powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday May 25, 1907
From Boise, Idaho – Montana News Reports on Haywood Trial:
A Grand Reception
—–Held in Idaho Penitentiary for the Purpose
of Creating a Sentiment in Favor of
a Self Confessed Murder
Boise, May 18.
When court closed at three o’clock this afternoon the state had used seven of its peremptory challenges and the defense six. The work of completing the jury still promises to be a long and tedious one. Today completed the sixth day of the trial. The weather is very warm. Not much interest in the case is manifested in Boise, only small crowds being in attendance.
It is evident even to a casual observer that a battle royal is on. Each side is contesting every step of the way. But the tilts between the attorneys have so far been conducted with uniform courtesy and good nature. It is interesting to watch the class feature figure in the selection of the jury. A man appearing right down common and plainly honest with no pretensions to belong to the confident side of society is unvaribly peremptorily rejected by the prosecution. While a self confident man owning considerable property and feeling a certain superiority and conscious respectability is promptly dismissed by the defense.
The reason for this unconscious action on the part of the contending forces at bar can be furnished only by the socialist philosophy.
The property possessing class and those that have means to live in a somewhat comfortable style find all their interests in conformity with maintaining the established order of things. The wage workers and those whose occupation has brought them no sense of security and established position in society feel no sympathy in maintaining the farce of established procedure. So the choosing of the jury proceeds as carefully as the chess player moves his pawns. Only in final resort the judge and the sheriff hold the deciding moves. Over half of the new panel of hundred men has been exhausted.
The majority of the jurors are dismissed because they confess to having opinions already formed. Now and then a man is excused because he is opposed to the death penalty on circumstantial evidence. Almost the entire panel is composed of farmers who own their farms, and if they have ever had a trade it is the carpenter trade. None have ever been union men in a militant trade organization. If one such ever appears he is promptly dismissed by the prosecution. There was one mild looking and harmless farmer, —– Gribble by name, come into the jury box, whose examination brought out the fact that while working in the coal mines of southern Colorado years ago, he had belonged to the Knights of Labor. He was peremptorily discharged by the prosecution.
Mr. Richardson always asks if there is any prejudice against socialism or socialists. One juror emphatically stated that he was opposed to “latter day socialists.” Mr. Richardson said that was a new one on him, and asked if they were related to Latter Day Saints. The juror replied that he meant Debs socialism. His further examination showed such a deep and abiding prejudice against socialists that he was dismissed.
Orchard in the Limelight.
Friday morning there was enough sensation to make up for the monotony of the preceding days.
The morning Statesman came out with a full and flaring headline account on three pages of a select reception held by Harry Orchard at the penitentiary with Governor Gooding and Warden Whitney present, to the representatives of the large and influential capitalist press.
Such repugnance to the Orchard testimony has been disclosed among the jury men that the prosecution finally decided to break the hermit like seclusion to which this self-confessed murderer has been held for seventeen months, and trot him out for an inspection by the representatives of the great organs and public informers of capitalism. The arrangements were made privately and whispered around. Thursday afternoon not a socialist or labor paper was given the slightest inkling of the plans. The Associated press has given the news of the interview of [to?] the world. The party took the electric car to the Natatorium where they were met by two carriages from the penitentiary and driven to the warden’s office where the guests were requested to register. The party consisted of Governor Gooding; the governor’s secretary, Charles Elmer; C. N. London of the Cleveland Press; John Fay, New York World; Luke Grant, Chicago Record Herald; J. S. Dunnegan, Hearst papers; E. G. Leipheimer, Butte Evening News; J . K. Nevins, Scripps-McRae service; B. Phillips, correspondent; John Tierney, Denver News; J. H. McLennon, Denver Republican; Joseph Waldeck, Newspaper Enterprise Association; H. L. Crane, Statesman [Idaho Daily Statesman]; J. R. Kennedy and Martin Egan, Associated Press; A. [O.] K. Davis [Oscar King Davis], New York Times; A. E. Thomas, New York Sun; Hugh O’Neill, Denver Post; J. W. Carberry, Boston Globe.
The correspondents of Wilshire’s and the Appeal to Reason, the two most widely circulated political periodicals in the world, are here, yet they were not invited to this distinguished interview.
Warden Whitney and the governor conducted the reception. Harry Orchard was dressed to kill in a new gray suit, fat and dapper and groomed like the plutes he is serving. Easily and self-confident he got off his little piece. All had been instructed not to talk about “the case. The obedient reporters to the behest of King Capital have filled their papers with most flattering accounts of this lowest of human brutes —a degraded wretch who would commit the most insensate murders, and then seek to throw upon his fellow working men his inhuman crimes. They speak of his “open countenance”, his “easy and graceful manners,” his “intelligent use of words.”
Why shouldn’t he show the advantages of training? He has been hobnobbing with royalty all this time. He laid stress on the fact that whatever statements he had made, he had made of his own free will, and that he had not been promised any immunity.
That sounds good. Nothing could have been fixed up any better to make the public think he was pretty good, and a real nice sort of a fellow. But the grand central act was the religious part of the play. This human brute has been made to pose as a religious devotee, a constant reader of religions, and so repentant of his monstrous crimes as to entitle him to complete sympathy and forgiveness.
Never was there a greater corroborative example of the historical part that religious institutions have been made to play in the subjection of those who do the work.
In the first place this weak minded tool takes readily to his religious masquerade. And in the second place the wealth and power represented by the Mine Owners’ Association know too well the powerfully suggestive effect it will have upon the minds of the great unwieldy ignorant mass to learn that Orchard is casting himself upon the alleged “sacred” ideas of the human race, for the remission of his sins. So this simpering ninny babbles of religion, and plans to send his brothers to their death.
Great game to aid the dangling halters! Rivers of working class blood have been shed in the past under the same cowardly cover. That hunter of working men, and perpetrator of almost every known crime, goes religiously to the Catholic church every morning.
Orchard gave out a pat statement that the press reported as his own language. Here it is:
I have nothing in particular to say but I might say that anything I may have said, I said of my own free will and accord after taking plenty of time to deliberate. There never was any force or coercion used at any time or any threats by word or deed. There have never been any promises made at any time.
And the reception was over.
Breeze in Court Room.
This high-toned reception for the murderer of Ex-Governor Steunenberg had its aftermath, however. When court convened Friday morning the judge commenced a discussion on the Orchard interview. Tho newspapers had blazoned it broad cast and he denounced it an very much out of place as the report would tend to influence the jurors still waiting on the venire.
Attorney Richardson rose on the part of the defense, and made a scathing speech on the proceedings, grilling Governor Gooding for again butting in to influence circumstances against the men on trial for their lives. He said the whole affair was a dastardly outrage designed to give credibility to Harry Orchard, whose odium had be«n so well evidenced in the examination of the jurors. He laid stress on the fact that only a portion of the press representatives were allowed to be present, and those were the ones that were favorable to the prosecution. He exonerated that portion of the prosecution that were present, but called on them to denounce the actions that were done under the governor’s sanction to rehabilitate Orchard as a witness. The governor had never intended that the defense should have a fair trial. Mr. Darrow then arose and said that the joint reception of Orchard and the governor was plainly to influence the case, and came from the examination made of various jurors. Would Orchard deliberately put his neck in the halter without any hope of reward?
Mr. Darrow closed by demanding that both the governor and Warden Whitney should be called before the court to answer for this infringement on the rights of the defense.
Mr. Hawley for the prosecution said that the attorneys for the state regretted what had been said by the defense. He attacked the policy of the socialist papers bitterly, said the prosecution had been maligned, and the most gross misstatements made. Injury was being worked upon them continually, but they did not retaliate. The defense had people at work continually to influence the jurors. And he gave an incident purported to have happened that very morning in the court yard.
He said he could not see how the interview could prejudice the defense, and defended the governor. He laid particular stress on the fact that the representatives of all papers of standing were admitted to the interview. And there sat a whole row of socialist and labor paper representatives who were completely ignored because they did not have the power of capitalism behind them.
Borah said that all the newspaper representatives had asked to see Orchard, and in view of the ridiculous stories sent out purposely by the other papers, the prosecution had decided that the representative men should see him.
Richardson demanded what right Gooding had to help the prosecution. Borah said that he could not lie down in the face of this crime, and he would leave Gooding to the state.
Judge Wood then stated that he had reported the matter to the prosecuting attorney and let him see what action he regarded necessary to take.
Special Law Passed.
On Friday afternoon tho defense brought up the question as to the number of peremptory challenges the prosecution should have, charging that the law was especially changed during the last session of the legislature, for this case was an ex post facto act and consequently illegal. Under the old practice the defense had two for every one of the prosecution. But this law had raised the number of challenges for the prosecution from six to twelve.
The court said he would not entertain the idea that the legislature had any ulterior purpose in passing the law.
Saturday the report of the prosecuting attorney on the Orchard interview was filed. It was of course obediently exonerative of the prosecution. What are institutions for if they are not to uphold those who institute them?
Mrs. Haywood is not in court all the time. The progress of getting the jury is very fatiguing.
Pettibone Dope.
A number of witnesses have arrived from Pocatello who will swear to the finding of the remains of the dangerous explosives which Adams is said to have buried in the fake confession rung from him by McParland as Orchard’s was, and afterwards repudiated. The prosecution still hopes that they can wring something out of the Adamses for their side.
The court instructed the bailiffs who have charge of the jury to allow them to have papers with all reference to the trial eliminated, also that the jurors were to be allowed to consult on their business affairs in the presence of the bailiffs.
Rev. James A. Russell has arrived from California for the purpose of identifying Orchard and describing Simpkins. He was at the same hotel in Caldwell where it is said these men stopped when they were plotting Steunenberg’s murder.
To show what a spirit of tension exists in the underground control of Boise, Policeman McGibson was dropped from the force last evening because he was suspected of lending aid to the workers for the defense.
One man employed by the state was dropped for a similar cause.
One of the guards, Van Stetter, in the court room Saturday tried to pick a quarrel with Comrade Priest, who has been very active for the defense, put his hand on the pocket where he carries his gun, and threatened to put a hole through him.
Wade Roscoe Parks, the correspondent for the “Daily People,” has even got mixed up in the general atmosphere of suspicion. Parks is a weird, lank, intense looking individual that strides through the town like a race horse, always carrying a mysterious and cavernous bag. He walked into a restaurant Saturday afternoon and as he sat down remarked that there was enough dynamite in it to blow up the whole town. The landlady was paralyzed with fear and telephoned the police. The chief appeared on the scene there was considerable excited inquiry, but when it was found out that Parks had simply referred to inoffensive socialist literature the matter was allowed to subside. Not before, however, all the reporters had got hold of it, and it was telegraphed over the country. The Capital Evening News had a column on the circumstance.
Comrade Parks is much chagrined over the incident which is certainly somewhat embarrassing though amusing, for he is certainly sending out very good stuff to the paper which he represent.
———-
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Montana News
“Owned and Published by the
Socialist Party of Montana”
-editor Ida Crouch-Hazlett
-Hazlett also served as Boise correspondent
during the Haywood trial.
(Helena, Montana)
-May 23, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1907-05-23/ed-1/seq-1/
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1907-05-23/ed-1/seq-3/
IMAGES
HMP, Justice Boise, Spokane Press, May 9, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/201688865
The San Francisco Call
(San Francisco, California)
-May 17, 1907
HMP, OK Davis re Orchard at Pen May 16, SF Call, May 17, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1907-05-17/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-May 17, 1907
Page 1 article by Oscar King Davis
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B07EEDD1738E033A25754C1A9639C946697D6CF&legacy=true
ORCHARD TALKS; IS SANE AND STRONG;
Tells Times Correspondent He Was Not
Coerced Into Making Statement.
HAS DETERMINED COURSE
His Favorite Reading is Ecclesiastical History
-Interested in the Haywood Jury.
Special to The New York TimesBOISE, Idaho, May 16.-I spent half an hour this morning with Harry Orchard, the former member of the Western Federation of Miners, who is accused of planting the bomb that killed ex-Gov. Frank Steunenberg, and who is reported to have made a confession implicating Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone in the conspiracy which, it is charged, compassed that murder….
Wade Roscoe Parks also sent copy to the IWW newspaper:
The Industrial Union Bulletin
(Chicago, Illinois)
-May 25, 1917
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v1n13-may-25-1907-iub.pdf
For more on the press in Boise during the trial:
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town
Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
Chapter 13: “Gentlemen of the Press” -page 632
-Page 644 begins the story of the press “reception” with Orchard.
Note: Kennedy, Egan, Davis and Thomas were personally escorted by Governor Gooding to the penitentiary to meet with Orchard during the morning of May 16th. That visit was supervised by Warden Whitney. The other reporters met with Orchard latter that same day, also well supervised.
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC