, and that is why the great respectable majority of their day
sleep in forgotten graves. The world does not know they ever lived.

"At a later time there began another mighty agitation in this country.
It was against an institution that was deemed a very respectable one in
its time, the institution of chattel slavery, that became all-powerful,
that controlled the president, both branches of congress, the supreme
court, the press, to a very large extent the pulpit. All of the
organized forces of society, all the powers of government, upheld
chattel slavery in that day. And again a few appeared. One of them was
Elijah Lovejoy. Elijah Lovejoy was as much despised in his day as are
the leaders of the I. W. W. in our day. Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in
cold blood in Alton, Illinois, in 1837, simply because he was opposed to
chattel slavery--just as I am opposed to wage slavery. When you go down
the Mississippi River and look up at Alton, you see a magnificent white
shaft erected there in memory of a man who was true to himself and his
convictions of right and duty unto death.

"It was my good fortune to personally know Wendell Phillips. I heard the
story of his persecution, in part at least, from his own eloquent lips
just a little while before they were silenced in death.

"William Lloyd Garrison, Garret Smith, Thaddeus Stevens--these leaders
of the abolition movement, who were regarded as monsters of depravity,
were true to the faith and stood their ground. They are all in history.
You are teaching your children to revere their memories, while all of
their detractors are in oblivion.

"Chattel slavery disappeared. We are not yet free. We are engaged in
another mighty agitation today. It is as wide as the world. It is the
rise of the toiling and producing masses who are gradually becoming
conscious of their interest, their power, as a class, who are organizing
industrially and politically, who are slowly but surely developing the
economic and political power that is to set them free. They are still in
the minority, but they have learned how to wait, and to bide their
time.

"It is because I happen to be in this minority that I stand in your
presence today, charged with crime. It is because I believe as the
revolutionary fathers believed in their day, that a change was due in
the interests of the people, that the time had come for a better form of
government, an improved system, a higher social order, a nobler humanity