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labor system existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and throughout the world the serf had a right to the soil on which he lived. The lord of the land could not exclude him from its use. But with the discovery of America and the developments which followed that discovery and its settlement, a century or two afterwards, the gold found in Mexico and Peru by the invading hosts of Cortez and Pizarro who carried back to Europe this precious metal, infused new vitality into the stagnant commercial blood of Europe and set in motion those wheels which have rolled on and on, until to-day commerce covers the face of the earth—time is annihilated and distance is known no more. Following the abolition of the serfdom system was the establishment of the wage-labor system. This found its fruition, or birth, rather, in the French revolution of 1789 and 1793. It was then for the first time that civil and political liberty was established in Europe.
We see, by a mere glance back into history, that the sixteenth century was engaged in a struggle for religious freedom and the right of conscience—mental liberty. Following that, in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, was the struggle throughout France which resulted in the establishment of the Republic and the founding of the right of political liberty. The struggle to-day, which follows on in the line of progress, and in the logic of events, the industrial problem, which is here in this court-room, of which we are the representatives, and of which the State's Attorney has said we were, by the grand jury selected because we were the leaders of it, and are to be punished and consigned to an ignominious death for that reason, that the wage slaves of Chicago and of America may be horrified, terror-stricken, and driven like "rats back to their holes," to hunger, slavery, misery and death. The industrial question, following on in the natural order of events, the wage system of industry, is now up for consideration; it presses for a hearing; it demands a solution; it cannot be throttled by this District Attorney, nor all the District Attorneys upon the soil of America.
Now, what is this labor question which these gentlemen treat with such profound contempt, which these distinguished "honorable" gentlemen would throttle and put to ignominious death, and hurry us like "rats to our holes"? What is it? You will pardon me if I
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