Parsons went into an explanation of the wage question and the relations of capital and labor, asserting that employers in owning capital and leaving nothing to the wage slave but the price of his work, had produced a conflict which would intensify as the power of the privileged classes over the non-possession of property classes increased. He continued: "We were told by the Prosecution that law is on trial; that government is on trial. That is what the gentlemen on the other side have stated to the jury. The law is on trial, and government is on trial. Well, up to the conclusion of this trial we, the defendants, supposed that we were indicted and being tried for murder. Now, if the law is on trial, and the government is on trial, who has placed it upon trial? And I leave it to the people of America whether the prosecution in this case have made out a case; and I charge it here now, frankly, that in order to bring about this conviction the Prosecution, the representatives of the State, the sworn officers of the law--those whose duty it is to the people to obey the law and preserve order--I charge upon them a willful, a malicious, a purposed violation of every law which guarantees every right to every American citizen. They have violated free speech. In the prosecution of this case they have violated a free press. They have violated the right of public assembly. Yea, they have even violated and denounced the right of self-defense. I charge the crime home to them. * * * My own deliberate opinion concerning this Haymarket affair is that the death-dealing missile was the work, the deliberate work of monopoly--the act of those who themselves charge us with the deed. I am not alone in this view of this matter. What are the real facts of that Haymarket tragedy? Mayor Harrison of Chicago has caused to be published his opinion, in which he says: 'I did not believe that there was any intention on the part of Spies and those men to have bombs thrown at the Haymarket.' He knows more about this thing than the jury that sat in this room, for he knows--I suspect that the Mayor knows--of some of the methods by which some of this evidence and testimony might have been manufactured. I don't charge it, your Honor, but possibly he has had some intimation of it, and if he has he knows more about this case and the merits of this case than did the jury who sat here. * * * Before the trial began, during its prosecution, and since its close, a Satanic press has shrieked and howled itself wild, like ravenous hyenas, for the blood of these eight working men. Now, this subsidized press, in the pay of the monopoly and of laborers and slavers, commanded this Court and commanded this jury and this Prosecution to convict us. As a fitting climax