indeed realize in life the noble last words of Spies, spoken as he stood
on the gallows with the hangman's noose around his neck:

_"There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than
the voices you are strangling today."_




Labor's Martyrs

By Vito Marcantonio
President, International Labor Defense


_"These are my ideas. They constitute a part of myself. I cannot divest
myself of them, nor would I if I could. And if you think that one can
crush out these ideas that are gaining ground more and more every day;
if you think you can crush them out by sending us to the gallows; if you
would once more have people suffer the penalty of death because they
have dared to tell the truth--and I defy you to show that we have told a
lie--if death is the penalty for proclaiming the truth, then I will
proudly and defiantly pay the costly price."_--(August Spies, just
before he was sentenced to death on October 9, 1886.)


The man who spoke these words had no illusions. He knew that the court he
was facing was a hostile court, an enemy court, a court determined to
stamp out all that he stood for and believed in. He knew, also, that the
truth of which he spoke was much bigger than the little man who sat in a