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Life of Albert Parsons

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p121

ers bids me to do it. The workingmen of Pittsburg should be here in thousands, but possibly because the victims of oppression in the coke regions now being driven into slavery at the bayonet point are Hungarians, there is prejudice against them. Well, be it so. So much the worse for us and our organizations that the cause of these people is ignored by us, and it is left for the hated and despised Anarchists and Socialists to step boldly to the front in their behalf. The unwelcome truth calls for heroes. The poor Hun is being crushed and only the hated Anarchist comes to his rescue. Are we doing our duty? Let the hated Anarchist roll his drum today, but in the long roll I believe our organization will stand in line and every man answer 'aye.' I am not here as an Anarchist, for I do not clearly yet understand their position. But the time has come for the utterance and acceptance of the truth, however unwelcome it may be to some. I ask your courteous attention to what Mr. Parsons, of Chicago, has to say."

I discoursed to the audience for about two hours, and was cheered throughout to the echo, and at the conclusion of my speech the following resolutions were adopted unanimously by the large audience present, which was composed mainly of Americans:

Resolved, By this mass-meeting of workingmen of Pittsburg, that the employment of police and militia to suppress strikes and compel working people to submit to starvation wages paid by monopolists and capitalists, as witnessed in the recent struggle of the miners on the Monongahela river, the rolling-mill men at the Braddock, and the coke-workers of the Connellsville region and elsewhere, demonstrates that the employers of labor rely upon force to compel obedience to their dictation; it therefore becomes the bounden duty of all workingmen who values their life, liberty and happiness to arm and prepare themselves to successfully resist the oppressions of their capitalistic masters.

Resolved, that the monopolistic or private control of recent inventions in labor-saving machinery, together with the use of natural gas in the manufacture of iron, steel, and glassware, has destroyed the means of subsistence of tens of thousands of wage-workers by rendering their labor superfluous: therefore it is our bounden duty, in order to live and enjoy liberty, to take the means of human subsistence out of control and ownership of private individuals and place them where they by natural right belong, viz: into the hands of society for the free use of all, thus destroying forever the

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