Lucy E. Parsons

The Proposed Slaughter

March 4, 1905

The Liberator

Chicago

Is it to be another slaughter of innocent working men like the one which took place in Chicago twenty years ago, at the behest of the capitalistic class, who wished to put men out of the way whom they regarded as dangerous to their reign of robbery?

The conspiracy entered into by the Mine Owners’ Association of the states of Colorado and Idaho, acting through their tools—the governors of the above-named states—in kidnaping Charles H. Moyer, William D. Haywood and George Pettibone, and spiriting them out of the state of Colorado when the shadows of night had fallen, when no one might witness the conspiracy save the armed conspirators, savors so much of deeds of “dark ages”, long, long gone by, that one in reading it in this twentieth century is forced to tap one’s self on the forehead and shake one’s self, so to speak, to make sure that they are not dreaming!

What, pray, in the face of such an infamy, becomes of the boasted rights of American citizens under its constitution?

If such an outrage had been perpetrated in a foreign country, the American Navy would have been set in motion, and diplomatic relations would have been “strained”; “Teddy” would be talking loudly about the “rights” of American citizens. But how different all this is when the rights of the American citizen is ruthlessly set aside by the czars of his own country, if he happens to belong to the working class!

There is such a similarity between the present “great dynamite conspiracy” now being staged for action in Idaho, and that conducted by the capitalistic class in the “Anarchists’ Trial” in Chicago nearly twenty years ago, that a brief recapitulation is not out of place.

In the present case, as in the former, the Pinkerton lying thug bobs up with his “evidence.” Then there are other detectives of less luminous degrees, to be used as supernumeraries in filling out the less important parts of the tragedy. In the present, as in the former case, dynamite bombs have been planted by the “conspirators” and conveniently found by the detectives, and too, like the former case, the “conspiracy” is to date back a few years. This is done to keep the public in breathless expectancy, like the clown in the circus who announces in clarion tones the wonders soon to be brought forth! The governor of Idaho, chief clown just now, begins to talk loudly about “a conspiracy that is going to shock civilization.”

This is decidedly à la mode Bonfield, Schaack, Grinell, etc. People of America—citizens, brothers and sisters, lovers of liberty and justice—are you going to stand idly by and see these men murdered by the Mine Owners’ Association of the states of Idaho and Colorado because they want them out of the way—because they are “troublesome characters”?

If you do not wish to see American soil again stained with the blood of innocent workingmen; if you do not wish to again hear the sound of the accursed gallows as it strangles their voices and forever silences them, then waste not an hour, bestir yourselves! Act now!

Let your voices be heard in protest from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Mexico. Serve notice upon the murderous capitalistic class that you will not again stand idly by and see your brothers made victims because they so will it, and they will dare not do it!

Show by your action, your strength and your determination that the people are more powerful than a few rich conspirators.