Tribute to the Martyrs of Chicago: Extracts from the speeches they delivered in court To attack our conquests… Today the capitalists take the working class hostage, as they did before We reproduce the speeches that the Martyrs of Chicago gave in 1886 before being executed, as a tribute to all the workers who gave their lives fighting for the emancipation of the working class all over the world. Today, more than ever, we must resume the path of the international struggle of the workers to free our hostages and defend our conquests

 

August Spies:

“In addressing this court I speak as the representative of one class to the representative of another. I will begin with the words uttered five hundred years ago on a similar occasion, by the Venetian Doge Faheri, who addressing the court, said:
My defense is your accusation. The causes of my alleged crime your history! I have been indicted on the charge of murder, as an accomplice or accessory. Upon this indictment I have been convicted. There was no evidence produced by the State…”
“This verdict against us is the anathema of the wealthy classes over their despoiled victims – the vast army of wage workers and farmers.” But if you believe that by hanging us you can contain the worker movement, such constant movement where millions of workers living in misery, slaves of the salary are agitated, if you expect the salvation and believe it: hang us! Here you find us on a Volcano and here and there, everywhere the revolution is in ferment”.

 

Louis Lingg:

“You have charged me with despising "law and order." What does your "law and order" amount to? Its representatives are the police, and they have thieves in their ranks.”
“He charges me with being a "conspirator." How does he prove it? Simply by declaring the International Workingmen's Association to be a "conspiracy." I was a member of that body, so he has the charge securely fastened on me. Excellent! Nothing is too difficult for the genius of a state's attorney!”
In this hope do I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order; your laws; your force-propped authority. HANG ME FOR IT!

 

George Engel:

“For what reasons am I accused of murder? The same that caused me to leave Germany- the poverty – the misery of the working classes. And here, too, in this "free republic," in the richest country of the world, there are numerous proletarians for whom no table is set; who, as outcasts of society, stray joylessly through life.”
“I don’t fight capitalists individually; I fight the system that gives the privilege. My most fervent wish is that workers know who their enemies are and who their friends. I disdain whatever other thing: I disdain the power of an unfair
government, his police, and spies.”

 

Samuel Fielden:

“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.”
“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.”

 

Albert R. Parsons:

“They on the one side and we on the other side. You arise representing justice. What is your justice, which takes men to the gallows without proving any crime…?”
“This process has started and continued against us, inspired by the capitalists, for those who believe that the people have nothing more than a right and a duty, the obedience.”
“Capital is the privilege of a few and cannot exist without a majority who has as a lifestyle to sell its work to the capitalists. The capitalist system is protected by the law, and in fact the law and capital are the same thing.”
“The verdict of the American people and the whole world will prevail over your verdict to prove your injustice and social injustices that lead us to scaffold; the popular verdict will remain to say that the social war doesn’t end up for a small matter.”