Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial evidence book. Defense Exhibit 5.
The Alarm (Newspaper) article, "Forcible Gospel," 1885 Sept. 5
1 p.
Introduced Vol. N p. 156, 1886 Aug. 10.
Transcript of article.
From "The Alarm" of September 5, 1885.
"FORCIBLE GOSPEL.
"At a meeting held by the Socialogic Society of New York City, recently, the Rev. Dr. Rylance spoke, and among other things said: "Patronizing talk was of no use as a remedy for existing evils. Workingmen were not to be won over by mere pulpit eloquence. It was no use telling a man that if he was industrious and saved his money he might become a capitalist himself, when in many cases the amount he received as wages was barely sufficient for a bare subsustence. The tyranny of capital was fast becoming as bad as European despotism. He contrasted the squalid tenements and crowded neighborhoods in which the working people were huddled together with the stately residences of those who lived in luxury from the results of labor, and maintained that poverty was not the result of ignorance. and that wealth was the result of the co-operation of labor with capital. The present conditions of capital were founded on force, and not upon knowledge.