and the aspirations of men by tying a noose around his neck, you who are seeking to kill him, not because it is Haywood, but because he represents a class, don't be so blind, don't be so foolish as to believe you can strangle the Western Federation of Miners when you tie a rope around his neck. Don't be so blind in your madness as to believe that when you make three fresh new graves you will kill the labor movement of the world. I want to say to you, gentlemen, Bill Haywood can't die unless you kill him. You must tie the rope. You twelve men of Idaho; the burden will be on you. If at the behest of this mob you should kill Bill Haywood, he is mortal, he will die, but I want to say that a million men will grab up the banner of labor at the open grave where Haywood lays it down, and in spite of prisons or scaffolds or fire, in spite of prosecution or jury, or courts, these men of willing hands will carry it on to victory in the end.
THE BULL-PEN OF THE COEUR D'ALENES.
"Now, gentlemen, I am not going to discuss to this jury whether his method was right or wrong. I believe it was wrong. I don't believe any lawyer can defend the right of any human being to indiscriminately take his fellow man without any criminal charge whatever, without any trial or any hearing, and shut him up in a pen, as was done in the Coeur d'Alenes in '99; and whatever Governor Steunenberg might have thought, and however honest and sincere his motives were at the time (and I am not here to impugn them) when he established the bull-pen in the Coeur d'Alenes he sowed the seed of more strife and contention than was ever sown by any governor from the days that this nation was founded to the present time. There was nothing to justify it. If the arm of the law was not strong enough, if the civil authorities were not strong enough, then the military authorities should have been called in to assist. But when you say that a governor or a general may reach out indiscriminately and take whom he will, without warrant, without charge, without a hearing of any kind, and lock them up as he sees fit, then you say that all government should be submerged and the only law be the law of might, and I don't think the man lives who can defend it. Doubtless Governor Steunenberg felt at the time of this crisis that there was nothing else to do—I don't propose to discuss him for a moment on that account—but I believe that large numbers of right-minded people, in labor organization and out, have always denounced that act and always will denounce that act so long as we pretend to have a government by law in these United States. It is not strange that at that time large numbers of miners and workingmen, that honest lawyers, ministers, congressmen and all classes of people protested against it as being an outrage, a crime against the liberties of man. But what had Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone to do with it? Orchard was doubtless there and he ran away.
* * *
HUNTED BY MANY, BAYED BY ONLY ONE.
After Bill Haywood becomes the secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, and, mark you, the next thing they have against him, the very next act, does not occur until 1903, four years after the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mill has been blown up, four years after the time when he was an obscure miner over here at Silver City. In the meantime he had been one of the officers of the Western Federation of Miners for three years, and all was peaceful and serene, and they have not brought to this jury one single act up to 1903, and then they gather up another act of Harry Orchard's to charge to him. It is a strange thing, is it not, gentlemen. Here is Mr. Haywood, the secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners. Here is Mr. Moyer, the president. They have been leading a strenuous life, God knows. Their organization is a militant organization and has been from the beginning, from the time Mr. Hawley advised them how to construct it, when its officers were lying in the county jail, until now, when the hand of the powerful and the great has been raised against it. They have had to fight every inch of their way, and fight it, gentlemen, in the face of courts, in the face of jails, in the face of scaffolds, in the face of newspapers, in the face of every man who could get together a body of stolen gold to spend to fight this organization. Mr. Moyer and Haywood were connected with it for several years. Haywood has not been in Idaho since 1900 until he was brought to this state in 1906. Will you tell me where any voice has been raised against Haywood excepting Harry Orchard's? Will you tell me—where the Pinkertons, with their million eyes focused upon him, with their million ears trained to catch every sound that could come from his voice; can you tell me while the public was poisoned against him and where its captains of industry poured out their gold to compass his death —can you tell me—why it is that there hasn't been one word, one look, one letter, one circumstance that does not come from this foul creature upon whose testimony I undertake to say there is not one of you farmers but would blush with shame if you should kill a sheep-stealing dog! A man who would not give a dog a show for his life against Orchard would not be a man. Who else has said anything against him—the world of wealth, the world of power, the world of influence; the world of officialdom—and they have produced Harry Orchard and they have not produced another line or another letter or another word or another look or another thing. Gentlemen, another thing: In all of their unions everywhere were the Pinkerton detectives, ready to report every act, every word, every letter. They were present with them in all their trials and in all that took place. The Pinkertons were with Moyer In the bull-pen and stuck to him as close as a pull-pen tick. Why didn't they get a word out of him in the days of his unlawful imprisonment and his tribulation? Why haven't they found something somewhere that would give twelve men a reason, if they wanted it, for taking away the life of their fellow man? Why haven't they found it? And these men have been conspiring, they have been talking, they have been writing, they have been working—this Pinkerton and all his cohorts—with the money of all the mines and all the mills behind them, and have produced nothing except the paltry story which you have heard upon this witness stand.
* * *
"The state of Colorado passed an eight-hour law in 1899—under the evidence in this case, 1899 is right, isn't it? And the Guggenheims fought it, and they took it before the Supreme Court—and the courts are always the last to move, and the higher they are the slower—and they took it before the Supreme Court and of course the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional to pass a law which won't permit Guggenheim to take ten hours out of the hide of his men instead of eight.
" 'Mr. Richardson—It was twelve hours in the smelter.'
"Mr. Darrow—Well, a man that will work in a smelter ought to be worked twelve hours a day.
"The courts declared it unconstitutional. Of course they would. What is the constitution for except to use for the rich to destroy the laws that are made for the poor? That is the main purpose in these latter days. Then what did the workers do? They said, if the constitution is wrong, let us change it. And they appealed once more to the state—to the people. The people are blind and stupid, but still more generally right upon an issue like this—and they put it to a vote of the people, and the people voted six to one to change the constitution which was in their way, and the new constitution provided that the next legislature should enact an eight-hour law. This was the strike which Hawley says was unconstitutional—was unwarranted. They appealed to the people, and by six to one they changed the constitution of the state and then the legislature came in in 1902, and was asked to pass that law which the constitution commanded them to pass, and what did they do? Why, the constitution is only meant to be obeyed by the poor. What is the law for if a rich man has to obey it? Why should they make it if it can reach them? Why should they have the constitution if it could be used against them? The constitution said that they must change the law— must pass an eight-hour law, and Mr. Guggenheim and Mr. Moffat and the Union Pacific railroad and the Mine Owner's Association and all the good people who lived by the sweat and blood of their fellow men:—all of these invaded the chamber of the house and the senate and said: 'No, you must not pass an eight-hour law; true, the constitution requires it; but here is our gold which is stronger than the constitution.' The legislature met and discussed the matter, and these miners were there. The evidence in this case has shown you who they were. Haywood was there; the labor organizations were there and they were there pleading then, as they have always pleaded, for the poor, for the weak, for the oppressed. I don't mean to tell this jury that labor organizations do no wrong. I know them too well for that. They do wrong often, and sometimes brutally; they are sometimes cruel; they are often unjust; they are frequently corrupt; they will be as long as human nature is human nature, and there is no remedy for it. But I am here to say that in a great cause these labor organizations—despised and weak and outlawed as they generally are—have stood for the poor, they have stood for the weak, they have stood for every human law that was ever placed upon the statute books. They have stood for human life. They have stood for the father who was bound down with his task; they have stood for the wife threatened with being taken from the home to work by his side, and they have stood by the little child, who has also been taken to work in their places, that the rich could grow richer still, and they have fought for the right of the little one to have a little of life, a little of comfort while he is young. I don't care how many wrongs they have committed—I don't care how many crimes—these weak, rough, rugged, unlettered men, who often know no other power but the brute force of their strong right arm, who find themselves bound and confined and impaired which ever way they turn, and who look up and worship the God of might as the only God that they know; I don't care how often they fail —how many brutalities they are guilty of. I know their cause is just. I know that trouble and strife and contention have been invoked, yet through brutality and bloodshed and crime has come the progress of the human race. I know they may be wrong in this battle or that, but in the great long struggle they are right, and they are eternally right, and they are working for the poor and the weak, they are working to give more liberty to the man, and I want to say to you, gentlemen of the jury, you Idaho farmers, removed from the trades unions, removed from the men who work in industrial affairs, I want to say, had it not been for the trades unions of the world—for the trades unions of England, for the trades unions of Europe, the trade unions of America—you today would be serfs instead of free men sitting upon a jury to try one of your peers. The cause of the men is right.
* * *
ORCHARD'S INTRODUCTION TO HAYWOOD.
"Who was he, and what was he doing at that time? Let us see about this fellow. Harry Orchard swears that he tried first to explode a carload of gunpowder and failed, and he did not get any money for it, and then Bill Davis told him he was going to have plenty of money when they wrecked this train and it made Harry Orchard jealous because something was going on and he was not in it; to feel that anybody should explode a mine or tear up a railroad track, or kill any human being and Harry Orchard not considered. He said: Here is the union putting out their good money for a comparatively easy job; why don't they hire me? And he went to Scott. Now, do you suppose that was the reason? I don't know how anybody can tell. If you can tell, you are wiser than I, but there is one thing he did and that is sure—he did go to Scott. He went to Scott, the chief detective of the Florence and Cripple Creek railroad, and he had a conference with him, and, strange to say, the first time he ever saw Moyer or Haywood in the world he went up to Denver with a pass furnished by this detective and twelve or fifteen dollars in his pocket which this detective had given to him. Now think of it. And you are asked to believe that we are responsible for him. Before Haywood ever saw him or had heard of him, he had Scott's money in his pocket. He was sent to Haywood with a pass and cash to get next to the officers of the Western Federation of Miners. Whose hired man was he? Now, let me be plain about this matter.
"Orchard went up to Denver with Scott's money and Scott's pass, and there he says he saw Moyer and Haywood. Now, Scott and he do not agree. I asked Scott how much money he ever gave him, and he said forty-five dollars at the most. I asked Orchard how much money he ever got of Scott, and he says he got either twelve or fifteen dollars once, and five dollars afterward, and that is all. They don't agree. Perhaps neither of them tells the truth. I don't care which, or whether either of them does.
THE ABSENCE OF JACK SIMPKINS.
"Gentlemen of the jury: Before I overlook it I want to refer to a few suggestions made by Mr. Hawley as to Jack Simpkins and why he is not here. I suppose the reason he is not here is because he is afraid to be here. That is the best reason I can give. I do not propose to go around the question or get up any fantastic reason. That is the reason. But Mr. Hawley says to you that the fact that he ran away proves that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. With that statement I take serious issue. If the fact that Jack Simpkins ran away proves that he is guilty, then the fact that Haywood and Moyer did not run away, but waited in their offices and stayed to face whatever might come, proves that they are innocent. Neither statement is true. One is as true as the other, but neither statement is true. I used to think that I could tell something about whether a man was innocent or guilty by the way he acted. But 1 have gotten over it. Sometimes the guiltiest wretch on earth is the coolest man. Accuse a guilty man of crime, one who has known it and has lived in it and is accustomed to it, and he is often the coolest man you can imagine. Accuse an innocent man of crime, a man who has lived an upright life, and he may drop dead with fear, or he may tremble with confusion, or he may run away. No man can tell what an individual is going to do under circumstances like that. When you undertake to judge a man's guilt or innocence by his conduct when he is accused, you are on very dangerous ground. Mr. Hawley says that because Jack Simpkins ran and hid himself therefore he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, Mr. Hawley is an expert on the subject of conversion and what it does for a sinful man. I don't know whether he is a student of the Bible or not. But I can call his attention to one historical illustration of what an innocent man will do; and if he is as well posted on the acts that prove guilt as he is upon conversion, he is making a pretty dangerous statement when he says that if a man hides or runs away that is conclusive evidence of his guilt. There was once a great reformer and agitator who lived on the earth and walked with men and who was a disturber in his day and generation, one of the kind of men that Mr. Hawley describes who always makes trouble wherever he is, because if a man stands for truth and justice and righteousness he is bound to make trouble no matter when he lives or where. There was a man nineteen hundred years ago who stood for truth and justice and righteousness as they understand it. And this man offended the Jerusalem Daily Advertiser and the other fake newspapers which published the ads of the Pharisees of that time, and he offended the great and the strong and the mighty raised a mob in Jerusalem, just as they raised a mob at Cripple Creek and Victor, and they went out after this disturber and this outcast. What did he do? Why, he ran away and hid. Was he guilty? He ran away and hid to save his life from the mob, from the righteous mob that believed in order and law, especially order so long as they made it. And he hid himself securely, until one of his friends and disciples, Judas, betrayed him for thirty dollars, I believe it was. I wonder if he was guilty! I wonder if he was a criminal because he hid himself because he did not wish to throw himself into the hands of the mob of that time!
PERORATION.
"Gentlemen, Mr. Hawley has told you that he believes in this case, that he would not ask you to convict unless he believed Haywood was guilty. I tell you I believe in my case. I believe in it as I believe in my very life, and my belief does not amount, nor his belief does not amount to anything, or count. I am not an unprejudiced witness in this case. Nobody knows it better than I. My mind is not unbiased in this great struggle. I am a partisan, and a strong partisan at that. For nearly thirty years I have been working to the best of my ability in the cause in which these men have given their toil and risked their lives. For nearly thirty years I have given this cause the best ability that God has given me. I have given my time, my reputation, my chances—all this in the cause of the poor. I may have been unwise—I may have been extravagant in my statements, but this cause has inspired the strongest devotion of my life, and I want to say to you that never in my life did I feel about a case as I feel about this. Never in my life did I wish anything as I wish the verdict of this jury, and, if I live to be a hundred years old, never again in my life will I feel that I am pleading in a case in which involves such momentous questions as this. You are jurors in a historical case. You are here, with your verdict to make history, here to make history that shall affect the nation for weal or woe, here to make history that will affect every man that toils, that will influence the liberties of mankind and bring weal or woe to the poor and the weak, who have been striving through the centuries for some measure of that freedom which the world has ever denied to them.
"Gentlemen of the jury, this responsibility is on you, and if I have done my part I am glad to shift it upon your shoulders and be relieved of the grievous load.
IF CONVICTED SUN WON'T SHINE.
"I have known Haywood—I have known him well and I believe in him. God knows it would be a sore day to me if he should go upon the scaffold. The sun would not shine or the birds would not sing on that day—for me. It would be a sad day, indeed, if any such calamity could come to him. I would think of him, I would think of his wife, of his mother, I would think of his children, I would think of the great cause that he represents. It would be a sore day for me, but, gentlemen, he and his mother, and his wife and his children, are not my chief concern in this great case. If you should decree that he must die, ten thousand men will work in the mines and send a portion of the proceeds of their labor to take care of that widow and these orphan children, and a million people throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world will send messages of kindness and good cheer to comfort them in their bereavement and to heal their wounds. It is not for them I plead. Other men died before. Other men have died in the same cause in which Will Haywood has risked his life. Men strong with devotion, men who loved liberty, men who loved their fellow men, patriots who have raised their voices in defense of the poor, in defense of right, have made their good fight and have met death on the scaffold, on the rack, in the flame, and they will meet it again and again until the world grows old and gray. William Haywood is no better than the rest. He can die if die he must. He can die if this jury decrees it; but, oh, gentlemen, do not think for a moment that if you hang him you will crucify the labor movement of the world; do not think that you will kill the hopes and the aspirations and the desires of the weak and poor. You men of wealth and power, you people anxious for his blood, are you so blind as to believe that liberty will die when he is dead. Think you there are no other brave hearts, no other strong arms, no other devoted souls who will risk all in that great cause which has demanded martyrs in every land and age?
There are others and these others will come to take his place; they will come to carry the banner when he can hold it up no more.
SPEAKS FOR THE WEAK AND WEARY.
"Gentlemen, it is not for him alone that I speak. I speak for the poor, for the weak, for the weary, for that long line of men, who in darkness and despair, have borne the labors of the human race. The eyes of the world are upon you—upon you twelve men of Idaho tonight. Wherever the English language is spoken or wherever any tongue makes known the thoughts of men in any portion of the civilized world, men are talking, and wondering and dreaming about the verdict of these twelve men that I see before me now. If you kill him your act will be applauded by many. If you should decree Bill Haywood's death, in the railroad offices of our great cities men will applaud your names. If you decree his death amongst the spiders of Wall street will go up paeans of praise for these twelve good men and true. In every bank in the world, where men hate Haywood because he fights for the poor and against that accursed system upon which the favored live and grow rich and fat—from all those you will receive blessings and unstinted praise.
"But if your verdict should be 'Not Guilty' in this case, there are still those who will reverently bow their heads and thank these twelve men for the life and reputation you have saved. Out on our broad prairies where men toil with their hands, out on the wide ocean where men are tossed and buffeted on the waves, through our mills and factories, and down deep under the earth, thousands of men, and of women and children—men who labor, men who suffer, women and children will kneel tonight and ask their God to guide your hearts— these men and these women and these little children, the poor, the weak, and the suffering of the world, are stretching out their helpless hands to this jury in mute appeal for Will Haywood's life."