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Life of Albert Parsons

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p158

in persisting in such course it was creating revolutionists, and if there was a single revolutionist in America monopoly and corporations were directly responsible for its existence. I specifically called attention to this fact, in order to defend myself from the charges constantly being made through the mouthpiece of monopoly—the capitalistic press. I called attention in this connection to the Chicago Times and other newspapers. I called the attention of the working people that night to the strike of 1877, when the Chicago Times declared that hand-grenades ought to be thrown among the striking sailors, who were then on a strike on the river wharves in this city, in order to teach them a lesson and that other strikers might be warned by their fate. I said that the Chicago Times was the first dynamiter in America, and as the mouth-piece of monopoly and corporations it was the first to advocate the killing of people when they protested against wrong and oppression. I spoke of another Chicago paper which at that day advocated that when bread was given to the poor strychnine should be placed on it. I also called attention to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper, which declared in an editorial that the American toiler must be driven to his task either by the slave-driver's lash or the immediate prospect of want. I spoke of the New York Herald, and its saying that lead should be given to any tramp who should come around. Whenever a workingman, thrown out of employment and forced to wander from place to place in search of work, away from family and home, asked for a crust of bread, the New York Herald advised those to whom he applied to fill him with lead instead of bread. I called attention to what Tom Scott, the railway monopolist, said during the strike of 1877: "Give them the rifle diet, and see how they like that kind of diet." I referred to Jay Gould, when he said we would shortly have a monarchy in this country, and to a similar statement in the Indianapolis Journal. Then I referred to how monopoly was putting these threats into practice. They not only used these threats, but they put them into practice, and I cited East St. Louis where Jay Gould called for men and paid them $5 a day for firing upon harmless, innocent, unarmed workingmen, killing nine of them and one woman in cold-blooded murder. I referred to the Saginaw valley, where the militia was used to put down strikes, I

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