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.
