Lucy E. Parsons

Challenging the Lying Monopolistic Press:

A Letter to Joseph Labadie

October 11, 1886

Labadie Collection, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor

Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati, Ohio, October 11, 1886

Dear Comrade: I am meeting with success far beyond what the comrades here expected. I addressed a large and enthusiastic meeting here on Sunday the 10th and will address one tonight, and the prospects are good for a still larger one. The noticeable feature about that meeting was that it was composed almost entirely of conservative trade unionists who applauded my utterances to the echo, and accepted my definition of the red flag with rapture. Ah! I tell you the people are becoming hungry for the other side of the late judicial farce known as the Anarchist trial.

I go from here to Louisville, thence to Cleveland, and to New York City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, etc. You know, comrade, that my present trip is for the purpose of enlightening the American people upon this all-important judicial murdering operation in Chicago and to raise funds for the defense.

I am not afraid to trust to the common sense of the American people in deciding upon any case when both sides are heard, and giving their verdict of guilt where it belongs.

If the great body of the people have clamored for our comrades’ blood, it was because they believed what the lying monopolistic press has said. Now let them be just as anxious to hear the other side, and I have no fear of the verdict in the case, when the people sit as jurors.

Yours for emancipated labor,

Lucy E. Parsons