Life of Albert Parsons

PRESS COMMENTS

GEN. M. M. TRUMBULL'S REVIEW IN THE "KNIGHTS OF LABOR."

It will be difficult to get this book into circulation, and more difficult still to get it out of circulation. The "classes" will ignore it. It must depend for its existence on its own fascination as "a weird and wondrous tale." It will grow slowly, but it will live long. It is the prose epic of the great struggle for labor emancipation. Some day it will be the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of a new deliverance.

This "Life of Albert R. Parsons" will not be a welcome book, because it ruffles and disturbs the conscience of "society." It reviews the "Anarchist case," legally and officially settled on the fifth of November 1887. This book will not be welcome, because it is a posthumous motion to reverse a judgment executed and done-a motion made by the spirit of Parsons, who was excluded from politics a year and a half ago. This book 'is a strange medley of biography, autobiography, history, opinions, letters and miscellaneous matter, by, of, and concerning Albert R. Parsons, and the "labor movement." Every chapter has an independent interest of its own, and some chapters weave a sympathetic spell around the reader's heart in spite of him. There is a charm in chivalry which excites our admiration; and there has not appeared of late a tale of chivalry told with such overpowering pathos as the story of Parsons is told in this book.

Of New England lineage, Albert R Parsons was a Puritan fanatic in zeal, courage, and enthusiasm, spirituality, and tenacity of principle and purpose. Neither the gloom of the cell nor the shadow of the scaffold could break or bend him. His iron Puritanism had been hardened into steel by his Southern birth and education. He would not for his life tell a lie, even to himself. His life was offered him for the asking, but he said he could not ask for that which he had not forfeited. From that resolution neither friends nor foe~ could move him. Never did Scott or Shakespeare imagine a deed of chivalry more splendid than that actually done by Parsons when he walked into the court-room and offered himself for trial. Neither could novelist nor dramatist describe that heroic incident so vividly as it is presented in this biography. Self-devotion compels praise, and we cannot withhold it. This life-offering will: take its place among the brave deeds told in story for the emulation of mankind.

The tragedies of May and November combine to give this biography dramatic interest. They make it a theatrical attraction, and the story magnetizes