THE preceding pages will have given to the reader facts enough to show the difficulty of the task assumed, as well as the manner in which we went about the work. One of the greatest of the obstacles to be overcome arose from the character and habits of thought of the Anarchists themselves. They heartily hated all law, and despised its constituted representatives. The conspiracy was well disciplined in itself, and it had been specially organized with a view to guarding its secrets from the outside world and protecting its members from the consequences of their crimes. Thus I soon found that it would require peculiar address, patience, secretiveness and diligent work to lay bare the great plot to the world. I can find no better place than this to testify to the help given me throughout the case by Assistant State’s Attorney Furthmann, whose work was a most important feature of the result finally brought before the Criminal Court. The protection of society is an interest so momentous that it would be a false modesty in me to refuse, for fear that I should be charged with egotism, to analyze the processes by which the conviction of the confederates in the Haymarket murder conspiracy was bought about, and accordingly I will now say, once for all, that I believe that careful, systematic detective inquiry, conducted with some brains and a good deal of grit, can unravel any plot which the enemies of law and order and our American institutions are apt to hatch. It will require tact. It will require intelligence. It may require the hardest and most persistent work that men may do—but about the result there can be no doubt. Our government and our methods are strong enough for the protection of the people and the maintenance of law and order, no matter how dangerous may seem the forces arrayed against it. The various steps taken may be gathered best from the memoranda made upon the arrest of each Anarchist who had been conspicuous in his order and who was supposed to know the secret workings of the “armed sections;” and, in reading the particulars, the general conclusion will become irresistible that the men who posed as the bloodthirsty bandits of Chicago became arrant, cringing cowards when they found themselves within the clutches of the law. In the galaxy of trembling “cranks” there were a few exceptions, notably George Engel and Louis Lingg, but the demeanor of the common herd under arrest proved that their vaunted bravery had been simply so much talk “full of sound and fury.” [Illustration: JULIUS OPPENHEIMER’S “DOUBLE.” From a Photograph.]