the land of the autocrat, liberty is unknown. In that thrice damned
country liberty and justice, free speech and free press and trial by
jury are banished, and a trail of blood and tears from the palace of the
despot to prison and to death, made by men and women whose only crime is
a desire for freedom, tell their doom; and yet in Russia imprisonment,
torture and death only increase the ranks of men and women who cry,
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
In Russia, the victim of autocratic displeasure is denied a trial by a
jury of his peers. Wm. A. Woods carries out the Russian practice. In
Russia the doomed man or woman is arraigned before the supreme despot or
one of his numerous satraps. Truth, justice, mercy are forever exiled,
hope disappears and only words of satanic cruelty are uttered. Age, sex,
character, innocence, name and condition count for nothing. It is enough
to know that the brave soul yearned for freedom, and the penalty of
exile, imprisonment, torture or death is inflicted, and it has come to
this at last in the United States of America, that the law of injunction
is the will of a despot, and by the exercise of this Russian power
American Railway Union officials go to prison and the hope is that by
the exercising of this power the American Railway Union will be crushed.