Life of Albert Parsons

I was a visionary, an enthusiast I believed as so many righteous people do today that the truth only required to be expressed, the argument only to be made to enlist (.Very good man and woman in the good cause of humanity. In my youthful enthusiasm I forgot to apply the experience of historical progress to this particular case. But to my great sorrow I soon became convinced that the bulk of humanity were automatons, incapable of thinking and reasoning, altogether unconscious of themselves, simply tools of custom-

     "For from the sordid is man made,
     Usage and custom he doth call his nurse.

-Schiller.

But nothing could discourage me. The study of French, German and English economist and social scientists soon made me view things differently than I had seen them in my first enthusiasm. Buckles' "History of Civilization," Karl Marx's "Kapital," and Morgan's "Ancient Society" have probably had the greatest influence over me of any. I now became an attentive observer of the various social phenomena myself. The last ten years have been very favorable for such investigation as I sought. I found my favorite teachers corroborated everywhere.

I think it was in 1877 when I first became a member of the Socialistic Labor Party. The events of that year, the brute force with which the whining and confiding wage-slaves were met on all sides, impressed upon me the necessity of like resistance. The latter required organization. Shortly afterwards I joined the "Lehr und Wehr Verein," an armed organization of the workingmen, numbering about 1,500 well-drilled members. As soon as our patricians saw that the canaille was arming for defense to repel such scandalous attacks in the future as had been made upon them in 1877, they at once commanded their law agents in Springfield to prohibit workingmen from bearing arms. The command was obeyed.

The workingmen also went into politics, independent politics. I served as a nominal candidate myself several times, but when the noble patricians and the political augurs saw that they (the workingmen) were successful in electing a number of their candidates, a conspiracy was organized to disfranchise them by fraudulent count and like methods. The workingmen thereupon left the ballot with disgust.