The Labor enquirer., 1886-09-04
! DENVER COLORADO SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER a, 1886 j.

Oscar Nebee is condemned to fifteel
years in states prison for having shot
gun in his house and being connected
with a certin newspaper. and Lewi'
Lingg is condemned to death for making
and bearing arms, without any pretense
that he ever used them, and the laws oi
every state to some extent infringe upor
the citizens right to keep and beal
arms" so much so that the people are
really allowed to bear arms under GER
tain limited restrictions, and then in
many cases the consent of some Officer
of the government must first be had.
:, Thus we have lost the liberties oul
fathers fought for and are now left to do
their bloody work all over again. Ithas
become as nothing for policeman or a
police mob to club or butcher a penni,
less citizen, but the courts pronounce
death on not only all who resist them
but all who believe and say thev ought
to be resisted. A mob of 200 brutal po-
lice filled with hatred and vengeance
made an unlawful raid on the meeting
in haymarket square, and had they
done as is their custom many a poor
fellow would have got his head broken
with club ere he had time to get out of
their reach. AS it was, some brave fell
low BY well directed bomb offered re-
sistance to their unlawful raid, where
upon the armed mob CT police opened a
deadly fire into several hundred un-
armed and unofending citizens, and
kept up their fire as long as a citizen
was in sight, and the citizens never re-
turned a single shot.
All this was distinctly proved before
the court, vet not a policeman IN the
whole mob was as much as censured, or
even chided, for their bloody work, but
the man who resisted their attack is
cursed without ceasing, and all who were
present and had advocated a citizens
right to resist the police are condemned d
to death. This is criminal justice" and
it is rightly named, for it would disgrace
Russian prince.
The same spirit that has inspired the
whole proceedings in Judge Gary's in
QUESTION at Chicago has inspired all the
trials against strikers and boYcotters on
the same invented term Of conspiracy
so handily made use of. 1t is the same
power that starved the miners at Hook
ing Valley, as capitalism then shot them
for resisting the police, and it is the
same power that took poor miners out to
tie Northern Pacific coal banks and got
their entire earnings, and froze out all
other stores, then discharged the miners
for organizing an assembly of the
Knights of Labor, and in their penni-
less condition, without means of travel,
denied them food even for their money,
and turned their wives and children out
of do Jrs, and the militia were standing
ready to shoot the miners if they offered
anv resistance to this land piracy.
Our forefathers thou.ht if they put
arms in the hands of every individual
and gave him the right to assemble with
his fellows, and gave him an absolute
free speect and free press, that he would
always be able to get and sustain his
rights, but they little thought that everv
one of these safeguards would be filched
from him by the money loving and
power-loving people in authority. That
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
was never better illustrated.
He have not lost our liberties by any
concerted plan, or by the design of any
one man or set of men, but We have lost
them because the greed and want o.
principle of the money and power-loVing
rulers have ever found it to their inter-
est to crowd us out of those rights. We
have now only to 90 about it and get
them again, and shall no doubt have to
resort to the time-worn method of force
that our forefathers have always beer
Obliged to resort to. 1t is at least time
we were getting our eyes open for the
capitalistic gallows is hungry for many
of us. c. 5. GRIFFIN.