Iâve watched her weave his suits back together when they fell to pieces from wear. She could make meals of scraps. There were years when he couldnât work, when he was on the blacklist of every newspaper and every printshop in the west. Then his own people fed him from the little they had. He never took until it was forced on him; he never asked; he never complained. Once, when I met him, he had not eaten for two full days; but I was with him more than an hour before I realized he was faint from hunger.
âI know I will have to bore you by repeating what we both know, the facts of the meeting; I keep saying to myself, thank you for hearing me. But first I want to finish with the man; he isnât going to die if they kill him today; some men donât die. Maybe both of us will have to deal with him, and thatâs why I want to understand him, for myself as well as for you. They talk of socialism as a foreign importation, but what is foreign about Parsons? Once I met a United States marshal from Texas; he was like Parsons, quiet, gentle, polite, he never raised his voice and most often seemed to apologize, but he had a reputation for being a very brave man, and he too, in his own way, took the side where there was least strength and least hope. But donât think Parsons is a dolt; his reasoning is cold and logical; heâs read everything on labor and socialism he could lay hands on. When he talks, there are ideas. I disagree bitterly with those ideas; I say he is wrong, dangerously wrong, and isnât what happened proof that he was wrong? For him, there is only one solution, for the workers to rise up and take over the land, the means of production, the factories and the schools and the halls of justiceâand to me, that is insanity. So you see, I too am against him, and against Spies and the others. But are men to die, to be murdered simply because I do not agree with them?
âYou could ask why, believing this, Parsons should fight so hard for the eight-hour day, for every advance and demand of labor. That is very interesting. I myself asked Parsons that; but to him there is no contradiction; every gain for labor is a gain for his own and their own causeâlike that. I say that to show that the man lived what he preached; there is only one Parsons, not two.
âI could tell more; I could spend most of the day telling this and that about Parsons, but there isnât most of today. There is only another hour and a half. So let us start with such a man and see what happened.
âYou remember how a year and a half ago we decided that there should be a day for American labor, one day which was ours, which would mark our unity and our determination in the struggle for eight hours. We picked May the first. My word, you would have thought that we destroyed the foundations of the country by asking a day for ourselves, our own holiday. As it approached, you remember what happened. A whole army of Pinkertons poured into Chicago; the police armed themselves to the teeth, deputized every no-good bum who could be found on the streets. The National Guard was alerted; even units of the regular army were demanded, to come to Chicago and preserve the peace. Had we threatened the peace? All we proposed was to select a day when we could demonstrate our solidarity for the eight-hour movement. Of course, that Saturday came and went without any trouble; trouble was our enemy. We knew what we were after; we were organized throughout the nationâwhat good would violence do us?
âBut on Monday, the third of May, a bad thing happened. You know about it, but I want to put all things in their place. The demonstration outside the McCormick plant was not held only by the Lumber Shoversâ Union; there were over a thousand McCormick strikers there too, and though August Spies spoke there, he did not call for trouble; he called for unity. Is that a crime? The trouble came when the scabs began to leave
âI know I will have to bore you by repeating what we both know, the facts of the meeting; I keep saying to myself, thank you for hearing me. But first I want to finish with the man; he isnât going to die if they kill him today; some men donât die. Maybe both of us will have to deal with him, and thatâs why I want to understand him, for myself as well as for you. They talk of socialism as a foreign importation, but what is foreign about Parsons? Once I met a United States marshal from Texas; he was like Parsons, quiet, gentle, polite, he never raised his voice and most often seemed to apologize, but he had a reputation for being a very brave man, and he too, in his own way, took the side where there was least strength and least hope. But donât think Parsons is a dolt; his reasoning is cold and logical; heâs read everything on labor and socialism he could lay hands on. When he talks, there are ideas. I disagree bitterly with those ideas; I say he is wrong, dangerously wrong, and isnât what happened proof that he was wrong? For him, there is only one solution, for the workers to rise up and take over the land, the means of production, the factories and the schools and the halls of justiceâand to me, that is insanity. So you see, I too am against him, and against Spies and the others. But are men to die, to be murdered simply because I do not agree with them?
âYou could ask why, believing this, Parsons should fight so hard for the eight-hour day, for every advance and demand of labor. That is very interesting. I myself asked Parsons that; but to him there is no contradiction; every gain for labor is a gain for his own and their own causeâlike that. I say that to show that the man lived what he preached; there is only one Parsons, not two.
âI could tell more; I could spend most of the day telling this and that about Parsons, but there isnât most of today. There is only another hour and a half. So let us start with such a man and see what happened.
âYou remember how a year and a half ago we decided that there should be a day for American labor, one day which was ours, which would mark our unity and our determination in the struggle for eight hours. We picked May the first. My word, you would have thought that we destroyed the foundations of the country by asking a day for ourselves, our own holiday. As it approached, you remember what happened. A whole army of Pinkertons poured into Chicago; the police armed themselves to the teeth, deputized every no-good bum who could be found on the streets. The National Guard was alerted; even units of the regular army were demanded, to come to Chicago and preserve the peace. Had we threatened the peace? All we proposed was to select a day when we could demonstrate our solidarity for the eight-hour movement. Of course, that Saturday came and went without any trouble; trouble was our enemy. We knew what we were after; we were organized throughout the nationâwhat good would violence do us?
âBut on Monday, the third of May, a bad thing happened. You know about it, but I want to put all things in their place. The demonstration outside the McCormick plant was not held only by the Lumber Shoversâ Union; there were over a thousand McCormick strikers there too, and though August Spies spoke there, he did not call for trouble; he called for unity. Is that a crime? The trouble came when the scabs began to leave
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