“O king, at thy Command I went into the world of men; I sought full earnestly the thing which I Might weave into the gay and lightsome song. I found it, king; ’twas there. Had I the art To look but on the fair outside, I nothing Else had found. That art not mine, I saw what Lay beneath. And seeing thus I could not sing; For there, in dens more vile than wolf or jackal Ever sought, were herded, stifling, foul, the Writhing, crawling masses of mankind. Man! Ground down beneath oppression’s iron heel, Till God in him was crushed and driven back, And only that which with the brute he shares Finds room to upward grow.” Such pictures of horror our martyrs saw in Chicago, as others have seen them in all the great centers of population in the country. But, like the noble minstrel, they proceeded to recite their discoveries and with him moaned: “And in this world I saw how womanhood’s fair flower had Never space its petals to unfold. How Childhood’s tender bud was crushed and trampled Down in mire and filth too evil, foul, for beasts To be partakers in. For gold I saw The virgin sold, and motherhood was made A mock and scorn. I saw the fruit of labor Torn away from him who toiled, to further Swell the bursting coffers of the rich, while Babes and mothers pined and died of want. I saw dishonor and injustice thrive. I saw The wicked, ignorant, greedy, and unclean, By means of bribes and baseness, raised to seats Of power, from whence with lashes pitiless And keen, they scourged the hungry, naked throng Whom first they robbed and then enslaved.” Such were the scenes that the Chicago martyrs had witnessed and which may still be seen, and for reciting them and protesting against them they were judicially murdered. It was not strange that the hearts of the martyrs “grew into one with the great moaning, throbbing heart” of the oppressed; not strange that the nerves of the martyrs grew “tense and quivering with the throes of mortal pain”; not strange that they should pity and plead and protest. The strange part of it is that in our high-noon of civilization a damnable judicial conspiracy should have been concocted to murder them under the forms of law. That such is the truth of history, no honest man will attempt to deny; hence the demand, growing more pronounced every day, to snatch the names of these martyred evangelists of labor emancipation from dishonor and add them to the roll of the most illustrious dead of the nation. Mother Jones