Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1911-08-31
IGNOR ANT
FOREIGNER
Such was Andrew 10th Called
When Punished for Crime
He Never Committed.
LEAVES AMERICA FOREVER
With Heart Filled With Bitter
ness----The Sad Story Of
His Wrong.

New York, Aug. 29.-His heart fill
ed with bitterness toward this land
of the Free" which for him was a
country of suffering and imprison-
ment, Andrew 10th, who spent TWEEN
ty years behind the bars of Pennsyl-
vania prison for a murder he had not
committed, sailed today for his ma
tive home in Austria, never to re-
| turn to these shores.
10th had been in this country only
short time, and was working hard
to support his wife and children and
III the hope of acquiring home and
competence, when he was arrested on
the charge of killing a fellow work
man He was only an ignorant for
eigner," unable to speak English,and
as circumstantial evidence pointed to
his guilt, he was right speedily con
yicted and whisked away to prison
There was no laws delay in Toth's
case. Behind the grim walls of the
penitentiary he Was soon forgotten
and might have died there had not
another, after twenty years, confess
ed to the crime of which 10th was
wholly innocent. Toth's sons, grown
to manhood, had for years spent all
their earnings in attempts to prove
their fathers innocence. Toth's wife
heartbrolen and hopeless, despairine
at last of justice in this strange land
where poor men are rushed Off tC
prison on tlimsy suspicious, returned
| to Austria to end her years. In the
little town Of Cengyel Falu she is an
xiously awaiting the old, broken ma \
with the prison pallor on his face
who sailed today to join her.
Bitter Experiences.
"Free America scoffed 10th, with
the bitterness OF twenty years of ha
tired in his voice, "do not tell me OF
free America. 1t has robbed me OF
my wife and of my youth, of every
thing that makes life worth living
and | shall be glad to shake it's dust
from my feet. If you could realize
the anguish | have suffered for TWEEN,
y years, two months and nineteen
days-even the days seem like years
in prison cell--you would not won.
der that | feel anger and sorrow in
my heart toward the government.
You do not know what it is to sit,
day after day, looking up at a mar.
row strip of sky, crying until your
eyes are so dry they hurt. You dc
not know what it is to have a wife
that trusts and loves you, and child
rem whom you most want to respect
you, beginning TO believe after all
that you may be a murderer. If you
could only understand these things,
you would know why prisons are
hell for the guilty and doubly hell.
ish for the innocent. And after all
this, they thrust me out in the world,
broken and old, unable to make a
| living-and they gave me a suit Of
cheap clothing and five dollars in
money. Five dollars for twenty years
Of labor--for twenty years taken out
| of the life of man innocent of all
wrong-five dollars to assuage the
grief Of woman for twenty years
deprived of her husband and forced
to toll like slave for her subsis.
tence-tive dollars to atone to my
children for the education and oppor.
tunities they might have had could
have been left free to provide for
them-for all this, and much more
that | could never put into words,
| i've dollars.
| Some people blame me because |
talk SO. They say it was only mis-.
take, that nobody was to blame, that
ought to accept it in philosophic
manner and be thankful that I am
free. ! am thankful, of course, bat
this philosophy-it is not for those
who have spent twenty years in pris,
on.
I would not have enough money
to return to Austria except for my
sons and the benefactions of charita,
Bile people. Andrew Carnegie was
Continued on Page 5.