McClure's Magazine printed during last summer and fall the Autobiography of Harry Orchard, with its confessions of wholesale assassinations during the labor war in the mining districts of the West. There was, at that time, repeated and angry denial of the truth of his story; and, since the acquittal of W. D. Haywood, secretary and treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, and of George A. Pettibone, whom Orchard charged with being the instigators of his crimes, their adherents have, of course, maintained that Orchard's story has been entirely disproved. Logically, this does not follow. The acquittal of these two men means nothing more than that they were not proved guilty to the satisfaction of the juries trying them. Before a final judgment as to the truth or falsity of Orchard's statement is made, the last development in this matter must be thoroughly considered. On March 18, Orchard, persisting in his story to the last, pleaded guilty to the murder of Governor Frank Steunenberg, at Caldwell, Idaho, and was sentenced to be hanged--with the recommendation by the presiding judge that his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment by the Prison Board of the State. In pronouncing sentence upon Orchard, Judge Fremont Wood, who presided over the trials of both Haywood and Pettibone, expressed his belief in Orchard's story in a most convincing way. The parts of the Judge's statement dealing with Orchard's testimony, which follow, are of peculiar value to those desiring to arrive at a final conclusion regarding the responsibility for the campaign of murders which took place during the labor wars of the Western Federation of Miners; they are the summing up of the entire matter by a mind whose judicial fairness has been recognized by both parties in this great controversy. "I am more than satisfied," said Judge Wood, "that the defendant now at the bar of this court awaiting final sentence has not only acted in good faith in making the disclosures that he did, but that he also testified fully and fairly to the whole truth, withholding nothing that was material and declaring nothing that had not actually taken place. "During the two trials the testimony of the defendant covered a long series of transactions involving personal relations between himself and many others. In the first trial he was subjected to the most critical cross-examination by very able counsel for at least six days, and I do not now recall that at any point he contradicted himself in any material manner, but on the other hand disclosed his connection with many crimes that were probably not known to the attorneys for the State, at least not brought out by them on the direct examination of the witness.