THE TRIAL OF THE ANARCHISTS
_The terror of good citizens--Henry Iverson Dround--Righteous
indignation--Leaders of industry get together "to protect
society"--A disagreeable duty--Selecting the jury--The man from
Steele's--What is evidence?--What is justice?--In behalf of
society--Life is for the strong--All there is in it!--I take my
side_
The morning after the fourth of May the city was sizzling with
excitement. From what the papers said you might think there was an
anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of
bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and
stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was
every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had
unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the
bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of
lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the
police, having nothing better, fed them lies. At the Yards, men were
standing about in little groups discussing the rumors; they seemed
really afraid to go into the buildings.
In front of our office a brougham was drawn up--an unusual sight at any
time, and especially at this hour. It was standing close to the door,
and as I picked my way through the crowd I looked in at the open window.
My eyes met the eyes of a woman, who was leaning against the cushioned
back of the carriage. She was dressed in a white, ruffled gown that
appeared strange there in the yards, and her eyes were half closed, as
if she were napping or thinking thoughts far removed from the agitated
city. But when I came closer she gave me the sharpest look I ever saw in
a woman's eyes. It was a queer face, dark and pale and lifeless--except
for that power of the eyes to look into you. I stopped, and my lips
opened involuntarily to speak. As I went on upstairs, I wondered who she
could be.
My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door
happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and
down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I
could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:--
"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very
foundations of our free country--"
"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But
we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around
in a nest of rattlers."
"Let them do their worst! Let them blow up this building! Let them
dynamite my house! I should call myself a craven, a poltroon, if I
wavered for one moment in my duty as a citizen."
Carmichael sighed and bit off the end of a fat cigar that he had been
rolling to and fro in his mouth. He seemed to give his boss up, as you
might a talkative schoolboy.
Henry Iverson Dround was a tall, dignified gentleman, with thick gray
hair, close-cut gray whiskers, and a grizzled mustache. He always
dressed much better than most business men of my acquaintance, with a
sober good taste. The chief thing about him was his manners, which, for
a packer, were polished. I knew that he had been to college: there was a
tradition in the office that he had gone into the business against his
will to please his father, who had begun life as a butcher in the good
old way and couldn't understand his son's prejudices. Perhaps that
explains why all the men in the house thought him haughty, and the other
big packers were inclined to make fun of him. However that might be, Mr.
Dround had a high reputation in the city at large for honorable dealing
and public spirit. There was little set afoot for the public good that
Henry I. Dround did not have a hand in.
I had met the chief once or twice, big John having called his attention
to me, but he never seemed to remember my existence. To-day Mr. Dround
blew out of the manager's office pretty soon and brushed against my
desk. Suddenly he stopped and addressed me in his thin, high voice:--
"What do you think, Mr. Harrington, of this infernal business?"
My answer was ready, pat, and sufficiently hot to please the boss. He
turned to Carmichael, who had followed him.
"That is what young America is thinking!"
Carmichael put his tongue into his cheek instead of spitting out an
oath; but after Mr. Dround had gone, he growled at me:--
"That's all right for young America, but I am no damn fool, either! My
father saw the riots back home in Dublin. It's no good sitting too close
on the top of a chimney--maybe you'll set the house on fire. The police?
The police are half thieves and all blackguards! They got this up for a
benefit party, most likely. Why, didn't they kill more'n twice as many
men over at McCormick's only the other day, just because the boys were
making a bit of a disturbance? And nobody said anything about it! What
are they kicking for, anyway?"
Mr. Dround's view, however, was the one generally held. That very
evening there was a meeting of the prominent men of the city to take
counsel together how anarchy might be suppressed with a strong hand. We
little people heard only rumors of what took place in that gathering,
but it leaked out that there had been two minds among those wealthy and
powerful men--the timid and the bold. The timid were overridden by the
bolder-hearted. Good citizens, like Strauss and Vitzer, so Carmichael
told me with a sneer, talked strong about encouraging the district
attorney to do his duty, and raised a fund to pay for having justice
done.
"It means that some of those rats the police have been ferreting out of
the West Side saloons will hang to make them feel right. The swells are
bringing pressure to bear, and some one must be punished. It's grand!"
He chuckled bitterly at his own wit. But the swells meant business, and
when Henry I. Dround was drawn for the grand jury, to indict those
anarchists that the police had already netted, big John swore:--
"He needn't have done that! There are plenty to do the fool things. It's
his sense of duty, I s'pose, damn him! It's some of his duty to come
over here and help us make enough money to keep his old business
afloat!"
The Irishman thought only of the business, but Henry I. Dround was not
the man to let any personal interest stand in the way of what he
considered his duty to society. Perhaps he was a little too proud of his
sacrifices and his civic virtues. Some years later he told me all about
that grand jury. All I need say here is that this famous trial of the
anarchists was engineered from the beginning by prominent men to go
straight.
The hatred and the rage of all kinds of men during those months while
the anarchists were on our hands, before they were finally hanged or
sent to prison, is hard to understand now at this distance from the
event. That bomb in its murderous course had stirred our people to the
depths of terror and hate: even easy-going hustlers like myself seemed
to look at that time in the face of an awful fate. The pity of it all
was--I say it now openly and advisedly--that our one motive was hate.
Stamp this thing out! that was the one cry. Few stopped to think of
justice, and no one of mercy. We were afraid, and we hated.
Finally it came time for the trial; the _venire_ for the jury was
issued. One night, to my consternation, I found a summons at the house.
When I showed it to a fellow-clerk at the office the next morning, he
whistled:--
"I thought I saw the bailiff in here yesterday, looking around for
likely men. They are after a safe jury this time, sure!"
I asked Carmichael to use his influence to get me excused, as I knew he
usually did for the boys when they were summoned for jury duty. But all
he said was:--
"You're a nervy youngster. You'd better do the thing, if you are
accepted."
"It means weeks, maybe months, off," I objected.
"We'll make that all right: you won't lose nothing by it. But you
mustn't mind finding a stick of dynamite under your bed when you go home
after the trial," he grinned.
"I guess there's no trouble with my nerve," I said stiffly, thinking he
was chaffing me. "But I don't want the job, all the same."
"Well, you'll have to see the old man this time. Maybe he can get you
off."
So I went into Mr. Dround's private office and made my request. The
chief asked me to take a chair and handed me a cigar. Then he began to
talk about the privileges and duties of citizenship. From another man it
might have been just slobber, but Henry I. Dround meant it, every word.
"Why don't you serve?" I asked him pretty bluntly.
He flushed.
"I haven't been drawn. Besides, it has been thought wiser not to give
the jury too capitalistic a character. This is a young man's duty. And I
understand from Mr. Carmichael that you are one of the most energetic
and right-minded of our young men, Mr. Harrington."
[Illustration: _From another man it might have been just slobber, but
Henry I. Dround meant it, every word._]
He stood facing the window and talked along for some time in a general
way. His talk was rather simple and condescending, but kind. He spoke of
the future before me, of my having the right influence in the community.
When I left him I knew perfectly well that the house expected me to
serve on that jury if I was chosen, and that Mr. Dround would take
personally the warmest interest in a young man who had the courage to do
his duty "in behalf of society," as he kept saying.
Still I hoped to escape. I was tolerably far down the list. So day after
day I listened to the wrangle among the lawyers over the selection of
the jurors. It was clear enough from the start that the State wanted
only one kind of man on that jury--an intelligent, well-to-do clerk or
small manufacturer. No laboring man need apply: his class was suspect.
As a clerk in Steele's store said to me while we waited our turn:--
"That bailiff came into our place and walked down past our department
with the manager. I heard him say to Mr. Bent: 'I'm running this case.
Let me tell you there won't be no hung jury.'"
"Do you want to serve?" I asked the man from Steele's.
"Well, I do and I don't." Then he leaned over and whispered into my ear:
"It looks to me that there might be a better place for me at Steele's if
everything goes off to suit and I am a part of it!" He nudged me and
pulled a straight face. "I guess they ought to be hanged, all right," he
added, as if to square himself with what he was ready to do.
After the defence had used up its challenges, which naturally was pretty
soon, the real business of getting the jury began. Much the same thing
happened in every case. First the man said he was prejudiced so that he
couldn't render a fair verdict on the evidence. Then his Honor took him
in hand and argued with him to convince him that his scruples were
needless. His Honor drove him up and down hill until the man was forced
to admit that he had some sense of fairness and could be square and
honest if he tried hard. And then he was counted in. In every case it
went pretty much as it did in the case of the man from Steele's.
"I feel," so the man from Steele's said, "like any other good citizen
does. I feel that some of these men are guilty; we don't know which
ones, of course. We have formed this opinion by general report from the
newspapers. Now, with that feeling it would take some very positive
evidence to make me think that these men were not guilty, if I should
acquit them.... But I should act entirely upon the testimony."
"But," said the defence, "you say that it would take positive evidence
of their innocence before you could consent to return them not guilty?"
"Yes, I should want some strong evidence."
"Well, if that strong evidence of their innocence was not introduced,
then you want to convict them?"
"Certainly!"
Then the judge took him in hand, and after a time his Honor got him to
say:--
"I believe I could try the case on the evidence alone, fairly."
And so they took him, and they took me in the same way, when it came my
turn.
* * * * *
This is scarcely the place to tell the story of that famous trial. It
has kept me too long as it is. The trial of the anarchists was an odd
accident in my life, however, which, coming, as it did, when I had my
foot placed on the ladder of fortune, had something to do with making me
what I am to-day. Up to this time I had never reflected much upon the
deeper things of life. The world seemed good to me--a stout, hearty
place to fight in. I had made money in the scheme of things as they are,
and I found it good. I wanted to make some more money, and I had little
patience with the kickers who tried to upset the machine. But I had not
reasoned it out. There in the court room, and later shut up in the jury
quarters, day after day, cut off from my usual habits, I thought over
some of the real questions of our life, and made for myself a kind of
philosophy.
To-day, after the lapse of eighteen years, I can see it all as I saw it
then: the small, dirty court room; the cold, precise face of the judge;
the faces of the eight men whom the police had ferreted out of their
holes for us to try. There wasn't much dignity in the performance: some
pretty, fashionably dressed girls sat up behind the judge, almost
touching elbows with his Honor. They came there as though to the play,
whispering and eating candy. There was the wrangling among the lawyers,
snarling back and forth to show their earnestness. But my eyes came back
oftenest to the faces of those eight men, for whose lives the game was
being played. Two were stupid; three were shifty; but the other three
had an honest glow, a kind of wild enthusiasm, that came with their
foreign blood, maybe. They were dreamers of wild dreams, but no thugs!
From the start it seemed plain that the State could not show who threw
that fatal bomb, nor who made it, nor anything about it: the best the
State could do would be to prove conspiracy. The only connection the
lawyers could establish between those eight men and the mischief of that
night was a lot of loose talk. His Honor made the law--afterward he
boasted of it--as he went along. He showed us what sedition was, and
that was all we needed to know. Then we could administer the lesson. Now
that eighteen years have passed, that looks to me like mighty dangerous
law. Then I was quick enough to accept it.
When we filed into the court room the last morning to listen to the
judge's charge, the first face I saw was that of Hillary Cox. A big red
scar, branching like a spider's web, disfigured her right cheek. It drew
my eyes right to her at once. All her color and the plump, pretty look
of health had gone for good. She looked old and sour and excited. And I
wished she hadn't come there: it seemed as though she was waiting for
her revenge for the loss of her youth and good looks. She was counting
on me to give it to her! Ed sat beside her, holding her hand in a
protecting way. He was an honest, right-feeling sort of fellow, and I
guessed that her loss of good looks would make no difference in his
marrying her.
Near the district attorney sat Mr. Dround. He listened to the judge's
charge very closely, nodding his head as his Honor made his points and
rammed conviction into us....
"In behalf of society"--his phrase ran in my head all through the trial.
That was the point of it all--a struggle between sensible folks who went
about their business and tried to get all there was in it--like
myself--and some scum from Europe, who didn't like the way things are
handed out in this world. We must hang these rebels for an example to
all men. To be sure, the police had killed a score or two of their
kind--"rioters," they were called: now we would hang these eight in a
proper, legal, and ordinary way. And then back to business! I suppose
that the world seemed to me so good a place to hustle in that I
couldn't rightly appreciate the complaint of these rebels against
society. And at any rate I was convinced that we sensible folks who had
the upper hand could not tolerate any bomb foolishness. "In behalf of
society"--yes, before we had left our seats in the court room my mind
was made up: guilty or not, these men must suffer for their foolish
opinions, which were dead against the majority.
Thus I performed my duty to society.
* * * * *
When our verdict was ready, and we came in to be discharged, I saw
Hillary Cox again. As the foreman rose to give our verdict, her scarred
face flushed with excitement, and an ugly scowl crept over her brow. I
turned away. Queer thoughts came into my mind--for the bad air and the
weeks of close confinement had made me nervous, I suppose.... Society! I
seemed to see old Strauss with his puffy, ashen face, and his broad
hands that hooked in the dollars, dirty or clean, and Vitzer, who kept
our honorable council on his pay-roll for convenience, and the man who
had been with Lou Pierson that night, and many others. Were they better
men before the eyes of God these eight misguided fools whom we were
about to punish? Who did the most harm to society, they or that
pale-faced Fielden, who might have been a saint instead of an
anarchist?...
The judge was still making remarks; the jury were listening restlessly;
the prisoners at the bar seemed little interested in the occasion. I
kept saying to myself: "Society! In behalf of society! I have done my
duty in behalf of society." But what was this almighty society, anyhow,
save a lot of fools and scamps with a sprinkling of strong souls, who
were fighting for life--all of them fighting for what only a few could
get? My eyes rested on Hostetter's face in the crowd. His jaw was
hanging open, and he was staring at the judge, trying to understand it
all. Poor Ed! _He_ wouldn't have much show in the scramble if society
didn't protect him. Suddenly a meaning to it all came to me like a great
light. The strong must rule: the world was for the strong. It was the
act of an idiot to deny that truth. Yes, life was for the strong, all
there was in it! I saw it so then, and I have lived it so all my
life....
[Illustration: "_My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night._"]
The man from Steele's nudged my elbow:--
"My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night. Won't the old woman's
food taste slick to-night? You bet."
"The jury is discharged."
The play was over. The spectators were moving from the crowded room. At
the door my friends were waiting for me. Hillary Cox stretched up a thin
hand.
"Thank you, Van," she said.
"You fellows did just right," Hostetter added.
Slocum said nothing, but there was a dubious smile on his lips.
"We're going to blow you off for a dinner at the Palmer House, the best
you ever ate," Dick Pierson called out loudly. Then he added for the
benefit of the onlookers, "To hell with the anarchists!"
"Quit that!" I said sharply, some of those queer doubts about the
justice of the act I had been concerned in returning to me. "It's over
now, and let's drop it."
It was good to be out on the streets once more, knocking elbows with
folks, and my heart soon began to feel right. In the lobby of the hotel
men I didn't know, who recognized me as one of the famous jury, came up
to me and shook hands and said pleasant things. Before the dinner was
far along I was quite myself again, and when Slocum set up the champagne
for the party, I had begun to feel rather proud of the part I had taken
in public affairs. After all, it was a fine thing to live and hustle
with your neighbors for the dollars. I had done my part to make the game
go on smoothly. At the Yards, the next morning, it was the same thing:
my desk was covered with flowers, and the boys kept me busy shaking
hands and taking in the cigars until I thought I was at a church
presentation party. Big John was one of the first to welcome me back.
"Say! do you want a vacation? The old man thinks a month or two would be
the right thing. Enjoy yourself, my boy, after your arduous duty!"
"Shoo!" I replied. "What would I do with a month's vacation, John? I've
just pined to be back here at work. What do I want to light out for
now?"
"Supposing some of 'em should try to fix _you_?" he grinned.
"I guess we've fixed _them_ for good and all."
"Well, your nerve is all right."
So I sat down to my desk, quite the cock of the walk, and felt so
pleased with myself that you would think I had saved the whole town from
being blown up. I was for society as it is, first, last, and all the
time, and I felt good to be in it.
[Illustration: _Big John was one of the first to welcome me back._]
Once, some months later, I saw those eight men again, when they were
brought into court to be sentenced. They all had a chance to speechify,
and I listened to them for a time. I didn't take much stock in Spies and
Parsons--long-winded, talky, wild fellows. But the others, who weren't
as glib as those two, had a kind of simple sincerity about them. They
had the courage to stand up there in the face of death and say what they
believed. No one plead for mercy. I was sorry for them.
But, nevertheless, it was comfortable to be of the strong. The world is
for the strong, I said to myself as I left the court, and I am one of
them!