lost their interest. But one by one, jurymen were accepted. On December 8, exactly one month after the trial began, and after 220 veniremen had been examined, the jury was completed. Judge Hartwell set December 13 as the date for opening statements.
On that morning the defendants were brought into the courtroom early. Otis Clark, forty or thereabouts, of medium height and weight, bearing himself with habitual soberness, looked as much the insurance salesman (which he had been) as the miner (which he was). Bert Grace was all animation, calling to his friends and exchanging jokes with them. Neatly dressed, his thinning hair prematurely gray, he could have passed for a traveling salesman as easily as for a coal miner. Peter Hiller, young, round-faced, stolid, bore himself like a garage mechanic on a Sunday outing, and with no more concern. Joe Carnaghi’s black hair and olive skin confirmed his Italian parentage; his pleasant, good-humored expression explained his popularity in the community.By contrast, Leva Mann’s grave face seemed almost misanthropic as he sat with one knee in his big muscular hands waiting for the proceedings to begin.
“There is little to tell about them [the defendants],” Philip Kinsley wrote, “because they are ordinary men and have led ordinary lives. They are Americans, proud of their country, proud of the power of their union. There is no tinge of ‘red’ about them. They are not of the bolshevik persuasion. They are not ‘wild, ignorant foreigners.’ They are conservative and commonplace, an indistinguishable part of the herd washed from the main current by accident.”
Conservative and commonplace, too, were the jurymen whom State’s Attorney Duty faced when he rose to make his opening statement. One of the twelve was a miner; the others were farmers, though two had worked in mines. The youngest was twenty-seven, the oldest fifty-six; their average age was forty-four. Such names as Swanner, Weaver, Riddle, and Cox testified to their “American” lineage.
Duty opened by reviewing the events of June 21 and June 22. Not until he outlined what the state expected to prove did his high-pitched voice become tense. The state would show, he asserted, that Otis Clark was one of the two men who led McDowell to his death, and that he was the leader who gave the order to fire, by the fence in the powerhouse woods. It would show that Bert Grace took part in the hangings and shootings in the Harrison woods, and that he was the man in the Herrin cemetery who threatened to shoot anyone who should attempt to give water to the wounded. It would show that Leva Mann, Joe Carnaghi, and Peter Hiller were participants in the killings at the cemetery, and that it was Hiller who cut the throats of the dying strikebreakers.
Kerr rose to reply to Duty. Heavyset, fatherly, he had endeared himself to union labor by his defense of the copper miners in the Calumet strike of 1913; the defendants and the miners’ union looked to him with complete confidence. As he describedthe early days of coal mining in Illinois—the low wages, long hours, hazardous working-conditions, the uphill pull of the diggers to better themselves—the intensity of the zealot supplanted his customary graciousness.
“In that battle,” he shouted, “at every step these determined workers were met with the powerful forces of organized capital.… Private armies of gunmen in the employ of the organized operators directed their guns against the breasts of the workers. The miners fought on against all the power of the organized employers of this state until finally they won for themselves an organization.… And now in this case they are assailed for wanting to protect and conserve this organization.…”
Kerr described Lester’s operation, his violation of his agreement with the union, the provocative acts of the guards.
“We will show,” he promised, “that their avowed purpose was to assault, abuse, intimidate and, as a last
On that morning the defendants were brought into the courtroom early. Otis Clark, forty or thereabouts, of medium height and weight, bearing himself with habitual soberness, looked as much the insurance salesman (which he had been) as the miner (which he was). Bert Grace was all animation, calling to his friends and exchanging jokes with them. Neatly dressed, his thinning hair prematurely gray, he could have passed for a traveling salesman as easily as for a coal miner. Peter Hiller, young, round-faced, stolid, bore himself like a garage mechanic on a Sunday outing, and with no more concern. Joe Carnaghi’s black hair and olive skin confirmed his Italian parentage; his pleasant, good-humored expression explained his popularity in the community.By contrast, Leva Mann’s grave face seemed almost misanthropic as he sat with one knee in his big muscular hands waiting for the proceedings to begin.
“There is little to tell about them [the defendants],” Philip Kinsley wrote, “because they are ordinary men and have led ordinary lives. They are Americans, proud of their country, proud of the power of their union. There is no tinge of ‘red’ about them. They are not of the bolshevik persuasion. They are not ‘wild, ignorant foreigners.’ They are conservative and commonplace, an indistinguishable part of the herd washed from the main current by accident.”
Conservative and commonplace, too, were the jurymen whom State’s Attorney Duty faced when he rose to make his opening statement. One of the twelve was a miner; the others were farmers, though two had worked in mines. The youngest was twenty-seven, the oldest fifty-six; their average age was forty-four. Such names as Swanner, Weaver, Riddle, and Cox testified to their “American” lineage.
Duty opened by reviewing the events of June 21 and June 22. Not until he outlined what the state expected to prove did his high-pitched voice become tense. The state would show, he asserted, that Otis Clark was one of the two men who led McDowell to his death, and that he was the leader who gave the order to fire, by the fence in the powerhouse woods. It would show that Bert Grace took part in the hangings and shootings in the Harrison woods, and that he was the man in the Herrin cemetery who threatened to shoot anyone who should attempt to give water to the wounded. It would show that Leva Mann, Joe Carnaghi, and Peter Hiller were participants in the killings at the cemetery, and that it was Hiller who cut the throats of the dying strikebreakers.
Kerr rose to reply to Duty. Heavyset, fatherly, he had endeared himself to union labor by his defense of the copper miners in the Calumet strike of 1913; the defendants and the miners’ union looked to him with complete confidence. As he describedthe early days of coal mining in Illinois—the low wages, long hours, hazardous working-conditions, the uphill pull of the diggers to better themselves—the intensity of the zealot supplanted his customary graciousness.
“In that battle,” he shouted, “at every step these determined workers were met with the powerful forces of organized capital.… Private armies of gunmen in the employ of the organized operators directed their guns against the breasts of the workers. The miners fought on against all the power of the organized employers of this state until finally they won for themselves an organization.… And now in this case they are assailed for wanting to protect and conserve this organization.…”
Kerr described Lester’s operation, his violation of his agreement with the union, the provocative acts of the guards.
“We will show,” he promised, “that their avowed purpose was to assault, abuse, intimidate and, as a last
Similar Books
