Life of Albert Parsons

APPENDIX.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AUGUST SPIES.

WRITTEN IN COOK COUNTY JAIL IN THE SUMMER OF 1886 WHILE AWAITING THE EXECUTION OF THE DEATH SENTENCE.

" ...... Barbarians, savages, illiterate, ignorant Anarchists from Central Europe, men who cannot comprehend the spirit of our free American institutions,"* of these I am one. My name is August Vincent Theodore Spies, (pronounced Spees). I was born within the ruins of the old robbers' castle Landeck, upon a high mountain's peak (Landeckerberg), Central Germany, December 10, '55. My father was a forester (a government administrator of a forest district); the forest house was a government building, and served-only in a different form-the same purposes the old castle had served several centuries before. The noble Knighthood of highway robbery, the traces of which were still discernible in the remnants of the old castle, had passed away to make room for more genteel and less dangerous forms of plunder and robbery, such as are carried on in the modern dwelling under the present government. But while the people from old custom designate this and similar ruins in the vicinity as "old Robber Castles," they speak with great deference of the present government buildings, in which they themselves are daily and hourly fleeced; they would even, I believe, fight for the maintenance of these lawful institutions.

How greatly these "Barbarians" differ from the intelligent American people! Tell the Americans to fight for the maintenance of our commercial robbing posts and fleecing institutions-tell them to fight for. the protection of the lawful enterprises of our Board of Trade men, Merchant princes, Railroad kings, and Factory lords-would they do it? Deplorable as the fact must seem-they would! even more readily, I fear, than those "barbarians from Central Europe." The American people in their vast majority are ignorant of the great truth that is embodied in these words of a celebrated philosopher and poet:

     "What from your fathers came to you as an inheritance
     You must acquire it, if you would possess it!"—

*Quotation from Grinneli's speach to the jury.