criminal element, I am of it; while there is a
soul in prison, I am not free....

"If the law under which I have been convicted is a good law, then there
is no reason why sentence should not be pronounced upon me. I listened
to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this
law, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon it as a despotic
enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the
spirit of free institutions.

"Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form
of our present Government; that I am opposed to the social system in
which we live; that I believed in the change of both--but by perfectly
peaceable and orderly means.

"Let me call your attention to the fact this morning that in this system
five per cent. of our people own and control two-thirds of our wealth,
sixty-five per cent. of the people, embracing the working class who
produce all wealth, have but five per cent. to show for it.

"Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen, I went to
work in the railroad shops; at sixteen, I was firing a freight engine on
a railroad. I remember all the hardships, all the privations, of that
earlier day, and from that time until now, my heart has been with the
working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred
to go to prison. The choice has been deliberately made. I could not have
done otherwise. I have no regret.

"In the struggle--the unceasing struggle--between the toilers and
producers and their exploiters, I have tried, as best I might, to serve
those among whom I was born, with whom I expect to share my lot until
the end of my days.

"I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am
thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out
their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of
their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the
remorseless grasp of mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons,
there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body
and soul. I can see them dwarfed, diseased, stunted, their little lives
broken, and their hopes blasted, because in this high noon of our
twentieth century civilization, money is still so much more important
than human life. Gold is god and rules in the affairs of men. The little
girls, and there are a million of them in this country--this, the most
favore