The Haymarket Riot Trial

(State of Illinois v. Albert Spies, et al.)

1886

"If these men are to be tried...for advocating doctrines opposed to our ideas of propriety,
there is no use for me to argue the case. Let the Sheriff go and erect a scaffold; let him
bring eight ropes with dangling nooses at the ends; let him pass them around the necks
of these eight men; and let us stop this farce now."
--Defense Attorney William Foster (closing argument)
 "You stand between the living and the dead. You stand between law and violated law.
Do your duty courageously, even if the duty is an unpleasant and severe one."
--Prosecutor Julius Grinnell (closing argument

The Haymarket Riot and Trial: A Chronology

1866 National Labor Union passes a resolution calling for an eight-hour work day.
1867 Illinois enacts the nation's first eight-hour law, but employers refuse to comply and
the law is rendered meaningless.
1878 Albert Parsons becomes secretary of Chicago's Eight-Hour League.
 October 1884 The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union declares its goal of having
eight hours constitute a legal day of work, beginning May 1, 1886.
April 1886 American laborers rally and lobby in support of an eight-hour work day with no
reduction in pay. In Chicago, nearly 50,000 workers win such this concession from
employers. The Chicago City Council, with the support of Mayor Harrison,
approves an eight-hour work day for city employees.
May 1, 1886 100,000 American workers go on strike in support of the eight-hour workday. The
strike day ends peacefully in Chicago, where German anarchists toast their
"Emancipation Day."
<!--[endif]-->May 3, 1886 While Spies speaks, police attack demonstrators with clubs and bullets at
McCormick’s Reaper Works. Spies writes a circular (the “Revenge Circular”)
urging a militant response to the death of "six brothers." In the evening, 8-hour
leaders meet at Grief's Hall to discuss strategy. Prosecutors will later describe this
meeting, attended by Engel and Fischer, the "Monday Night Conspiracy."
May 4, 1886 Louis Lingg and William Seliger make 30 to 50 bombs. They later transport them to
Nepf’s Hall....At 7:30 PM, a rally to protest the violent attack on demonstrators at
McCormicks and support the eight-hour day begins at Haymarket in Chicago. At
8:15, August Spies arrives at the rally. At 8:30, Albert Parsons arrives at the meeting
of the American Group. A half hour later, he begins speaking at the Haymarket. He
speaks for about an hour, and then leaves for Zepf's Hall. Samuel Fielden begins
speaking about 10 PM. About 10:20, police demand that the Haymarket rally
promptly end. As Fielden steps down from the speaker's wagon, a bomb is thrown
into the ranks of the police, fatally injuring several. Officer Degan is the first to die.
After hearing of the violence at Haymarket, Parsons boards a train for Geneva,
Illinois.
May 5, 1886 August Spies, Henry Spies, Lizzie Holmesand Michael Schwab are arrested at the
office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, as the police raid the newspaper. Elsewhere, police
arrest Adolph Fischer, Gerhard Lizius, Herman Pudewa, Lucy Parsons, Sarah Ames,
and Samuel Fielden..... In response to the Haymarket Riot, Mayor Harrison
proclaims that all public gatherings are now illegal.
May 7, 1886 Rudolph Schnaubelt is arrested.
May 7-10, 1886 Parsons travels to Waukesha, Wisconsin.
May 14, 1886 After an intense struggle with a police officer, Lingg is arrested.
May 17, 1886 Grand jury is called.
May 18, 1886 The Grand jury begins its examination of witnesses.
May 27, 1886 The Grand jury returns indictments against Albert Parsons, August Spies, Michael
Schwab, Samuel Fielden, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Oscar Neebe, Louis Lingg,
William Seliger, and Rudolph Schnaubelt. They are charged with the murder of
Officer Degan.
<!--[endif]-->June 5, 1886 The Grand Jury issues its report to Judge Rogers. The grand jury concludes that the
bombthrowing was a direct result of a deliberate conspiracy.
 June 21, 1886 In dramatic fashion, Parsons willingly surrenders by walking into court on the first
day of the proceedings. Jury selection begins.
July 15, 1886 Jurors are sworn in. The prosecution opens its case.
July 31, 1886 The state closes its case; the defense begins its case.
August 19, 1886 Judge Gary instructs the jury and it begins deliberations.
August 20, 1886 Jury delivers its verdict of guilty for the 8 defendants. All defendants, except Neebe,
are sentenced to receive the death penalty. Neebe is sentenced to 15 years of hard
labor.
October 7, 1886 Appeal is denied; the execution date is set for December 3, 1886.
October 7-9, 1886 The defendants give speeches in court.
November 2, 1886 The defendants appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court for a writ of error.
November 25, 1886 A stay of execution is granted.
March 1887 The Illinois Supreme Court hears the appeal by the defendants.
September 14, 1887 The Illinois Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s ruling. November 11, 1887 is
the date set for the defendants’ execution.
October 27, 1887 Counsel for the defense petitions the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of error.
November 2, 1887 The U.S. Supreme Court denies the writ of error.
November 6, 1887 Four bombs are found in the cell of Louis Lingg.
November 9, 1887 The Amnesty Association presents a petition with 41,000 signatures from Chicago
residents.
November 10, 1887 Governor Oglesby announces he is commuting the sentences of Samuel Fielden and
Michael Schwab to life sentences. Lingg commits suicide in his cell, by biting on a
dynamite cap.
November 11, 1887 Spies, Parson, Fielden, and Engel are hanged at noon.
June 25, 1893 Thousands attend the unveiling of a new monument to the Haymarket martyrs at
Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.
June 26, 1893 Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe are pardoned by Governor John Peter Altgeld. The
move effectively ends Altgeld's promising political career.
1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act makes eight hours a legal days work in the United
States.
According to prosecution witnesses, George Engel, at a May 3 meeting of anarchists at
Grief's Hall (a saloon), announced a plan involving the German-language paper
Arbeiter-Zeitung. Under Engel's plan, the appearance of the German word "Ruhe"
(meaning "rest") in the notices column of the paper would be a signal to North Side
activists to take militant action including bombing police stations, shooting police
officers, and pulling down telegraph lines. In fact, the word "Ruhe" did appear in the
notices ("Briefkasten") column of the Arbeiter-Zeitung edition of May 4 (image at left).
The prosecution used this to link Albert Spies to the violence at Haymarket, although
Spies claimed to have had no knowledge of the word's significance when it appeared in
the paper. The image on the right is of a note in the handwriting of Spies introduced
by the prosecution as "People's Exhibit 10."
Monumento a los Mártires de Chicago
 Meet the Haymarket Defendants
The sketches on this page were prepared by Jeremy M. Strathman (1L)
George Samuel Adolf Louis Oscar Albert Michael August
Engel Fielden Fischer Lingg Neebe Parsons Schwab Spies

Louis Lingg
Samuel Fielden
“The forces by which the workers are kept in subjugation must be
"It is not generally considered a crime among intellectual people to be retaliated by force.”
a Revolutionist, but it may be made a crime – Louis Lingg
if the Revolutionist happens to be poor."
– Samuel Fielden Born: September 9, 1864
Died: November 10, 1887 (suicide)
Born: February 25, 1847; Todmorden, England Occupation: carpenter
Died: February 7, 1922
Occupation: self-employed teamster “Devoted and fearless, never for an instant allowing
false hope to swerve him from the path of principle,
“His rugged appearance and fluent homespun delivery appealed to his he died as he had lived--a child of nature.”
working-class audiences- he was whole-souled, humorous, full of – Dyer Lum (on Lingg)
quaint touches of tenderness, simple uncultured poetry, and good-
heartedness.” Louis Lingg, at age twenty-two the youngest of the Haymarket
–Lizzie May Holmes (on Fielden) defendants, immigrated to the United States from Germany less than
one year before the Haymarket incident. In Germany, Lingg’s father
The only English immigrant among the accused defendants in the was hurt in an accident, and his father’s employer reduced his wages
Haymarket trial, Samuel Fielden served as the treasurer of the and eventually discharged him; this gave Lingg a poor impression of
American Group (a faction of the International Working Persons employers and set off his militant hatred of capitalism. He discovered
Association). A supporter of the 8-hour movement, Fielden was socialism in 1881, before leaving for the United States.
speaking at the Haymarket when Captain Bonfield ordered Fielden and
the assembled group to immediately disperse. Fielden maintained that Once in America, Lingg joined the North-Side Group, along with
the group was peaceable, but decided to step down from the speaker’s Neebe and Schwab. Lingg was extremely militant, and together with
position, anyway. As he was stepping down from the speakers’ William Seliger, made 30 to 50 bombs on the day of the Haymarket
wagon, the bomb was thrown into the ranks of policemen. Fielden was incident. Although Lingg did not attend the Haymarket meeting, he
the only defendant who sustained a major injury at Haymarket--he was was eventually arrested on May 14, 1886 when a police officer came to
shot in the knee by a police officer as he fled the Haymarket area. Lingg’s hiding spot. Lingg fought the police officer before finally
being subdued by his landlord, who witnessed the struggle.
Fielden was arrested the following morning, at his home. He stood
trial and was convicted and sentenced to death with the other In 1886, a jury convicted Lingg and sentenced him to death, along with
defendants. Like Michael Schwab, Fielden chose to write to Governor the other Haymarket defendants. On November 6, 1887, less than one
Oglesby, pleading that his death sentence be commuted to a sentence week before his scheduled execution, four bombs were found in
of life in prison. Governor Oglesby granted this favor, commuting Lingg’s cell. This prompted the city of Chicago to fear either an
Fielden’s sentence on November 10, 1887. escape or an attack by the defendants and caused serious harm to the
defendants’ public opinion and support. On November 10, 1887, the
Fielden served six years in prison, before being pardoned on June 26, day before his scheduled execution, Lingg smuggled dynamite caps
1893 by Governor John Peter Altgeld. After being pardoned, Fielden into his cell and bit them, destroying his jaw, and killing himself.
led a quiet life, eventually acquiring land and moving to a ranch in
Colorado. He lived the rest of his life on the ranch, remaining
generally inactive in the labor movement, until his death in 1922.
George Engel
“No power on Earth can rob the working man of his knowledge of
how to make bombs- and that knowledge he possesses.”
--George Engel
Born: April 15, 1836
Died: November 11, 1887
Occupation: toy store owner
George Engel, 50 years old at the time of the Haymarket riot, was the
oldest of the Haymarket defendants. An orphan since the age of 12,
Engel immigrated to America from Germany in 1873. Engel became a
socialist shortly after arriving in Chicago in 1874. His adoption of
socialism was influenced by what he saw as the sameness of the two
major parties: "When, in the fourteenth ward, in which I lived and had
the right to vote, the Social Democratic party had grown to such
dimensions as to make it dangerous for the Republican and Democratic
parties, the latter forthwith united and took stand against the Social
Democrats. This, of course, was natural; for are not their interests
identical?"
A militant, “fervent devotee” of the International Working Persons
Association, Engel, along with Fischer, was a radical leader of the
autonomist faction of the socialist labor movement. In the words of
co-defendant Oscar Neebe, “Engel was a brave soldier in the working-
class struggle, an out and out rebel for the cause.” Although Engel
attended the “Monday Night Conspiracy” at Greif’s Saloon on May 3,
1886, Engel stayed at home and played cards on the night of the
Haymarket riot.
He was arrested at his home two days later. Engel was convicted and
sentenced to death by hanging. Unlike Fielden and Schwab, Engel
chose not to plead to Governor Oglesby for his sentence to be
commuted. Accordingly, Engel was hanged on November 11, 1887
with the remaining Haymarket defendants.
Many believed that he did not want his fate to be in the hands of his
oppressors, and that he would rather be a martyr for the cause, by his
own volition.
Adolf Fischer
“He expected and desired to lose his life in the cause of human
emancipation, and he had little patience with measures looking to the
mere amelioration of the working people’s condition.”
– William Holmes
Born: 1858
Died: November 11, 1887
Occupation: printer
Adolph Fischer was a militant revolutionary zealot and German-born
socialist who immigrated to the U.S. when he was 15 years old. After
arriving in America, Fischer became the foreman of the composing
room at the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Fischer also joined the International
Working Persons Association and the Lehr-und-Wehr Verein. Along
with Engel, Fischer was a leader of the autonomist faction of the
socialist labor movement.
Fischer attended the “Monday Night Conspiracy” at Greif’s Saloon on
the night before the Haymarket incident. He also attended the
Haymarket meeting, but was reportedly at Zepf’s Hall when the bomb
was thrown. He was apprehended the following morning at the offices
of the Arbeiter-Zeitung.
Fischer was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. At his
sentencing, Fischer blamed the verdict on the jury's hatred of his ideas:
“I was tried here in this room for murder, and I was convicted of
Anarchy.” He predicted the verdict would not end anarchy, but only
lead to more of it: “The more the believers in just causes are
persecuted, the more quickly will their ideas be realized. For instance,
in rendering such an unjust and barbarous verdict, the twelve
‘honorable men’ in the jury-box have done more for the furtherance of
Anarchism than the convicted have accomplished in a generation. This
verdict is a death-blow to free speech, free press and free thought in
this country, and the people ill be conscious of it, too. This is all I care
to say.” Fischer did not plead for his sentence to be commuted, and if
he had, his appeal would have likely failed. Accordingly, Fischer was
hanged on November 11, 1887 with Parsons, Spies, and Engel.
 Oscar Neebe
“Neebe was an organizer, pure and simple. An adept at collecting
men together and lining them up into workable bodies, he was an able
ally for the educators, as innocent of wrong as the others.”
– Lizzie Holmes.
Born: July 12, 1850
Died: April 22, 1916
Occupation: part-owner of a yeast company
Neebe, along with Parsons, is one of only two American-born
defendants in the Haymarket trial. Shortly after birth in New York
City, Neebe and his family moved back to Germany where they stayed, 1879, Schwab became an active fighter for labor rights. Once a
before returning to America shortly before the Haymarket incident .
Neebe was never considered a leader of the Socialist movement, but he its associate editor. Schwab was considered to be a milder type of
remained to play an important role in organizing the movement. He
offered this criticism of capitalism: "You use your power to perpetuate writings as some of his colleagues.
a system by which you make your money for yourselves and keep the
wage workers poor... You rich men don't want the poor educated. You
don't want anybody to be educated. You want to keep them down in
the mud so you can squeeze the last drop out of their bones."
Neebe was not present at the Haymarket, but attempted to revive the
Arbeiter-Zeitung after the riot had caused many involved with the
Arbeiter-Zeitung to be arrested.
After being arrested himself and tried with the other defendants, Neebe
was the only defendant who escaped a death sentence. He was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. Neebe was pardoned on June 26, 1893
by Governor Altgeld.
Michael Schwab
“His revolutionary tendencies were of a mild character; his
was not of a nature to get violently aggressive.”
- Lucien S. Oliver, chair of the Haymarket Amnesty Association.
Born: August 9, 1853
Died: June 29, 1898
Occupation: bookbinder
Michael Schwab was a 32-year old German immigrant and brother-in-
law of Rudolph Schnaubelt (the man suspected of throwing the bomb
that caused the Haymarket riot). After immigrating to America in
member of the Socialists Labor Party, Schwab left the group to help
found another labor rights group, the North-Side Group. Schwab
began writing for the Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1881 and eventually became
revolutionary who was not quite as inflammatory in his speeches and
As the associate editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and supporter of the 8-
hour labor movement, Schwab wrote an article on May 4, 1886, calling
for the need of resistance against the capitalists. That night, Schwab
attended the beginning of the Haymarket meeting, but had left and was
speaking at the Deering Reaper Works at the time of the explosion.
Schwab was arrested the following morning at the offices of the
Arbeiter-Zeitung. In the trial, Schwab sought to distinguish anarchy
from the violence with which it was so often associated: “It is entirely
wrong to use the word Anarchy as synonymous with violence.
Violence is one thing and Anarchy another. In the present state of
society violence is used on all sides, and therefore we advocated the
use of violence against violence, but against violence only, as a
necessary means of defense.” He also used the forum to predict the
eventual triumph of socialism: “I know that our ideal will not be
accomplished this or next year, but I know that it will be accomplished
as near as possible, some day, in the future.” Schwab was convicted
and sentenced to death, but he wrote a letter to Governor Oglesby,
pleading for his sentence to be commuted to a life sentence. The letter
was successful and his sentence was commuted on November 10,
1887.
Schwab served only six years in prison before Governor Altgeld
 pardoned Schwab, Neebe, and Fielden on June 26, 1893.

Albert Parsons August Spies

“Toward any individual in danger or distress, He was “handsome and intelligent, with a wide range of reading
he had an instinctive sympathy.” and of studious nature, with a warm heart controlled by a cold,
– Charles Edward Russell philosopher’s brain.”
- Dyer Lum
Born: June 20, 1848
Died: November 11, 1887 Born: December 10, 1855
Occupation: printer Died: November 11, 1887
Occupation: Upholsterer
Albert Parsons, 37 at the time of the Haymarket riot, had the deepest
American roots of all of the accused Haymarket conspirators. His August Spies (pronounced Speeze in English), 30 at the time of the
ancestry can be traced back to 1632, when his ancestors arrived in Haymarket incident, was a German immigrant who came to America
America on the second voyage of the Mayflower. His family was in 1872. Considered to be an excellent writer, Spies was fluent in
involved in many social revolutionary causes, and Albert continued English, German, and French.
this tradition by fighting for labor reform in America, beginning in the
early 1870’s. In Chicago, Spies was a member of the Lehr-und-Wehr Verein and
Socialists Labor Party. He was also the business manager of the
Husband of a former slave, Parsons had previously fought for the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the German-language newsletter for the working
rights of Black American citizens and former slaves. Parsons equated class. Many considered Spies to be nearly an equal to Parsons in the
the plight of the working class to the plight of slaves before slavery anarchist movement in Chicago.
was abolished in America. He believed that once traditional slavery
was abolished, capitalism created a new kind of slavery, where the
working masses were slaves to their capitalist masters. Parsons wrote, Spies witnessed the incident at the McCormick factory on May 3,
“The working people thirst for the truths of Socialism and welcome 1886, where a skirmish broke out between the police and workers.
their utterance with shouts of delight.” Two people were killed, prompting Spies to write and publish the
“Revenge Circular.” The Arbeiter-Zeitung printed approximately
2,500 copies of the circular, and half were distributed to the public.
Parsons and his wife, Lucy, arrived in Chicago in 1873 and became a The circular called for the working class to take up arms and exact
leader of the Socialist Labor Party. Parsons eventually founded the revenge on their oppressors, the capitalists.
American Group of Chicago, which was the American branch of the
International Working Persons Association. Parsons was also the
editor of The Alarm, the English version of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Spies was the first speaker at the Haymarket on May 4, 1886. He
spoke while the crowd waited for Parsons to arrive. By all accounts,
Spies’s speech was mild and was not likely to incite violence. He
Parsons was invited to speak at the Haymarket on May 4, 1886 and remained for the conclusion of the meeting and was stepping down
arrived at the Haymarket around 9 PM. He spoke for almost an hour, from the speakers’ wagon when the bomb was thrown into the crowd.
before leaving for Zepf’s Hall, during Samuel Fielden’s speech. He
was at Zepf’s when the bomb exploded in the Haymarket. Knowing
that the police would immediately search for him, Parsons left Chicago Spies was arrested the next morning (May 5, 1886) at the offices of
by train at midnight, heading for Geneva, Illinois to stay with the Arbeiter-Zeitung, along with Fischer and Schwab. While in prison,
compatriot William Holmes. Parsons further evaded the police, Spies began a romance with Nina Van Zandt, eventually marrying
shortly after his arrival in Geneva, by traveling to Waukesha, while in prison. Spies also did not write a plea to Governor Oglesby.
Even if he had, Governor Oglesby would likely not have commuted
Wisconsin, where he stayed with the Hoan family, whose father the sentence. Spies was hanged on November 11, 1887. On the
sympathized with Parsons’s beliefs. scaffold, Spies offered a prediction: “The time will come when our
silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
Parsons stayed in Wisconsin until the first day of the Haymarket trial,
June 21, 1886. He surrendered by dramatically and unexpectedly
entering the court. He, along with six others, were convicted at trial
and sentenced to death. Despite pleas to do so, Parsons did not write
to Governor Oglesby to have his sentence commuted. Many believed
that, had he asked, Parsons would not have been executed. Parsons
felt that the only way to save the others was to align himself with
them. Because of this insistence to have the same fate as the others, he
was hanged with them on November 11, 1887.

[May 5, 1886]

A Hellish Deed
A Dynamite Bomb Thrown Into a Crowd of Policemen
It explodes and covers the street with dead and mutilated officers –A storm of
bullets follows- The police return the fire and wound a number of rioters-
Harrowing scenes at the Desplaines Street Station- A night of terror.

A dynamite bomb thrown into a squad of policemen sent to disperse a mob at

the corner of Desplaines and Randolph streets last night exploded with terrific force,
killing and injuring nearly fifty men. The following is a partial list of the dead and
wounded policemen:

JOSEPH DEAGAN, West Lake Street Station; fell dead in front of the
Desplaines Street Station, in the arms of Detective John McDonald. He had sufficient
vitality to walk from the scene of the shooting to the spot where he expired.
 LIEUT. JAMES STANTON, West Lake Street Station, shot in both legs; not
badly hurt.

JACOB HANSEN, West Lake Street Station, shot in both legs.

THOMAS SHANNON, Desplaines Street Station, shot in foot, leg, and arms;
married and has three children. Lives at No. 24 Mather Street.

JOHN K. MCMAHON, West Chicago Avenue, shot in thigh and calf of right
leg. Married, and has three children; lives at No. 118 North Green Street.

JOHN B. DOYLE, Desplaines street, bomb wounds in leg, knee, and back.
Married, and as one child; lives at No. 142 ½ Jackson street.

TIMOTHY FLAVIN, Rawson Street Station, shot in leg, resides at station,

married.

JOHN H. KING, Desplaines Street Station, bomb wound in neck, feet, and arms.

JAMES PLUNKETT, Desplaines Street Station, shot in the hand.

EDWARD BARRETT, West Chicago Avenue, shot in knee and ankle, has wife
and six children, lives at No. 297 West Ohio Street.

J. SIMONS, West Chicago Avenue, shot in side; wife and two children; lives at
No. 241 West Huron street.

A. C. KELLER, Desplaines Street Station, shot in side; lives at No. 36

Greenwich Street.

L. J. MURPHY, Desplaines Street, shot in neck and hand; foot hurt by bomb;
married; lives at 317 ½ Fulton Street.

T. BUSTERLY, West Lake Street, shot in hand, wife and one child, lives at No.
436 West Twelfth Street.

H. T. SMITH, Desplaines Street, shot in the right ankle, single, lives at No. 36
Keith Street.

ARTHUR CONLEY, Desplaines street, bullet wound in leg and right shoulder,
and bomb wound on right leg, maimed; lives at No. 318 West Harrison street.

C. WHITNEY, West Lake Street, wounded in the breast by a bomb, maimed;

lives at No. 43 South Robey Street.

J.H. WILSON, Central detail, wounded by bomb in groin, shot in left hand, wife
and five children lives at No. 810 Austin Avenue.

J. NORMAN, West Lake street, bullet wound in left hand, has fie and two
children, lives at 612 Walnut street.
 JOHN BARRETT, Desplaines street, shot in elbow, bomb wound in left side,
married, lives at No. 199 Erie street.

MICHAEL HORNE, Desplaines street, shot in leg.

T. HENNESSEY, West Lake street, wound in head and right thing, married,
lives at No. 287 Fulton street.

JOHN R. KING, Desplaines street, shot in leg, bomb wound in groin.

H.N. KRUGER, West Chicago Avenue, shot in leg; wife and two children, No.
184 Ramsey Street.

CHARLES FINK, West Lake Street, bomb wound in three places in right leg,
married, lives at No. 124 Sangamon Street.

LEWIS JOHNSON, Desplaines street, shot in right leg, wife and four children,
No. 40 West Erie street.

HELVERSON, West North Avenue, shot in both legs, single.

JOHNSON, West Chicago Avenue, bomb wound in leg, married.

S. ELIDZIO, West Chicago Avenue, bullet wound in left hand, married, No. 158
Cornell Street.

T. EBINGER, Central detail, shot in hand, wife and three children, No. 235
Thirty-Seventh Street.

M. O’BRIEN, Central detail, shot in leg, wife and three children, No. 491 Fifth
Avenue.

T. BROPHY, West Lake Street, shot in hand, married, No. 35 Nixon Street.

T. B. MCMAHON, West Chicago Avenue, shot in thigh and calf, wife and three
children, No. 118 Green Street.

D. HOGAN, Central detail, shot in right leg, wife and two children, no. 526
Austin Avenue.

M. CONDON, Desplaines street, three bomb wounds in legs, wife and one child.

PETER MCCORMICK, West Chicago Avenue Station, shot in arm, lives at No.
473 West Erie Street.

OFFICER ONEILS HANSON of the West North Avenue Station, seven shots.
One severe one in right thigh, one in lower part of same limb, one in the back near the
lower ribs, one in the left elbow, one in each knee, and one in the left ankle. All of the
wounds were ragged and were apparently fired from a shotgun. Drs. J. W. Propeck and
A. K. Smith are inclined to think his wounds are serious, but not necessarily fatal.
 OFFICER JOSEPH GILSO of the West Chicago Avenue Station, bullet wounds
in the right shoulder and one in the right leg, neither of which is serious.

JAMES O’DAY of the Desplaines Street Station shot in the knee seriously. He
was removed to his home on Carroll Avenue, near Robey Street.

An Incendiary Speech

The following circular was distributed yesterday afternoon:

ATTENTION, WORKINGMEN!

GREAT MASS-MEETING

Tonight, at 7:30 o’clock

At the

HAYMARKET, RANDOLPH STREET, BETWEEN DESPLAINES AND HALSTED.

Good speakers will be present to denounce the latest atrocious act of the police—the
shooting of our fellow-workmen yesterday afternoon.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

In response to this about 1,500 people gathered, but a shower dispersed all but
600. Several speeches had been made of a more or less rabid character when Sam
Fielden, the Socialist, put in an appearance.

“The Socialists,” he said, “are not going to declare war; but I tell you war has
been declared upon us; and I ask you to get hold of anything that will help to resist the
onslaught of the enemy and the usurper. The skirmish-lines have met. People have
been shot. Men, women, and children have not been spared by the ruthless minions of
private capital. It had no mercy. So ought you. You are called upon to defend
yourselves, your lies, your future. What matters it whether you kill yourselves with
work to get a little relief or die on the battle-field resisting the enemy? [Applause.]
What is the difference? Any animal, however loathsome, will resist when stepped
upon. Are men less than snails or worms? I have some resistance in me. I know that
you have too. You have been robbed. You will be starved into a worse condition.”

At this point those on the outskirts of the crowd whispered “Police,” and many
of them hastened to the corner of Randolph Street. Six or eight companies of police,
commanded by Inspector Bonfield, marched rapidly past the corner. Fielden saw them
coming and stopped talking. When at the edge of the crowd Inspector Bonfield said in a
loud voice: “in the name of the law I command you to disperse.” The reply was a
bomb, which exploded as soon as it struck. The first company of police answered with
a volley right into the crowd, who scattered in all directions.
 Hell for a minute

Fielden had just started speaking when part of the crowd, scenting danger, left.
Numerous detectives mingled with the mob surrounding the wagon used as a speakers’
stand. A stiff breeze came up from the north and anticipating rain, more of the crowd
left, the worst element, however, remaining. In a few minutes the police from the
Desplaines Street station, marching abreast the breadth of Desplaines street,
approached. A space of about two feet intervened between each line and they marched
silently, so that they were upon the mob almost before the latter knew it. The glittering
stars were no sooner seen than a large bomb was thrown into the midst of the police.
The explosion shook the buildings in the vicinity, and played terrible havoc among the
police. It demoralized them, and the Anarchists and rioters poured in a shower of
bullets before the first action of the police was taken. Then the air overhead the fighting
mass was a blaze of flashing fire. At the discharge of the bomb the bystanders on the
sidewalk fled for their lives, and numbers were trampled upon in the mad haste of the
crowd to get away. The groans of those hit could be heard above the rattle of the
revolvers. In two minutes the ground was strewn with wounded men. Then the shots
straggled, and shortly after all was quiet, and the police were masters of the situation.

What Another Reporter Saw.

Fielden was apparently about winding up his address when a dark line was seen
to form north of Randolph street and in front of the Desplaines Street Station. For some
time no attention was paid to it, but it gradually moved north, and the stars and buttons
on the uniforms of a squad of policemen were seen glittering. The officers marched
three deep, occupying the whole width of the roadway, but leaving the sidewalks clear.
Their forms were plainly visible as they approached, for the electric lights in front of the
Lyceum Theatre set them off so as to form a good mark for the rioters. As the line
approached a cry arose in the crowd: “the police! The police!” and the south end of the
crowd began to divide towards the sidewalk and walk south to Randolph Street. But the
wagon in front of the Crane Bros. Manufacturing Company was not vacated by the
speaker and the other “leaders.” Fielden continued speaking, raising his voice more and
more as the police approached. There was no warning given. The crowd was rapidly
dispersing. The police, marching slowly, were in a line with the east and west alley
when something like a miniature rocket suddenly rose out of the crowd on the east
sidewalk, in a line with the police. It rose about twenty feet in the air, describing a
curve, and fell right in the middle of the street and among the marching police. It gave a
red glare while in the air. The bomb lay on the ground a few seconds, then a loud
explosion occurred, and the crowd took to their heels, scattering in all directions.
Immediately after the explosion the police pulled their revolvers and fired on the
crowd. An incessant fire was kept up for nearly two minutes, and at least 250 shots
were fired. The air was filled with bullets. The crowd ran up the streets and alleys and
were fired on by the now thoroughly enraged police. Then a lull followed. Many of the
crowd had taken refuge in the halls or entrances of houses and in saloons. As the firing
ceased they ventured forth, and a few officers opened fire on them. A dozen more shots
were fired and then it cease entirely. The patrol-wagons that had stopped just south of
Randolph Street were called up, and the work of looking for the dead and wounded
began.
The police separated into two columns and scoured the block north to Lake Street and
south to Randolph. When the firing had stopped the air was filled with groans and
shrieks. “O God! I’m shot, “Please take me home,” “Take me to the hospital, “and
similar entreaties were heard all over within a radius of a block of the field of battle.
Men were seen limping into drug-stores and saloons or crawling on their hands, their
legs being disabled. Others tottered along the street like drunken men, holding their
hands to their heads and calling for help to take them home. The open doorways and
saloons in the immediate vicinity were crowded with men. Some jumped over tables
and chairs, barricading themselves behind them; others crouched behind the walls,
counters, doorways, and empty barrels. For a few minutes after the shooting nobody
ventured out on the street. The dynamite shell did terrible execution among the police.
About one-half of those wounded were picked up in the middle of the street where the
explosion had occurred. The first to receive attention after the crowd was effectually
dispersed were the wounded officers. They were taken to the Desplaines Street Station.

Reinforcements of Officers Arrive and Disperse the Mob- More Shots Fired.

After the explosion crowds of excited people assembled on Desplaines,

Washington, and Randolph streets, and, with bated breath and compressed lips, talked
over the wholesale murder committed by the Anarchists. Hardly a man spoke above a
whisper, fearing to identify himself either with the Anarchistic fiends or the law-abiding
citizens, as an expression either way meant a broken head and perhaps death. The big
bell in the police station tower tolled out a riot alarm, while the telegrapher sent
dispatches to other stations calling for aid. Ten minutes later, patrol wagons were
dashing toward the scene of the riot from all directions bringing stalwart policemen.
The mob shouted wildly as the wagons dashed by, and several missiles were thrown, all
of which missed the bluecoats on the wagons. The Anarchists slunk back as a large
company of policemen on foot marched down Desplaines street, their faces white with
determination and their hands on their revolvers ready to shoot to kill at their
commanding officer’s order. This company of police marched in front of the station
while the dead and dying were being carried in. Several times the mob advanced with
wild shouts from the north, but they were kept back as far as Randolph Street. The
Anarchists, led by two wiry-whiskered foreigners, grew bolder and made several
attempts to renew the attack but the police held their ground. The wind-bag orators who
had harangued the fire-eaters earlier in the evening were not the leaders after business
began, but they slunk away and were out of danger. At 11:30, the police made a grand
drive at the mob, which was growing larger instead of diminishing. Blank cartridges
were fired from hundreds of revolvers in two volleys which set the crowd flying in all
directions. The police gave chase as far as the Lyceum Theatre, firing again, and the
crowd, covering Madison Street from curb to curb, did not stop running until Halsted
Street was passed. This fusillade from the officers practically dispersed the mob, and at
11:45 there were but few people on the streets near the station.

After the rioters had been cleared away Desplaines street looked black and
deserted, save where the gas-lamps showed blood on the sidewalks and curbstones. The
police had the upper hand at midnight.

The only citizen wounded whose name could be ascertained was Michael Hahn
of No. 157 Eagle Street, who was shot in the back and leg.
He was carried into a hallway at No. 182 West Madison Street were he lay groaning.
He was able to walk to the patrol wagon, in which he was carried to the County
Hospital. He was probably a rioter, but he claimed to be an unoffending citizen.

This will give an idea of the locality in which the tragedy occurred:

A Harrowing Spectacle.

The squad-room at the Desplai8nes Street Station, after the wounded were
carried in, presented a most harrowing spectacle. Half a dozen men from whom the
blood literally flowed in streams were stretched upon the floor, others were laid out on
tables and benches, and others not so badly wounded were placed in chairs to await with
what patience they could the assistance of the surgeons. Mattresses and other bedding
were dragged downstairs, and dozens of willing hands did their utmost to assuage the
pain of the sufferers. Very soon the doctors were busy with needle, lancet, and probe;
priests passed from one wounded man to another, administering brief consolatory words
to some and the sacrament of extreme unction to others; officers and volunteer assists
went around with stimulants, or helped to bind up wounds or held the patient down
while the surgeon was at work, or carried some of the wounded to the other apartments,
or in some other way did what could be done to help in easing pain or saving life. Pools
of blood formed on the floor, and was trampled about until almost every foot of space
was red and slippery. The groans of the dying men arose above the heavy shuffling of
feet, and to add to the agony the cries of women—relatives of officers supposed to have
been wounded—could be heard from an outer room, beyond which the women were not
permitted to enter. Men who had only got a foot or an arm wounded, even though the
blood poured from it in streams, sat still, claiming no help in the face of the greater
agony. “O, Christ! Let me die!” “O, merciful God!” and similar expressions were
continually rung forth as the surgeon’s knife or saw was at work or when attempts were
made to move those more badly wounded. The priests in attendance were Fathers
Kearns, Moloney, Kinsella, Hickey, and Walsh, all from St. Patrick’s and Father Byrne
from St. Jariath’s. The sacrament of extreme unction was administered to eight of the
wounded before they were moved from the spot where they had been first laid.

The thirty beds on the upper floor were not sufficient for even the
accommodation of the more severely wounded, and several beds had to be made up on
the floor. The scene here was as painful as that seen previously on the floor below. The
doctors were busy dressing wounds until almost 1 a.m. and it was past midnight before
the priests were ready to leave. Basins of blood were seen at nearly every bedside, and
great clots and blotches bespattered the floor, the bed-clothing, and the clothing of those
at work as well as of the wounded. Every few minutes, it seemed, a new sufferer was
helped into the room, leaning on the shoulders of this brother officers, these later-
comers being those who had been slightly wounded, comparatively speaking, and who
had rested wherever they could until their brothers were attended to. Two officers were
observed bandaging up their own wounds—Peter McCormick and Michael Gordon, the
former wounded in the arm and the latter writhing with a fractured foot—but never a
moan came from either, each doing what he could for himself until somebody
volunteered to help. It seems invidious to select names in this manner where so much
heroism was displayed—in fact, to obtain the names of the more heroic was impossible
in the excitement and where each hero was perhaps in the agonies of death.
 Among the doctors who were promptly on the ground and rendered efficient
service were the following:

Drs. O.T. Shenick, George W. Reynolds, D. D. Moran, J.C. Bryan, J.M.

Fleming, J.J. Davis, C.A. Stewart, Murphy, Kerber, and Lee.

One of the most painful scenes witnessed at the station was the arrival of women
relatives of injured officers, who raised a most pitiful wail of anguish as soon as they
entered the door. This was not a time for sentiment, however; it would not do for the
wounded men to have wailing women around them and consequently the females were
firmly and not urgently excluded from the the rooms where the sufferers lay, though the
stalwart officers who pushed them back did so with tears in their eyes.

About twenty minutes to 1, Nurses Scott, Sheldon, Bushnell, Lock, and Ricks of
the Illinois Training-School for Nurses arrived at the station with Capt. McGarigle.
They at once offered their services to dress the wounds. Their services were gratefully
accepted by the doctors and their tender nursing deeply appreciated by the sufferers.

The Wounded Rioters and Citizens – A Dead Bohemian

Below stairs at the station was the resting place of the wounded rioters and
citizens the police had brought in. In the centre of the room lay the dead body of a
Bohemian. A shot had entered his body in the small of the back and had gone clear
through him, protruding under the skin. Scattered about just as they were brought in
were a dozen men more or less seriously wounded, and waiting for medical attendance.
One poor fellow with a flesh-wound in the leg kept up a continuous moaning and
screaming, but the remainder were as quiet as the death which was settling down upon
not a few of the number. Several were unable to give their names and occupations fully,
but the list ran about as follows:

Robert Schultz, No. 88 Harrison Street, waiter at No. 165 Ashland Avenue, just
coming from the Lyceum; shot in the leg.

John Sachman, No. 103 South Desplaines street: was lounging along Randolph
Street when he was shot in the leg.

Franz Wrosch, residence in the cheap lodging-houses. “I just stopped and

listened,” he groaned, “and then the fire came to my shoulder and sides.” He will
probably die. Not a Socialist.

Charles Schumaker, No. 19 Fry Street; was with two friends. They ran away
and he was shot in the back. It is doubtful if he will recover.

Emil Lotz, keeper of a small shoe shop at No. 25 North Halsted Street; when he
got through work he went out to hear the speeches and was shot in the shoulder.

John Edbund, a carriagemaker at NO. 1138 Milwaukee avenue; clubbed in the

head.
 Peter Ley, No. 536 West Huron street; shot in the back.

Joe Kucker, a hanger-on around West Side “barrel-houses” and boarding at No.
116 Randolph street; shot in the side.’

B. Le Plant, Earl Park, Ind.: “I bought some peanuts and was eating them when
the bomb went off,” he said; “the shot broke my leg and I fell. In a second a shot went
into my shoulder and a policeman kicked me.”

Franz Kaderkit, a member of the Central Labor Union and residing at the
corner of Mohawk street and North Avenue, wounded on the head and right shoulder by
a policeman’s club.
Thomas Haha of No. 157 Eagle Street was shot in the back and leg. He was
carried into a hallway at No. 182 West Madison Street, where he lay groaning. He was
able to walk to the patrol wagon, in which he was carried to the County Hospital. He
was probably a rioter, but he claimed to be an unoffending citizen

In a search of the dead Bohemian, but 12 cents was found upon him. Not a trace
of a name could be found. He was apparently about 35 years of age.

Wounded Men Seeking the Drug-Stores.

Every drug-store in the vicinity was crowded immediately with citizens who
had received more or less serious injuries. In John Hieland’s drug-store, at the corner of
Desplaines and Madison streets, over a dozen men were carried by their friends, their
wounds dressed, and then they were taken home. Their names are entirely unknown to
any one except their friends.

At Ebert’s drug store, at the corner of Halsted and Madison, a man who said he
was in the employ of the Chicago Sand & Gravel Company staggered in, and it was
found that he had a bullet in his left breast, just below the nipple, in close vicinity to the
heart, and also a bullet in his right leg. He was taken home by a friend. Five other men
had bullets extracted from arms and legs at this place by Drs. Shenick, Stewart, and
Minte. One man had a serious bullet-wound in his neck.

Three men suffering from bullet-wounds were cared for at Barker’s drug store,
NO. 280 West Madison Street and three others who had slighter injuries.

Michael Hahn of No. 257 Eagle Street was found by a physician sitting on a
stairway near Halsted and Madison streets faint with loss of blood from two wounds.
He was taken home.

It was a common spectacle to see men having their wounds dressed on the
sidewalk.

The street-cars going in every direction contained men who had been wounded
but were strong enough to help themselves away.
 Clearing the Streets

The feeling among the police when they fully realized the extent of the calamity
which had befallen their comrades rose to a frenzy, and nothing but the discipline
among them and the presence of Inspector Bonfield, who was one of the very few cool
men in the station, prevented their rushing out and talking summary vengeance upon the
crowds of loiterers on the sidewalks who jeered the flying patrol wagons as they passed
filled with officers on the way to the scene of the disaster. The cruel heartlessness of
the men who exulted over the fact that more than a score of policemen had fallen
victims to the deadly Nihilist bomb surpasses belief, and yet it is a fact that, crowded
along the sidewalks on both sides of Desplaines street from Madison street to the
station, there were hundreds of Communistic sympathizers who exulted in the fiendish
work which had been perpetrated but a few moments before. “served the damned
coppers right,” exclaimed a brutal looking hoodlum in front of the Lyceum Theatre, and
the next moment he was running for dear life in front of a company of police which
came charging down Desplaines street toward Madison brandishing their batons and
firing their revolvers in the air. It would have gone hard with any man who should have
dared give utterance to such a sentiment as this in the presence of an officer; he would
have been killed without a word. As the police by companies swept the streets adjacent
to the Desplaines station the mob gave way sullenly and with the worst grace possible,
but there was no help for it. Goaded to madness the police were in that condition of
mind which permitted of no resistance, and in a measure they were as dangerous as any
mob of Communists, for they were blinded by passion and unable to distinguish
between the peaceable citizen and the Nihilists assassin. But then at such a time honest
men had no business on the streets; their places were at home, and the police took it for
granted that no man, unless he had had work on hand, would be hanging around the
vicinity. For squares from the Desplaines Station companies and squads of offices
cleared the streets and mercilessly clubbed all who demurred at the order to go.

Scenes Before and After the Explosion – Men with Revolvers

The most enthusiastic of the crowd were Germans. There was also a large
number of Poles and Bohemians, bedsides some American-looking people who came to
look on and detectives who had on old clothes. Groups of Germans were discussing the
anticipated trouble. Three of these fellow stood right behind the reporter, and he heard
their conversation, which they kept up in a not very low tone, although Parsons was
talking. “Our people don’t know anything,” one of them said. “They always shoot in
the air when they ought to shoot low. By shooting high they don’t hit anybody and
often kill one of their own crowd. I have trained in crowds where they knew a thing or
two, and our leaders always advised them to aim low.”

“And then, again,” said the second, “they don’t stick together. Haven’t Parsons,
Spies, and all those fellows told us to stick together? There is where our strength lies.”

Several men had their revolvers in their hands under their coats and were
prepared for an attack. These drifted around to the northern end of the crowd, where the
street was much darker.
The windows of the brick building on the northeaster n corner of Randolph and
Desplaines streets were filled with the heads and faces of men and women,. One of the
wounded officers said he saw the bomb come from one of these windows. Officer
Marx said he saw the bomb come from the wagon in which the speakers stood.

When the first shots were fired most of the crowd scattered east and west on
Randolph street. The bullets followed the fleeing ones, and many of them dropped on
the way before they got out of danger. Quite a number of them ran up towards Halsted
Street, and when they had nearly reached it the leader pulled out a huge revolver. He
was apparently the same man whom the reporter had heard telling the other two that to
stick together was the main thing. “Stick together,” he cried. “Come here and let us go
and shoot them.” They started towards Desplaines street on a trot, but had only gone a
short distance when several shots were fired on the battleground. They turned around
and disappeared towards the street from where they had just come.

A number of women were also seen in the crowd, and several scampered
screaming down Randolph Street. Men were seen falling 500 and 600 feet up Randolph
Street, west of Desplaines. Hats were lost, and several, stooping to pick up something
they had dropped, were trampled on by the mad mob. In the neighboring stores
everything was confusion. Men in their haste to get away from the bullets broke open
the doors of the stores and entered, hiding in the first convenient place they could find.
The proprietors struck at the intruders with clubs and threatened them with pistols, but
they pushed past these and entered.

No More Free Speech and Dynamite

Mayor Harrison, in the inner fringe of a crowd which numbered Chief Ebersold,
Inspector Bonfield, and Capt. Ward, was leaning on the iron railing leading up to the
office of the Desplaines Street Station at midnight. His head was bowed and his face
bore a grave and abstracted expression, although he was laconically taking part in the
conversation going on. A Tribune reporter with a question aroused him sufficiently to
induce him to change his position and move a step or two away. Not wishing to annoy
him with any questions that answered themselves, the reporter plumped this:

“Mr. Mayor, in view of the terrible facts of the night is the city prepared to meet
any expected or possible emergencies?”

“Yes, we are ready for any probable or possible criminal outbreaks.”

“This murderous move of the Socialists was not anticipated?”

“Not dreamt of. Free speech is a right, but accompanied with murder and
dynamite is a crime to be suppressed at all hazards.”

“Can the city keep down this Socialistic element that planned the horrors of a
while ago?”

“Yes, and more than that, now that it is plainly and fully warned, it will.”
 “What steps have you concluded to take?”

“No new ones are necessary. The laws are sufficient and they must be obeyed.”

“Then you have no intention to call on the State militia?”

“Why should I? This thing is already suppressed.”

No probability of another similar move on the part of the Socialistic crowd?”

“I think not. The Government of the city will and is able to take care of its
people.”

From the first the Mayor was restive, and finally and with a chagrined air moved
away.

The Detectives After Spies and the Other Communist Leaders

Many oaths were sworn by officers, as they gathered around their writhing
comrades in the sound-room of the station and ministered to their wants, that they
would give Sam Fielden, Spies, Parsons, and the rest of the Communistic outfit a short
shrift if they managed to lay their hands upon them. “These men should have been
hanged or driven out of town at the time of the street-car strike,” said one, “and then this
thing never would have happened. They have been preaching dynamite for years, and
now they have given us a practical application of it. The way to do now is to kill these
_____ ______ scoundrels whenever we meet them. We won’t fool with them any
more.”

The celerity with which the leaders of the dynamite movement got out of the
way as soon as the explosion occurred was little short of marvelous, and this fact led
many to believe that they had knowledge of what was to be done, and therefore took
occasion to escape the consequences they knew would follow. As soon as the superior
police officers could collect their with, orders were at once issued for the arrest of the
dynamite orators, and they therefore will be behind the bars as soon as the detectives
can get hold of them. Some said that mob violence would be attempted when the
Socialists are placed under arrest, and it is also a fact that the police do not at present
feel as if they would make any very determined effort to save them from Judge Lynch.

It is not believed that the Communistic leaders will dare trust themselves in the
city: they are notorious cowards and always take good care to see that their own skins
are safe, no matter how many other lives they may lure to destruction. This crowning
outrage will influence public sentiment and cause the people generally to wake to a
realizing sense of the true situation. Mayor Harrison was at the Desplaines Street
Station for quite awhile last night, but he said nothing as to whether or not Communistic
meetings will be allowed in the future. He was very grave, and as he walked around
among the wounded, his face wore a pallor not unlike marble. It may be safe to say that
from this time forward there will be no Socialistic meetings held Sunday afternoons on
the Lake-Front. If the police don’t disperse them, the people will.
 Chief Ebersold

Chief Ebersold when interviewed was as suave as usual, but not disposed to
talk. He said that his force was ready for any present contingencies that could possibly
arise, and that the police needed no help to crush and quiet Socialism and the red flag.
He had no intention of calling for or suggesting aid from the State Government or
militia. His police force were brave and devoted to the city, and he and they had faith
that they could guard it against all criminals and organized unlawful uprisings.

“Do you intend to prosecute the men who by speech incited the terrible work of
tonight?”

“Yes, we will pursue them,” and he uttered this with an emphasis not customary
with him. There was something like haste as well as purpose in the tone, and he walked
away rather to avoid further questions than to give instructions.

Lieut. Bowler’s Statement

Lieut. Bowler, who was in charge of the second company of twenty-four men,
said to the reporter:

“Every man in my company is wounded, with but three exceptions. I led the
company up to the wagon from which the speeches were being made. Inspector
Bonfield and Capt. Ward were immediately in front of me. Capt. Ward told the
speakers they would have to stop, as he had orders to disperse the meeting. As he
finished speaking a bomb was thrown from the wagon and fell directly in the centre of
my company, where it exploded.”

“Are you positive the bomb was thrown from that wagon?”

“Yes, I am. I could make no mistake about it, for I saw it thrown. Officers Reid
and Doyle were knocked down by it. Bonfield, Ward, and myself were the only three to
escape. Every one behind me was wounded – just mowed down.

Inspector Bonfield

Police Inspector Bonfield was next buttonholed, with difficulty. His resolution
and thoughtfulness as well as the authority known to be vested in him made him always
a centre for his subordinates. The questions asked him had to be few and pertinent.

“Had you an intimation or warning that such a terrible crime was to be

committed?”

“Not exactly, though I heard in the afternoon, by means not necessary to

mention, that the Communists were bent on mischief.
Their plan was to make a diversion by a meeting in the southwest side, at Centre avenue
and Eighteenth Street, and while the police were expected to be gathered near there,
their real determined body was to attack the Milwaukee & St. Paul freight-houses,
where 150 men brought form the outside were under presumed safety.”

“But they did not in that point succeed?”

“No, we foiled them. They held their meeting in the southwest, and a sufficient
number of men were sent there to look out for any movements they might make. But
anticipating a hellish intent underlying the haymarket meeting we had massed most of
our force at the Desplaines Street Station. I also had a number of officers in citizens’
clothes detailed to attend the meeting and report to me regularly of its progress and
character. More than one of these men came and said that he manner of the meting and
tone of ht speeches were such as to urge immediate action for the dispersal of the
gather. I said, “No, let it be beyond all question that the law is broken before we
move.” Finally the speakers urged riot and slaughter; they should have, they said,
revenge before morning for yesterday’s doings at McCormick’s, and revenge on the
aristocrats and capitalists for their oppression of the people. They urged all laboring
men to arm themselves and not delay the hour of vengeance. I then thought it was time
to act and formed the police held in the station in reserve into four companies and,
taking them through the side door, marched them in columns up to Randolph street, to
where the speaking was going on. Capt. Ward and myself were in front and as we
reached the wagon, where a man was speaking, Capt. Ward stepped to the front and
said: ‘In the name of the State of Illinois I command you peaceable to disperse,’ and,
turning slightly to each side, he added, ‘and I call upon you, and you, to assist.’ The
crowd gave way and took possession of the sidewalks. Immediately I heard a whizzing
in the air above and behind me and then a tremendous explosion. Almost instantly a
fusillade of pistol-shots from the sidewalks followed. I ordered the men who were
commencing to break to form and then we opened fire.” Inspector Bonfield, like the
Mayor and the Chief, thinks the police force is able to meet of itself any possible
deviltry that the Socialists dare plan or try to execute.

The Meeting – Speeches of Spies, Parsons, and Fielden

Crowds began to gather all over Hay-Market Square as early as 7:30. At the
corners of Desplaines, Union, and Halsted streets the men stood together and talked
over the situation. Some said they had been told the revolution would be started that
night. There were many member s of the Lehr-und-Wehr Verein, the Socialistic Rifle
Union, among the crowds, so some who knew them said. There was some uncertainty
as to the precise place where the meting was going to be held. An anarchist informed a
Tribune reporter that the International Working-People’s Association had nothing to do
with the matter. The Arbeiter-Zeitung had not issued the call, but had taken the
advertisement from some unknown persons. Nevertheless, their speakers were there in
full force. About 8:30 speakers were called for, and August Spies ascended a wagon
that was standing on Desplaines street close to the sidewalk in front of the Crane Bros.
establishment, just north of the east and west alley. He called the crowd of about 1,500
together and told them that Parsons and Fielden would soon be there to address them.
He jumped off the wagon and went round the square, bringing the men together towards
the improvised platform, while somebody went after Parsons.
A little before 9 o’clock Spies again called the meeting to order and began his address.
The majority of the crowd were foreigners. Some had to have the words of the speaker
interpreted to them by their friends. Among the well-known Anarchists present were
Michael Schwab, B. Rau, and a man named Schnaubelt.

Mayor Harrison was on the ground early, and walked up and down the square.
He was asked if he was going to speak, and replied: “No; and no one else either.” He
walked over to the stand, and then went to the Desplaines Street Station. About 300
policemen had been quartered there and in the neighborhood to be ready for an
emergency. It was stated that there would be no interference so long as the usual labor
talk was indulged in, but nothing revolutionary would be tolerated in view of the present
excited condition of the strikers.

Spies’ Inflammatory Harangue

August Spies, the first speaker, was remarkably mild. He said the meeting was
called to discuss the general situation, not for the purpose of raising a row or
disturbance. All violence was the outgrowth of their degraded condition and the
oppression to which they were subjected. He addressed a meeting in the neighborhood
of McCormick’s Monday. His hearers were good church-going people. They didn’t
want to hear him because he was a Socialist, but spoke to them and told them to stick
together. Some stones were thrown – a harmless sport. The police came and blood was
shed. It was said that he inspired the attack on McCormick’s. That was a lie. The fight
was going on. Now was the chance to strike for the existence of an oppressed class.
Oppressors wanted them to be content; if not, they would kill them. The thought of
liberty which inspired your sires to fight for their freedom ought to animate you today.
The day was not far distant when they would resort to hanging these men. [Applause
and cries of “Hang them now!”] McCormick was the man who created the row
Monday, and he must be held responsible for the murder of their brothers. [Cries of
“Hang him!”] “Don’t make any threats,” said Spies; “they are no of no avail. Whenever
you get ready to do something do it, and don’t make any threats beforehand.”
[Applause.] There were in the city today between 40,000 and 50,000 men locked out
because they refused to obey the supreme will or dictation of a small number of men.
The families of 25,000 or 30,000 men were starving because their husbands and fathers
are not men enough to withstand and resist the dictation of a few thieves on a grand
scale. [Applause.] Should it be out of the power of a few men to say whether they
should work or not? Would they place their lives, their happiness, everything out of the
arbitrary power of a few rascals who had been raised in idleness and luxury upon the
fruits of labor? [Applause.] Would they stand that? [Cries of “No.”] The press said
they were Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Germans – that there were no Americans among
them. That was a lie. Every honest American was with them. [Applause.] Those who
were not were unworthy of their traditions and their forefathers. [Applause.]

Parsons Is More Moderate than Usual.

A.R. Parsons was next introduced, and repeated his old, old story, claiming that
labor was deprived of its natural right to live, and that the only hope of the workingman
was in Socialism. Without it they would soon become Chinamen. [Applause.]
It was time to raise a note of warning. There was nothing in the eight-hour movement
to excite the capitalist. Did his hearers know that the military were under arms, and the
Gatling gun was loaded and ready to mow them down. [Applause.] Was this German,
or Russia, or Spain? [A voice, “It looks like it.”] Whenever they made a demand for
eight hours or an increase of pay the militia, and the Deputy-Sheriffs and Pinkerton’s
men were called out and they were shot, and clubbed, and murdered in the streets.
[Applause.] He was not there for the purpose of inciting anybody, but to speak the
truth, to tell the facts as they existed, even though it should cost him his life before
morning. [Cheers.] He told about the Cincinnati demonstration, which was headed by
the Rifle Union, carrying Springfield rifles, “and the red flag of liberty, fraternity, and
equality for labor all over the world – the red flag of emancipated labor.” [Applause.]
He denounced patriotism as a humbug. “It behooves you,” he said, “as you love your
wife and children, if you would not see them perish with hunger, killed or cut down like
dogs in the street, American men, in the interest of liberty and your independence, to
arm, TO ARM yourselves. [Applause, and cries of “We will do it!” and “We are ready
now!”] They were not. As this civilization was founded upon force, only by force
could they attain relief. [Applause.]

Sam Fielden Talks to the Crowd

Sam Fielden began by saying that there were premonitions of danger. All knew
it. The press said the Anarchists would sneak away. They were not going to.
[Applause.] If they continued to be robbed it wouldn’t be long before they would be
murdered. There was no security for the working classes under the present social
system. A few individuals controlled the means of living, and they held the
workingman in a vise. Everybody doesn’t know that. Those who knew it were tired of
it, and knew the others would get tired of it too. They were determined to end it, and
would end it, and there was no power in the land that could prevent them. [Applause.]
Congressman Foran had said the laborer could get nothing from legislation.
[Applause.] He also said that the laborers could get some relief from their present
condition when the rich man knew it was unsafe for him to live in a community where
there were dissatisfied workmen; that that would solve the labor problem. [Applause.]
The speaker didn’t know whether they were Democrats or Republicans, but whichever
they were they worshiped at the shrine of rebels. John Brown, Jefferson, Washington,
Patrick Henry, Hopkins said to the people, the law is your enemy; we are rebels against
it. The law is only framed for those that are your enslavers. [“That’s true.”] Men in
their blind rage attacked McCormick’s factory, and were shot down in cold blood by the
law [applause] of the City of Chicago in the protection of property. Those men were
going to do some damage to a certain person’s interest, who was a large property-
owner. Therefore the law came to his defense. And when McCormick undertook to do
some injury to the interest of those who had no property the law also came to his
defense, and not to the workingman’s defense when he (McCormick) attacked him and
his living; [Cries of “No.”] There was the difference. The law made no distinctions. A
million men own all the property in this country. The law is of no use to the other
54,000,000. [“Right enough.”] You have nothing more to do with the law except to lay
hands upon it and throttle it until it makes its last kick. [Applause.] It has turned your
brethren out on the wayside and degraded them until they have lost the last vestige of
humanity and become mere things and animals. Keep your eye upon it. Throttle it.
Kill it. Stop it. Do everything you can to wound it—to impede its progress.
If you don’t, it is a life and death struggle between you and it, and it will kill you.
Remember, if you ever do anything for yourselves, prepare to do it for yourselves.
Don’t turn over you business to anybody else. No man deserves anything unless he is
man enough to make an effort to lift himself from oppression.

At this point, as a storm was approaching, Mr. Parsons suggested that they
adjourn to the hall on the corner. The crowd had gradually diminished after Parsons
concluded, and more went away, leaving perhaps 500 to listen to the continuation of
Fielden’s talk.

He went on to ask if it wasn’t a fact that they had no choice as to their

existence—that they couldn’t dictate what their labor was worth? He who had to obey
the will of another in order to live was a slave. [Applause.] Could they do anything
except by the strong arm of resistance? His next sentence was followed by the arrival of
the police.

At Midnight.

At midnight the situation was such that it was deemed safe to send away the
reserves who had arrived to aid the Third Precinct men and the policemen from the
First, Fourth, and Fifth Precincts were dispatched in wagons to their respective
headquarters. Some men had been sent from the Second Precinct, but they were sent
back as soon as the first fight was over, as they have dangerous territory in the lumber
districts to guard. The greater portion of the Second Precinct men were held at the
Desplaines Street Station, giving Capt. Ward about 150 men with which to police the
district for the remainder of the night.

Incidents.

It was reported that both the First and Second Regiments had been ordered to
their armories last night after the news of the rioting had become noised abroad. A
guard was on duty at either place and declined to answer inquiries as to the strength of
the force under arms.

Sergt. Anson Bolte of the First Infantry, I.N.G., Company C, heard the firing,
and supposing that his company had been called out, hurried to the scene. He was in
citizen’s uniform, and a police officer, supposing him to be one of the mob, took him to
the station. After spending two hours in a cell he was identified and released.

The police force engaged in the battle numbered 174 men. These were divided
into six companies. On leaving the Desplaines Street Station the battalion headed north,
Lieut. Steele, with fifty men, leading. Capt. Ward with Lieut. Bowler, Sergt. Moore,
and twenty-four men came next, followed by Lieut. Hubbard with Sergt. Fitzpatrick
and twenty-seven men. Next was Lieut. Penzen with twenty-four men, Lieut. Beard
with sixteen men bringing up the rear.
 [May 6, 1886]

IN THE GRASP OF THE LAW

SPIES, FIELDEN, AND OTHER SOCIALISTS BEHIND THE BARS.

Shutting Up the Office of the Anarchists’ Organ—An Inquest Held Over Officer
Degan, and the Agitators Held as Accessories to His Murder—Important
Discoveries at Spies’ Office—Dynamite and Arms Seized—The Tolls tightening
About the Murderous Conspirators.

The Mayor, Chief Ebersold, State-Attorney Grinnell, Inspector Bonfield, and

the leading commissioned officer s hold a short consultation after Mr. Harrison came
from the West Side, and at its conclusion six detectives were told off in two divisions,
and assigned to duty. Bonfield, Wiley, and Duffy were sent to the office of the
Arbeiter-Zeitung, on the upper floor of no. 107 Fifth Avenue.
Entering there, Bonfield singled out an extremely pale gentleman who sat in the centre
of the room and asked him:

“Are you August Spies?”

The affirmative answer came with a sickly attempt at a smile.

“Well, we want you and both these men,” was the next remark of the officer, as
he pointed to Christian Spies, a brother of the editor, who was in the office, and Michael
Schwab, the associate editor, who sat at the next desk.

The men were undoubtedly frightened, and had little to say, putting on their
coats and preparing to leave the office without remark.

It fell to Officer Duffy to take charge of Chris Spies, and when he was asked
what his name was before starting said:

“I don’t know as it’s any of your business, was the tart rejoinder.

“You put on that coat and come with me to the station, and do it –quick,” was
the retort, accompanied by a motion that meant business. That settled it, and the three
prisoners walked over to the City-Hall without a word, but all three keeping an anxious
and frightened eye upon the little knots of people who paused to curiously examine the
hurrying procession of six men. The pace was a lively one, and, once at Central, the
three were buried into cells in the basement. The officers at once returned to the
newspaper office and made search of the place. They found about 100 copies of the call
for the hay-market meeting, and upon a galley, still undistributed, was the form of the
villainous revenge proclamation which was scattered all over the city by a mysterious
horseman Monday night after the rioting and shooting near the McCormick
reaperworks. The police took these, and, aided by an outside printer, also found and
confiscated sample letters from the cases containing the same fonts of type as those
used in the “revenge” proclamation.

The editor was in a cell at the station, but there was no cessation of work on the
part of the printers, who appeared to have the copy for the 12 o’clock edition all in
hand. They and persons in the counting-room declared that the paper was to come out
as usual, and the fact was reported by the police to the mayor.

Mr. Harrison at once held a secret consultation with the police authorities as
well as Mr. Winston, the ex-Corporation Counsel, and then started for the office
himself. As he stepped into the office he was recognized by a man giving the name
Oscar Niebe. Mr. Harrison sharply asked him if he was in charge, and he before a
somewhat broken and disconnected answer could be made the Mayor demanded to
know if a paper was to be printed. Niebe then explained that Spies was arrested and that
he had just stepped in to see what effect the excitement had upon the Arbeiter-Zeitung
staff.

“I want to know whether the paper intends to publish any incendiary articles
such as appeared yesterday?” commanded the representative of the municipality.
 “No, no. We’re going on all smooth and quiet; all smooth and quiet,” replied
Niebe.

“Well, I must be convinced of that. And before a paper is sent out a copy must
be placed in the hands of Mr. Hand.”

“O, yes. Hand is a friend of the workingmen. We’ll do anything he says. There
will be nothing exciting in the paper. We wouldn’t put in anything of that kind.”

“I will make sure that you don’t,” broke in the Mayor, “and Mr. Hand will be
here directly.”

A word or two more of no importance passed and Mr. Harrison took his
departure, leaving the impression that the paper was to be allowed to go to press.

As he left the place several persons made a motion as if to follow, but a dozen
detectives under Lieut. Shea had taken possession of all the doors and stairways, and
non one was permitted to go in or out. Then Mr. Niebe waited for Mr. Hand with what
patience he could command, but he waited in vain. A consultation of some sort was
held when the Mayor again reached headquarters, for a peremptory order to Shea to
bring in everybody connected with the office soon came over by special messenger, and
the printers up-stairs were told to stop work and put on their coats. The detectives
searched each one of them, and in the clothing of one they found a huge murderous
Remington revolver and an ugly knife made by grinding to razor edge the three corners
of a six-inch file. Then the whole force, ‘prentice hands and all, were marshaled two by
two and started for the station. This time the people on the street seemed to know by
instinct that these prisoners were men from the Socialistic newspapers, and, as the
procession moved along, threats could be heard on all sides. The number of officers
prevented any violent demonstration, but “They ought to be hung,” “Hanging is too
good for them,” and such remarks sounded on all sides. The prisoners were badly
frightened and might have broken from the officers to avoid the knots of spectators had
they not heard one loud-mouthed person call out: “What’s the use of coppers dragging
such as that to a station? Why don’t you shoot ‘em down and let their own kind cart the
bodies off?” This party just dodged a back-handed blow from a detective, and the
printers were safely landed in the big room at Central Station.

When the Mayor had left the counting-room the officers found collected in the
editorial room Gerhardt Lizeus, the city editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung; Mrs. Parson, the
colored wife of the blatant agitator, who publishes his English paper, The Alarm, in the
same office; Mrs. Holmes, a writer for the same, and Mrs. Michael Schwab, wife of the
editor under arrest. The last-named was allowed to depart with her brother-in-law, as
was also Mrs. Parsons, who apparently succeeded in convincing the police that she was
not a writer for either her husband’s or Spies’ sheet. The brother of the former was
present to protect her, and hew as told to take her home. These two women will be
remembered as the couple who carried the red and black flags in front of the procession
which howled about the street the night the new Board of Trade Building was opened.
The other two were quietly escorted along the same path their superiors had followed to
the City Hall.
 Mrs. Parsons was let go by the police because they believed she would go home
and by following her could locate her husband. They visited the home of the couple at
the corner of Indiana and May streets several times during the day, finding it always
locked. They made no attempt to enter, although a close watch was kept for any signs of
life about the premises. At about 5 o’clock in the afternoon Detectives Palmer and
William Boyd arrested Mrs. Parsons again at the house of a painter named Glasgow,
No. 313 West Lake Street.

“I have been expecting you,” she said calmly when Officer Palmer accosted her.

“You still wear the red ribbon, do you?” asked Palmer.

“Yes; and I’ll wear it until I die,” she replied with energy.

She was taken to the Central Police Station and was closeted for a few minutes
with Lieuts. Shea and Kipley. She declared that she was “ready to die,” and “might as
well die at once for the glorious cause,” but she could not be induced to say a word in
regard to her fellow Anarchists or her husband’s whereabouts. The police are
convinced that Parsons has left the city. Mrs. Parsons was released.

Mrs. Parsons and Mrs. Ames were rearrested at No. 14 Peoria Street, for the
third time, last evening, and taken to the Central Station. They were closeted again for
some time with Lieuts. Shea and Kipley, and then released. The latter officer remarked
that it was entirely useless trying to “pump” these women.

In the counting-room Mr. Niebe was still protesting that he had nothing to do
with the paper, notwithstanding his talk with the Mayor, but he was told to walk over to
the City Hall and make explanations there.

“Now, dust through this place and see what you can find,” was the order to
several officers who had returned from headquarters. The first dash was made at a
stuffy little cupboard, and as an officer brought out a bundle of coffee-sacking and
carefully placed it on a chair, saying, “Look out! I’ll be that’s dynamite,” a shudder
went through the whole party. It was about four or five pounds of that fatal explosive,
loosely done up in brown paper and wrapped in the coffee-sacking. Officer Marks, who
stood nearest the bundle, was told to carry it to Central, and it was stowed away in one
of the empty vaults there with much fear and trembling. A quantity of correspondence,
which clearly proved that Spies was the responsible head of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and
that Parsons stood in the same relation to The Alarm, was next seized, and the officers
caught up four red and two black flags and a couple of printed banners, and all started
away, leaving the office in charge of the clerk in the counting-room. These banners
were translated and the mottoes they bore were, “Our Capitalistic Robbers May Well
Thank Their Lord We, Their Victims, Have Not Yet Strangled Them,” and “Down with
Extortion—Long Live Free Labor—Long Live the Social Revolution.”

It was supposed that Parsons would be found in the office with Spies and
Schwab but he was not, and as soon as the first rush was over there detectives were
dispatched to hunt him up. When the first detail was made Officers Costello, Ryan, and
Slayton were ordered to go out and hunt up Sam Fielden, the rabid speaker of the night
before.
These men had heard that he was slightly injured, and they started at once for his home,
No. 110 West Polk Street. His wife admitted the policemen without delay, and they
found the Socialist in bed. In response to their notice that he was under arrest and that
he must come to headquarters, Fielden leaded that he had been injured the night before.
There was no ceremony about the next move of the officers, for they stripped down the
bed-clothes and began to hunt for his wound. It proved to be a ragged scratch extending
over his kneecap, evidently inflicted by a passing missile, while the remainder of the
fearless agitator’s body was prone upon the ground. He was suddenly and forcibly told
to get out of that bed and put on his clothes. Seeing that it was useless to linger he did
so without any apparent pain or effort. He refused to talk about his experience of the
night before, and was warned that on the trip down-town he must make no fuss and
keep his mouth shut. As he is not personally known to any great number of people the
trip to La Salle and Washington Streets was made without incident.

The search for Parsons had been going on all the forenoon, but it had met with
no success. No one could be found who was ready to confess that he had seen the
“editor” and “speaker.” A visit or two was aid to the elegant flat one occupies with his
colored wife at No. 248 West Indiana, and in one of their trips Officers Bonfield and
Wiley received some information that led them to return to the Arbeiter-Zeitung office
and make a careful search of a sink in Spies’ private office. Hidden in the woodwork
below the officers found a long, heavy Winchester revolver, a quantity of fixed
ammunition, a large number of small-sized dynamite cartridges, and another file knife,
all of which were taken to the station.

A mining expert was found about noon in the person of Mr. F.L. Buck, who
agreed to make a test of the dynamite found in the possession of the Anarchists.
Accompanied by two or three officers he took some of the stuff and went down to the
Lake-Front, near the foot of Randolph Street. A portion about the size of an egg was
placed upon a piece of plank probably four inches thick, and two pressed bricks were
laid on top It was exploded with the aid of the percussion-cap used by miners, and the
detonation could have been heard for a mile north and south along the open lake-front.
The plank was rent and torn to splinters, while the two bricks were reduced to a
powder. Another charge of about the same size was placed in side a steel coupling link
resting on a piece of a railroad tie and covered with another brick. The explosion tore
the link in pieces, bending and wrenching the fragments into all sorts of fantastic
shapes. The remnants of the two discharged were gathered up by the officers to be
preserved. Returning to headquarters Mr. Buck brought forth some acknowledged
dynamite, and burned it and some of Spies’ forcible argument together in the open air.
When the stuff is not confined it burns like grease, with no explosion, but leaving a
peculiar ash and producing a most disgusting smell. Both specimens, when burned
upon a stone between the City and County Buildings, gave exactly the same results, and
Mr. Buck expressed the opinion that there could be no doubt of the nature and
dangerous character of the stuff found in the printing office.

Niebe was let go later.

 WHAT THE INQUEST REVEALED

Positive Testimony of Many Witnesses Implicating the Anarchist Leaders.

The inquest upon the body of Mathias J. Degan, the West Lake Street Station
police officer who died shortly after being hurt by the bomb which exploded at the
corner of Desplaines and Randolph streets, was begun by Coroner Hartz yesterday
afternoon at 2:50 o’clock in the office of the City Clerk, the Coroner not having the
necessary room in his own office. The jury selected assembled at the County Hospital
at 2 o’clock, and, proceeding to the morgue, viewed Degan’s body as it lay upon the
marble slab. A ghastly hole in the abdomen of the corpse plainly indicated the cause of
death. The features of the dead man were calm and placid, and showed no signs of
violent death. The deceased was rather a handsome man and of perfect physical
development. As the jury was about leaving the morgue John Degan, a brother, threw
himself upon the body and cried pitifully, and it was with difficulty that he was induced
to come away.

The jury then took carriages to the City Hall, and the witnesses were summoned
to the office of the City Clerk. A sensation was created in the room by the arrival of
several officers, having in charge August Spies, Sam Fielden and Michael Schwab, the
first editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the second professional Communist with no other
occupation, and the third associate or telegraph editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. These
three had been arrested in the morning. Of the three Schwab appeared the coolest;
Spies was nervous and worried, his countenance betraying great anxiety, while
Fielden’s face was very red, and he shifted uneasily in his seat in his efforts to seem
careless and indifferent. His head, face, whiskers, and hands looked as though they had
seen neither water nor brush for many a day, and he was ill at ease. The trio had
doubtless heard of the threats of lynching that had been made, and cast furtive glances
on all sides, as if watching for somebody who might attack them. Though in their
harangues these fellows have always denounced the police as assassins and cut-throats,
they seemed at this time to be particularly glad of the protection afforded by the
officers, though they squirmed under the angry looks cast upon them by the spectators.
They paid close attention to the testimony given, and allowed nothing to escape that was
going on around them.
 The jury consisted of the following:

J.J. Badenoch, flour and feed merchant, corner Washington Boulevard and
Desplaines Street, foreman.

S. Greenebaum, commission merchant, No. 41 River Street.

Frank Kurtz, plumber’s clerk, No. 366 Ogden Avenue.

Charles Klausner, liquor dealer, No. 373 Ogden Avenue.

Paul Smith, tailor, no. 910 Milwaukee Avenue.

G. Eickenberg, barber, No. 382 Ogden Avenue.

The first witness was John Degan, brother to the deceased, living at No. 214
South Union Street. He said his brother was 34 years of age, a shoemaker by trade,
born in Germany, a widower, and leaving one child. He said he had no idea whatever as
to how the deceased came to his death.

Police Officers and Reporters on the Stand.

Louis Haas of No. 19 Lane place, a police officer of the detective force, said he
and others were ordered to report to Inspector Bonfield at 6 p.m., Tuesday evening, at
Desplaines Street Station. They did so, and Bonfield ordered them to scatter themselves
through the crowd which had begun to collect at Desplaines and Randolph streets, a
meeting having been announced for the market-place. He had also seen a notice of the
meeting Tuesday afternoon in the Arbeiter-Zeitung (the Anarchist organ, edited by
August Spies. The Coroner then translated the announcement for the benefit of the
jury. The notice of the meeting was published in yesterday morning’s TRIBUNE).
About 8:30 or 8:45 a crowd was noticed on Desplaines, north of Randolph Street, and
here, on a wagon, were several men who were the speakers of the evening. August
Spies was the first speaker, the next A.R. Parsons, and the third Sam Fielden. He was
walking through the crowd most of the time and did not pay much attention to the
speeches made. At about 9:30 or 10 o’clock Fielden was speaking, Spies and Parsons
having spoken. Five or six companies of police came from the Desplaines Street
Station, headed by Inspector Bonfield and Capt. Ward, went north on Desplaines and
across Randolph, and the first platoon got within fifteen feet of the wagon where the
speaking was going on. When Capt. Ward and Inspector Bonfield were within four feet
of the wagon Ward said, “I order you in the name of the state to disperse!” At this
moment there was a bomb or shell thrown from the east side of Desplaines Street, about
fifteen feet form the alley, where there was a lot of boxes. The bomb came from back
of the boxes, and landed about the centre of the street, between the first and second
police platoons, about the centre of the line. The shell or bomb had a lighted fuse, and
that attracted my attention from its sizzling, and exploded as soon as it struck the
ground. I was immediately in the rear of the shell, eight or ten feet, with Lieut.
Hubbard. At the time of the explosion of the shell there was quite a loud report and the
street was filled with smoke. I think I heard shots to the east of me, and then I heard the
command of some officer to the police to charge.
 I didn’t see Degan the, but saw him afterwards. Just after the word to charge I
heard a terrific firing from the officers, and then I went south on Desplaines Street, and
at the southwest corner of Desplaines and Randolph I found the body of an officer.
Officer McDonald tried to lift him up. I afterwards learned that this was Officer
Degan. I then returned to the centre of the street to look for Officer, Elliott, my partner,
and there found quite a number of officers and citizens wounded. I assisted in carrying
some of the wounded officers to the station.

Questioned by the Coroner, the witness said: When the bomb exploded the
ranks of the police seemed to spread, and then I saw great numbers of police lying on
the ground piled across each other. Foreman Badenoch—What remarks did you hear
previous to the throwing of the bomb?

Witness—I heard several people in the crowd say, “Hang them!” “Burn their
factories!” and similar ejaculations were very common. I do not know to whom these
persons referred, as I was circulating around in the crowd all the time.

Haas had heard Spies and Fielden make Socialistic remarks on former occasions
and say things calculated to rouse the hearers to bloodshed. He heard Fielden make
threats against the Government.

Paul C. Huli of No. 586 West Van Buren Street, a reporter, was on the scene. At
7:30 the crowd began to congregate at the corner along Market Square, and towards
8:30 gathered around the wagon in front of Crane Bros.’ foundry on Desplaines Street.
August Spies got on the wagon with several other people. A.R. Parsons followed Spies
and dealt in statistics. The utterances of the speakers were unusually guarded compared
to their speeches on other occasions. Fielden was shouting “In conclusion—when Capt.
Bonfield commanded the crowd to disperse. At the same moment a luminous object
rose from the east sidewalk and fell in the middle of the street in front of the police. An
explosion followed. The centre of the platform seemed to be giving way. Then a few
shots were heard and the police began shooting. There was a general fusillade for some
time. He could not state for certain whether shots were fired by the crowd after the
bomb exploded and before the police fired.

Foreman—What language did the speakers address the meeting in?

“In English.”

“Have you ever heard these men make similar remarks on former occasions?”

“Yes, sir. The tenor of their remarks was always opposition to law and order
and resort to violence.”

E.W. May of No. 351 Division Street heard Spies say at the meeting, in
speaking of the trouble at McCormick’s: “McCormick has said he was not responsible
for the death of the men who were shot. If he said so he lied. He alone was responsible
for their death.” His description of the arrival of the police and the throwing of the
bomb was similar to that of the preceding witness.
 Edgar B. Owen, a newspaper reporter, living at No. 542 Huribut Street, said he
saw A.R. Parsons about 7:45 at the meeting and Parsons told him he had nothing to do
with the meeting, and, jumping on a car, rode away. He also saw Schwab there. He
heard the speeches made by Spies, Parsons, and Fielden, and corroborated the testimony
given before as to the character of the utterances. The majority of the audience did not
seem to be in sympathy with the speakers. He heard Parsons cry “To arms!” “To arms!
“To arms! And this excited more enthusiasm than any of the previous talk. Fielden’s
speech was fiery, and there was some applause. Then he went to the Desplaines Street
Station and saw the police forming, and was told by several detectives to keep away, as
there was going to be trouble. Then he went to the place of the speaking and heard
Capt. Ward’s order to the crowd to disperse. He heard the explosion of the bomb and
was struck afterwards by a spent ball. Immediately after the explosion of the bomb
there was rapid firing on the part of the police and the crowd. He had heard Parsons,
Spies, Schwab, and Fielden make frequent incendiary speeches on the Lake-Front, at
No. 54 Lake Street, and other places.

Capt. William Ward of No. 21 Arlington Street, in command at Desplaines

Street Station, said that at 9:30 o’clock Inspector Bonfield ordered the police out to go
to the meeting. He was at the head of the police column as it came to the stand and
ordered Fielden to cease talking and commanded the crowd to disperse. At that
moment the bomb exploded and an indiscriminate firing began. He has been a police
officer for sixteen years. When he told the crowd, in the name of the State, he was
executing the orders of his superior officer. After the fight was over he found one of his
men dead and thirty-nine wounded. The dead man was Degan. He was so close to the
wagon when the bomb exploded that he could have put his hand on it and spoke so loud
that all must have heard what he said, and he knew Fielden heard his order.

The foreman—Have you ever been ordered by your superior officer to arrest
these men (pointing to the prisoners) for their incendiary utterances?

Capt. Ward—No, sir; but I think other officers have.

The inflammatory circulars were shown Capt. Ward (the ones distributed at the
meeting) and he recognized them as ones he had seen.

Officer John A. McDonald, a detective on the police force, was on the ground at
the time of the explosion of the bomb, at the southwest corner of Randolph and
Desplaines streets. He saw the bomb falling to the ground before it exploded. Half a
minute after the explosion there were several shots fired from the opposite side of the
street, and Officer Degan fell upon him, his weight bearing him to the ground. The
shots came from the southeast corner of Randolph and Desplaines streets and were not
fired by officers. Degan had come to him just before he was shot, and had suggested
going over to the opposite corner to see who were standing there. The witness said he
and other officers picked Degan up from the ground and carried him into the station.
He did not speak after being shot.

Capt. Ward, being recalled, said Degan was under Lieut. Stanton of the West
Lake Street Station. This company was instructed to keep the crowd from surging into
Randolph Street from Desplaines.
He (Capt. Ward) was ten feet or more in front of the police line when the bomb was
thrown. He did not give any order for his men to fire. There was a great deal of
confusion among the officers after the bomb exploded.

The Search of the “Arbeiter-Zeitung” Office and Finding of the Dynamite.

Officer Timothy McKeough, a detective, was around in the crowd with other
officers, and heard Spies ask the crowd to be quiet so they could hear the speakers.
Spies began to talk, and told the audience how he had spoken at the meeting of Monday
which led to the riot at McCormick’s factory, but denied that he had been the means of
inciting the mob. He said that the mob there had merely thrown stones and bricks, a
harmless amusement, and that there was no use for calling the police. He quoted freely
from Parsons’ speech, which ended with the cry “To arms!” He said he heard Fielden
say, “Kill the law; throttle it, stab it, shoot it!” Shortly after that the police came
marching from the Desplaines Street Station, and in a short time the bomb exploded.
He said that in the raid on the Arbeiter-Zeitung office Wednesday morning (Yesterday)
the detectives under command of Lieut.
Shea captured a quantity of material which they considered to be what was made into
bombs. Several detectives went down on the lake shore at the end of the Randolph
Street viaduct and ignited the stuff, which showed wonderful explosive power. It
shattered bricks and boards, and broke a large piece of iron in two when it exploded.
They used a very small quantity of the material when they made the experiments. The
stuff was found by Officer Marks in the Arbeiter-Zeitung building, and an expert said
there was enough there to blow up the City-Hall.

The Coroner—Where is this stuff now?

McKeough—In the vault of this building. [Sensation in the audience.]

Officer Michael H. Marks, also a detective, testified to the finding of the

explosive material in the Arbeiter-Zeitung building, No. 107 Fifth Avenue. He had
been detailed by Lieut. Shea to make a thorough search, and did so. On the second
floor are Spies’ office and composing-room, and in a small room just north of the office
he found a bag filled with sand and sawdust mixed with nitro-glycerin—the same
material as the bomb was filled with which exploded Tuesday night. He took it to the
Central Station and Lieut. Shea suggested that it be tested. Several officers with a man
named Buck, an expert at handling dynamite, went to the lake shore and made three
experiments. The first was with some bricks, and they were pulverized; next a board
and some stones were used, and the latter were blown into the lake, the board being
entirely smashed; at the third experiment a pile of bricks and an iron coupling-pin were
used, the dynamite being put under it. The fuse was lighted, and when the explosion
occurred the bricks were pulverized and the iron pin broken in two by its force. The
stuff was pronounced dynamite, and the amount used for each experiment did not
exceed the size of a hen’s egg.

Marks said the dynamite was wrapped in a heavy brown paper bearing the label
of the Adams Express Company, New York, but the direction had been taken off. The
room in which the dynamite was found opens into Spies’ office; in fact, the room was
nothing more nor less than a closet; it was really a part of the room.

Dr. Theodore J. Biuthardt, who held a post-mortem examination on the body of

the dead officer (Degan), gave a detailed description of the wounds found upon the
corpse, and it was evident from this that Degan’s death was not the result of being
struck by a bullet, but that he received a portion of the deadly bomb. A great wound
was discovered in the loft thigh, and the doctor said that it was very evident that the
missile had entered the thigh and burst after entrance, the muscles being terribly torn
and the femoral artery severed. It was evident that this missile was either an explosive
bullet or a portion of the bomb which had entered the flesh and exploded there. As to
this the doctor could not say, as he was not an expert on explosives, but the wounds
were not made by an ordinary bullet.

He exhibited to the jury pieces of lead taken from Degan’s thigh and leg and they were
very rough and ragged around the edges, and none of them very large. The explosion
inside of Degan’s thigh must have been of great force, for the flesh was badly torn.
 It was noticeable that while the testimony of the witnesses who found the
dynamite was being given, and while Dr. Biuthardt was giving his description of the
wounds on Degan’s body, Spies was very nervous, and the expression upon his face
was more anxious than ever. The evidence against him was most direct, and it was
apparent that he had not expected that such a good case would be made against him.
Apart from the type found in his office, set up, form which were printed the circulars
headed “Revenge,” and which were the most inflammatory of those distributed among
the crowd Tuesday night, was the fact of the finding of the dynamite in his office, by
which the inference was very strong that it was from this explosive that the bomb was
made which did the ghastly work. Spies’ face grew redder and redder and the wrinkles
upon his face deepened as the testimony was proceeded with.

Officer Reinhold Meyers of No. 545 North Clark Street went to the building of
the Arbeiter-Zeitung yesterday and found some type set together, the heading of which
was: “Revenge! Workingmen to Arms!” It was the type form which the English part of
the gory circular of last Monday night was printed.

F.L. Buck, of no. 16 Clark Street, salesman for Greer & Jaques, dealers in
nitroglycerine, giantpowder, and similar explosives, has handled these goods for five
years. He said he was familiar with the look of explosives before and after explosion.
He described the wounds caused by explosives, and after examining a piece of lead
taken from the principal wound of the dead officer declared there was some
nitroglycerine on it. The giantpowder found in the building of the Arbeiter Zeitung was
ready for use if a cap or a fuse was applied.

Detective Edward Cosgrove saw Michael Schwab in consultation with Spies on

the wagon.

Henry E.O. Heinemann, a TRIBUNE reporter, of No. 6724 Lafayette Avenue,

was present during Tuesday night’s meeting. He met Schwab at Desplaines and
Randolph Streets, but did not talk with him. He heard the speeches made, and they
seemed to have an inflammatory effect upon some of the audience. He had heard the
prisoners speak frequently before, and the talk was in the Anarchistic vein. M.M.
Thompson of No. 185 South Green Street, a grocer-keeper, said he was standing at the
alloy by Crane Bros.’ foundry about 8 o’clock, when he heard August Spies and
Schwab talking together in the alley. He paid no attention to what they were saying, but
when he heard the work “pistols” he pricked up his ears. He heard one of them say (he
thought I was Spies), “Do you think one will be enough?” (Presumably referring to the
bomb.) “If you don’t we’ll go and get some more.” They then went toward Randolph
Street, and on that thoroughfare they went a short distance to the east, Thompson
following them all the time. After talking together a few minutes the twain turned
around and returned to the wagon where the speaking took place, and Thompson is of
the opinion that what they were conversing about was the bomb business. AS they
neared the wagon from where the speeches were made Spies said, “I don’t think the
police will tackle us. They’re afraid, because they know what will be waiting for
them.” In the light of subsequent events Thompson found that this conversation had
made a very deep impression upon his memory, though it is very probable that he would
have forgotten it entirely had it not been for the explosion of the bomb, which gave the
conversation he had overheard a fearful significance.
 During the testimony Spies wore a sarcastic smile upon his features, and seemed
to think this part of the investigation was very funny indeed. Schwab, however, did not,
and once or twice vehemently interrupted the witness.

“May I ask you a question, sir?” he at last broke out.

The witness turned inquiringly to the Coroner, and that official said, “Certainly.”

“Was I,” asked Schwab, addressing the witness, “speaking in German or in

English?”

“In English,” promptly replied Thompson. “I don’t understand German.”

Schwab settled back in his chair, and he evidently thought it his turn to smile,
for a sickly grin overspread his features. The grin was intended to convey to the jury
the impression that, had he been talking to Spies at all, it would have been in German
and not in English, his command over the latter language not being very complete.
Schwab, however, can make himself understood in English very well, and can carry on
a conversation in the Anglo-Saxon very well indeed.

Officer William Jones of the detective force was one of the party who made the
search at the Arbeiter-Zeitung building in the morning. He arrested Spies, Schwab, and
Spies’ brother, and took them to the Central Station, where they were locked up. Then
he and other officers went back to the office, and in Spies’ office-desk they found two
bombs, with the fuse all ready to light and everything about them in perfect order. They
found dynamite in three different places in the building. In the desk they also found
several caps and fuses. The bomb may have been giant-powder cartridges. When he
and the other officers went to Spies’ office they were told Spies was not in and would
not be in until 2 o’clock, but on proceeding up-stairs they found him and Schwab and
his (Spies’) brother and placed them under arrest.

Frank Pennell of No. 47 North Market Street, who sells sewing-machine

attachments, said he saw Spies’ brother Chris Tuesday night at the corner of Halsted
and Randolph Streets. Witness was talking to a man at the corner when young Spies
came up. In talking over the situation young Spies said that if the police tried to break
up the meeting at Randolph and Desplaines Streets they would get a bomb. Young
Spies said the people did not understand what the Anarchists really wanted and
defended the Socialistic doctrines. Witness said he was sure that young Spies was the
man who said the police would get a bomb if they tried to break up the meeting.

Officer Reuben Slayton, a detective, was engaged in the search of the Arbeiter-
Zeitung building, and on the way up-stairs ran against one of the printers in the office.
He put his hands up to keep the man from running against him and felt a belt around his
body. He (the officer) searched the printer and found upon him a sharp three-cornered
dirk and a five-chambered revolver, both of which weapons he took away. He arrested
the printer and took him to the Central Station and locked him up.
 The Accused Asked to Speak on Their Own Behalf.

This closed the testimony, and then the Coroner said: “Gentlemen, we have
finished with all our witnesses, and this would finish the case were it not for one thing.
These men here (pointing to the two Spieses, Schwab, and Fielden) were not brought to
this room as prisoners—that is to say, they were not brought here as persons suspected
of having been concerned immediately in this horrible crime—but the evidence is such
as to show that they may have had a good deal to do with it, and therefore I extend to
them the privilege accorded to all suspected of crime—that of testifying in their own
behalf before the jury.”

Turning to the four men he said: “you may testify, should you desire so to do,
but with the understanding that what you say is voluntary and might be used against
you. Therefore it is your privilege to either speak or remain silent.”

Young Spies jumped to his feet and said he wanted to testify, and Schwab spoke
up and signified his intention of saying something. Fielden was silent, while August
Spies sat and smiled and never opened his lips.

Christian Spies, August’s brother, of No. 13 Park Street, a hardwood finisher,

said he did not know what was going on, and went to the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung
yesterday morning to read the papers, when he was arrested. Tuesday night he was at
Zepf’s Hall, corner of Desplaines and Lake Streets, at a meeting of the furniture-
workers. He heard the patrol-wagon and was going out on the street, but was told to
remain inside. He could not see the wagon from which the speeches were made from a
window in Zepf’s Hall. His brother August was editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung.
Michael Schwab was a bookbinder by trade, but was working for the Arbeiter-Zeitung.

Michael Schwab was sworn after the Coroner had explained to him that he need
not make any statement. He acknowledged an oath as binding to tell the truth. He said
he lived at no. 51 Florimond Street. He had left home Tuesday night at 7:40 to find
Spies, whom the strikers at the Deering Reaper Works wanted to speak. He looked for
Spies at the Haymarket and, falling to find either him or any other English speaker,
went to the strikers by himself and made a speech for them after 9 o’clock. So he could
not have been on the wagon on the Haymarket between 9 and 10 o’clock. He went from
his home to his office and through the tunnel to the Haymarket, arriving there about
8:20. Mr. Schwab did not recognize a stiletto that had been taken from Adolf Fischer,
one of the compositors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, nor a revolver that was shown him. He
denied any knowledge of how the circulars that were distributed Monday and Tuesday
were printed. He said he was associate editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. It was usual for
the paper to furnish speakers to trades-unions and other organizations when asked for.
He did not know who called the meeting he went to Tuesday night. A request for
speakers was sent by telephone.

Samuel Fielden asked leave to make a statement and was “affirmed” by the
Coroner. He said he had been invited Tuesday night to speak at No. 378 West Twelfth
Street. Before going there he learned of an important business meeting of the American
Group of the International Working People’s Association, and decided to go there, but
finally ran across the meeting at Desplaines and Randolph Streets, and staid there. He
was not armed himself and did not know that anybody else in the meeting was.
He was just getting off the wagon when the bomb exploded. AS he stepped on the
sidewalk he was shot in the left knee, but managed to walk down-town and took a car to
Twelfth and Canal Streets, where his wound was dressed. He then went home and staid
there till he was arrested. Fielden admitted having used some expression like this:
“Throttle the law or the law will throttle you.” He also admitted having discussed with
Spies the use of dynamite in the United States as a means of redress, and stated that the
Arbeiter-Zeitung had, about a year ago, published in pamphlet form an article form
Johann Most’s Freheit in regard to the use of dynamite.

The Verdict of the Jury Recommending that the Anarchists Be Held.

The following verdict was returned:

We, the jury, find that Mathias J. Degan came to his death from shock and
hemorrhage caused by a wound produced by a piece of bomb, thrown by an unknown
person, aided, and abetted, and encouraged by August Spies, Christ Spies, Michael
Schwab, A.R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, and other unknown persons; and we, the jury,
recommend that said unknown person who threw said bomb be apprehended and held to
the grand jury without bail; and further recommend that the said August Spies, Samuel
Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Christ Spies, as accessories before the fact, be held to
await the further action of the grand jury without bail; and, further, that the said A.R.
Parsons and the aforementioned unknown persons, be apprehended and committed as
accessories without bail to the grand jury; and we, the jury, recommend that the
constituted authorities in the future strictly enforce the statute prohibiting the holding of
unlawful meetings.

Arranging for the Prosecution of Spies et al.

State’s Attorney Grinnell and Chief of Police Ebersold closeted themselves

together twice yesterday to consult as to the best course to pursue in getting together the
evidence necessary to convict the murderous Anarchists who perpetrated the atrocious
wholesale murder on Desplaines Street Tuesday night. It was suggested that the State’s
Attorney had in mind the calling together of a special grand jury for the indicting of the
treacherous rioters, and that all known Anarchists who participated in the meeting
would be indicted by name on all possible charges, and that the indictments for the
unknown rioters would be made to read “a person unknown by name, to be pointed
out.” “We will push the prosecution of the men who instigated the riot and helped carry
out the murder as far as the law allows us,” said Mr. Grinnell after he came out of the
Chief’s office. “We intend and determine to punish these rioters to the fullest extent of
the law and for all there is in it,” he continued, “and we hope justice will not be cheated
this time. We want to look over all the evidence before deciding on what charge or
charges to make, and I can not say now what the charges will be. I think we will bring
the matter before the next regular grand jury.”

It was rumored yesterday that the State’s Attorney would present a request in
due form to Judge Rogers or Judge Garnett to impanel a special grand jury to act on the
cases of the Socialists Spies and Fielden, their associates, and dupes. The regular grand
jury, it was thought, would not be impaneled till Monday week, and would have all it
could do to attend to the ordinary jail cases. Some good citizens suggested a special
grand jury, because they do not like the personnel of the regular one.
A few good men like Murry Nelson, A.J. Grover, and George Adams have been drawn,
but the majority are small politicians, saloon-keepers, etc. It might not be safe to intrust
them with any business of importance. It is not likely that this will be done.

Fielden and Spies Talk.

The Nihilistic agitators, Spies, Fielden, and their fellow-conspirators, remained

in the cells beneath the detectives’ quarters last night. This morning they will be
committed to jail. At midnight Chief Ebersold permitted reporters to see the prisoners.
All were willing to talk, and answered all questions put to them except those more
pertinently connected with the horrid deed committed the night before. Fielden was
lying in his bunk when the reporters entered nursing his wounded leg and vainly trying
to lose consciousness of the thrilling scenes he had just passed through by falling
asleep. When the reporters entered he arose, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and came to the
bars. Fielden is rather below the medium height, thick-set, and muscular. His swarthy
features, well covered with a thick growth of black hair and beard, are repulsive, and his
low brow and catlike eyes do not improve his appearance. His clothing was well worn
and of the poorest quality, and his blue hickory shirt gave him the appearance of a
countryman.

“I was 39 years old last February,” he began, “and was born in Todmorden,
Lancashire, England. My parents were poor, but I succeeded in obtaining a fair
education. The first memorable event in my life was when I lost my mother. I was then
only 10 years old. At the age of 18 I attended an old-fashioned revival meeting, at
which I was converted to the cause of Christianity. Then I converted to the cause of
Christianity. Then I joined the Methodist Church, and subsequently preached the
Gospel in my immediate neighborhood. In 1869 I decided to leave England and
emigrate to the United States, and reached here in July, 1869, going first to Onleyville,
R.I., where I obtained employment in a woolen mill. The following July I went to Ohio
and worked on a farm a short time, when I came to Chicago. On arriving here I was
employed by “Long John” to work on his farm at Summit, Ill. When winter came I
found employment in stone quarries, and have followed that class of work most of the
time since.

“Soon after my arrival in America I began reading the works of Tom Paine, to
which I became a convert, though I am now what is termed a materialist. My
Socialistic career began five years ago, when I joined an organization called the
Chicago Liberal League. I at once became an active and prominent member of the
organization, and it was principally owing to my efforts that the National Liberal
League was compelled to adopt the labor platform. My connection with the
organization brought me into intimate relations with well-known Socialistic agitators,
and I soon became an enthusiastic disciple of their cause. In 1884 I joined the Working-
People’s Association, with which I have ever since been prominently identified. I
believe that I have attained considerable celebrity as a public speaker, and especially as
an advocate of the laboring people’s rights. I have assisted in building up Socialistic
organizations in Chicago, and am proud of the fact that we are now 3,500 strong in
membership, not including several thousands of known sympathizers. Carter Harrison
ought to know the strength of our organization, as it was the Socialists that elected him
Mayor of Chicago.”
 August Spies is a pale-faced, intellectual-looking German, 36 years of age. He
was born in Hessia, and came to this country in 1873. He has been a Socialist all his
life, and started a newspaper in support of that cause in 1879. He says he at first refused
to speak at the Haymarket meeting because handbills had been issued requesting people
to meet with arms. He afterwards consented to speak, as he wanted to defend the
Socialists against the attacks of “capitalist organs,” who had held the Socialists
responsible for the affair at McCormick’s factory. His speech, he says, was the most
temperate that he ever delivered. He strongly deprecated the throwing of the bomb,
which he denounced as an “ill-timed and outrageous affair.” It was, he thought, the
impulsive outbreak of the people, and not prearranged. Regarding the quantities of
explosives found in his office he says that he was ignorant of their presence there. He
thinks they were probably placed there by the police in order to make a case against
them. He had two cartridges in his desk, which he kept to show reporters, but they were
perfectly harmless.
 [May 4, 1886 (New York Times)]

Bloodshed in Chicago
Initiating the Eight-Hour Fight with Broken Heads.

Fiery Speeches Incite Lumbermen and Others to Acts of Violence-

The Freight handlers’ Demands.

Chicago May 3. – the eight-hour movement spilled its first blood today, and Joseph
Votjek, a lumber shover 18 years old, was fatally wounded, and a dozen more strikers
with bullet holes in their bodies, represented the result of the first encounter. There was
a collision at McCormick’s Reaper Works, between a mob of 7,000 or 8,000 Anarchist
workmen and tramps, maddened with free beer and free speech, and a squad of
policemen. More than 500 shots were fired and hundreds of windows in the works were
stoned. There are broken heads and bruised bodies all through the lumber district
tonight but the downtrodden masses have risen and had their fun. The talk of storming
McCormick’s works started early in the morning among the thousands of ignorant
Anarchistic lumbermen who have been on a strike since Friday night. The sole reason
for the animosity against the reaper works was that it was expected that the men there
would work 109 hours instead of demanding 8. Half of men were induced by threats
and arguments to stay away from the works this morning, but the other half, numbering
700, went to work. During the day the eight-hour system was adopted by the company
and the men at work were told that they could quit at 2:30 P.M. today and call it a days
work. But while this peaceful solution of what little difficulty there was being reached
the hard working. Anarchists outside were rousing the lumbermen who had no early
interest in the McCormick negotiations, to a pitch of frenzy by incendiary speeches and
bad beer. Over and over again the suggestion was made to “storm the factor,” but each
time cooler heads held the men in check for the time being.

At 1 o’clock a great mob, howling drunk, was gathered on the railroad tracks on the
prairies at Blue Island Avenue and Wood Street. From the tops of freight cars various
speakers addressed the crowd, hundreds of whom wore a bit of re ribbon in their
buttonholes. Fritz Schmidt, a Socialist from the Central Labor Union, urged the men to
strike fro liberty. This could be done with the revolver, the bludgeon, dynamite, and the
torch. “On to McCormeck’s” he said, “and let us run every one of the damned scabs out
of the city.”

“It is they who are taking the bread from you, your wives, and your children. On to
them blow up the factory, strike for your liberty. This could be done with the revolver,
the bludgeon dynamite, and the torch. “On to McCormeck’s,” he said, “and let us run
every one of the damned ‘scabs’ out of the city.”

“It is they who are taking the bread from you, your wives, and your children. On to
them, blow up the factory, strike for your freedom and if the armed murderers of the law
interfere shoot them down as you would the ‘scabs.’ Revolution is the only remedy.
Do not be afraid- arm yourselves. Use the torch and protect your rights. Be men. Arm
yourselves and get what rightfully belongs to you.”
“On to McCormick’s,” cried the mob, and a number began moving in that direction, but
were called back by several of the cool-headed strikers, who took Fritz down from the
car and held him to get out of the vicinity. Just then the factory bell rang, and the mob,
moved by a common impulse, started on a run toward the big gates which face Oakley
Avenue. It was a race of only twob locks and the head of the mob reached the gates just
as the men began to come out. In the run such of the mob as was not already provided
armed itself with stones. When the men walked out of the gates the stones began to fly.

The men dodged the missiles as best they could, and ran while their fellow workmen,
who were still in the yard, retreated to the shops. The stones flew thick and fast; and
above the mad roar of the mob rose the crash of breaking glass as the windows went in.
Fifty men and boys swept in through the gates and in a flash looted the gatekeeper’s
house of everything there was in it. The company has kept a dozen guards at the works
ever since the strike, a few weeks ago and these, when the mob reached the gates, fired
their revolvers in the air, hoping to frighten the attacking party off. The strikers laughed
at this and amused themselves by pelting the guards with stones till they too retired.
Then they followed them up and began battering sown the doors with crowbars. At this
moment a patrol wagon loaded with officers was seen approaching.

“Kill the police,” cried a hundred voices. The wagon dashed up Blue Island Avenue,
the horses urged into a mad gallop. Right into the thick of the crowd they rode with a
crutch that could not be checked by the mob.

Showered with stones and bricks, the officers crouched low in the wagon which turned
sharply off the avenue and ran down toward the gate. As the wagon drew up before the
gate the policemen jumped off and drawing their revolvers and leveling them at the
approaching men, held them at bay. For a moment had entered the yards got out the
best way they could. Then the cry of “Shoot them!” was raised. The crowd again
advanced a short distance and pelted stones and other missiles. The 12 officers stood in
the centre of the prairie and were splendid targets for the missiles of the mob. For 10
minutes they were kept busy dodging the stones, when the crowd got tired of it and
pulled revolvers. It seemed as if the majority of them were armed and revolvers of
every sort flashed in the sun. A volley was poured into the little band of 12 policemen
the patrol in the meantime standing inside the yards of the factory. Occasionally when
the rioters got dangerously close, a volley was fired by the police, but the officers
generally shot to scare and not to kill. They carried themselves throughout the riot in an
admirable manner. One stray shot struck the boy Joseph Votjek in the groin. Shots
were flying back and forth, but the strikers were bad marksmen, and though they were
observed to take deliberate aim at the 12 brave policemen, the officers escaped unhurt.
More police were summoned and until they arrived the 12 held the mob at bay. It is
known that at least a dozen men were wounded and some quite seriously, but their
friends carried them off. When reinforcements reached the ground the police formed
and by a determined effort, scattered the mob. Once broken, the men fled in every
direction. A dozen were captured and taken to the police station and locked up on the
charge of riot. Many of McCormick’s workmen were assaulted and slightly injured.
Patrolman Casey was sent to Vojtek’s house to tell his family he was injured. There he
was surrounded by a mob and a rope brought out to hang him. A detail of police came
to his rescue just in the mick of time.
A guard of 21 men has been established at the First Infantry Armory and will be kept
there night and day till this trouble is at an end. The reserve police force of the city can
be placed under arms in less than an hour. The outbreak today was unexpected as far as
its location was concerned.

The railroad officials who expected that their striking freight handlers would report for
duty this morning were generally disappointed, though every road except the Wisconsin
Division of the Northwestern was able to handle freight at 7 o’clock, and kept it up all
day. The work was stared by 40 office men from the local office here, as many more
from the general office in Milwaukee and 125 men picked up wherever the company
could find them. Seventy-five of the railroad’s “special agents,” under the charge of
S.B. Wood, the chief detective force of the road, and 6 uninformed policemen stood
guard over the 200 men handling freight. The special agents were armed with double-
action revolvers, which Detective Wood carefully loaded himself. The checking and
receiving clerks were office men familiar with the work, but the truckmen were green
and awkward and made pretty slow work of it. The 120 strikers marched by the freight
stations where the men were working several times, and in the course of the day induced
46 of the new men to quit work. The company has fitted up dining and sleeping rooms
in one of the stations for the men. The 220 men on the Wisconsin Division of the
Northwestern did not report for duty, but most of them hung around the station all day.
Superintendent Chyler says new men will be put on in their places in the morning if
they do not come to work. Of the 180 Lake Shore freight handlers 40 went to work this
morning. The remainder said they were willing to work, but were afraid of violence.
The 65 men in the out freight station presented a petition for an increase of pay, but said
nothing about eight hours. Pending a reply the men went to work with the promise that
they continue until driven out by force or receive some strong representation from
committees of the other roads.

A committee from the Wabash strikers tried to induce the 65 to quit work, but failed
ignominiously. All the Wabash men were out. The company picked up 60 men to take
their places, but 80 of these quit work as soon as they found what they were doing. The
Illinois Central’s men worked quietly all day, waiting to hear what reply the company
would make to their demand for eight hours’ work and ten hours’ pay. At 5 o’clock
General Superintendent Jeffrey assembled them together and made them a speech
refusing the demand in the course of which he said that during the last three months and
three weeks the earnings of the company had decreased $375,642, as compared with the
earnings of the same period last year. By the end of April the decrease would have
reached $400,000, and in all probability before the end of the year, through labor
disruptions and disorganized trade, the decease would amount to $800,000. Nearly
every other road had experienced a decease of from 10 to 20 per cent in its earnings.
The laboring classes, therefore, in view of these considerations had struck at the wrong
time. The only outcome of this movement was that they would remain out, lose money,
injure their families, and return to their old places at the same rate. The men listened
quietly to Mr. Jeffrey’s remarks, though they saw at once what the reply of the company
was. When he had finished, all the men, to the number of 150, quit work, marched over
to the headquarters of the Freight Handlers’ Union and joined that organization. The
Michigan Central’s men remained at work, and will not go out before Wednesday night
when the company has promised to reply to the demand for an advance of 25 cents a
day of 10 hours. The Baltimore and Ohio freight handlers worked along quietly, having
given the company till Friday to reply to a demand for higher wages.
About 75 percent of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy’s men were at work and the
company received and handled an enormous amount of freight at the out station. No
attempt was made to do business at the two other stations. A committee of five from
the strikers got inside the station and tried to persuade the men to quit work. They were
thrown out and two of them arrested. The Chicago and Alton had seven or eight men at
work in the freight house, and managed to get a little of the goods at the depot delivered
to the carriers. To protect these few men 25 police, special and otherwise, were kept in
the vicinity of the depot all day.

Ninety section men employed at this end of the Galena division of the Northwestern
struck this morning because the company would not increase their wages from $1.25 to
$1.50 per day. Fifty men, mostly engaged in relaying tracks in the old Milwaukee and
St. Paul yard on Goose Island did not go to work this morning. Kegs of beer were
opened among them and the men concluded that no work ought to be done in the yard.
So they spiked the switches and when Michael Schwartz, one of their number interfered
beat him badly about the head. After that not a wheel was turned in the yard all day.
No police were on the ground.

The managers of all the roads running into this city today met and discussed the eight
hour movement as far as the railroads are at present affected by it. It was unanimously
resolved that all the roads centering in the city should act in concert; that no reduction in
hours or an increase in wages be granted at this time the business and condition of the
roads being such that neither concession could be made: that all will refusing to go to
work tomorrow morning will be promptly discharged and new men put in their places,
and that the authorities be requested to give the roads such protection as will enable
them to catty on their business.

"The Labor Troubles of 1877 - Riots at the Halsted Street Viaduct, Chicago"

click on image to enlarge

1889 Illustration from book published by CPD Captain of Police

Source: Anarchy and Anarchists by Michael J. Schaack
 [May 6, 1886 (New York Times)]

Anarchy’s Red Hand

Rioting and Bloodshed in the Streets of Chicago.

Police mowed down with dynamite

Strikers killed with volleys from revolvers.

The slaughter following an anarchist meeting-twelve policemen dead or dying – the

number of killed or injured civilians unknown but very large – the bravery of the
police force.
Chicago, May 4 – The villainous teachings of the Anarchists bore bloody fruit in
Chicago tonight, and before daylight at least a dozen stalwart men will have laid down
their lives as a tribute to the doctrine of Herr Johann Most. There had been skimishes
all day between the police and various sections of the mob which had no head and no
organization. In every instance the police won. In the afternoon a handbill, printed in
German and English called upon “workingmen” to meet at Des Plaines and Randolph
streets this evening “Good speakers,” it was promised. “will be present to denounce the
latest atrocious act of the police – the shooting of our fellow workmen yesterday
afternoon.”

In response to this invitation 1,400 men, including those most active in the Anarchist
riots of the past 48 hours, gathered at the point designated. At Des Plaines-street,
Randolph street which runs east and west, widens out and is known as the Old
Haymarket. The plaza thus formed is about 2,900 feet long and 150 feet wide. It was
just off the Northeastern corner into Des Plaines street. 110 feet north of Randolph, that
the crowd gathered. A light rainstorm came up and about 800 people went away. The
600 who remained listened to speeches from the lips of August Spies, the editor of the
Arbiter Zellung, and A.B. Parsons, an Anarchist leader, mounted the wagon from which
the orators spoke the crowd pressed nearer, knowing that something different was
coming.

They were not disappointed. Fielden spoke for 20 minutes, growing wilder and more
violent as he proceeded. Police Inspector Bonfield had heard the early part of the
speech and walking down the street to the Des Plaines street police station not 300 feet
south of where Fielden stood, called out a reserve of 60 policemen and started them up
the street toward the crowd. The men were formed in two lines stretching from curb to
curb. The Inspector hurried on ahead and forcing his way through the crowd, reached a
point close to the wagon. Fielden had just uttered an incendiary sentence when
Bonfield cried:

“I command you in the name of the law to desist, and you,” turning to the
crowd, to disperse.”

Just as he began to speak the stars on the broad breasts of the blue coats, as they came
marching down the street so quietly that they had not been heard, reflected the rags of
light from the neighboring street lamp. From a little group of men standing at the
entrance to an alley opening on Des Plaines street opposite where Fielden was speaking
something rose up into the air, carrying with it a slender tail of fire, squarely in front of
the advancing line of policemen. It struck and sputtered mildly for a moment. Then, as
they were so close to it that the nearest man could have stepped upon the thing it
exploded with terrific effect.

The men in the centre of the line went down with shrieks and groans dying together.
Then from the Anarchists on every side a deadly fire was pured in on the stricken lines
of police and more men fell to the ground. At the discharge of the bomb the bystanders
on the sidewalk fled for their lives and numbers were trampled upon in the mad haste of
the crowd to get away. The groans of those hit could be heard above the rattle of the
revolvers as the police answered the fire of the rioters with deadly effect. In two
minutes the ground was strewn with wounded men. Then the shots straggled and soon
after all was quiet and the police were masters of the situation.
The situation was appalling in the extreme. The ground was covered with the bodies of
men writhing in agony and apparently dying. The men who were uninjured were
ministering to their comrades as best they could and as soon as possible the wounded
were removed to the station house. The first death was that of Officer Joseph Deegan,
who rose from the ground where he was thrown by the explosion, walked a hundred feet
toward the station house and dropping down, expired. All around within a radius of a
block of the field of battle men were seen limping into drug stores and saloons or
crawling on their hands their legs being disabled. Others tottered along the street like
drunken men, holding their hands to their heads and calling for help to take them home.
The open doorways and saloons in the immediate vicinity were crowded with men.
Some jumped over tables and chairs, barricading themselves behind them; others
crouched behind the walls, counters, doorways, and empty barrels. For a few minutes
after the shooting nobody ventured out on the street.

A hospital was hastily improvised in the squad room at the station house and thither the
wounded were carried by tender hands. The room presented a harrowing sight. Half a
dozen men from whom the blood literally flowed in streams, were stretched upon the
floor. Others were laid out on tables and benches and others not so badly wounded
were placed in chairs to await, with what patience they could, the assistance of the
surgeon. Mattresses and other bedding were dragged down stairs, and dozens of willing
hands did their utmost to assuage the pain of the sufferers. Very soon the doctors were
busy with needle lancet and probe. Priests passed from one wounded man to another
administering brief words of consolation and hope and the sacrament of extreme
unction to others. Officers and volunteer assistants went around with stimulants or
helped to bind up wounds or held the patient down while the Surgeon was at work or
carried some of the wounded to the other apartments, or in some other way did what
could be done to help in easing pain or saving life. Pools of blood formed on the floor
and was tramped about until almost every foot of space was red and slippery.

The groans of the dying men arose above the heavy shuffling of feet, and , to add to
the agony, the cries of women, relatives of officers reported to have been wounded,
could be heard from an outer room, beyond which the women were not permitted to
enter. Men who had only got a foot or an arm wounded even though the blood poured
from it in streams, sat still claiming no help in the face of the greater agony. “O Christ!
Let me die!” “O merciful God!” and similar expressions were continually wrung forth
as the surgeons knife or saw, was at work or when attempts were made to move those
more badly wounded. The sacrament of extreme unction was administered to eight of
the wounded before they were moved from the spot where they had been first laid.

As the bodies were picked up from the ground it was found that one man, an unknown
Bohemian, was dead, making with Officer Deegan, two victims already of the crime.
The following is a partial list of the 33 injured policemen. It is impossible to say at this
hour (1:15 A.M.) how many will die, but it is believed that the number will be nearly if
not quite a dozen.

Joseph Deegan, West Lake street station; fell dead in front of the Desplaines street
station in the arms of Detective John McDonald. He had sufficient vitality to walk from
the scene of the shooting to the spot where he expired.

Lieut. James Stanton, West Lake street station; shot in both legs; not badly hurt.
Jacob Hansen, West Lake street station; shot in both legs.

Thomas Shannon, Desplaines street station; shot in foot, leg and arms; married and has
three children.

John K. McMahon, West Chicago avenue; shot in thigh and calf of right leg; married
and has three children.

John E. Doyle, Desplaines street , bomb wounds leg, knee and back; married and has
one child.

Timothy Flavin, Ranson street station; shot in leg; resides at station; married.

John H. King, Desplaines street station; bomb wound in neck, feet and arms.

James Plunkett, Desplaines street station; shot in the hand.

Edward Barrett, West Chicago avenue; shot in knee and ankle; has wife and six
children.

J. Simons, West Chicago avenue; shit in side; has wife and two children.

A.C. Keller, Desplaines street station; shot in side.

L.J. Murphy, Desplaines street; shot in neck and hand; foot hurt by bomb; married.

T. Butterfly, West Lake street; ;shot in hand; has wife and one child.

H.T. Smith, Desplaines street; shot in the right ankle; single.

Arthur Conley, Desplaines street; bullet wound in leg and right shoulder and bomb
wound in right leg; married.

C. Whitney, West Lake street; wounded in the breast by a bomb; married.

Lieut. Bowler, who was in charge of the Second Company of 24 men, said: “Every man
in my company is wounded, with only three exceptions. I led the company up to the
wagon from which the speeches were being made. Inspector Bonfield and Capt. Ward
were immediately in front of me. The Inspector told Fielden they would have to stop as
he had orders to disperse the meeting. As he finished speaking a bomb was thrown
from the wagon and fell directly in the centre of my company, where it exploded.”

“Are you positive the bomb was thrown from that wagon?”

“Yes, I am. I could make no mistake about it for I saw it thrown. Officers Heid and
Doyle were knocked down by it. Bonfield, Ward, and myself wore the only three to
escape. Every one behind me was wounded- just mowed down.”

Several of the men listening to Fielden had their revolvers in their hands under their
coats, and were prepared for an attack.
These drifted around to the northern end of the crowd, where the street was much
darker. The windows of the brick building in the northeastern cotner of Randolph and
Desplaines streets were filled with the heads and faces of men and women. One of the
wounded officers says he saw the bomb coming from one of these windows. Officer
Marx said he saw the bomb coming from the wagon in which the speaders stood. It is
probable that both of the officers were mistaken and that the bomb cam from the
sidewalk.

When the first shots wee fired most of the crowd scampered east and west in Randolph
street. The bullets followed the fleeing ones and many of them dropped on the way
before they for out of danger. A number of women were also seen in the crowd and
several scampered screaming down Randolph street. More were seen falling 500 and
600 feet up Randolph street, west of Desplaines. Hats were lost and several, stopping to
pick something they had dropped, were trampled on by the mad mob. In the
neighboring stores everything was confusion. Men in their haste to get away from the
bullers broke open the doors of the stores and entered, hiding in the first convenient
place they could find. The proprietors struck at the intruders with clubs and threatened
them with pistols, but they pushed past these and entered

The feeling among the police when they fully realized the extent of the calamity which
had befallen their comrades rose to a frenzy, and nothing but the discipline among them
and the presence of Inspector Bonfield, who was one of the very few cool men in the
station, prevented their rushing out and taking summary vengeance on the crowds of
loiterers on the sidewalks, who jeered the flying patrol wagons as they passed filled
with officers on the way to the scene of the disaster. The cruel heartlessness of the men
who exulted over the fact that more than a score of policemen had fallen victims to the
deadly Nihilist bomb surpasses belief, and yet it is a fact that crowded along the
sidewalks on both sides of Desplaines street from Madison street to the station were
hundreds of Community sympathizers who exulted in the flendian work which had been
perpetrated but a few moments before. The big bell in the police station tower had
tolled out a riot alarm, while the telegrapher sent dispatches to other stations calling for
aid. Ten minutes later patrol wagons were dashing toward the scene of the riot from all
directions, bringing stalwart policemen. The mob shouted wildly as the wagons dashed
by, and several missiles were thrown, all of which missed the bluecoats on the wagons.
The Anarchists slunk back as a large company of policemen on foot marched down
Desplaines street.

Several times the mob advanced with wild shouts from the north, but they were kept
back as far as Randolph street. The Anarchists led by two wiry, whiskered foreigners
grew bolder and made several attempts to renew the attack, but the police stood their
ground. At 11:30 o’clock the police made a grand drive at the mob, which was growing
larger instead of diminishing. Blank cartridges were fired from hundreds of revolvers in
two volleys, which set the crowd flying in all directions. The police gave chase as far as
as the Lyceum Theatre, firing again, and the crowd covering Madison Street from curb
to curb, did not stop running until Halstead Street was passed. This fusillade from the
officers practically dispersed the mob, and at 11:45 there were few people in the streets
near the station.
The celerity with which the leaders of the dynamite movement for out of the way as
soon as the explosion occurred was little short of marvelous and this fact led man to
believe that they had knowledge of what was to be done and therefore took occasion to
escape the consequences they knew would follow.

As soon as the superior officers could collect their wits orders were at once issues for
the arrest of the dynamite orators and they therefore, will be behind the bars as soon as
the detectives can get hold of them. Some said that when persons in the mob fell to the
ground their friends picked them up and carried them away. It is therefore impossible
to give any estimate of the number of citizens shot. That the number is large there can
be no doubt, and that some were fatally wounded, if not killed outright, is more than
probable. Fifteen persons were picked up by the police, and one or two of these will, in
all probability, die. The people injured are in the main men who were on their way
home from a cheap theatre, where the performance had come to an end early. Among
them are the following:

Robert Shults, a waiter, on his way home from the theatre: shot in the leg.

John Sachman, who was walking in Randolph street: shot in the leg.

Frank Wrovsch, shot in the shoulder and sides and will die.

Charles Shoemaker, tailor: shot in back.

Emil Goltz, shoemaker; shot in shoulder.

Joseph Kucher; shot in back.

John Edlund; shot in head.

Peter Ley; shot in the back.

B. Le Plant, of Earl Park, Ind.; on his way home from the theatre; shot in the leg and
shoulder.

It should be borne in mind that the men who were present at the Anarchist meeting were
with few exceptions, fellows with no visible means of support and professional
agitators. They were not there to right any specific wrong, but to listen to wild
harangues, such as they hear upon the lake front and in the Anarchist halls on Sunday.
The meeting was of precisely the same nature as those held Sundays, differing only
from the usual gatherings in that it was held in the night instead of the day time. The
street where the meeting was held was narrow, but the crowd was gathered very
compactly. Everything points to a preconcerted plan on the part of Spies, Parsons, and
Fielden to try the effect of one of their bombs. The speeches were planned to rouse the
mob gradually to a point where police interference could reasonably be hoped for and
then a man, screened by others, at the end of a convenient dark alley, down which he
could run, was detailed to throw a bomb when the proper time came.

This evening 200 Bohemian sausage makers at Armour’s left the establishment and
marched down to Ashland avenue, carrying red flags, beating drums, and shouting
“Down with the police.” They paraded around all night and about 11 o’clock reached
the corner of Forty-eighth and Laflin streets. Officers Doran, McManus and J. W.
Murphy of the town of Lake, were met and the mob commenced to beat them, when
Officer McManus drew his revolver and fired. Matthew Blank, one of the strikers, ran a
few yards and then dropped dead.

Chicago, May 5-2 A.M. Inspector Bonfield has hust been seen at the Desplaines street
stateion and says concerning tonights trouble in the old Hay market: After Parsons
concluded his speech Sam Fielding, another notorious Socialist, mnounted the wagon
and began to address the crowd. His words were of the most inflammatory description.
He called on the men to arm themselves and assert their rights. He finally became so
violent that word was sent to the station, which was only a block distant, and Inspector
Donfield, at the head of 125 men, marched to the place where the meeting was in
progress. Bonfield called upon the crowd to disperse, and Fielding shouted out to them
from the wagon: “To arsm!” The officer once more called on them to disperse, when
suddenly from behind the wagon, which was not 15 feet from the front rank of the
police, bombs were thrown in between the second and third ranks of the men, with the
effect as already about an hour ago, proved to be nothing of consequence. No one was
hurt.

On a table in the station house where the wounded policemen are one poor fellow lies
stretched on a table with terrible bullet wounds in his breast. A few feer distant a man
with tattered clothes and a mortal wound in his side is lying insensible on a cot. Around
the chairs, with their legs bandaged up and resting on supports of different kinds, are
some 15 or 20 of the officers who were wounded by the bombs. Not a groan or
complaint is heard from any of them. Another officer, who was found lying in a
doorway where he had been carried, or where he had dragged himself has just been
brought in, frightfully wounded. There are some 20 of the Socialists in the cells in the
basement. Nearly all of them are wounded and one of them , a young fellow of about
20, is dead.

Forewarnings of Trouble

Chicago, May 4. –The first trouble of the day was at Armour’s glue factory, in Ashland
avenue, near Thirty-fifth street. The 200 men, employed there struck yesterday and this
morning there was nobody in the factory save the Superintendent. The workmen, with a
crowd of 400 Anarchists and strikers in other factories, gathered in the neighborhood of
the buildings armed with pick handles and clubs, and prepared to raid the factory. The
Superintendent telephoned the police for help, and in a few moments two patrol wagons
loaded with blue coats dashed up. Most of the, would be rioters scattered. Those who
stood their found were vigorously clubbed, and four of them all young men, all
Germans, and all known as virulent Anarchists, were arrested. August Meyer, one of
the four, spent yesterday stirring up the mob which later in the day raided McCormick’s
works.

At noon a crowd of 500 strikers from the lumber yards gathered at Centre avenue and
Eighteenth street, and after listening to wild speeches started out to raid a paint factory
two blocks away. The men in the factory, who were working under the protection of
four special policemen, were forced to throw down their tools and join the mob.
Then the crowd turned on the watchmen, who ran, one of them emptying his revolver at
his pursuers, but without effect. Returning to the starting point the mob listened to more
speeches, drank a good deal of beer, and were soon engaged in free flights without
number. All were armed with revolvers and the shots began to fly, when Officers Small
and Kilgalen and Detective Michael Granger tried to arrest one Joseph Wallack for
disorderly conduct. Small had the prisoner and the crowd made a rush on him. One
fellow thrust his revolver into the officer’s face and was about to pull the trigger when
Detective Granger knocked his hand up and arrested him. Then the detective went
down under a brick thrown by a skillful hand, which laid open his scalp but did not
seriously wound him. Small gave his prisoner to Kilgalen, and, with two revolvers in
his hand fought his way to the nearest patrol box with bullets whizzing around his head
and summoned help. Three patrol wagons, loaded with police dashed up and the crowd
scattered, leaving seven of their number in the hands of the officers.

At the Railroad Switches

Chicago, May 4 –All the railroads were able to handle freight after a fashion to day,
through none of the striking freight handlers returned to work and their number was
augmented during the day. About 200 men worked all day in the Milwaukee and St.
Paul Depots. The Burlington sent frequent appeals to the police for help and seemed to
be in about as bad shape as any of the roads. Its cars run in over the Fort Wayne tracks
and the switchmen in the Fort Wayne yards today refused to throw any switches for cars
not loaded by the regular freight handlers. This determination, it is reported, is similar
to that which all other switchmen in the city will come to, and should that course be
adopted it would seriously complicate matters. With the aid of office men and laborers
the roads are able to handle freight without much delay, and claim that as soon as the
new men are broken in they can transact business as usual. But with the switchmen up
in arms against them freight, even if loaded, could not be moved. The teamsters
drawing freight t the depots are in the mafia in sympathy with the strikers and throw all
the obstacles they can in the way of new men. One of the strikers met Freight Solicitor
Harmon, of the Burlington, in the street this afternoon and knocked him senseless with a
blow of his fist.

The railroad managers held another meeting today, at which every road running into the
city was represented. The action of yesterday, by which the road determined not to
accede to the demands of the strikers, was reaffirmed. The managers, despite their bold
stand, are very nervous and fear the extension of the strike.

The Baltimore and Ohio freight handlers made a request of the officials for an
increaseof wages to $1.75 a day. The request was forwarded to headquarters at
Baltimore, and the men will wait for an answer until Friday. The sentiment of a
majority of them is against a strike.

The Michigan Central men resolved to wait until Wednesday for a definite reply to their
demands. This action was taken after the local agent had informed them that the
company was not prepared to give an answer, but was silling to pay as much as other
roads.

The Illinois Central freight handlers listened to an address from General Superintendent
Jeffrey, in which he said it was impracticable for the road to grant eight hours.
The men conferred a few minutes and decided to quit work, which they did. They
express a determination to stay out until they have secured their demands.

This morning 600 striking employees of the new gas company marched t the centre of
the city from the south side. At Harrison street and Wabash avenue they split up in two
gangs, one going to the north side and the second one, numbering fully 200, going to
Adams street and Wabash avenue in laying tracks for the Chicago City Passenger
Railway. The gas men compelled the track layers to throw down their tools, put on
their coats and hats, and stop work.

Judge Gresham formally refused today to make any order appointing special Deputy
Marshals to protect the property of the Wabash Railroad. He had another conference
wit Mr. Railroad. He had another conference with Mr. W.J. Durham, who represented
the road, late in the afternoon, and told him that he wanted better evidence that the
Receivers were making the application. It looked very strange that one of them should
be in New York and the other in St. Louis when there was trouble on their line in
Chicago, and if they desired him to make any order or help them out of any trouble they
must come here and make the application personally. Until that was done he would
refuse to do anything in the matter.

Anarchists Called to Arms.

Chicago, May 4. - The Arbeiter Zeitung of today, edited by August Spies, the most
viscous of the local Anarchist teachers, has the following remarkable editorial:

“Blood has flowed. It had to be and it was. Not in vain has order drilled and
trained its bloodhounds. It was not for fun that the militia was practiced in street
fighting. The robbers who know best of all what wretches they are who pile up their
money through the misery of the masses, who make a trade of the slow murder of the
families of workingmen are the last ones to stop short at the direct shooting down of
workingmen. Down wit the Canaille’s is their motto. Is it not historically proved that
private property grows out of all sorts of violence? Are these capitalistic robbers to be
allowed by the canaille-by the working classes – to continue their bloody orgies, with
horrid murders? Never? The war of classes is at hand. Yesterday workingmen were
shot down in front of McCormick’s factory whose blood cries out for revenge. Who
will deny that the tigers who rule us are greedy for the blood of the workingman? * *
* But the workingmen are not sheep and will reply to the white terror with the red
terror.

“Do you know what that means? You soon will know. Modesty is a crime on
the part of workingmen, and can anything be more modest than this eight hour
demand? It was asked for peacefully a year ago, so as to give the spoils men a chance
to reply to it. The answer is, drilling of the police and militia, regulations of the
workingmen seeking to introduce the eight hour system, and yesterday blood flowed.
This is the way in which these devils answer the modest prayer of their slaves. Sooner
death than life in misery. If workingmen are to be shot at, let us answer in such a way
that the robbers will not soon forget it. The murderous capitalistic beasts have been
made drunk by the smoking blood of our workingmen. The tiger is crouching for a
spring; it’s eyes glare murderously; it moves its tail impatiently and all its muscles are
tense. Absolute necessity forces the cry to arms! To arms!
If you do not defend yourselves you will be torn and mutilated by the fangs of the
beast. The new yoke which awaits you in case of a cowardly retreat is harder and
heavier than the bitter yoke of your present slavery.

“All the powers opposed to labor have united. They see their common interest.
In such days as these all else must be subordinate to the one thought- how can these
wealthy robbers and their hired bands of murderers be made harmless? * * *
Shabbily dressed women and children in miserable huts wept for husbands and fathers
yesterday. In palaces they still fill goblets with costly wine and pledge the health of the
bloody banditti of order. Dry your tears ye poor and suffering! Take heart, ye slaves!
Rise in your might and level the existing robber rule with the dust. The heroes of the
club yesterday pounded brutally with their clubs a number of girls, many of whom were
mere children. Whose blood does not course more swiftly through his veins when he
hears of this outrage? Whoever is a man must show it today. Men, to the front!”

Many Industries Paralyzed

Chicago May 4. – A conference was held at the Lumbermen’s Committee and a

delegation of the striking employees. The special business of the delegation was to get
the reply of the lumbermen to the circular of Friday. John Schmidt, a member of the
delegation, said to a reporter as he came from the meeting: “They weren’t to starve us.
We told them that if we didn’t cull the lumber they could not sell it, and they said they
would cull it and sell it in spite of us. Well, if we cannot cull and sort it they cannot sell
it, and I tell you we are not going to starve. We will sell it ourselves first, or, if we
cannot do that, we can burn it.”

Secretary Hotchkiss, of the Lumbermen’s Association, chanced to overhear the latter

part of the remark, and followed the man to the street where he requested a policeman to
arrest him, and Schmidt was locked up for disorderly conduct. The Exchange voted to
present to the Grand Jury the names of any persons found intimidating their employees
and to prosecute them at the expense of the organization. It also voted not to treat with
any union in the matter of taking back strikers, but with the men individually.

The outcome of the trouble with the lumbermen is watched with no small degree of
anxiety. At present appearances are threatening. Directly and indirectly at least 20,000
men, most of them with families to support, are dependent upon the lumber dealers
business in this city. The wages paid by Chicago lumber dealers and planning mill
owners are larger for the same grade of men than are paid by any other Chicago
industry. The majority of the men are wholly unskilled. Even a knowledge of the
English language is not required. But $1 per day has been paid men newly arrived with
a chance of early promotion and higher wages. By persisting in their demands the men
were menacing the lumber business of the port. But persist the men did until the lumber
dealers said that they would like to see the men go back to work on the old basis and
hoped they would do so, but if not their places would be filled as speedily as possible.

No serious trouble occurred at the McCormick works. A fair-sized force of police,

under Lieut. Sheppard, was on hand ready to quell any disturbance that might arise.
Fifty of them stood opposite the factory and as many more patrolled the vicinity. There
were several attempts near the works to organize mobs, but the sight of the blue coats
brought terror to the hearts of the Anarchists, and caused them to cease their attempts.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 men went to work in the factory, the others
staying at home through fear. Several inmates of the hotel in front of the works had
exceedingly narrow escapes Monday afternoon, and it is known that at least four men
besides Votjek, who is still alive, were wounded. A number of policemen were badly
bruised.

The vessel business of Chicago is nearly paralyzed by the strike. Many loaded vessels
are lying in the harbor unable to get rid of their cargoes, and the lumber yards all along
the bank of the river are as deserted as on Sunday.

The great army of idle operatives increases every hour. Where employees will not
consent to the short day the men invariably drop their tools and leave the shops in a
body with fires burning in the forges. At the Union Steel Company’s works the
manager said that it was simply impossible to run an eight hour schedule, but he offered
instead to increase the pay of the men from $1.25 to $1.40 for 10 hours’ work. This
offer was refused on the spot and the men walked our of the works.

The North Side Rolling Mills have shut down for an indefinite period, and about 1,000
men are thrown out of employment. The Superintendent said that in all probability the
mills would not start up again until the labor troubles were at an end. The company
could not give ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work, and to shut down was the only
course open.

Not a wheel was turned in the mills of the Calumet Iron and Steel Company, at
Cummings, yesterday. Superintendent McCloud posted a notice that the mills, with the
exception of the nail department, would be closed. The following notice was circulated
in the streets of Cummings:

All friends of labor are hereby requested to keep out of the employ of the
Calumet Iron and Steel Company.

By order Knights of Labor Local Assembly No. 1,757.

The shutting down of this mill will throw 650 men out of employment.

Many of the packing houses have yielded to the demands of the men rather than bother
with a strike. At a monster mass meeting of packing house employees’ committees
reported that Armour, Fowlser, Swift, Moran & Healy, Morril, Ferguson, Silberhorn,
Washington Butchers’ Sons, Botsford, Libby, McNeil & Libby, Jones & Stiles, and
Atchison will hereafter allow ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work. Nelson Morris will
allow nine hours’ pay for all employees getting over $2 per day, and will reduce the $2
men. Hately Brothers agreed to allow nine hours’ pay for eight hours’ work for skilled
labor, but wanted to reduce the unskilled workmen. This was objected to by the
committee waiting upon them. It is expected, however, that this firm will fall into line
with the others. Underwood’s packing house will allow nine hours’ pay for eight hours’
work. Kent’s house allows nine and ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work, with no men
reduced.
Metal workers who have been trying to run their shops on the eight hour system, having
conceded the demands of their men, today gave the movement the most serious setback,
it has yet suffered by voting to return to 10 hours. Sixty foundry men, boil makers’ and
manufacturers held a meeting today, at which R. T. Crane presided, and organized the
Metal Manufacturers’ Association of Chicago. The following, which will be signed and
posted in the factories tomorrow morning, was adopted:

“It is the sense of the meeting of the metal workers that, in consequence of the
eight hour movement not being extended throughout the country, it is not practicable to
run our works on eight hours’ time and that we will close on or before next Saturday
night to reopen on 10 hours.”

Lucy Gonzalez de Parsons

MAY 1 - HONOR THE MARTYRS OF THE HAYMARKET
MASSACRE

May Day and the Haymarket Martyrs

by W.T. Whitney, Jr.

On May 1, 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, led
80,000 people through the city's streets in support of the eight-hour day. In the
next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who went on
strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago.

On May 3, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper),

spoke at a meeting of 6,000 workers, and afterwards many of them moved down
the street to harass scabs at the McCormick plant. The police arrived, opened fire,
and killed four people, wounding many more.

On May 4, Spies, Parsons, and Samuel Fielden were speaking at a rally of 2,500
people held to protest the police massacre when 180 police officers arrived, led by
the Chicago police chief. While he was calling for the meeting to disperse a bomb
exploded, killing one policeman. The police retaliated, killing seven of t heir own
in the crossfire, plus four others; almost two hundred were wounded. The identity
of the bomb thrower remains unknown.

On June 21, 1886, eight labor leaders, including Spies, Fielden, and Parsons went
on trial, charged with responsibility for the bombing. The trial was rife with lies
and contradictions, and the state prosecutor appealed to the jury: "convict these
men, make an example of them, hang them, and you save our institutions."

Even though only two were present at the time of the bombing (Parsons had gone
to a nearby tavern), seven were sentenced to die, one to fifteen years
imprisonment. The Chicago bar condemned the trial, and several years later
Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned all eight, releasing the three survivors (two of
them had had their sentences reduced from hanging to life imprisonment).

On November 11, 1886, four anarchist leaders were hanged; Louis Lingg had
committed suicide hours before. Two hundred thousand people took part in the
funeral procession, either lining the streets or marching behind the hearses.

Unfortunately, the events surrounding the execution of the Haymarket martyrs

fueled the stereotype of radical activists as alien and violent, thereby contributing
to ongoing repression.

Over the years the remains of many deceased or martyred radicals, among them
Emma Goldman, Bill Hayward, and Joe Hill, were deposited at the Haymarket
Monument in Chicago, where seven of the eight men on trial lie buried. Ever
since that time, in almost every country except one (guess which?) May 1 has
been honored as International Workers Day.

The internationalization (if not "globalization") of the Haymarket legacy was

apparent two days after the hangings when José Martí, leader of Cuba's struggle
for independence from Spain, who was then living in exile in New York, wrote a
detailed, emotion-filled report of the events leading up to the executions. Full of
analysis, his article entitled "A Terrible Drama" appeared on January 1, 1888, in
the Argentine paper La Nación, published in Buenos Aires. Early on in his piece
he notes:

"Frightened by the growing power of the plain people, by the sudden coming
together of the working masses (previously held back by the rivalries of their
leaders), by the demarcation of two classes within the population - the privileged
and the discontented (the latter a thorn in the side of European high society) - the
republic determined to defend itself with a tacit covenant, a complicity whereby
criminal action is triggered by the authorities' misdeeds as much as by the
fanaticism of the accused, in order to use their example to terrify - not by means
of pain directly visited upon the rabble, but by the fearsome revival of the
hangman's hood."
At the end of his long article José Martí quoted from the Arbeiter-Zeitung issued
on the day of the executions:

"We have lost a battle, unhappy friends, but we will see in the end an ordered
world that conforms to justice: we will be wise like the serpent and quiet like the
dove."

In our own time the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has commented on "A
Terrible Drama" (in his Memories of Fire, vol. II):

"The scaffold awaited them. They were five, but Lingg got up early for death,
exploding a dynamite cap between his teeth. Fischer was seen unhurriedly
humming the ‘Marseillaise.' Parsons, the agitator who used the word like a whip
or a knife, grasps the hands of his comrades before the guards tie his own behind
his back. Engel, famous for his sharp wit, asks for port wine and then makes them
all laugh with a joke. Spies, who so often wrote about anarchism as the entrance
into life, prepares himself in silence to enter into death.

"The spectators in the orchestra of the theater fix their view on the scaffold - a
sign, a noise, the trap door gives way, now they die, in a horrible dance, twisting
in the air. [Here he quotes Martí.]

"José Martí wrote the story of the execution of the anarchists in Chicago. The
working class of the world will bring them back to life every first of May. That
was still unknown, but Martí always writes as if he is listening for the cry of a
newborn where it is least expected."

MAY DAY 1886 AND THE EIGHT-HOURDAY MARTYRS

Posted on May 2007 by David Johnson

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During the summer of 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades called for May
1st 1886 to be the beginning of a nationwide movement for the eight-hour work
day. Both state of Illinois and federal employees were already covered by an
eight-hour work day law since 1867. The problem was that the federal government
failed to enforce its own law, and in Illinois state employers forced workers to
sign waivers of the law before being hired.
The eight-hour work day movement caught the imagination of workers all over
the country. After almost two years of organizing, nation-wide demonstrations
were held on Saturday May 1st, 1886. Chicago had the largest turn-out with
80,000 workers marching up Michigan Avenue, chanting “eight hours for work,
eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will!”
The unions most strongly represented were the Building Trades. This show of
worker solidarity shocked many employers, who feared a workers’ revolt.
Although thousands of police and National Guard troops were mobilized
along the parade route, no incidents of violence occurred and all ended peacefully.
Protests continued the next day, Sunday May 2nd, without any problems.
However the following day the Chicago police, led by Captain Becker
(whose hatred of unions was well known), attacked and killed four picketing
striking workers at the McCormick Reaper plant.

This attack by the police provoked a protest rally scheduled for the following
evening, Tuesday May 4th, at Haymarket Square (corner of Des Plaines between
Randolph and Lake St.) About twenty-five hundred people attended the
Haymarket protest, which lasted about two hours. Many people had left early due
to the rain, and just when the meeting was ending, with only about 200 people
remaining, several hundred Chicago police on horseback attacked the crowd. A
few minutes into the attack a bomb exploded, killing a police officer. The police
at that point panicked and began shooting into the crowd, killing four workers and
six fellow police officers by mistake.

The next day martial law was declared nation-wide. In Chicago, labor leaders
were arrested, and union newspapers were closed down by the police. Eventually
eight union organizers were selected from a cross-section of the labor movement
in Chicago and held for trial. Six of the eight defendants were not even at
Haymarket when the police attack occurred. The two-month trial that followed
ranks as one of the worst miscarriages of “justice” in U.S. history.

Eventually, three of the eight men were sent to Joliet Penitentiary and the other
five men were condemned to be murdered (hanged) by the state of Illinois,
despite many witnesses for the defendants and no credible evidence presented by
the prosecution. One of the imprisoned defendants, Louis Lingg, supposedly
committed “suicide” by placing a dynamite blasting cap in his mouth while he
was in solitary confinement.
In June of 1893, Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld (namesake for Altgeld Hall on
the U of I Urbana campus) pardoned the surviving Haymarket defendants.
The Haymarket affair took on international significance in July of 1889, when a
delegate from the U.S. AFL (American Federation of Labor) recommended at a
labor conference in Paris, France, that May 1st be set aside as International Labor
Day, in memory of the Haymarket martyrs.

The recommendation was approved unanimously.

Today, over one hundred years after the fact, almost every industrialized country
in the world celebrates May Day as Labor Day. The irony is that the country
where May Day originated is the country that does not celebrate it officially or in
large numbers by U.S. citizens.
For nearly thirty years May Day and the first Monday in September were
celebrated as Labor Days in the U.S., until the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in
Russia. Because of the Russian Communist party’s “borrowing” of the celebration
of May Day and the pre-cold war propaganda of the U.S. corporate media, many
workers in the U.S. felt uncomfortable celebrating May Day.

However, many U.S. workers and union activists have slowly but surely begun to
bring back the May Day celebration over the last ten years or so. The significance
of May Day is now being recognized. That is the fight for the eight hour day,
decent pay, benefits, and working conditions, as well as a worker’s right to join a
union of her or his choice. Probably no single event has influenced the history of
labor in Illinois, the United States, and the world, more than the Chicago
Haymarket affair. Now more than ever, with the eight hour work day and
general economic standards of working people being attacked by corporate greed
and control, with millions of native-born Americans losing decent paying jobs,
with millions of undocumented workers being exploited and blamed for taking the
jobs of U.S. workers, May Day is needed as an annual solidarity day of
celebration and action by ALL working people.

Despite our differences, May Day should be the day where we ALL join in
solidarity and annually renew our commitment to continue the fight against our
common enemy, the corporate state, and struggle for a new society that is TRULY
of the people, by the people, and for the people, here and throughout the entire
world!

Lucy Parsons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photograph of Parsons in 1886

 Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons

Parsons in 1920

1853 (?)
Born
Texas, US

March 7, 1942
Died
Chicago, Illinois, US

Occupation Labor organizer

Spouse(s) Albert Parsons

Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons (c. 1853 – March 7, 1942) was an American labor
organizer, radical socialist and anarchist communist. She is remembered as a powerful
orator. Parsons entered the radical movement following her marriage to newspaper
editor Albert Parsons and moved with him from Texas to Chicago, where she
contributed to the newspaper he famously edited, The Alarm. Following her husband's
1887 execution in conjunction with the Haymarket Affair, Parsons remained a leading
American radical activist as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and other
political organizations.

Biography

Early life
Lucy (or Lucia) Eldine Gonzalez was born around 1853 in Texas, probably as a slave,
to parents of Native American, African American and Mexican ancestry.[1]
In 1871 she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier. They were forced to
flee north from Texas due to intolerant reactions to their interracial marriage. They
settled in Chicago, Illinois.

Lucy Parsons' origins are not documented, and she told different stories about her
background so it's difficult to sort fact from myth. Lucy was probably born a slave,
though she denied any African heritage, claiming only Native American and Mexican
ancestry. Her name before marriage to Albert Parsons was Lucy Gonzalez. She may
have been married before 1871 to Oliver Gathing.[2]

Career as activist
Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand
rioters" in the 1920s, Parsons and her husband had become highly effective anarchist
organizers primarily involved in the labor movement in the late 19th century, but also
participating in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color,
the homeless and women. She began writing for The Socialist and The Alarm, the
journal of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) that she and Parsons,
among others, founded in 1883. In 1886 her husband, who had been heavily involved in
campaigning for the eight-hour day, was arrested, tried and executed on November 11,
1887, by the state of Illinois on charges that he had conspired in the Haymarket Riot —
an event which was widely regarded as a political frame-up and which marked the
beginning of May Day labor rallies in protest.[3][4]

Parsons was invited to write for the French anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux[5] and
shared a stage with Peter Kropotkin during a visit to London in 1888.[5]

In 1892 she briefly published a periodical, Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-

Communist Monthly. She was often arrested for giving public speeches or distributing
anarchist literature. While she continued championing the anarchist cause, she came
into ideological conflict with some of her contemporaries, including Emma Goldman,
over her focus on class politics over gender and sexual struggles.[6]

In 1905 she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
and began editing the Liberator, an anarchist newspaper that supported the IWW in
Chicago. Lucy's focus shifted somewhat to class struggles around poverty and
unemployment, and she organized the Chicago Hunger Demonstrations in January
1915, which pushed the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party, and Jane
Addams' Hull House to participate in a huge demonstration on February 12. Parsons
was also quoted as saying: "My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and
go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary
property of production."[7] Parsons anticipated the sit-down strikes in the US and, later,
workers' factory takeovers in Argentina.

In 1925 she began working with the National Committee of the International Labor
Defense in 1927, a communist-led organization that defended labor activists and
unjustly-accused African Americans such as the Scottsboro Nine and Angelo Herndon.
While it is commonly accepted by nearly all biographical accounts (including those of
the Lucy Parsons Center, the IWW, and Joe Knowles) that Parsons joined the
Communist Party in 1939, there is some dispute, notably in Gale Ahrens' essay "Lucy
Parsons: Mystery Revolutionist, More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters",
which can be found in the anthology Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity.
Ahrens also points out, in "Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality and Solidarity: Writings
and Speeches, 1878 - 1937", that the obituary the Communist Party had published on
her death made no claim that she had been a member.

Conflict with Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons represented different generations of anarchism. This
resulted in ideological and personal conflict. Carolyn Ashbaugh has explained their
disagreements in depth:

Lucy Parsons' feminism, which analyzed women's oppression as a function of

capitalism, was founded on working class values. Emma Goldman’s feminism took on
an abstract character of freedom for women in all things, in all times, and in all places;
her feminism became separate from its working class origins. Goldman represented the
feminism being advocated in the anarchist movement of the 1890s [and after]. The
intellectual anarchists questioned Lucy Parsons about her attitudes on the women's
question.[8]

In 1908, after Captain Mahoney (of the New York City Police Department) crashed one
of Goldman’s lectures in Chicago, newspaper headlines read that every popular
anarchist had been present for the spectacle, “with the single exception of Lucy Parsons,
with whom Emma Goldman is not on the best of terms.”[9] Goldman reciprocated
Parsons’s absence by endorsing Frank Harris' book The Bomb, which was a largely
fictional account of the Haymarket Affair and its martyrs road to death.[10] (Parsons had
published The Famous Speeches of the Haymarket Martyrs, a non-fictional, first-hand
recounting of the Haymarket martyrs' final speeches in court.)

Parsons was solely dedicated to working class liberation, condemning Goldman for
“addressing large middle-class audiences”; Goldman accused Parsons of riding upon the
cape of her husband’s martyrdom.[10] “[N]o doubt,” Candace Falk wrote (Love, Anarchy,
and Emma Goldman), “there was an undercurrent of competitiveness between the two
women. Emma generally preferred center stage.”
Goldman planned on preserving her place in the spotlight as an American anarchist
laureate by shoving risqué sexual and kinship discourse into “the center of a perennial
debate among anarchists about the relative importance of such personal issues”.

In The Firebrand, Parsons wrote, “Mr. [Oscar] Rotter [a free love advocate] attempts to
dig up the hideous ‘Variety’ grub and bind it to the beautiful unfolding blossom of
labor's emancipation from wage-slavery and call them one and the same. Variety in sex
relations and economic freedom have nothing in common.”[11] Goldman responded:

The success of the meeting was unfortunately weakened by Lucy Parsons who, instead
of condemning the unjustified Comstock attacks and arrest of anarchists… took a stand
against the editor of the Firebrand, [Henry] Addis, because he tolerated articles about
free love… Apart from the fact that anarchism not only teaches freedom from the
economic and political areas, but also in social and sexual life, L. Parsons has the least
cause to object to treatises on free love… I spoke after Parsons and had a hard time
changing the unpleasant mood that her remarks elicited, and I also succeeded in gaining
the sympathy and the material support of the people present…[12]

Parsons responded: "The line will be drawn sharply at personalities as we know these
enlighten no one and do infinitely more harm than good."[13]

Goldman, in her autobiography, Living My Life, briefly mentioned the presence of "Mrs.
Lucy Parsons, widow of our martyred Albert Parsons", at a Chicago labor convention,
noting that she "took an active part in the proceedings". Goldman later would
acknowledge Albert Parsons for becoming a socialist and anarchist, proceeding to praise
him for having "married a young mulatto"; there was no further mention of Lucy
Parsons.[14]

Death Parsons continued to give fiery speeches in

Chicago's Bughouse Square into her 80s, where she
inspired Studs Terkel. One of her last major
[15]

appearances was at the International Harvester in

February 1941.
Parsons died on March 7, 1942, in a house fire in Chicago, Illinois.[16] Her lover, George
Markstall,[17] died the next day from injuries he received while trying to save her. She
was believed to be 89 years old.[18] After her death, police seized her library of over
1,500 books and all of her personal papers. She is buried near her husband at Waldheim
Cemetery, near the Haymarket Monument[19] (now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest
Park, Illinois (then part of the city of Chicago).

Legacy, tributes and memorials

In 2004, the City of Chicago named a park for Lucy Parsons.[15]

On July 16, 2007, a book that purportedly belonged to Lucy Parsons was featured on a
segment of the PBS television series, History Detectives.
During the segment it was determined that the book, which was a biography of Albert
Parsons' co-defendant August Spies' life and trial, was most likely a copy published and
sold by Parsons as a means of raising money to prevent her husband's execution. The
segment also provided background on Parsons' life and the Haymarket affair.

Footnotes

1. Jump up ^ "About Lucy Parsons". The Lucy Parsons Project. Retrieved August 10, 2010. "Born in
Texas, 1853, probably as a slave, Lucy Parsons was an African-, Native- and Mexican-American
anarchist labor activist who fought against the injustices of poverty, racism, capitalism and the
state her entire life."
2. Jump up ^ "About Lucy Parsons". about.com. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
3. Jump up ^ Trachtenberg, Alexander (March 2002) [1932]. The History of May Day. Marxists.org.
Retrieved 2008-01-19.
4. Jump up ^ Foner, Philip S. (1986). "The First May Day and the Haymarket Affair". May Day: A
Short History of the International Workers' Holiday, 1886-1986. New York: International
Publishers. pp. 27–39. ISBN 0-7178-0624-3.
5. ^ Jump up to: a b "Lucy Parsons: American Anarchist". Anarchist Writers. Retrieved Aug 14,
2013.
6. Jump up ^ "Lucy Parsons: Woman Of Will." Industrial Workers of the World.
7. Jump up ^ Wobblies! 14
8. Jump up ^ Ashbaugh, Carolyn (1976). Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary. Chicago: Charles
H. Kerr Publishing. ISBN 0-88286-005-4.
9. Jump up ^ Daily Tribune (March 17, 1908); quoted in Falk, Love…, p. 65
10. ^ Jump up to: a b Falk, Candace. Anarchy, Love, and Emma Goldman. p. 66. ISBN 0-03-043626-5.
11. Jump up ^ Parsons, Lucy. “On Variety”, The Firebrand, 27 September 1896, Free Society; also in
Ashbaugh, 204.
12. Jump up ^ Goldman, Emma. Emma Goldman: A Documentary…, pp. 312-313; originally
featured in Part IV, “Letters from A Tour”, Sturmvogel, 15 November 1897.
13. Jump up ^ Parsons, Lucy. "Salutation to the Friends of Liberty", The Liberator Chicago, 3
September 1905; Lucy Parsons, Ahrens, ed., p. 88.
14. Jump up ^ Goldman, Emma (1931). Living My Life. Alfred A Knopf. ISBN 0-486-22544-5.
 15. ^ Jump up to: a b Watkins, Nancy (2008-11-09). "Who Loves Lucy?". Chicago Tribune Magazine
(Tribune Co.). p. 23. Retrieved 2013-09-07.
16. Jump up ^ International News Service (March 8, 1942). "Widow Of Anarchist Dies When
Chicago Home Burns". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2012-11-26. "Mrs. Lucy Parsons 80-year-
old blind anarchist whose first hus band, Albert Parsons, died on the gallows as a result of the
Haymarket riot, ..."
17. Jump up ^ "Haymarket Widows". The Lucy Parsons Project. Retrieved August 10, 2010. "Lucy
Parsons and her companion George Markstall, with whom she had lived since around 1910,
died in a fire at their Chicago home in March 1942."
18. Jump up ^ Biography Of Lucy Parsons by IWW, Lucy Parsons Center
19. Jump up ^ "Browse by City: Forest Park". Findagrave.com. Retrieved 2008-05-05.

Works

 "A Word to Tramps," The Alarm, vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct. 4, 1884), pg. 1.

Further reading

 Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr

Publishing Co., 1976.
 Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
 Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman, Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers
of the World. New York: Verso, 2005.
 Dave Roediger and Franklin Rosemont (eds.), A Haymarket Scrapbook. Chicago:
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1986.
 Keith Rosenthal, "Lucy Parsons: 'More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters,'" Joan of
Mark, September 6, 2011.
 "Lucy Parsons Is Burned to Death in Chicago; Husband Was Hanged After Haymarket
Riot," New York Times, March 8, 1942, pg. 36.

 The Lucy Parsons Center, a radical bookstore in Boston, Massachusetts

 Works by or about Lucy Parsons in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
 Lucy Parsons entry at the Anarchy Archives
 "Lucy Parsons: "More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters"".
Joanofmark.blogspot.com. 2011-09-06. Retrieved 2012-01-08.

Collage by JR Jimenez (a) Oikos

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