The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-10-22
VERDICT OF THE
WORKERS JURY
Decision in the Castor
Case
(C6ntinued from Pane Onel

Continued from Page One)
Workers Union so that they could
continue, in the future as in the
past, to distill the very life blood of
men, women and children ito profits.
1t was trial of workers for dar-
ing to defend themselves against or
ganized murder at the hands of a
vicious, drunken, depraved gang of
mill-owners hoodlums, clothed with
police authority. The trial was an
effort to wreak vengeance upon
these seven defendants because they
refused to abandon the struggle of
the workers and cowardly leave the
territory when their very lives were
threatened on innumerable occasions,
as was fully brought out by the
evidence. The charges of conspiracy
to murder were initiated against the
i defendants in an attempt to kill
them through the use of the ma
! chinery of capitalist class legality
after the murderous assault on the
tent colony was repulsed by the
heroic defense of the workers them
selves.
The trial was part of the union
smashing campaign that has been
waged under various forms since the
beginning of the struggle of the
Gastonia workers against starvation
wages, the speed-up (stretch-out) 4,
child slavery, long hours of labor,
horrible conditions of work, and all
the frightful suffering, poverty and
disease (pellagra) as result of
over-work and undernourishment.
We, the labor jury, have not only
found the defendants not guilty, but
our verdict is verdict for the whole
working class. In finding Governor
Gardner, Judge Barnhill, Solicitor
Carpenter, the Manville-Jenckes
company, short the entire crew
of mill owners and their state Off
Gals and legal flunkeys GUILTY,
we indict the whole capitalist class
and will pillory them before the
working class throughout the United
States and the entire world as mon
sters whose hands drip with the
blood of our murdered comrade, Ella
May, an dthe working class victims
of their sadistic attacks during the
course fthe Gastonia struggle. In
the courtroom we represented the
mass of awakened workers of the
United States whose delegates at the
/ Cleveland Trade Union Unity Con-
vention elected US, and now that the
rial. is over we will expose before
the working class everywhere the
real meaning for our class of capt.
talist class justice and democracy.
One of the principal illusions of
the legal system in the United States
is that every man is entitled to a
trial by jury of his peers. If our
brothers who faced trial in Char
lotte had been tried by jury Of
their peers it would have been a
labor jury, a jury of workers who
understood the nature Of their strug
gle and Of labor's struggle in gem
eral 1t is the purpose of the state
in such cases not to secure jury of
peers of defendants, but to secure
mercenary, servile jury that WILL
CONVICT REGARDLESS OF THE
! T1yvJnJNrCIN DDIy CINNTTLD
That is precisely what happened
at the Charlotte trial. The judge
upon the bench, Barnhill, proved
himself an instrument of the CAPT
talist class by series of rulings
which conclusively proved his role.
He openly stated that Communists
cannot come into a capitalist court
and expect fair trial, because Com
munists believe that the laws and
the government under which they
are tri edare wrong. He endeavored
to cast aspersions upon and to ques-
ton the truthfulness Of young
woman witness for the defense be-
cause she did not believe in the fun
damentalist god Ct the mill owners
and the old ruling class of the South.
The SNUG hypocrisy of Barnhill was
further revealed when, after stating
at the opening of the trial that it
was solely q tria to ascertain re-
sponsibility for the death of Alder
holt and that it would be conducted
as such without any reference to
political, economic, religious or rae
ial questions, he ruled, during the
trial that such questions and the ac-
tivity fthe witnesses for the de-
Tense in carry'-.g out their political
and economic policies may be used
against them for impeaching their
estimony. Yet not once did Barn
hill raise the question of the credi-
bility OF honesty Of the witnesses