Chapter IV…

Chapter IV

Socialism, Theoretic and Practical—Statements of the Leaders—Vengeance on the “Spitzels”—The Black Flag in the Streets—Resolutions in the Alarm—The Board of Trade Procession—Why it Failed—Experts on Anarchy—Parsons, Spies, Schwab and Fielden Outline their Belief—The International Platform—Why Communism Must Fail—A French Experiment and its Lesson—The Law of Averages—Extracts from the Anarchic Press—Preaching Murder—Dynamite or the Ballot-Box?—“The Reaction in America”—Plans for Street Fighting—Riot Drill and Tactics—Bakounine and the Social Revolution—Twenty-one Statements of an Anarchist’s Duty—Herways’ Formula—Predicting the Haymarket—The Lehr und Wehr Verein and the Supreme Court—The White Terror and the Red—Reinsdorf, the Father of Anarchy—His Association with Hoedel and Nobiling—Attempt to Assassinate the German Emperor—Reinsdorf at Berlin—His Desperate Plan—“Old Lehmann” and the Socialist’s Dagger—The Germania Monument—An Attempt to Kill the Whole Court—A Culvert Full of Dynamite—A Wet Fuse and no Explosion—Reinsdorf Condemned to Death—His Last Letters—Chicago Students of his Teachings—De Tocqueville and Socialism.

THE Constitution of the United States guarantees the right of free speech, free discussion and free assemblage. These are the cardinal doctrines of our free institutions. But when liberty is trenched upon to the extent of advocacy of revolutionary methods, subversion of law and order and the displacement of existing society, Socialism places itself beyond the pale of moral forces and arrays itself on the side of the freebooter, the bandit, the cut-throat and the traitor. Public measures and public men are open to the widest criticism consistent with truth, decency and justice, but differences of opinion are no more to be brought into harmony through blood than the settlement of private disputes is to be effected by means of the bludgeon, the knife or the bullet. The freedom of speech which is valuable either to the individual or to humanity is that which builds up, not destroys, society.

Now, what does Socialism, or Anarchy, precisely teach, and at what does it aim? It is true, there are two schools of Socialism—one conservative and the other radical to a sanguinary degree; one seeking a change in existing society and government through enlightenment, and the other the attainment of the same principles through force. But the conservatives form so small a portion of the Socialistic body that they cut no figure in the general direction and management of the organization; and so far as relates to the visible manifestations of that body, Socialism in the United States may be regarded as synonymous with Anarchy.

As I have shown, the ostensible object of the organization in Chicago, as elsewhere, at the outset, was peaceful, but the ulterior aim—the establishment of Socialism through force, when sufficiently powerful in numbers—has in later years clearly developed. The early Socialist orators only hinted at force as a possible factor in the social revolution they advocated, and it was reserved for the active agitators of the past ten years to boldly and openly proclaim for the methods of the Paris Commune.

Before proceeding to particulars as to the utterances of Anarchist leaders, the sources of their inspiration and their definition of Socialism, it may be well to advert to some incidents in connection with their movements as a revolutionary party. One incident specially worthy of mention was a meeting held at Mueller’s Hall, corner of Sedgwick Street and North Avenue, on the evening of January 12, 1885. It was a secret gathering, but, despite Socialistic vigilance, Officer Michael Hoffman managed to remain and quietly note the drift of the speeches. Parsons first took the floor, and said:

Gentlemen, before we call this meeting to order, I want you to be sure that we are all right and all one. I want you to see if there are any reporters or policemen present. See if you can discover any spies. If you find any one here, you can do with him as you please, but my advice to you is, take him and strangle him and then throw him out of the window; then let the people think that the fellow fell out. And if you should give one of them a chance for his life, tell him, if he has any more notions to come to our meetings, he should first go to St. Michael’s Church, see the priest and prepare himself for death, say farewell to all his friends and family—and then let him enter. I want all these people to know that I am not afraid of them; I don’t like them, and let them stay away from me.

After precautions had been taken to exclude objectionable persons, the proceedings began. Four speeches were delivered, two in English and two in German. Parsons confined his remarks to the capitalists. All present were poor, he said, and they only had themselves to blame. One-half of all the wealth in the country belonged to the poor people, but the capitalists had robbed them of it. The poor offered no resistance, and yet the capitalist was doing the same thing day after day. He was getting richer, and the poor poorer, because the working people lay down and permitted themselves to be robbed. He recounted some of Most’s experiences, and insisted that capitalists must submit to workingmen. They must be shown that their lives are worth no more than the lives of the working people.

He next touched upon the merits of a new invention by which, he said, many hundreds of houses could be set on fire, and exhibited a small tin box or can with a capacity of four ounces. This can, he remarked, could be filled with some chemical stuff to serve as an explosive. A great many of these cans could be carried in a basket, and, traveling around as match peddlers or under some other guise, his hearers could secure entrance to the houses of capitalists. All they would then be obliged to do was to either place or drop one of “those darlings” in a secure place and go about their business. It would do its work, without any one’s presence to attend to it, in less time than an hour. If they would get the boxes ready, he would tell them where to get the “stuff.” This plan of operations would keep the fire and police departments quite busy. If they organized and went to work with a resolute spirit, they could have things all their own way throughout the city and obtain possession of what remained after their work of destruction. He also urged all his comrades to become familiar with dynamite and said that for the necessary instructions they could come to a building on Fifth Avenue (107, the offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and Alarm), where he and others could be found to help them. There was no other way now left, he continued, except for the laborers to use the sword, the bullet and dynamite, and, closing sententiously, he said:

I probably will be hung as soon as I get out on the street, but if they do hang me, boys, don’t forget what I have been telling you about the little can and the dear stuff, dynamite, because this is the only way I and you can get our rights.

It goes without saying that Parsons was applauded to the echo. Another speaker emphasized his remarks about dynamite, but refrained from making a speech, because, as he said, Parsons had “covered the ground so well and thoroughly.” One of the German speakers gave his attention to King William and the Pope, scoring them in the strongest language he could command. He held that the “police of Chicago were only kept to protect the property of capitalists and to club poor workingmen.”

Another event memorable in the history of the party was the flaunting of the black flag on the streets of Chicago for the first time. On that occasion—November 25, 1884, Thanksgiving Day—they marched through the fashionable thoroughfares of the South and North Divisions, and, with two women as standard-bearers for the black and the red, they made it a point to halt before the residences of the wealthy, uttering groans and using threatening language. Their route included Dearborn Street to Maple on the North Side. There they massed in front of the residence of Hon. E. B. Washburne, ex-Minister to France. They pulled the door-bell and insulted the family by indulging in all sorts of noises, groans and cat-calls. They rested satisfied with this last exhibition, and retraced their steps, proceeding to Market Square, where they dispersed.

The preliminaries leading up to the procession just described were thus given in the Alarm on the following Saturday:

THE BLACK FLAG.

The Emblem of Hunger Unfolded by the Proletarians of Chicago.—The Red Flag Borne Aloft by Thousands of Workingmen on Thanksgiving Day.—The Poverty of the Poor is Created by the Robbery of the Rich.—Speeches, Resolutions and a Grand Demonstration of the Unemployed, the Tramps and Miserables of the City.—Significant Incidents.

Shortly before Thanksgiving Day some of the working people, after consultation, issued the following circular to wage-workers and tramps:

The Governor has ordained next Thursday for Thanksgiving. You are to give thanks because your masters refuse you employment; because you are hungry and without home or shelter, and your masters have taken away what you have created, and arranged to shoot you by the police or militia if you refuse to die in your hovels, in due observation of Law and Order. You must give thanks that you face the blizzards without an overcoat; without fit shoes and clothes, while abundant clothing made by you spoils in the storehouses; that you suffer hunger while millions of bushels of grain rots in the elevators. For this purpose a thanksgiving meeting will be held on Market Square at 2:30 o’clock, to be followed by a demonstration to express our thanks to our “Christian brothers on Michigan Avenue.” Every one that feels the mockery of this Thanksgiving order should be present. Signed, the Committee of the Grateful Workingpeople’s International Association.

Thursday opened with sleet and rain, cold and miserable. At 2:30 over three thousand people assembled on Market Street, under the unpitying rain and sleet. A stranger said, “What you want is guns; you don’t want to be heard talking.” He was stopped for the regular arrangements. The meeting being called to order, A. R. Parsons said: “We assemble as representatives of the disinherited, to speak in the name of forty thousand unemployed workingmen of Chicago—two millions in the United States and fifteen millions in the civilized world.” He compared the Thanksgiving feast to that of Belshazzar, and said the champagne wrung from the blood of the poor ought to strangle the rich. He then read as follows: “St. James, chapter 5, says, ‘Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries which are to come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days.

Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which ye have kept back by fraud, crieth: ‘Woe to them that bring about iniquity by law.’ The prophet Habakkuk says: ‘Woe to him that buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity.’ The prophet Amos says: ‘Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor to fail from the land, that I may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes.’ The prophet Isaiah says: ‘Woe unto them that chain house to house, and lay field to field, till there is no place, that they may be alone in the midst of the earth.’ Solomon says: ‘There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed of their filthiness; a generation, O, how lifted are their eyes, and how their eyelids are lifted up: A generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw-teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.’”

And, concluding, he said: “We did not intend to wait for a future existence, but to do something for ourselves in this.”

He introduced S. S. Griffin, who said this was an international assembly in the interests of humanity, having no quarrel with each other and objecting to being set at work by governmental scheme. “Don’t believe that any government or system should be allowed to pit man against man, for any cause; and to get at the root of these evils, we must go to the foundation of property rights and the wage system. The old system could not meet the demands of our present civilization. The present cry is against over-production, because it operates against humanity. Over-production, glutting the market, causes a lock-out, depriving the wage class of the means of purchasing. Vacant houses stop the building industry, and result in throwing builders out of employment. Ragged because of a surplus of clothing; homeless because of too many houses; hungry because there is too much bread; freezing because too much coal is produced. The system must be changed. Man can wear but one suit of clothes at a time and can consume only about so much. The genius of our age is inventing and increasing the productive power. A system that in effect tells the working classes that, the more they produce, the less they will have to enjoy, is a check on human progress and cannot continue. Everything must be made free. No man should control what he has no personal use for.”

Upon Mr. Parsons’ call the resolutions were read, as follows:

WHEREAS, We have outlived wage and property system; and whereas, the right of property requires more effort to adjust it between man and man than to produce and distribute it:

Resolved, That property rights should no longer be maintained or respected, and that all useless workers should be deprived of useless employment and required to engage in productive industry; and as this is impossible under the payment system,

Resolved, That no man shall pay for anything, or receive pay for anything, or deprive himself of what he may desire, that he finds out of use or vacant.

Resolved, That whoever refuses to devote a reasonable amount of energy to the production or distribution of necessaries is the enemy of mankind and ought to be so treated; and so of the willful waster.

As this system cannot be introduced as against existing ignorance and selfishness without force, Resolved, That, when introduced, the good of mankind and the saving of blood requires that forcible opposition shall be dealt with summarily; but that no one should be harmed for holding opposite opinions.

Resolved, That our policy is wise, humane and practical and ought to be enforced at the earliest possible moment.

As an expression of thankfulness, Resolved, That we are thankful we have learned the true cause of poverty and the remedies, and can only be more thankful when the remedy is applied.

The next speaker was Samuel Fielden. He denounced the hypocrisy of calling upon people to thank God for prosperity, while providing no changes for the better, when so many people were in actual want in the midst of abundance. When he was a boy, his mother had taught him to say, “Our Father who art in Heaven,” but so far as he knew, God remained there and would not come here until things were better arranged. “Our motto is, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, embracing all men. Our international movement is to unite all countries and to do away with the robber class.”

August Spies spoke. Pointing to the black flag, he said it was the first time the emblem of hunger and starvation had been unfurled on American soil. He said we had got to strike down these robbers who were robbing the working people.

In answer to a call from the Germans, Mr. Schwab spoke in German a few minutes. A stranger said: “Get your guns out and go for them. That is all I have got to say.” Three cheers were given for the social revolution. The audience then formed a procession three thousand strong.

Another notable procession was on the evening of the opening of the new Board of Trade building. The Anarchists gathered in front of the Arbeiter-Zeitung office and were addressed by Parsons and Fielden. The speeches were highly inflammatory. Parsons insisted that they ought to blow up the institution, and urged them to arm themselves “to meet their oppressors with weapons.” The Board of Trade, he said, was a robbers’ roost, and they were reveling on the proceeds of the workingmen. “How many,” he asked, “of my hearers could give twenty dollars for a supper to-night? We will never gain anything by arguments and words. While those men are enjoying a sumptuous supper, workingmen are starving.” He characterized the police as bloodhounds and servants of the robbing capitalists, and suggested that the mob loot Marshall Field’s dry-goods store and other places and secure such things as they needed. It was apparent that these sentiments appealed strongly to the inclinations of the assembled rabble, and when Parsons had concluded the mob was ready for an even more violent harangue.

Fielden went as far as to urge the mob to follow him and rob those places, and, like Parsons, held that the Board of Trade building had been built out of money of which they had been robbed, and that all who transacted business in that place were “robbers, and thieves, and ought to be killed.”

There were hundreds of tramps in the throng addressed, and naturally all allusions to capitalists as robbers, and all suggestions to plunder, were greeted with applause. A procession was formed, with Oscar W. Neebe, Parsons and Fielden at the head, and with two women following next carrying the red and black flags. They marched down to the Board of Trade, but, arriving at the street leading to the building, a company of police headed them off. Thus balked, they had to content themselves with marching through the streets back to their starting-point, where they separated without further exhibition of violence than subsequently hurling a stone through the window of a carriage occupied by a prominent West Side resident and his wife, whom they took to be a millionaire on his way to the Board of Trade reception. A tougher-looking lot of men than those who composed the procession it would be difficult to find, and, once started in the direction of violence at the building, there is no telling the extent of damage they might have inflicted. The toleration of such a parade by the municipal authorities was severely criticised by the community, for, had it not been for the action of the late Col. Welter, then Inspector of Police, in intercepting the procession, a serious riot would have occurred.

Parsons, when asked subsequently why they had not blown up the Board of Trade building, replied that they had not looked for police interference and were not prepared. “The next time,” he said, “we will be prepared to meet them with bombs and dynamite.” Fielden reiterated the same sentiments and expressed the opinion that in the course of a year they might be ready for the police.

* * * * *

NOW WHAT is the Socialism or Anarchy they seek to establish? In his speech before Judge Gary in the Criminal Court, when asked why sentence of death should not be imposed upon him, Anarchist Parsons, among other things, thus described the condition of affairs when Socialism should obtain sway:

Anarchy is a free society where there is no concentrated or centralized power, no state, no king, no emperor, no ruler, no president, no magistrate, no potentate of any character whatever. Law is the enslaving power of men. Blackstone defines the law to be a rule of action, prescribing what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. Now, very true. Anarchists hold that it is wrong for one person to prescribe what is the right action for another person, and then compel that person to obey that rule. Therefore, right action consists in each person attending to his business, and allowing everybody else to do likewise. Whoever prescribes a rule of action for another to obey is a tyrant, a usurper and an enemy of liberty. This is precisely what every statute does. Anarchy is the natural law, instead of the man-made statute, and gives men leaders in the place of drivers and bosses. All political law, statute and common, gets its right to operate from the statute; therefore, all political law is statute law. A statute law is a written scheme by which cunning takes advantage of the unsuspecting, and provides the inducement to do so, and protects the one who does it. In other words, a statute is the science of rascality or the law of usurpation. If a few sharks rob mankind of all the earth,—turn them all out of house and home, make them ragged slaves and beggars, and freeze and starve them to death,—still they are expected to obey the statute because it is sacred. This ridiculous nonsense, that human laws are sacred, and that if they are not respected and continued we cannot prosper, is the stupidest and most criminal nightmare of the age. Statutes are the last and greatest curse of men, and, when destroyed, the world will be free.... The statute law is the great science of rascality, by which alone the few trample upon and enslave the many. There are natural laws provided for every work of man. Natural laws are self-operating. They punish all who violate them, and reward all who obey them. They cannot be repealed, amended, dodged or bribed, and it costs neither time, money nor attention to apply them. It is time to stop legislation against them. We want to obey laws, not men, nor the tricks of men. Statutes are human tricks. The law—the statute law—is the coward’s weapon, the tool of the thief.... Free access to the means of production is the natural right of every man able and willing to work. It is the legal right of the capitalist to refuse such access to labor, and to take from the laborer all the wealth he creates over and above a bare subsistence for allowing him the privilege of working. A laborer has the natural right to life, and, as life is impossible without the means of production, the equal right to life involves an equal right to the means of production.... Laws—just laws—natural laws—are not made; they are discovered. Law-enacting is an insult to divine intelligence; and law-enforcing is the impeachment of God’s integrity and His power.

August Spies on the same memorable occasion gave his views of Socialism in these words:

Socialism is a constructive and not a destructive science. While capitalism expropriates the masses for the benefit of the privileged class; while capitalism is that school of economics which teaches how one can live upon the labor (i. e., property) of the other, Socialism teaches how all may possess property, and further teaches that every man must work honestly for his own living, and not be playing the respectable Board of Trade man, or any other highly too respectable business man or banker. Socialism, in short, seeks to establish a universal system of coöperation and to render accessible to each and every member of the human family the achievements and benefits of civilization, which, under capitalism, are being monopolized by a privileged class, and employed, not, as they should be, for the common good of all, but for the brutish gratification of an avaricious class. Under capitalism, the great inventions of the past, far from being a blessing for mankind, have been turned into a curse! Socialism teaches that machines, the means of transportation and communication, are the result of the combined efforts of society, past and present, and that they are therefore rightfully the indivisible property of society, just the same as the soil and the mines and all natural gifts should be. This declaration implies that those who have appropriated this wealth wrongfully, though lawfully, shall be expropriated by society. The expropriation of the masses by the monopolists has reached such a degree that the expropriation of the expropriateurs has become an imperative necessity, an act of social self-preservation. Society will reclaim its own even though you erect a gibbet on every street-corner. And Anarchism, this terrible “ism,” deduces that under a coöperative organization of society, under economic equality and individual independence, the “state”—the political state—will pass into barbaric antiquity. And we will be where all are free, where there are no longer masters and servants. Where intellect stands for brute force, there will no longer be any use for the policeman and militia to preserve the so-called “peace and order.” Anarchism, or Socialism, means the reorganization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime.

Michael Schwab, in his utterances before the same tribunal, held as follows:

Socialism, as we understand it, means that land and machinery shall be held in common by the people. The production of goods shall be carried on by producing groups which shall supply the demands of the people. Under such a system every human being would have an opportunity to do useful work, and no doubt would work. Some hours’ work every day would suffice to produce all that, according to statistics, is necessary for a comfortable living. Time would be left to cultivate the mind and to further science and art. That is what Socialists propose. According to our vocabulary, Anarchy is a state of society in which the only government is reason. A state of society in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right and hate wrong because it is wrong. In such a society no laws, no compulsion will be necessary.

Samuel Fielden, standing before the same court, also dwelt upon Socialism, saying:

And it will be a good time, a grand day for the world; it will be a grand day for humanity; it will never have taken a step so far onward toward perfection, if it can ever reach that goal, as it will when it accepts the principles of Socialism. They are the principles that injure no man. They are the principles that consider the interest of every one. They are the principles which will do away with wrong; and injustice and suffering will be reduced at least to a minimum under such an organization of society. As compared to the present struggle for existence, which is degrading society and making men merely things and animals, Socialism will give them opportunities of developing the possibilities of their nature.

The platform of the International Association of Workingmen, indorsed by the local organization, formulates the principles of Socialism as follows:

1. Destruction of existing class domination, through inexorable revolution and international activity.

2. The building of a free society on communistic organizations or production.

3. Free exchange of equivalent products through the productive organization without jobbing and profit-making.

4. Organization of the educational system upon a non-religious and scientific and equal basis for both sexes.

5. Equal rights for all, without distinction of sex or race.

6. The regulation of public affairs through agreements between the independent communes and confederacies.

The above was published in the Alarm of November 1, 1884, with the following comment:

Proletarians of all countries, unite. Fellow workmen, all we need for the achievement of this great end is organization and unity.

There exists now no great obstacle to that unity. The work of peaceful education and revolutionary conspiracy will, can and ought to run in parallel lines.

The day has come for solidarity. Join our ranks! Let the drum beat defiantly the roll of battle; workingmen of all lands, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win. Tremble, oppressors of the world! Not far beyond your purblind sight there dawn the scarlet and sable lights of the judgment day!

Such, in brief, are the aims of Socialism as expounded by its most extreme representatives. The state of society they seek to establish may be highly beneficial to a class which, under any conditions, lacks sobriety, frugality, thrift and self-reliance; but just where the general mass of humanity is to be bettered or elevated, socially, morally or politically, is a point not satisfactorily explained. Their theory may look well on paper, and their glittering generalities may draw adherents from the ranks of the illiterate and the vicious, but a condition of society in which there are no masters and no authority can only lead to chaos. In a society “in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right,” there can be neither stability nor permanence, unless human nature is recast, reconstructed and regenerated. Human nature must be treated as it is found in the general make-up of man; and therefore a society in which all special desires, all ambition and all self-elevation have been eliminated, precludes development and progress. It reduces everything to utter shiftlessness and stagnation. In such a society there can be no incentive to great achievements in art, literature, mechanics or invention. If all are to be placed on an equal footing, the ignorant with the educated, the dullard with the genius, the profligate with the provident, and the drunken wretch with the industrious, what encouragement for special effort? If you “render accessible to each and every member of the human family the achievements and benefits of civilization,” holding “property in common,” why should a man rack his brain or strain his muscles in producing something which he expects to prove remunerative to himself in some way, but which under the Socialistic state would go to the financial benefit of all? Take away all incentive to improvement, and you make life scarcely worth the living. Where the state, or the “independent commune,” is to be entrusted with the care and equal distribution of wealth and the employment of men, the individual will give little concern for the morrow or for anything beyond his immediate wants. What need he accomplish more than his neighbor, since everything that is produced is shared jointly?

In the Socialistic society, every man might “work honestly for his own living,” as Spies declares, but what would be the inevitable result of a system in which the state or commune undertakes to see that all have employment?

History does not leave us room for doubt. The various constitutions of France recognized the right of the people to employment. It was provided in 1792 that it was the duty of society to afford such employment, and in the following year it was added that the remuneration of the laborer should be sufficient to support him. This doctrine was recognized until 1819, when it fell into “innocuous desuetude,” and it was not revived until 1848. In that year a placard appeared on the dead walls of Paris, to the following effect:

The Provisional Government of the French Republic guarantees existence to the laborer by labor. It guarantees labor to every citizen. It guarantees that laborers may associate to obtain the profits of their legitimate labor.

In consequence of this proclamation the Government was appealed to, and national work-shops were established under the auspices of the Government. The establishments were open to all, but, as no one was specially interested in their financial success, they soon proved too great a drain upon the resources of the nation. Failure was the result. In the assignment of work at the factories, skill and fitness never entered into consideration. One workman was as good as another, and the men, so long as they had the Government at their back, with living guaranteed, did not bother much about the kind of article they produced. The result was that inferior goods were thrown upon the market, and purchasers were difficult to find. This speedily led to the closing of the work-shops, and since then the French Government has never maintained that society at large must operate work-shops for the benefit of all. Any commune that undertakes the same task again must similarly fail.

Now, suppose that, in the new economic conditions, it should be determined by the “independent communes” that wages should in a measure be fixed according to the skill, ability and energy of the workingmen, what sort of allotment would fall to the great body of workers? Edward Atkinson, an accurate statistician of world-wide reputation, has furnished the public with a compilation showing what each would receive if the aggregate production in the United States were divided among its inhabitants. The annual production, he calculates, of all the industries of our country, does not exceed $200 per head of population. This would give a total of $12,000,000. If this were divided equally among families of five persons each, on a basis of a sixty-million population, each family would have $1,000 per annum. But, as I have said, suppose some families secure more than others, on account of greater efficiency, and that one-third of these families secure $2,000 each per annum. The remaining two-thirds would only secure an average of $500. “Suppose,” it has been said, “one-half of this third to be fortunate enough, or skillful enough, to increase their average to $3,000. The remaining half continuing at $2,000, the average share of the two-thirds would fall to $250, or $50 only per head, per annum.”

As Prof. Barnard, dwelling upon the facts to be deduced from Atkinson’s showing, says: “Inasmuch as the idea of an average implies that as many are below it as are above it, it is easy to see that the only way of removing the scourge of poverty from the entire human race is to increase the productiveness of labor so that want can only be a consequence of willful idleness, or improvidence, or vice.”

In the “wonderful readjustment” of wealth and the products of labor Socialists propose to inaugurate, there would be everywhere more misery, more poverty and more crime than the people are now contending with in the purlieus of London and Paris. That there is room for improvement in the condition of our social state is true, but that changes for the better can be obtained by Socialism and by means of violence is false. These social as well as governmental improvements can only be brought about by peaceable means. Never by force, as the logic of events demonstrated in the Cook County Jail. There is no question that crack-brained theorists will continue to spring up and exist. They have existed in the past. The Babeufs, the Lassalles, the Fouriers and the Karl Marxes may continue to preach their one-sided ideas, but universal education in the United States and the general morality of the masses may be safely counted upon as a guaranty that neither the gospel of violence nor isolated cases of bloodshed will ever succeed in establishing exploded and ruinous theories of politics.

AFTER the Socialists of Chicago had organized their military companies, it soon became evident that they intended to use their forces against organized society, and as they paraded them before the community on all public occasions as a menace to good order, the Illinois Legislature in 1879 settled their status effectually by adopting a law prohibiting armed forces in the State except those willing to swear to support the institutions of the State as well as of the nation, or to become members of the State militia. It was also made a punishable offense for any body of men to assemble with arms, drill or parade within the State without authority. The Socialists were not seeking State honors, and they took an appeal to the State Supreme Court on the ground that the legislative act was unconstitutional. They were beaten, and accordingly forced to abandon their ten companies.

From carrying arms, however, they soon turned their attention to the study of explosives. They began experiments at once, and some years later boldly urged their adherents to become adepts in the manufacture and use of the most approved explosive—dynamite.

In the Alarm of October 18, 1884, the following was published:

One man armed with a dynamite bomb is equal to one regiment of militia, when it is used at the right time and place. Anarchists are of the opinion that the bayonet and Gatling gun will cut but sorry part in the social revolution. The whole method of warfare has been revolutionized by latter-day discoveries of science, and the American people will avail themselves of its advantages in the conflict with upstarts and contemptible braggarts who expect to continue their rascality under the plea of preserving law and order.

The same paper, in its issue of November 1, 1884, contained this pronunciamento:

How can all this be done? Simply by making ourselves masters of the use of dynamite, then declaring we will make no further claim to ownership in anything, and deny every other person’s right to be the owner of anything, and administer instant death, by any and all means, to any and every person who attempts to continue to claim personal ownership in anything. This method, and this alone, can relieve the world of this infernal monster called the “right of property.”

Let us try and not strike too soon, when our numbers are too small, or before more of us understand the use and manufacture of the weapons.

To avoid unnecessary bloodshed, confusion and discouragement, we must be prepared, know why we strike and for just what we strike, and then strike in unison and with all our might.

Our war is not against men, but against systems; yet we must prepare to kill men who will try to defeat our cause, or we will strive in vain.

The rich are only worse than the poor because they have more power to wield this infernal “property right,” and because they have more power to reform, and take less interest in doing so. Therefore, it is easy to see where the bloodiest blows must be dealt.

We can expect but few or no converts among the rich, and it will be better for our cause if they do not wait for us to strike first.

Again, on February 21, 1885, from the same paper:

The deep-rooted, malignant evil which compels the wealth-producers to become the independent hirelings of a few capitalistic czars, can not be reached by means of the ballot.

The ballot can be wielded by free men alone; but slaves can only revolt and rise in insurrection against their despoilers.

Let us bear in mind the fact that here in America, as elsewhere, the worker is held in economic bondage by the use of force, and the employment of force, therefore, becomes a necessity to his economic preservation. Poverty can’t vote!

In the same issue also appeared the following:

Dynamite! Of all the good stuff, this is the stuff. Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe (gas or water pipe), plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the immediate neighborhood of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people’s brows, and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying result will follow. In giving dynamite to the downtrodden millions of the globe science has done its best work. The dear stuff can be carried in the pocket without danger, while it is a formidable weapon against any force of militia, police or detectives that may want to stifle the cry for justice that goes forth from the plundered slaves. It is something not very ornamental, but exceedingly useful. It can be used against persons and things. It is better to use it against the former than against bricks and masonry. It is a genuine boon for the disinherited, while it brings terror and fear to the robbers. A pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots all hollow, and don’t you forget it! Our law-makers might as well try to sit down on the crater of a volcano or a bayonet as to endeavor to stop the manufacture and use of dynamite. It takes more justice and right than is contained in laws to quiet the spirit of unrest.

In the Arbeiter-Zeitung of March 19, 1886, appeared the following, after many articles had been previously published of the same tenor as those in the Alarm:

The only aim of the workingman should be the liberation of mankind from the shackles of the existing damnable slavery. Here, in America, where the workingman possesses yet the freedom of meeting, of speech, and of the press, most should be done for the emancipation of suffering mankind. But the press gang and the teachers in the schools do all in their power to keep the people in the dark. Thus everything tends to degrade mankind more and more, from day to day, and this effects a “beastening,” as is observable with Irishmen, and more apparent, even, with the Chinese.

If we do not soon bestir ourselves for a bloody revolution, we can not leave anything to our children but poverty and slavery. Therefore prepare yourselves, in all quietness, for the revolution.

The following extracts are from the first number of the Anarchist, Engel’s paper, dated January 1, 1886, with the motto, “All government we hate”:

Workingmen and fellows: We recognize it our duty to contend against existing rule, but he who would war successfully must equip himself with all implements adapted to destroy his opponents and secure victory. In consideration thereof we have resolved to publish the Anarchist as a line in the fight for the disinherited. It is necessary to disseminate Anarchistic doctrine. As we strive for freedom from government we advocate the principle of autonomy, in this sense: We strive towards the overthrow of the existing order, that an end may be put to the “abhorrent work of destruction on the part of mankind, and fratricide done away.” The equality of all, without distinction of race, color or nationality, is our fundamental principle, thus ending rule and servitude. We reject reformatory endeavors as useless play, adding to the derision and oppression of the workingmen. Against the never-to-be-satisfied ferocity of capital we recommend the radical means of the present age. All endeavors of the working classes not aiming at the overthrow of existing conditions of ownership and at complete self-government are to us reactionary. The idea of the absence of authority warrants that we will carry on a fight of principles only....

No one can deny that man brings with him into the world the right to live. But this is denied by the property beast. He who has the whip of power will brandish it over the poor. What does the world offer to the poor who are compelled to carry on a mere struggle for existence? Patented machinery, combined with capital and other means of preservation, denies work to the workmen on account of the excessive offer of working powers. Workingmen should, therefore, enter the ranks of those who propose to set aside the present system of inequality and build up a system of equality and freedom. Let every one join the International Workingmen’s Association, and arm himself with the best weapons of modern times....

The authorities in America have hitherto refused to prosecute Anarchists as the European powers do, not because of hatred to despotism, but from fear that the American people might be driven into Anarchism. As Anarchists increase, however, it is intended to do away with them by slow degrees. To this end a bill was introduced in Congress refusing to and revoking citizenship of such. Yet the Anarchist declines citizenship because he regards himself as cosmopolitan. We hope for more foolish things to open the eyes of American workingmen....

Reflections of an Anarchist at the Grave of Leiske.—After the workingman becomes a journeyman he feels free, casts a glance into the world—it is glorious, beautiful. He thinks there is happiness for him somewhere. He proposes to go abroad, but a terrible cry falls upon his ears—the outcry of a tormented people. He inquires, have the pariahs of to-day a right to live? and answers yes. Why otherwise born, if suffered to die with hunger? And hunger and poverty are the results of the stealings of the rich. Having thus concluded, he swears to help in the work of liberation, “in the great struggle of mankind for a better condition;” to take vengeance upon those responsible for this misery. In his investigations he learns the utter vileness of the police power, and a policeman is killed. Whereupon the workman is arrested, charged with the murder of Rumpf, and killed after nearly a year of most devilish torture. With what contempt Leiske met his executioners, and with what heroism he went unto his death, is known to our fellows, and he shall be avenged.

The Alarm, January 13, 1885:

“Force the only defense against injustice and oppression.” Because the Socialists advocate resistance, they are accused of brutality and want of wisdom. All men agree that themselves should not be trampled upon by others. If you can compel a man to agree to allow others to exercise control over him, you will find that the soldier will soon claim all you have acquired for yourselves. This only teaches that it is dangerous for the wicked to teach war; not so with justice. Justice can never create opposition to itself. Therefore “justice is always safe in accumulating force, while injustice can only accumulate force at its peril.” We are told force is cruel, but this is only true when the opposition is less cruel. If the opposition is relentless power, starving, freezing, etc., and the application of force will require less suffering, then force is humane. Therefore we say that dynamite is both humane and economical. It will, at the expense of less suffering, prevent more. It is not humane to compel ten persons to starve to death, when the execution of five persons would prevent it. A system that is starving and freezing tens of thousands of little children, in the midst of a world of plenty, cannot be defended against dynamiters on the ground of humanity. If every child that starved to death in the United States were retaliated for by the execution of a rich man in his own parlor, the brutal system of wage property would not last six weeks. It is a wonder that a father, after his vain search for bread, can see his little ones starve or freeze, without striking that vengeful, just and bloody blow at the cause that would prevent other little ones suffering a similar fate. It is not probable that men will always endure this cruel, relentless process of monopoly and competition.

The privileged class use force to perpetuate their power, and the despoiled workers must use force to prevent it.

The Alarm, July 25, 1885:

STREET FIGHTING.

How to Meet the Enemy.—Some Valuable Hints for the Revolutionary Soldiers.—What an Officer of the United States Army has to Say.

The following letter, published in the San Francisco Truth some time ago, will be read with interest. The letter is quoted as follows, in substance: “I am an officer in the army of the United States, and know whereof I write. John Upton said to me, with great earnestness, that the day of armies is passing away. I believe this. This introduces my subject. I desire to place the details of the science of butchery before the people; to point out its weak points, so that in future uprisings the people may stand some chance of winning. They have for the past twenty years been overcome only because of their own ignorance. They have been slaughtered and subdued because of a lack of coolness, want of knowledge, and adherence to what is called ‘humanity,’ ‘honorable warfare,’ etc. I assume that my readers agree with me that against tyrants all means are legitimate, and that in war that course is best, though bloodiest, which soonest ends the contest. My purpose is to persuade the people to add a little common sense in future to their heroism, and thus insure success.

“United States and State regiments are organized on the unit of four, which permits the most rapid and effective change of front that can be devised. The art of war consists in making soldiers fight. The line of retreat must be kept open to avoid capture. In future revolts the people shall assume the aggressive. Army officers have wasted years of study over the science of street fighting, unavailingly. The plan below shows a method adopted as best. The troops are formed on the street in two bodies in column of four, headed by a Gatling gun. On the sidewalk a line of skirmishers and sharpshooters, whose duty it is to fire into the houses, the whole advancing cautiously. When a cross street is reached, a company is left to hold it, in order to keep open the avenue of retreat. Military knowledge has become popularized since 1877, and now, in almost any contest, it would be easy to find some fair leaders of the people who would devise some means of meeting such an advance, as indicated by the following diagram. The diagram represents a street corner. The plan is, at the street crossing to have bodies of revolutionists with movable barracks placed obliquely on the cross street, and who from there will fire vigorously upon the advancing column. They have supporters also in the building, also at the corner, whose duty is to throw dynamite upon the troops. If the position is carried, the party defending escape through the cross streets. The rear of the column can also be attacked from the cross streets. If the men in the barricades are armed with the new international dynamite rifle (which I am told exists in the hands of the revolutionists), I give it as a careful technical opinion, that, pursuing these tactics under brave and able leaders, fifty men can hold at bay and finally destroy in any of your cities an attacking force of five thousand troops.” Signed “R. S. S.” Alcatraz Island, December 8.

The Alarm, December 26, 1885:

Bakounine’s Groundwork for the Social Revolution.—A Revolutionist’s Duty to Himself. (Free translation from the German.)

1. The revolutionist is self-offered; has no personal interest, but is absorbed by the one passion, the revolution.

2. He is at war with the existing order of society and lives to destroy it.

3. He despises society in its present form and leaves its reorganization to the future, himself knowing only the science of destruction. He studies mathematics, chemistry, etc., for this purpose. The quick and sure overthrow of the present unreasonable order is his object.

4. He despises public sentiment and acknowledges as moral whatever favors the revolution; as criminal whatever opposes it.

5. He is consecrated; he will not spare, nor does he expect mercy. Between him and society reigns the war of death or life.

6. Stringent with himself, he must be stringent with others. All sentiment must be suppressed by his passion for the revolutionary work. He must be ready to die and to kill.

7. He excludes romance and sentiment and also personal hatred and revenge; never obeying his personal inclinations, but his revolutionary duty.

Toward his Comrades.

8. His friendship is only for his comrade, and is measured by that comrade’s usefulness in the practical work of the revolution.

9. As to important affairs, he must consult with his comrades, but in execution depend upon himself. Each must be self-operating, and must ask help only when imperatively necessary.

10. He shall use himself and his subordinates as capital to be used for the work of revolution, but no part of which can he dispose of without the consent of the persons involved.

11. If a comrade is in danger, he shall not consider his personal feelings, but the interest of the cause.

His Duty toward Society.

12. A new candidate can be taken into the company only after proof of his merit, and upon unanimous consent.

13. He lives in a so-called civilized world because he believes in its speedy destruction. He clings to nothing as it now is, and does not hesitate to destroy any institution. He is no revolutionist if arrested by personal ties.

14. He must obtain entrance everywhere, even in the detective agency and the emperor’s palace.

15. The present society should be divided into categories, the first including those sentenced to immediate death, the others classifying the delinquents according to their rascality.

16. The lists are not to be influenced by personal considerations, but those are to be first destroyed whose death can terrify governments and deprive them of their most intelligent agents.

17. The second category embraces those who are permitted to live, but whose evil deeds will drive the people to open revolt.

18. The third category embraces the dissolute rich whose secrets must be discovered in order to control their resources.

19. The fourth category consists of ambitious officials and liberals whose purposes we must discover so as to prevent their withdrawing from our cause.

20. The fifth category consists of doctrinaire conspirators; they must be urged to action.

21. The sixth category is the women, who are divided into three classes: First, the brainless and heartless; second, the passionate and qualified; and, third, the wholly consecrated, who are to be guarded as the most valuable part of the revolutionary treasures.

The Alarm of January 9, 1886, then edited, in the absence of its editor and his assistant, by August Spies, contained this suggestive editorial:

“The Right to Bear Arms.”—After the conspiracy of the workingmen, the working classes, in 1877, the breaking up of the meeting on the Haymarket Square, the brutal assault upon a gathering of furniture workers in Vorwaerts Turner Hall, the murder of Tessman, and the general clubbing and shooting down of peaceably inclined wage-workers, the proletarians organized the Lehr und Wehr Verein, which in about a year and a half had grown to a membership of one thousand. This was regarded by the capitalists as a menace, and they procured the passage of the militia law, under which it became an offense for any body of men, other than those authorized by the Governor, to assemble with arms, drill or parade the streets. The members of the Lehr und Wehr Verein, mostly Socialists, who believed in the ballot, made up a test case to determine the constitutionality of this act, rejecting the counsel of the extremists. Judge Barnum held the law to be unconstitutional—an appeal was taken—and the Supreme Court upset this decision and held the law constitutional. Thereupon the Lehr und Wehr Verein applied to the Supreme Court of the United States, which within a few days affirmed the decision of the Supreme Court of the State. Do we need comment on this?

That militia law has had its uses. Where there was before a military body publicly organized, whose strength could be easily ascertained, now there exists an organization whose members cannot be estimated, and a network of destructive agencies of modern military character that will defy suppression.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, February 17, editorial:

In France, during strikes, etc., a new method is lately adopted. The workingmen barricade themselves in the factories with provisions, taking possession of the property, which the manufacturers desire to preserve, and will only resort to force for their ejection in the most extreme case. The conflict between capitalism and workingmen is growing constantly sharper, and the indication is that force will bring about decisive results in the battle for liberty.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung of April 30:

We are advised that the police are ordered to be ready for a conflict upon Saturday of next week. The capitalists are thirsting for the blood of workingmen. The workingmen refuse longer to be tortured and treated like dogs, and for this opposition the capitalists cry for blood. Perhaps they may have it, and lose some of their own. To the workingmen we again say: Arm yourselves, but conceal your arms lest they be stolen from you.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, May 3:

Courage, courage, is our cry. Don’t forget the words of Herways: “The host of the oppressors grow pale when thou, weary of thy burden, in the corner puttest the plow; when thou sayest, ‘It is enough.’”

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, May 4:

Blood has flown. It happened as it had to. The militia have not been drilling in vain. It is historical that private property had its origin in violence. The war of classes has come. Yesterday, in front of McCormick’s factory, workmen were shot down whose blood cries for vengeance. In the past, countless victims have been offered on the altars of the golden calf amid the shouts of the capitalistic robbers. One has only to think of East St. Louis, Chicago and other places, to recognize the tactics of the extortioners. The white terror will be answered with the red, for the workmen are not asleep. They modestly asked for eight hours. The answer was to drill the police force and militia, and browbeat those advocating the change. And yesterday blood flowed—the reply of these devils to this modest petition of their slaves. Death rather than a life of wretchedness. The capitalistic tiger lies ready for the jump, his eyes sparkling, eager for murder, and his clutches drawn tight. Self-defense cries, “To arms, to arms!” If you do not defend yourselves, you will be ground by the animal’s teeth.

The powers hostile to the workingmen have made common cause, and our differences must be subordinated to the common purpose. The statement of the capitalistic press, that the workmen yesterday fired first, is a bold, barefaced lie.

In the poor shanty miserably clad women and children are weeping for husband and father. In the palace they clink glasses filled with costly wine and drink to the happiness of the bloody bandits of law and order. Dry your tears, ye poor and wretched; take heart, ye slaves; arise in your might and overthrow the system of robbery.

These are a few of the many articles emanating from the Socialistic propaganda, calling the rabble to murder and destruction. Other declarations printed in the Arbeiter-Zeitung and pronounced upon the stump are in the same virulent spirit, couched in varying language as suggested by the events of the moment, but all breathing defiance and death to the so-called “capitalistic class.” There are also minute and specific directions for the preparation as well as the use of dynamite, Herr Most’s work on that subject having been largely drawn upon for the enlightenment of those who believed that dynamite is the weapon through the use of which the social revolution can be accomplished. Paragraphs, sections and chapters of Bakounine’s “Groundwork for the Social Revolution” were likewise read to the Socialists and published in their organs.

Another source from which to draw inspiration was Reinsdorf, the apostle of Anarchy in Germany. The Chicago Anarchists regarded him as a splendid representative of their class, and praised his attempt on the life of the Emperor of Germany. His death on the scaffold was regarded as martyrdom, and his deeds were frequently extolled. His confederates in conspiracy, Hoedel and Nobiling, were referred to in terms of praise by George A. Schilling at a meeting in West Twelfth Street Turner Hall. Louis Lingg had been personally acquainted with Reinsdorf, and gloried in the man’s work and courage. The extreme section of the Chicago Socialists always sought to inculcate his ideas, and that the reader may gain some notion of Reinsdorf’s character, I reproduce the following translation from a German Socialistic paper, showing his career:

He was the principal leader of all the Anarchists in Germany. The people looked upon him as the savior of their great cause. He was admired not only by men, but also by women. Wherever he went he was given great receptions, and he had many pupils.

Reinsdorf was born in Prussia. When he became of age, he joined the party, and, by his good and rapid work, became in a short time the father of the Anarchistic agitation. But the law pursued him, and he wandered from state to state. In the year 1876 we find him in Switzerland, where he had many followers. One of his pupils and admirers was Max Hoedel, who with Reinsdorf conceived a plot to murder King William of Prussia. The attack upon his life was made by Hoedel on the 11th day of May, 1878. He fired several shots at the aged warrior, but failed, as none of them took effect. They missed their mark. Not satisfied with this, another man, Dr. Nobiling, also a pupil of Reinsdorf, made another attempt three weeks later, by firing a shot-gun filled with buck-shot at the old King; but again without effect. Nobiling’s deed was the consequence of Hoedel’s attempt, and Reinsdorf was the agitator. Failing in this, they concluded to wait some time until their party should get stronger and could secure better material. Among others Louis Lingg joined the Anarchists in Zurich. Louis was then very young, but he became as radical as their chief leader. The Socialists were to have held a Congress there in May, 1880, but the gathering did not take place, as the police had notice, and Reinsdorf and his followers were compelled to leave Zurich and go to Freiburg (Baden), where they held secret meetings and where Reinsdorf declared that he himself would go to Berlin and kill the miserable mahdi by stabbing him to the heart. He went to Berlin to carry out this plan, but was arrested by the police. They could not make out a case of conspiracy against him, but he was sent to prison for several months on the charge of carrying a dagger. After his discharge Reinsdorf traveled to and from Switzerland to Germany, France and Belgium, speaking in all places where he stopped, and gaining many followers. His only desire was to put old Emperor William (commonly called “old Lehmann”) out of the way—to do something great so that all the people would look up to him. His only targets were royal palaces and the palaces of diplomates. He and others then formed a plan to murder the King, and Bismarck, and all the princes and others who were to participate in the dedication of the Germania monument at Ruedesheim on the 28th day of September, 1883. But Reinsdorf met with an accident while crossing a railroad track, and was severely injured. This was a very painful situation for Reinsdorf. The day for action drew near, but he was confined to his bed. Should this beautiful plan be given up on that account? Never! Could not other people accomplish what he had thought out? Certainly. But was it sure that they would have the necessary courage at the critical moment? Could he trust them? Tormented by such thoughts, Reinsdorf finally submitted to the inevitable and confided his mission to two of his comrades. He called these people to his bedside and told them what he wanted done. He presented his plan in detail. Rupsch and Kuechler—these are their names—pledged themselves to do what he desired. They started on the journey with the necessary material, reached Ruedesheim safely, and on the night of the 27th they proceeded to a spot not far from the monument, where the railroad runs near the edge of the forest. They filled a culvert with a large quantity of dynamite, put a fulminating cap into it and drew the fuse into the forest. It was raining at the time, and they covered the fuse with moist ground and tied the end of it to a tree, which they marked by cutting into it. They then returned to Ruedesheim. The next morning they returned to the place. The royal train came. Kuechler gave the signal; Rupsch held his burning cigar to the fuse. One moment of breathless expectation! The train passed, and the explosion—failed. Kuechler asked Rupsch about the failure. The latter showed that the end of the fuse had been lighted, but did not burn because it was damp. They did not give up hope, as the train had to return the same way after the ceremonies were over. A new fuse was attached. Again the royal party passed over the critical ground, where death had been prepared for them. Rupsch lit the fuse again, but it did not burn. An investigation afterwards showed that the fuse only burned a short length and then went out. They had followed all Reinsdorf’s instructions but one—instead of water-proof fuse they had supplied themselves with the common kind. With mutual recriminations, Kuechler and Rupsch took the dynamite from under the culvert and went back to Ruedesheim, where they got gloriously drunk. After they had sobered up, they returned to Elberfeld and reported to Reinsdorf, who already knew that his beautiful plan had miscarried. With great wrath he listened to them and said: “No such thing could have happened to me.” He thought there would be another chance. Then he would not be in the hospital, but could carry it out himself. His hopes were in vain. After his discharge from the hospital in Elberfeld, he proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he was arrested. The police found out that he was an accomplice in the conspiracy, but, putting him through the sieve, they failed to get anything out of him, as he would not answer a single question. He said: “You may ask me as much as you wish, I shall not answer.” Bachman, one of his companions and an accomplice, escaped to Luxemburg, where he thought he would be safe from the law, but he also was arrested and extradited and sent to Elberfeld to keep Reinsdorf company, together with Rupsch and Kuechler.

Reinsdorf and his accomplices were tried before the courts of Leipsic, and the trial lasted seven days. Bachman and two others were sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. Rupsch got a life sentence, while Reinsdorf was sentenced to be beheaded. At his trial Reinsdorf was as stubborn as ever. He denied everything. When he was asked who he was he answered:

“I am an Anarchist.”

“What is Anarchy?” he was asked.

“A company in which every sensible man can develop his ability. To permit this no one should be burdened with excessive labor; want and misery should be banished; every force should cease; every stupidity, every superstition should be banished from the world.”

The presiding judge asked him if he was guilty or not, and to answer with “yes” or “no.”

Reinsdorf answered with a steady voice: “I look upon this whole thing as a question of power. If we German Anarchists had a couple of army corps at our disposition, then I would not have to talk to this court. I for my part have nothing to say. Do with me as you please.”

After the court had finished, Reinsdorf resumed his remarks and said: “The attempt at Niederwald failed because ‘the hand of Providence appeared,’ as the prosecution terms it. I tell you the awkward hand of Rupsch did it. I am sorry to say I had no one else at my disposal. I have nothing to repent, only that the attempt failed. At the factories the people are going to ruin merely for the benefit of the stockholders. These honest Christians swindle the working people of half of their living. My lawyer wanted to save my head, but for such a hounded proletarian as I am the quickest death is the best. If I had ten heads I would offer them with joy and lay them on the block for the good cause.”

Before going to the scaffold, Reinsdorf ate a hearty meal, smoked a cigar, and sang a song. He walked steadily into the court-yard, where the scaffold was standing, guarded by a squad of soldiers, besides about a hundred other persons.

“Are you August Reinsdorf?” asked the sheriff.

“Yes, that I am.”

The death warrant was then read and the royal signature shown to him. The executioner then bore him to the scaffold. Reinsdorf’s last words were: “Down with barbarism; hurrah for Anarchy!” The axe fell and the head was severed from his body.

The atonement for the decapitation of Reinsdorf followed quickly. The sentence had hardly been carried into execution when, on the 13th of January, 1885, “the miserable Rumpff,” as they called him, was stabbed and killed by the hand of an Anarchist at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Sic semper tyrannis.

With such an example of courage before them, and the revenge his execution invited, it is almost needless to remark that the bloodthirsty Anarchists of Chicago read with eager avidity anything pertaining to their hero. Accordingly, in the Vorbote of December 16, 1885, the following is to be found:

REINSDORF’S INHERITANCE.

In the pamphlet about Reinsdorf there is a letter published which our great martyr wrote the day previous to his decapitation. We are able now to publish two other letters which Reinsdorf wrote at the same time, to his parents and to his second brother.

One letter reads as follows:

HALLE, February 6, 1885.

My Dear Brother: To-day is my last day, and I could not let it pass without writing to you to show you that I always remembered you with brotherly love. When you have read this letter I shall be one of the fortunates who are past and one of whom they can speak nothing but good. Now, my deeds, specially alleged against me before the courts, lie open before the world, and, although I am sentenced to death, I have the feeling that I did my duty; and this feeling it is which makes my last walk easy, to receive joyfully the everlasting sleep as something well earned.

Dear August, you have often had trouble and sorrow, although you are in the blossom of life. People usually heed the words of one deceased more than the speeches of philosophers. I want to tell you a few words. Bear with strength, endurance and friendly submission the burden which you have laden upon yourself, and try to have satisfaction in it, so you can raise your children that they may be useful to you and an adornment to you. What would you gain by it, if you should participate in the good-for-nothing diversions of the people? Think, I could have done it, but I preferred the wandering existence of an Anarchist.

When you, therefore, in years to come, look back upon the days of honest, peaceable labor done, and of hard duty fulfilled, then you will be filled with a joyful certainty and a quiet happiness that will repay you for all your sufferings. We still live, unfortunately, in a world of egotism and incompleteness, and only a few are in position to swim against the stream—even at the risk of their lives. You never did it. Good. So do your duty as the father of your family. Good-by. Accept a greeting from my heart for your wife and family, from

Your brother, AUGUST.

The second letter is directed to his parents:

HALLE, February 6, 1885.

My Dear Parents: Take in silence what cannot be helped! Who would sacrifice their children, if not you, who have so many? Or should the wealthy do it, when it is the cause of the poor for which we fight? Or should we lay our hands in our laps and wait until others have sacrificed themselves for us? And is it such a great sacrifice I bring? Sick as I am, and with a prospect of long suffering, it should be looked upon as a blessing when such an existence is put to a quick death. And what an end is it? Whoever they are, progressive or reactionary, liberal or conservative, they all hate the Anarchist Reinsdorf. As they have condemned his doings, they cheer his death, the crown of a faithful, self-sacrificing man. But his steadfastness, in defiance of thousands of obstacles, no one can deny. And this shall be your consolation.

How many have had to die for smaller causes? How many have lost their lives in dynamite conquests? Take all this in consideration and don’t let your hearts be made heavy through the babble of paltry and narrow-minded people. My last thoughts are of you and of brothers and sisters, and of the great cause for which I die. Deep-felt wishes fill my heart for the prosperity of every one of you. Greetings to my brothers and sisters, especially Carl, Emilie, Emma and Anna, to whom I could not write personally. Shake once more their hands for me. You and I embrace with all the love of childhood, and I greet you a thousand times. Good-by, all.

Yours, AUGUST.

What Herr Johann Most, the present American leader of the irreconcilables, thought of Reinsdorf, may be judged by the following extracts from Most’s biography:

From the 15th to the 22nd of December, 1884, eight workingmen, who had been captured in the war of the poor against the rich, were sitting in the dock, not to have justice passed upon them, but to await the sentence of might which the judges, acting as mouth-pieces for the ruling powers, had in preparation for them. The most prominent figure among these victims of a barbaric order of society was August Reinsdorf. To this man my little book is to be a tribute of esteem.

I am well aware of the difficulty of my otherwise quite modest undertaking, to write a biography of the father of the Anarchistic movement within the territory of the German language, yet I hope to do the brothers near and far a service, for the time being at least, by sketching for them a likeness of a true hero of the Social Revolution....

Indeed Reinsdorf was not an agitator of the common sort. Speeches delivered occasionally or written articles were to him only means to a higher purpose—incentives to action.

Since he had recognized his ideal in Anarchism; ... since the necessity of the “tactics of terror” had dawned upon him in contradistinction to the tactics of petitioning, voting, “parliamenting,” bargaining, and of the peaceable and legitimate hide-and-seek practice—all his thinking and planning was directed to but one thing, he knew of but one endeavor, he gave his entire being to but one motive power of the Social Revolution—that was the propaganda of action.

In this regard he may be put beside the most noble conspirators of ancient and modern times....

To be a revolutionist indeed, one must possess the faculty of thinking with the most acute clearness. But religious “fog” is the opposite of clearness of intellect. Yea, where religious nonsense has once taken a deep root, there every mental development is actually excluded, and a kind of idiocy formally takes its place....

Quite different does the matter stand in the case of a “proletarian.” If he once recognize the old Lord God with his thunderbolt as an invented scarecrow which a shrewd gang of rascals have placed before paradise,—that man should not eat of the tree of knowledge, but that he should rather wait in patience for the roasted birds which, after his death, come flying into his mouth from a heavenly kitchen,—if the poor devil has learned to see that his namesake, too, wherewith they had tried to scare him previously, is also an invention of malicious swindlers,—then he soon applies the rule of the critic to the “high” and “highest” idols of earth. He loses respect for the so-called “Governments” and more and more learns to see in them a horde of brutal tormentors. These custodians of existing treasures attract his eye also to the possessors of the riches of the earth, and soon the question dawns upon him, Who has created all these things? The answer comes of itself. He and his like have done that. To them, therefore, belongs the whole world. They only need to take.

Thus the man, having cut loose from God, becomes the revolutionist par excellence.

After Reinsdorf had succeeded in finding people who he thought were fit to take part in revolutionary actions and even risk their lives, he was also fortunate enough to discover a source from which dynamite, that glorious stuff which will literally make a road for liberty, could be procured.

And how did he die? Shortly before the moment of death, and while in the hands of the hangman, he cried out: “Down with barbarism! Let Anarchy live!”

These are admonishing words, which no one should leave unheeded who marches under the flag of the Revolution.

Well, then! Let us act accordingly! Away with all sentimental hesitation when it comes to strike a blow against State, Church and Society and their representatives, as well as against all that exists.

Let us never forget that the revolutionists of modern times can enter into the society of free and equal men only over ruins and ashes, over blood and dead bodies.

Let us rise to the height of an August Reinsdorf! Let us complete the work which he so boldly began! Only thus can we avenge ourselves; only thus can we show ourselves worthy of him; only thus can we conquer.

Workingmen! Look down into the freshly dug pit. There lies your best friend and adviser, an advance champion of your cause, a martyred witness to the greatness of the Anarchistic idea. Live, strive and act as he! Anarchists, in your name I lay the well-earned laurel-wreath upon his grave....

The retribution for the annihilation of Reinsdorf came rapidly. Scarcely had the sentence been spoken, and before it had been executed, the dagger of a Nemesis had already taken revenge. On January 13, 1885, the head of the German detective forces, the miserable Rumpff, was stabbed to death by the hand of an Anarchist.

“Sic semper tyrannis—So be it to all tyrants!” was heard everywhere. With great satisfaction every honorable man, especially every man of work, experienced that Rumpff had to die because he was the cause of Reinsdorf’s death....

The combustibles are heaped up. Proletarians, throw the igniting spark amongst them.

Up with force! Let the Social Resolution live!

The revolutionists of Chicago appear more careful about exposing themselves to danger than their foreign co-conspirators, and, while counseling bloodshed, suggest ways of bringing about destruction with a minimum of danger. In the Arbeiter-Zeitung of March 16, 1885, there appeared the following editorial, suggesting the most effective way of using dynamite:

In all revolutionary action three different epochs of time are to be distinguished: First the portion of preparation for an action, then the moment of the action itself, and finally that portion of time which follows the deed. All these portions of time are to be considered one after another.

In the first place, a revolutionary action should succeed. Then as little as possible ought to be sacrificed,—that is, in other words, the danger of discovery ought to be weakened as much as possible, and, if it can be, should be reduced to naught. This calls for one of the most important tactical principles, which briefly might be formulated in the words: Saving of the combatants. All this constrains us to further explain the measures of organization and tactics which must be taken into consideration in such an action.

Mention was made of the danger of discovery. That is, in fact, present in all three of the periods of conflict. This danger is imminent in the preparation of the action itself, and finally, after the completion thereof. The question is now, How can it be met?

If we view the different phases of the development of a deed, we have, first, the time of preparation.

It is easily comprehensible for everybody that the danger of discovery is the greater the more numerous the mass of people or the group is which contemplates a deed, and vice versa. On the other hand, the threatening danger approaches the closer the better the acting persons are known to the authorities of the place of action, and vice versa. Holding fast to this, the following results:

In the commission of a deed, a comrade who does not live at the place of action—that is, a comrade of some other place—ought, if possibility admits, to participate in the action; or, formulated differently, a revolutionary deed ought to be enacted where one is not known.

A further conclusion which may be drawn from what was mentioned is this:

Whoever is willing to execute a deed has, in the first place, to put the question to himself, whether he is able, or not, to carry out the action by himself. If the former is the case, let him absolutely initiate no one into the matter and let him act alone; but if that is not the case, then let him look, with the greatest care, for just so many fellows as he must have, absolutely—not one more nor less; with these let him unite himself into a fighting group.

The founding of special groups of action or of war is an absolute necessity. If it were attempted to make use of an existing group to effect an action, discovery of the deed would follow upon its heels, if it came to a revolutionary action at all, which would be very doubtful. It is especially true in America, where reaction has velvet paws, and where asinine confidence is, from a certain direction, directly without bounds. In the preparation, even, endless debates would develop; the thing would be hung upon the big bell; it would be at first a public secret, and then, after the thing was known to everybody, it would also reach the long ears of the holy Hermandad (the sacred precinct of the watchman over the public safety), which, as is known to every man, woman and child, hear the grass grow and the fleas cough.

In the formation of a group of action, the greatest care must be exercised. Men must be selected who have head and heart in the right spot.

Has the formation of a fighting group been effected, has the intention been developed, does each one see perfectly clear the manner of the execution, then action must follow with the greatest possible swiftness, without delay, for now they move within the scope of the greatest danger, simply from the very adjacent reason, because the select allies might yet commit treason without exposing themselves in so doing.

In the action itself, one must be personally at the place, to select personally that point of the place of action, and that part of the action, which are the most important and are coupled with the greatest danger, upon which depend chiefly the success or failure of the whole affair.

Has the deed been completed, then the group of action dissolves at once, without further parley, according to an understanding which must be had beforehand, leaves the place of action, and scatters in all directions.

If this theory is acted upon, then the danger of discovery is extremely small—yea, reduced to almost nothing, and from this point of view the author ventures to say, thus, and not otherwise, must be acted, if the advance is to be proper.

It would be an easy matter to furnish the proof, by the different revolutionary acts in which the history of the immediate past is so rich, that the executors sinned against the one or the other of the aforementioned principles, and that in this fact lies the cause of the discovery, and the loss to us of very important fellow-champions connected therewith; but we will be brief, and leave that to the individual reflection of the reader. But one fact is established—that is this: That all the rules mentioned can be observed without great difficulty; further, that the blood of our best comrades can be spared thereby; finally, as a consequence of the last-mentioned, that light actions can be increased materially, for the complete success of an action is the best impulse to a new deed, and the things must always succeed when the rules of wisdom are followed.

A further question which might probably be raised would be this: In case a special or conditional group must be formed for the purpose of action, what is the duty, in that case, of the public groups, or the entire public organization, in view of the aforesaid action? The answer is very near at hand. In the first place, they have to serve as a covering—as a shield behind which one of the most effective weapons of revolution is bared; then these permanent groups are to be the source from which the necessary pecuniary means are drawn and fellow-combatants are recruited; finally, the accomplished deeds are to furnish to permanent groups the material for critical illustration. These discussions are to wake the spirit of rebellion,—that important lever of the advancing course of the development of our race,—without which we would be forever nailed down to the state of development of a gorilla or an orang-outang. This right spirit is to be inflamed, the revolutionary instinct is to be roused which still sleeps in the breast of man, although these monsters, which, by an oversight of nature, were covered with human skin, are earnestly endeavoring to cripple the truly noble and elevated form of man by the pressure of a thousand and again a thousand years—to morally castrate the human race. Finally, the means and form of conquest are to be found by untiring search and comparison, which enhance the strength of each proletarian a thousandfold, and make him the giant Briareus, alone able to crush the ogres of Capital.

I have thus shown the manner and methods by which Socialism seeks to gain a foothold in America. In their declarations of principles and encouragements to violence, these agitators have proved themselves traitors to their country or the country of their adoption, and ingrates to society. They have sought, and are seeking, to establish “Anarchy in the midst of the state, war in times of peace, and conspiracy in open day.” They are the “Huns and Vandals of modern civilization.”

As De Tocqueville says: “Democracy and Socialism are the antipodes of each other. While Democracy extends the sphere of individual independence, Socialism contracts it. Democracy develops a man’s whole manhood; Socialism makes him an agent, an instrument, a cipher. Democracy and Socialism harmonize on one point only—the equality which they introduce. But mark the difference: Democracy seeks equality in liberty, while Socialism seeks it in servitude and constraint.”

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Chapter V

The Socialistic Programme—Fighting a Compromise—Opposition to the Eight-hour Movement—The Memorial to Congress—Eight Hours’ Work Enough—The Anarchist Position—An Alarm Editorial—“Capitalists and Wage Slaves”—Parsons’ Ideas—The Anarchists and the Knights of Labor—Powderly’s Warning—Working up a Riot—The Effect of Labor-saving Machinery—Views of Edison and Wells—The Socialistic Demonstration—The Procession of April 25, 1886—How the Arbeiter-Zeitung Helped on the Crisis—The Secret Circular of 1886.

WHILE the Socialists are bent on a revolution in the economic condition of the working class, or, as they choose to term it, the proletariat, they have conclusively shown that they do not desire to further that movement by pacific means. Imbued with the doctrines of violence and intent on the complete destruction of government, they do not seek their end by orderly, legitimate methods. This fact has been most thoroughly established by the extracts from their public declarations which I have already given.

But if any doubts still exist with reference thereto, they are completely dissipated by an examination into the attitude assumed by the Socialists toward the labor problem as it exists at the present day. It is not my purpose to enter into a detailed review of the whole field. I will simply call attention to one fact, and in that fact one sweeps the labor horizon, viewed from the Socialistic standpoint, as the astronomer sweeps the heavens with his telescope, striking the most prominent objects within the range of observation. This one fact is the position of the Socialists toward the eight-hour movement.

It is generally known that many economists and agitators, with neither affiliations nor sympathy for Socialism, have been contending for years that with the rapid increase in labor-saving machinery and the consequent displacement of labor, reduction in the hours of service has become an absolute necessity. The points made in support of this position are numerous, and as the most salient ones appear in a memorial on the part of a National Labor Convention to the Committee on Depression in Labor and Business of the Forty-sixth Congress, drafted November 10, 1879, I may briefly quote a few. The memorial asked a reduction:

1. In the name of political economy. “All political economists are agreed,” they said, “that the standard of wages is determined by the cost of subsistence rather than by the number of hours employed. Wages are recognized as resulting from the necessary cost of living in any given community. The cost of subsistence for an average family determines the rate, and it is for this reason that single men can save more if they will.”

2. In the interest of civilization. “The battle for a reduction of the hours of labor is a struggle for a wider civilization.” With less hours, more leisure is afforded for mental and social improvement. In proof the memorialists appealed to the past and to the fact that one day of rest in seven has raised the social condition of the people. Besides, they urged, the “history of the short-hour movement in England proved conclusively that every reduction of time in the United Kingdom had invariably been followed by an increase of wages,” and the consequent improvement of workingmen.

3. The changed relations between production and consumption demand remedial legislation. A reduction of hours would give more men employment. Under existing conditions, capital and production have increased while the number of persons employed has fallen off.

These are doctrines one would think the Socialist, pretending to have the interests of labor at heart, would unquestionably and heartily indorse. Far from it. True to his nature as a social disturber, disorganizer and malcontent, he sees in it a possible solution of many labor troubles and the approach to a rearrangement of existing conditions on a basis different from his own theories. When this question arose in Chicago in the winter of 1885-86, the Alarm entered its most emphatic protest. In its issue of December 12, 1885, it had this to say, under the heading, “No Compromise”:

We of the Internationale are frequently asked why we do not give our active support to the proposed eight-hour movement. Let us take what we can get, say our eight-hour friends, else by asking too much we may get nothing.

We answer: Because we will not compromise. Either our position that capitalists have no right to the exclusive ownership of the means of life is a true one, or it is not. If we are correct, then to concede the point that capitalists have the right to eight hours of our labor, is more than a compromise; it is a virtual concession that the wage system is right. If capitalists have the right to own labor or to control the results of labor, then clearly we have no business dictating the terms upon which we may be employed. We cannot say to our employers, “Yes, we acknowledge your right to employ us; we are satisfied that the wage system is all right, but we, your slaves, propose to dictate the terms upon which we will work.” How inconsistent! And yet that is exactly the position of our eight-hour friends. They presume to dictate to capital, while they maintain the justness of the capitalistic system; they would regulate wages while defending the claims of the capitalists to the absolute control of industry.

These sentiments were frequently reiterated by A. R. Parsons, who was the editor of the Alarm; and in August Spies he found an energetic ally. Among other things Spies said concerning the movement:

We do not antagonize the eight-hour movement. Viewing it from the standpoint that it is a social struggle, we simply predict that it is a lost battle, and we will prove that, even though the eight-hour system should be established at this late day, the wage-workers would gain nothing. They would still remain the slaves of their masters.

Suppose the hours of labor should be shortened to eight, our productive capacity would thereby not be diminished. The shortening of the hours of labor in England was immediately followed by a general increase of labor-saving machines, with a subsequent discharge of a proportionate number of employés. The reverse of what had been sought took place. The exploitation of those at work was intensified. They now performed more labor, and produced more than before.

The movement, however, took a firm hold of the laboring classes. They saw in it a chance to secure more leisure, and, inspired by their anti-Socialistic leaders, did all in their power to further it. There were then in Chicago a great many unemployed, and under the plea that a reduction in the hours of toil would not only give more time for self-improvement, but necessitate the employment of many of the idle throng, the leaders advocated its speedy introduction. At this time the general sentiment prevailed that it was simply a movement for a reduction in working-time, the question of wages not being involved. Some few irresponsible talkers of the Socialistic stamp, it is true, held out that it was to be a contention for wages as well, but the most influential and conservative representatives of labor insisted that they only wanted eight hours’ work for eight-hours’ pay. Grand Master Workman Powderly held to the latter view and repeatedly urged the members of the Knights of Labor not to go beyond that demand. He even intimated a doubt if it were the part of wisdom and policy to undertake at the time a strike of the kind, in view of the complications then growing out of the Missouri Pacific Railway—known as the Gould system—“tie-up.” Traffic and industry had been seriously affected throughout the West by Martin Irons’ stubbornness, and it is evident that Powderly had his misgivings about the outcome of an eight-hour strike. However, the leaders continued their agitation, and it was decided that the resolution adopted in 1884 by a number of trades organizations in national session for an eight-hour strike on May 1, 1886, should be carried out in Chicago, as in other large manufacturing and trade centers. Had this simple proposition not been “loaded,” the result of the movement might have been different, but, as the time drew near, it became quite apparent that, despite Powderly’s warnings, the question of wages was to cut a leading figure. It was developed that the demand for a reduction of hours was to be accompanied with a demand for the same wages as under the old ten-hour system. This was the rock upon which they subsequently foundered. Had they been content to accept decreased wages and relied upon increased efficiency and skill and the logic of events to secure increased pay in the future, they might have scored many victories, if not a complete success.

But they were alike unmindful of Powderly’s advice and the teachings of history. They seemingly forgot that the employers would naturally resist any such sweeping concession, and that, as in other instances, the unemployed would at once be installed, whenever possible, in their places, and that in industries where there did not exist an over-production, the capacity of machines would be more heavily taxed and new machines would be introduced to do work hitherto done by hand. A London publication has shown how, in recent years, in the extremity of bitter strikes, manufactories have increased their labor-saving machinery to offset the absence of their workmen and how invention in the line of new machines has been greatly stimulated by a stubborn conflict between employer and employé. Hon. David A. Wells has also pointed out a similar result in this country. Identically the same thing happened in several establishments in Chicago. The unemployed and new machines were called into requisition whenever possible.

But labor-saving machinery need not necessarily be regarded as an enemy of labor. That doctrine, which had its origin at the time when a riot in Spain followed the introduction of a machine to make woolens, and which continued until the invention of the sewing-machine, has in this day come to be regarded by all enlightened economists as a nightmare of the musty past. The fact is labor has been aided and benefited by machinery.

Prof. Edison, the great inventor, is authority for the statement that the increase in machinery and inventions during the last fifty years has doubled the wages of workingmen and reduced the cost of the necessaries of life 50 per cent. “For the first time in the world’s history,” he says, “a skilled mechanic can buy a barrel of flour with a single day’s work.” Hon. David A. Wells, in an article in the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1887, treating of the depression of prices since 1873, also demonstrates the fact that the reductions, which he states to be 30 per cent., during the time under his review, are due to inventions. Edison goes still further in his statement with reference to the enhancement of wages. He predicts, rather too glowingly perhaps, that in another generation even “the unskilled laborer, if sober and industrious, will have a house of his own, a library, a piano and a horse and carriage,” with all the comforts that these imply.

Anarchist Spies evidently took no stock in such a condition as the result of new and improved mechanical appliances, for in his early opposition to the inauguration of the eight-hour movement he declared that “for a man who desires to remain a wage slave, the introduction of every new improvement and machine is a threatening competitor.”

I have thus pointed to some facts bearing on strikes and wages because it has since transpired that the Anarchists or Socialists, intent on precipitating the “social revolution,” were the principal instigators of the demand for ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work, thereby hoping to irritate the employers to determined resistance and the workingmen of non-Socialistic ideas to the point of violence. Past experience was cast aside under their clandestine guidance. While the movement was in its infancy the Socialists, as such, held aloof, but, the moment they saw that it was gaining strength and was likely to involve all the wage-workers in the city, and that eight hours on a basis of reduced pay might be secured, they perceived their opportunity to complicate matters by the introduction of a demand for the old wages with reduced time. This at once threw down the gauntlet. While before they had opposed the movement, they now became active agitators in its behalf and appeared more solicitous about its certain inauguration than they were about its successful ending. Their organs bristled with incendiary language. Their speakers could hardly find words strong enough to fire their auditors in the demand for eight hours. They even got up a procession under the auspices of the Central Labor Union, and, on Sunday, April 25, 1886, paraded the streets with red flags and red badges.

Among some of the mottoes displayed were: “The Social Revolution,” “Workingmen, Arm Yourselves,” “Down with Throne, Altar and Moneybags,” and “Might makes Right, and You are the Strongest.”

The procession massed on the Lake Front. There the leading speakers were loud in encouraging the strike for eight hours. Parsons maintained that “if the demands of workingmen were met by a universal lock-out, the signal would be taken as one of ‘war, and war to the knife.’” Spies declared that “the eight-hour day had been argued for twenty years. We at last can hope to realize it.” Schwab and Fielden were alike emphatic.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung likewise heartily indorsed the movement. In its issue of April 26, 1886, appeared an editorial of which the following is the concluding paragraph:

What a modest demand, the introduction of the eight-hour day! And yet a corps of madmen could not demean themselves worse than the capitalistic extortioners. They continually threaten with their disciplined police and their strong militia,—and these are not empty threats. This is proved by the history of the last few years. It is a nice thing, this patience, and the laborer, alas! has too much of this article; but one must not indulge in a too frivolous play with it. If you go further, his patience will cease; then it will be no longer a question of the eight-hour day, but a question of emancipation from wage slavery.

In the same paper two days later the editor said:

What will the first of May bring? The workingmen bold and determined. The decisive day has arrived. The workingman, inspired by the justice of his cause, demands an alleviation of his lot, a lessening of his burden. The answer, as always, is: “Insolent rabble! Do you mean to dictate to us? That you will do to your sorrow. Hunger will soon rid you of your desire for any notions of liberty. Police, executioners and militia will give their aid.”

Men of labor, so long as you acknowledge the gracious kicks of your oppressors with words of gratitude, so long you are faithful dogs. Have your skulls been penetrated by a ray of light, or does hunger drive you to shake off your servile nature, that you offend your extortioners? They are enraged, and will attempt, through hired murderers, to do away with you like mad dogs.

When the eventful day—May 1—arrived, the Arbeiter-Zeitung became more menacing than ever, and the following appeared:

Bravely forward! The conflict has begun. An army of wage-laborers are idle. Capitalism conceals its tiger claws behind the ramparts of order. Workmen, let your watchword be: No compromise! Cowards to the rear! Men to the front!

The die is cast. The first of May has come. For twenty years the working people have been begging extortioners to introduce the eight-hour system, but have been put off with promises. Two years ago they resolved that the eight-hour system should be introduced in the United States on the first day of May, 1886. The reasonableness of this demand was conceded on all hands. Everybody, apparently, was in favor of shortening the hours; but, as the time approached, a change became apparent. That which was in theory modest and reasonable, became insolent and unreasonable. It became apparent at last that the eight-hour hymn had only been struck up to keep the labor dunces from Socialism.

That the laborers might energetically insist upon the eight-hour movement, never occurred to the employer. And it is proposed again to put them off with promises. We are not afraid of the masses of laborers, but of their pretended leaders. Workmen, insist upon the eight-hour movement. “To all appearances it will not pass off smoothly.” The extortioners are determined to bring their laborers back to servitude by starvation. It is a question whether the workmen will submit, or will impart to their would-be murderers an appreciation of modern views. We hope the latter.

In the same issue of the Arbeiter-Zeitung also appeared the following, in a conspicuous place:

It is said that on the person of one of the arrested comrades in New York a list of membership has been found, and that all the comrades compromised have been arrested. Therefore, away with all rolls of membership, and minute-books, where such are kept. Clean your guns, complete your ammunition. The hired murderers of the capitalists, the police and militia, are ready to murder. No workingman should leave his house in these days with empty pockets.

The consummate inconsistency of the Socialists is thus no better illustrated in what has already been shown than in their record in Chicago. They have always been eager to jump on top of the band wagon, to paraphrase a famous expression of Emery A. Storrs, when they thought that it gave them a chance to join in the lead of the procession; and, the moment they had a voice in directing the music, they led it beyond the mere sentiments of a Marseillaise. Take each formidable strike in the city, and invariably they have instigated the rabble to deeds of disorder and violence. What care they for labor reforms accomplished through peaceable agitation? It is only when a pretext is presented for widening the breach between capital and labor, and hastening the time for revolution, that the Socialists join in any movement looking to the real benefit of labor. It is true, they have figured in labor reforms, such as the agitation for national and State bureaus of labor statistics, the abolition of convict labor in competition with outside industries, the prevention of child labor in factories and work-shops, the sanitary inspection of tenement-houses and factories; but all these have been merely side issues to their one and controlling purpose—Revolution. For appearance’ sake they have boasted of their achievements in the lines indicated, but it is a fact of history that, without the efforts of non-Socialistic labor, none of the reforms so far accomplished would ever have been secured. The fact is that Socialists and Anarchists are radically opposed to the whole wage system and only join in the demands of law-observing and peace-loving labor as a means to one end—opportunity for disturbance. For this purpose alone they have become members of the Knights of Labor, and, once in, they have proved an element of disorder and contention. So pronounced had they become in fomenting trouble during the eight-hour agitation that Mr. Powderly finally found it necessary to issue a secret circular to the order in the spring of 1886. In that circular, among other things, he said:

Men who own capital are not our enemies. If that theory held good, the workman of to-day would be the enemy of his fellow-toiler on the morrow, for, after all, it is how to acquire capital and how to use it properly that we are endeavoring to learn. No! The man of capital is not necessarily the enemy of the laborer; on the contrary, they must be brought closer together. I am well aware that some extremists will say I am advocating a weak plan and will say that bloodshed and destruction of property alone will solve the problem. If a man speaks such sentiments in an assembly read for him the charge which the Master Workman repeats to the newly initiated who join our “army of peace.” If he repeats such nonsense put him out.

Wise words and well spoken.

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Chapter VI

The Eight-hour Movement—Anarchist Activity—The Lock-out at McCormick’s—Distorting the Facts—A Socialist Lie—The True Facts about McCormick’s—Who Shall Run the Shops?—Abusing the “Scabs”—High Wages for Cheap Work—The Union Loses $3,000 a Day—Preparing for Trouble—Arming the Anarchists—Ammunition Depots—Pistols and Dynamite—Threatening the Police—The Conspirators Show the White Feather—Capt. O’Donnell’s Magnificent Police Work—The Revolution Blocked—A Foreign Reservation—An Attempt to Mob the Police—The History of the First Secret Meeting—Lingg’s First Appearance in the Conspiracy—The Captured Documents—Bloodshed at McCormick’s—“The Battle Was Lost”—Officer Casey’s Narrow Escape.

THE events immediately preceding the inauguration of the eight-hour strike were remarkable in the opportunities they afforded Anarchists for arousing workingmen against capital and stirring up their worst passions. The leaders had already intensified the clamor for reduced working-time, and only the occasion was needed to fully arouse the true ruffianism behind the Socialistic rabble. This occasion was presented in the troubles that grew out of the “lock-out” at McCormick’s Harvester Works, and, as the facts in connection therewith are necessary to a clear and comprehensive understanding of the situation, I shall briefly review them. Before doing so, however, it may be well to premise by saying that the real state of affairs in that trouble was greatly exaggerated, and that, instead of dividing responsibility, the Socialistic orators sought to throw the sole burden upon the owners and managers of that establishment, charging them, in the heat and excitement of the times, with gross violation of pledged faith to the men employed, and instigating even violent resistance to the installation of new men, or “scabs,” as they were opprobriously termed, into the vacated places.

This so-called “lock-out” occurred on February 16, 1886, and through it some twelve hundred men became idle. The Anarchists proceeded at once to distort every fact in connection with it. The view they presented of the affair may be best shown by the following extract from a history of the Chicago Anarchists published by the Socialistic Publishing Society:

The employés of that establishment had been for some time perfecting their organization, and at last had presented a petition for the redress of certain grievances and a general advance of wages. The dispute arose over an additional demand that a guarantee be given that no man in the factory should be discharged for having acted as a representative of his comrades. This was absolutely refused. A strike in the factory in the preceding April had been adjusted on the basis that none of the men who served on committees, etc., and made themselves conspicuous in behalf of their fellow workmen, would be discharged for so doing. This agreement has been wantonly violated, and every man who had incurred the displeasure of Mr. McCormick was not only discharged, but black-listed, in many cases being unable to obtain employment in other shops.

It thus appears that the Socialist leaders not only hoped to utilize the strike to precipitate their revolution, but, by purposely misstating the grievances of McCormick’s men, to engender a bitter and violent feeling against that establishment. Now, what were the true facts in the case? Along in February the employés in the works asked for a uniformity of wages, the re-employment, as occasion demanded, of all old hands, who had been out of work since the strike in April preceding, and the discharge of five non-union men employed in the foundry. Mr. Cyrus McCormick generously conceded the first two demands, but firmly declined to discharge the non-union men, as he regarded this as an interference with the company’s right of employing whom they pleased. Thereupon the employés held a meeting and formulated an ultimatum, in which they insisted upon the discharge as requested, “not because,” as they said, “they wanted to abridge the privilege of hiring and discharging, but because Foreman Ward threatened to pursue old hands with such vindictiveness that he would drive them over the ‘Black Road,’ or else they would have to walk in their nakedness,” and in justice to the old employés the non-union workmen ought to be “thrown out.” Mr. McCormick took the position that this was an attempt to dictate that only union men should be employed in the works, and he finally declared that the company had always decided and always would decide who were best suited to do its work, and whom or how many men it would employ or discharge. If the concessions already made were not satisfactory, he would close the works.

During the strike of the preceding spring, McCormick had done just what other manufacturers had done in similar cases—introduced new machinery to perform work hitherto done by hand. He had put in new molding apparatus and had found that the new machines in the hands of ordinary laborers, as soon as they learned to handle them, turned out daily far more molds and more reliable ones than the old hand process. On the outbreak of the trouble in February there were fifteen men employed in the foundry,—ten old hands and five non-union men. The services of all of them might thus have been dispensed with, since skilled labor was not necessary, and, with the addition of more machines and a few raw hands, just as much and just as good work, he claimed, might have been produced. But the owners desired to favor the employés, and, having granted a uniformity of wages even to the extent of advancing the pay of ordinary labor to $1.50 per day, a sum greater than that paid by similar industries elsewhere, and having promised to give preference to old employés when additional hands were needed, they resolved not to be dictated to by outside malcontents nor to discharge men who had done efficient work for the company.

The grant of such a request would, they held, be virtually placing the management of the concern in the hands of outsiders. When, therefore, the employés, instigated by the Anarchists, resolved to strike for their demand, McCormick took time by the forelock and ordered the works closed on and after nine o’clock on the morning of February 16, to remain closed until the strikers decided to return.

By this “lock-out” the employés were deprived of $3,000 a day in the shape of wages, that amount representing the daily payroll of the concern. Meanwhile, pending the lock-out, the company canvassed the possibility of an early resumption of business and quietly perfected arrangements for that step, which they concluded to take on March 1. Of course, this contemplated move enraged all the groups in the city. The strikers in the vicinity of the factory were especially excited. Ever since the establishment had closed its doors the neighborhood had been infested with idlers and vicious-looking men. They had all felt confident that the firm would be finally forced to submit, but when it gradually dawned upon their minds that arrangements had actually been made for a resumption of work without reference to the wishes of the “outs,” they determined to prevent it by force. They were the first to decide on violent measures, and they presented their purpose to the members of Carpenters’ Union No. 1. The result was that two secret meetings of the armed men of both unions were held between February 27 and March 3 at Greif’s Hall. The first meeting called out nearly all the “armed men” of the Metal-workers’ Union and about one hundred and forty men belonging to International Carpenters’ Union No. 1, some with rifles, revolvers and dynamite bombs. They then and there formulated a plan to prevent the “scabs” from going to work. The plan was that the metal-workers should gather in the vicinity of the factory at about five o’clock on the morning the works were to be reopened, well equipped with bombs, rifles and revolvers. Those who did not possess rifles were to secure revolvers and bombs, which could be obtained, they were told, on Blue Island Avenue, between Twenty-second Street and McCormick’s. At that place, on giving the pass-word and number of the place, every member would be supplied. In the event of their running short of ammunition, they were to repair to that place, and they would find some one there always to wait on them. It was given out that the place was run by the metal-workers, who would see to it that all necessary bombs were on hand. Members having friends living in the vicinity of the factory were to stay with them over night so as to be up bright and early in the morning, and those living at a distance were to make it a point to get up early enough to be on hand at the time indicated. A point of rendezvous was designated, and, when all had arrived, they were to surround the factory and permit no one to enter except on peril of being shot. This situation of affairs, they said, would necessarily bring out the police, but the moment these should arrive the “armed men” were to open fire. The first volley was to be over the heads of the “blue-coats,” and if that did not put them to flight, they were to be shot down without mercy. When they began to throw bombs the “reds” were all to be in line, so that none of their own number would be hurt by the explosions, and wherever the police formed a company a solid front was to be presented and a rattling fire maintained. They would also form different lines along the “Black Road,” and when patrol wagons came to the rescue of the officers, they were to hurl bombs at them.

It was to be a fight to the death. Every one agreed, as I was told, “to die game, give no quarter, and see to it that the green grass around McCormick’s factory was nourished with human blood.” In accordance with the plan, the members of the Carpenters’ Union were to assemble with rifles and ammunition at Greif’s Hall at an hour not later than six o’clock in the morning, and to remain there until orders for their services were sent. The carpenters carried out their part of the programme, and at the appointed hour there were no less than two hundred of them at the hall, fully armed and apparently ready for any emergency. They scattered throughout the hall building so as not to attract attention, and impatiently awaited orders or information indicating the progress of affairs at the factory. But no orders were received. They heard nothing for some time, but when they did they were a happier lot of men. The clamor and excitement of the hour had stimulated them with a false courage, but each had nevertheless entertained a secret hope that there would be no call for a display of their valor. And there was none.

It appears that, on the morning they were to have created such dire destruction, the brave metal-workers overslept themselves! “There was snow on the ground,” and probably they did not care to defile it with the blood of their enemies. None of them appeared at the rendezvous on time, and when they straggled around at a later hour they were full of excuses, the one on which they principally relied being that their faithful spouses had neglected to wake them in time. No one for a moment charged the others with cowardice, and yet that was the whole secret of their failure. Each had expected others to be at the appointed place ready for the fray, but the unanimity with which all had prolonged their slumbers prevented what all had expected to see—a brilliant victory with themselves beyond all danger.

But about the time these braves should have been around according to programme, another party occupied the field. It was the brave and fearless Capt. Simon O’Donnell, of the Second Precinct, with two lieutenants and three companies of well disciplined officers. They took charge of the “Black Road” and the vicinity of McCormick’s factory as early as six o’clock, and the so-called “scabs” passed into the works, “with none to molest them or make them afraid.” When those who had overslept sneaked around, one after another, they were perfectly amazed. Where they had hoped to see the ground strewn with the dead bodies of policemen, they found order and serenity.

In the expectation of seeing some disturbance, the vicinity became crowded during the forenoon with idlers and curious people drawn from all parts of the city. Seeing this throng and relying on the presence of many Anarchists, the daring metal-workers revived their spirits and hoped yet to precipitate a conflict by egging it on at a safe distance in the rear. They accordingly began to utter loud threats and urge the excited rabble to an attack on the “blanked bloodhounds,” the police.

There were in the crowd a lot of half-drunken Polanders and Bohemians who, living in the neighborhood, claimed that the presence of the police was a menace to their personal rights and privileges. The police were on what these misguided people considered their own reservation, and, with a view to driving them away, some began throwing stones and clubs at the officers in the patrol wagons. Others picked out officers apart from their companions and made them the targets for their missiles. Captain O’Donnell learned, while this disconcerted attack was going on, that many of the crowd had revolvers and dynamite in their pockets. He speedily resolved on a plan for arresting and disarming such men and gave orders to his lieutenants to surround the crowd and search all suspected persons. The result was that the following were found to have arms, and they were placed under arrest: Stephen Reiski, Adolph Heuman, Charles Kosh, Henry Clasen, John Hermann, George Hermann, Ernest Haker, Otto Sievert, Emil Kernser, Frank Trokinski and Stanifon Geiner. Detectives from the Central Station assisted in the search, and the offenders were taken to the Police Court, where they were fined $10 each.

It was thought that this procedure would quiet the mob, but later in the day the Anarchists again gathered around McCormick’s. The crowd was again surrounded, and the following were arrested for carrying concealed weapons: Louis Hartman, William Brecker, Julius Vimert, Peter Pech, William Holden, Louis Lingg, Carl Jagush, Samuel Barn, William Meyer, Rudolph Miller, John Hoben and John Otto. These were also fined.

During this trouble at the factory a gang of Anarchists had gathered at the Workingmen’s Hall on West Twelfth Street, and they had just formed a procession to march out in a body to McCormick’s, when they were surrounded and searched. In this “round-up” the great “Little August” Krueger was arrested with a full uniform of the Lehr und Wehr Verein under an overcoat, and a number of his comrades were taken in charge at the same time. Many of them had dynamite bombs, and some one shouted that “all brothers who had ‘stuff’ should get away and the others should assist them.”

But the police were not to be trifled with, and some of the most daring officers rushed into the thickest of the crowd, and succeeded in gathering in several bombs. There were a number of women in the mob, and some of these hid bombs under their petticoats. The officers were of course too gallant to molest them. But the search and arrests served to break up the procession and prevent further outbreaks at the factory that day.

Such were the results of the plots of the first secret meeting. The second secret gathering, a few days later, was held, as the former had been, at Greif’s Hall. It was called by the metal-workers and carpenters jointly. They were more demonstrative than ever. Gustav Belz was accorded the distinction of presiding over the turbulent members of the Carpenters’ Union. All of the carpenters belonging to the Lehr und Wehr Verein, numbering one hundred and eighty men, were present with their rifles, and they were loud for war. At the same time the metal-workers had a gathering by themselves, and when a delegation from them called on the carpenters and announced that they were prepared to engage in battle that day, the carpenters’ assemblage became delirious with excitement. They shouted and jumped about in such a lively manner that some of the more conservative members were obliged to warn them to quiet down or they would attract the attention of the police. The hot-heads, enraged at this caution, retorted by accusing the conservatives of cowardice. They refused to be quieted, and, like Comanche Indians about to take to the war-path, they examined their revolvers and brandished their guns. They even inspected the fuse on their bombs, and insisted that they would be ready the moment the command was given. In anticipation of blood, they screwed up their courage by frequent libations; and the more they drank the happier they grew over the prospect of speedy acquisition of wealth when once their revolution was started.

It was an uncomfortable place meanwhile for the conservative members, and these had frequent occasion during the stormy proceedings to regret that they had uttered a word of remonstrance. But there was one who did not allow his feelings to get the better of his judgment. It was Balthasar Rau. He took the floor and said that, however much he desired to fight and sweep McCormick and all other capitalists from the face of the earth, yet he could plainly see that the time had not yet arrived for commencing the revolution. It would be folly, he insisted, to go out on the streets with rifles in hand while all the surroundings were against them and while they were not generally prepared to cope with the police and militia. To commence a general upheaval now would be to destroy their prospects in the immediate future.

“Before you make war,” said Rau, “you must have something to fall back on; but now we have nothing. We ought to have a treasury well filled. If we inaugurate a fight we must expect that some of us will be killed, others wounded, and others again arrested. Where is the money to help those in distress? What will your families do if you are killed? You must take all these things into consideration. It is very easy for us to go out, shoot and kill somebody, but what can we expect to gain by all that? We must be ready and prepared and protected.”

This speech had a soothing effect upon some, but Belz wanted blood, and that immediately. He despised the capitalists, and the sooner their blood was spilled the better it would suit him. The majority of the meeting expressed a concurrence in Rau’s ideas, and one member emphasized Rau’s remarks by saying that it would be like a man going out on the streets, pounding another and then running away—nothing was gained.

Belz, seeing the drift of sentiment, grew very angry, and he suggested that some one move an adjournment to some other day, when they might hope to get together a braver lot of men. Such a motion was made, and the gathering separated, those that were not too drunk posting off at once for home.

Belz grew quite demonstrative over the lack of results at this meeting, and avowed that he would have nothing more to do with such a crowd of cowards. A few days thereafter, however, another meeting was held; but, in view of the many arrests Captain O’Donnell had made among their members, they were unable to decide upon any business. Some of the hot-heads threw all the blame on Rau and some of his friends for having prevented decisive action when they might have hoped to come out victorious. But all this sort of talk was simply braggadocio, and had any of these loud-mouthed fellows been actually tried, they would have been found skulking in the rear of an attacking party. Prior and subsequent events proved them all trembling cowards when their own personal safety was at stake.

Perhaps the most dangerous, because the most secret, figure in the cabal at this time was Louis Lingg. He seems to have been chosen especially to direct the revolutionary design in the southwest part of the city, and his counsels permeated every Socialistic circle in that section. In his trunk, after his arrest, the following letter was found in his own handwriting, evidently a copy or the original of one sent:

Dear Brother Union: On the occasion of the last general meeting in Zepf’s Hall the International Carpenters’ Union passed a resolution asking the Furniture Makers’ Union if they were satisfied with the doings of their delegates, especially with Mr. Hausch and Mr. Mende, who had agreed to take the leadership of the revolution.... It is natural that the governing class would take these—their means—as soon as the workingmen would try to take their rights. In consequence of these facts we feel it our duty to call the attention of indifferent workingmen to these facts and suggest the adoption of force, power against power, and urge all to arm yourselves. Therefore, stand with all your energy against the system of profit without regard to the way they prepare themselves. We request our brother union to acquaint us with their point of view, so we can form our plans accordingly.

With greeting and the shaking of the hand.

INTERNATIONAL CARPENTERS’ UNION NO. 1.

Lingg likewise issued a personal address, a copy of which was also found in the trunk, urging the laborers of the Southwest Side to practice in the handling of arms. Among other things found written over his signature, is the following:

Our authorized demands are replied to with clubs, powder and lead. In consequence of these experiences it is no more than right that we adopt force and arm ourselves. The opportunity to arm yourselves cheaply can be ascertained from all well-known comrades, as well as armed organization, where you can find good places to drill. Don’t let this opportunity pass. The medicine dynamite, in leaden bomb, is more powerful than the rifle. Don’t forget the opportunity.

Lingg also sent another circular to his comrades in that section, of which the following is a copy:

Brothers: As you have noticed for a long time past that the police are more than ready to break your heads with their murderous clubs and do not care whether they make you cripples for the balance of your miserable days, and do not care whether your wives and children have to go begging for you after you become useless; neither do they care for the loving young son that supports his old parents, whether they kill him or not: therefore, taking all these things into consideration,—that these policemen are ready, under the instruction of the capitalists, to commit murder on the working people,—I say we must resist these monsters, and the way we must do this is to get ready and be all like one man. We must fight them with as good weapons, even better than they possess, and, therefore, I call you all to arms! As we are no capitalists, we can make arrangements in a gun-factory outside of this State. Have this matter treated very confidentially. Have only a committee of three members to buy arms as cheaply as possible, and see if there can be anything secured on half credit, so that you can also give time to the buyer. In this way you can get all new and good arms and better than the police have. Then I call your attention again and impress on your minds that it is not alone enough that you have the arms; you must also understand how to use them so that you can be equally well drilled with them as your opponents. Then you can give them successful resistance. And now, to make this matter very easy and a success for all, the workingmen of this city, with the third company of the Lehr und Wehr Verein and some members of the International Carpenters’ Union, held a meeting yesterday, and they all agreed to give lessons in drill to any one that wanted to learn how to use arms. All the people so desiring should call every Thursday evening at 8 o’clock at Turner Hall “Vorwaerts,” on West Twelfth Street, and there they will receive instructions free of charge.

I want you Southwest Side people to be as useful with arms as the people on the North and Northwest sides. We have everything about as complete as we wish it to be. On the North Side we have Neff’s or Thuringia Hall, No. 58 Clybourn Avenue, and you can come and visit us there and see the boys drill. We have a man named Hermann, and he is a soldier from the old home and a first-class drillmaster, and always pleased to see new recruits. Now, workingmen of the Southwest Side, I beg of you to make use of this opportunity. Do not let this go by like a dream. Remember, we are all one. It does not matter whether you are on the South, North or West Side; we must all fight for a purpose. Do not stay at home and let your brothers be killed when you can help them and make your cause a victory. Come in large masses, come often, come promptly. If you do this, everything will be an easy matter for us to undertake. Our labor will be rewarded.... The first of May is coming near. We will have to kill the monster. We must be ready to meet him. This is our only chance now. Probably we will not have this opportunity to meet the monster so that we can fight him with our weapons. You must kill the pirates. You must kill the bloodsuckers; and for the first time in ages the poor workingmen will be made happy. Our work is short; we do not want a thirty years’ war. Be determined. Do not let your near relation, if he is an enemy, stand in your way. Doing all this, then, the victory is ours.

LOUIS LINGG.

In the work of stirring up bad blood, Lingg seems to have neglected no point likely to count with the dissatisfied laborers. He knew that among the strikers were a great many German Knights of Labor, and, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, he took occasion particularly to point out an article published in the Arbeiter-Zeitung of April 22, 1886, giving Governor Oglesby’s views on boycotting. This paper was afterwards found in his trunk, somewhat soiled from frequent usage, and the article in question, for convenience of reference, had been heavily marked with a lead-pencil. Lingg no doubt figured that those who believed in the boycott would thereafter array themselves solidly on the side of those who favored force. A translation of the Governor’s remarks, as given in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, is as follows:

The system of boycotting is the most damnable proposal which was ever fabricated. It repudiates the Constitution, the law and everything. It is the devil’s invention. Yes (speaking to John V. Farwell), when it has so far progressed that the militia is obliged to interfere, you will find that these d—d boycotters will come to them (the merchants and business men) and say, “You must prohibit your employés joining the militia, and those who persist in belonging must be discharged from employment, or you will be boycotted.” This is a fine arrangement. It is true that, meeting with opposition all over, it will die out, but I tell you it is the most damnable transgression which was ever concocted.

Parsons and Schwab also took a hand in the McCormick “lock-out,” but they used the platform to arouse the people to force. On the 2d of March a mass-meeting of Anarchists and hot-headed strikers was held at the West Twelfth Street Turner Hall. Parsons and Schwab were the chief speakers. They were particularly abusive of the owners and the superintendent of the works, and advised the use of violence against the police. So incendiary were the speeches that E. E. Sanderson, a member of the strikers’ standing committee, took occasion to denounce the proceedings.

“Such speakers,” he declared, “cause every spark of sympathy to disappear and bring us into disrepute.” If he had had the power, he said, he would have stopped the gathering. He belonged to the true laboring class, and to properly voice its sentiments he hired another hall for the next day.

The continued presence of the police at the works finally restored order in the vicinity, and it seemed as if the Anarchists had abandoned any further intention of violence. But they were secretly at work, biding their time and watching their opportunity. It came on the afternoon of May 3. At this time between 40,000 and 50,000 men in Chicago were out of employment by reason of the eight-hour strike. Excitement ran high throughout the city. The reaper works were now almost in full operation, and, led by the Anarchists, some of the hot-headed strikers, grown impatient over the apparent failure of their plan, made an assault upon the “scabs” at work in the shops. The instigators of this attack and the principal assailants were Anarchists, who exerted themselves to the utmost to bring on a deadly conflict between the police and the unemployed.

For the day in question a meeting of the Lumber-shovers’ Union had been called in the vicinity to receive the report of a committee who had waited on their employers with reference to the eight-hour question. The Socialists, learning of this, determined to make use of the opportunity. The union was composed of over six thousand lumber workingmen, three thousand Bohemians and over three thousand Germans, and had no connection with the McCormick strike, but it occurred to the Central Labor Union that, inasmuch as many of them were adherents of Socialism, it would be no difficult matter to incite them to riotous demonstrations. On the day preceding, Spies had been delegated by his union to address the gathering. The president of the Lumber Union, Frank Haraster, had become cognizant of the Anarchists’ intentions, and had taken occasion to warn the men against either listening to Socialistic orators or participating in a riot. But there were mutterings of discontent, and the crowd was in a revengeful mood. There were no less than 8,000 people at the gathering—some estimated the number as high as 15,000. Some were intent on revolution, and others had been drawn to the scene through idle curiosity.

It only needed a spark to create a tremendous conflagration. Anarchists were busy among the various groups that had collected. For several days they had labored early and late in the locality to stimulate revolutionary action. Their plans had been carefully concocted, and their network of conspiracy extended in every direction. They had opened channels of subterranean communication, and so arranged their mines of Socialistic powder that at the appointed time they hoped to produce an explosion that would reverberate throughout the globe. That appointed time, they figured, had arrived with the inauguration of the eight-hour movement, and in the lock-out at McCormick’s the first opportunity was presented for a general upheaval. This was their hope and the burden of their care.

When, therefore, a coterie of trained Anarchists appeared on the scene of trouble,—evidently by a preconcerted arrangement,—with the Nation’s flag reversed and trailing in mud and muck, the wildest excitement was aroused, and only a leader was necessary to connect the electric currents of suppressed hostility to start an outburst of violent deeds.

The occasion brought forth that leader in the person of the impulsive and impetuous Spies. He, with some trusted lieutenants, mounted a box-car in the vicinity of the meeting of the lumber-shovers and the McCormick works. He gathered about him an immense crowd, and, speaking in German, called the attention of his auditors to the “brutalities of capital, its selfishness and its grinding oppression” of wage-workers, rendering their condition worse than that of slaves. With fiery invective he wrought up the feelings of the mob to a pitch of reckless frenzy. In the climaxes of his envenomed utterances, he held the multitude with a charmed spell, and he evoked their highest plaudits when he counseled violence as a means to redress their grievances.

Before the termination of this lurid speech, many hitherto apparently apathetic had caught the infection, and when some of the non-union men emerged from the gate at the McCormick foundry, on the conclusion of their day’s labor,—the hour being three o’clock,—many of the mob rushed to the establishment, bent on wreaking vengeance. They had hardly begun to move when some one on the box-car shouted: “Go up and kill the d——d scabs!” The identity of this person has never been disclosed, but it is no rash conclusion to suppose that it was a confidant of Spies, as well as of Lingg, who had secret charge of fomenting disturbances in that district. Lingg was present at this gathering, and, as he subsequently claimed that he had been clubbed by the police in the riot that followed, he may possibly have raised the cry himself.

The mob reached the works in short order, hurling stones and firing shots into the windows of the guard-house, which they finally demolished. The non-union men, seeing the approaching mob, took to flight, some seeking shelter in the works and others scampering across the prairie beyond reach. There were at this time only two policemen on duty. One of them, J. A. West, endeavored to pacify the crowd, but received in response bricks and mud. The other for awhile, as well as he could, held the mob at bay at the gate. West finally worked his way through the crowd to a patrol box, and turned in an alarm for reinforcements. Meanwhile the mob disported itself in throwing stones and firing revolvers, and finally forced an entrance through the gate to the yards.

Presently a patrol wagon loaded with officers plowed through the turbulent mass, and, securing the ground between the mob and the buildings, began driving out and dispersing the rioters. This only served to infuriate the Anarchists, who fired in the direction of the police and hurled a shower of stones. The officers remonstrated in vain, warning the mob to keep back, and finally made a rush upon the rioters with revolvers drawn, shooting right and left.

The crowd swayed to and fro, retreated slightly, then rallied again, and, diverging to either side in a jumbled but compact body, seemed bent on holding their ground and fighting for every inch of it. But the dashing and aggressive movements of the police, backed by courage and discipline, soon demonstrated to the howling rabble the hopelessness of the struggle. The very air seemed charged with bullets, clubs and missiles. Revolvers clicked furiously, the exigencies of the moment necessitating their use on the part of the police, and several revolutionists bit the dust, maimed and wounded. What seems strange is that none were killed in this furious onslaught.

The mob, which numbered fully 8,000, was soon put to precipitate flight. Some of the most vicious leaders, however, kept up a rattling fire of guns, revolvers, brickbats and sticks so long as their retreat was measurably covered by the fleeing mob surrounding them. Several of these leaders, with their weapons still smoking, were subsequently overtaken, disarmed and locked up.

During all this short affray, Spies was nowhere to be seen, but, the moment all danger seemed past, he emerged from his seclusion, breathing courage and vengeance. He bounded into the field like one ready to sacrifice himself for his cause, but cautiously kept himself where no stray bullets might reach him. Another singular feature in connection with the part he played in the affair was his attempt to parade his own heroic virtues, by implication, in the denunciations and upbraidings he heaped upon his comrades in the account published of the riot on the very afternoon after its occurrence. This is what he said in the Arbeiter-Zeitung:

The writer of this hastened to the factory as soon as the first shots were fired, and a comrade urged the assembly to hasten to the rescue of their brothers, who were being murdered, but none stirred.... The writer ran back. He implored the people to come along,—those who had revolvers in their pockets,—but it was in vain. With an exasperating indifference they put their hands in their pockets and marched home, babbling as if the whole affair did not concern them in the least. The revolvers were still cracking, and fresh detachments of police, here and there bombarded with stones, were hastening to the battle-ground. The battle was lost!

A riot on a smaller scale occurred shortly after this in another locality, instigated by the Anarchists who had been so severely repulsed in the afternoon. After the McCormick outbreak one of the wounded strikers was taken in a patrol wagon to the Twelfth Street Station, and thence to his home on Seventeenth Street. Officer Casey was one of the men in charge of the wagon, and remained behind at the house to take a report of the man’s name, his residence and the nature of his injuries. When the officer came out of the wounded man’s home, he was set upon by a mob, shouting:

“Hang him! Hang the blue-coat!”

A Bohemian, named Vaclav Djenek, cried out:

“Help me; help me to hang the canaille!”

Two or three came to his side and endeavored to execute the threat. Casey by a great effort managed to get away, and started on a run. Pistol shots were fired after him by the mob, but fortunately he escaped without injury.

A patrol wagon from the West Chicago Avenue Station had meanwhile been telephoned for by some peace-loving citizens, and it rapidly dashed up to the scene of disturbance. The officers saw the whole situation, dispersed the mob, and set about arresting the parties who had so nearly succeeded in hanging the officer. They found that it had been a very close call for Casey, that the rope was ready, and that, had it not been for his own Herculean efforts, he would have dangled from a lamp-post in a very few seconds.

Djenek, who was afterwards recognized as the principal actor in this episode, was run down and placed under arrest. He was tried and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary. During the trial two officers of the West Chicago Avenue Station happened to be in the State’s Attorney’s office when a lot of Bohemian literature and Anarchist utensils were being exhibited. Among other things, they noticed a photograph of Franz Mikolanda, and they at once exclaimed:

“This is the other man who helped Djenek to hang Casey!”

Mikolanda appeared at the trial for the purpose of swearing to an alibi for Djenek, and was promptly recognized. He had no sooner left the witness-stand than he was arrested on a warrant and subsequently prosecuted. He was found guilty and sentenced to six months in the Bridewell.

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Chapter VII

The Coup d’État a Miscarriage—Effect of the Anarchist Failure at McCormick’s—“Revenge”—Text of the Famous Circular—The German Version—An Incitement to Murder—Bringing on a Conflict—Engel’s Diabolical Plan—The Rôle of the Lehr und Wehr Verein—The Gathering of the Armed Groups—Fischer’s Sanguinary Talk—The Signal for Murder—“Ruhe” and its Meaning—Keeping Clear of the Mouse-Trap—The Haymarket Selected—Its Advantages for Revolutionary War—The Call for the Murder Meeting—“Workingmen, Arm Yourselves”—Preparing the Dynamite—The Arbeiter-Zeitung Arsenal—The Assassins’ Roost at 58 Clybourn Avenue—The Projected Attack on the Police Stations—Bombs for All who Wished Them—Waiting for the Word of Command—Why it was not Given—The Leaders’ Courage Fails.

NEVER was that old saying, “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad,” better illustrated than in the actions of the Anarchist leaders after their desperate exploits at McCormick’s Works. That riot was to have been the pivotal point in their social revolution. It turned out a humiliating fiasco. They had hoped to make a coup d’état for the scarlet banner and had counted upon such a victory as would terrorize Capital, appal the people and paralyze the arm of constituted authority. When they discovered that the police had escaped with only slight bruises, that some of their own comrades had been seriously wounded and that even the so-called “scabs” had passed through the onslaught with nothing worse than fright, their rage knew no bounds. They saw that “the battle had been lost,” and prompt, energetic action seemed necessary to retrieve the situation.

Spies, their recognized leader, while the perspiration still dripped from his face, and his blood still fired by his speech to the strikers and his “heroic efforts” to rally the routed and fleeing Socialists, seized a pen, and, dipping it into the gall of his indignation, wrote what subsequently became famous as the “Revenge Circular.” It was printed in German and English, and an exact fac-simile is presented herewith. The German version is somewhat different from the English, being addressed to the adherents of Anarchy and Socialism, the English version seeming to have been intended for Americans in general. Several thousand copies were scattered throughout the city.

The wording of the English portion of the circular may be seen in the illustration. The German portion, translated, reads as follows:

Revenge! Revenge! Workmen to arms!

Men of labor, this afternoon the bloodhounds of your oppressors murdered six of your brothers at McCormick’s. Why did they murder them? Because they dared to be dissatisfied with the lot which your oppressors have assigned to them. They demanded bread, and they gave them lead for an answer, mindful of the fact that thus people are most effectually silenced. You have for many years endured every humiliation without protest, have drudged from early in the morning until late at night, have suffered all sorts of privation, have even sacrificed your children. You have done everything to fill the coffers of your masters—everything for them! And now, when you approach them and implore them to make your burden a little lighter, as a reward for your sacrifices, they send their bloodhounds, the police, at you, in order to cure you with bullets of your dissatisfaction. Slaves, we ask and conjure you, by all that is sacred and dear to you, avenge the atrocious murder that has been committed upon your brothers to-day and which will likely be committed upon you to-morrow. Laboring men, Hercules, you have arrived at the cross-way. Which way will you decide? For slavery and hunger or for freedom and bread? If you decide for the latter, then do not delay a moment; then, people, to arms! Annihilation to the beasts in human form who call themselves rulers! Uncompromising annihilation to them! This must be your motto. Think of the heroes whose blood has fertilized the road to progress, liberty and humanity, and strive to become worthy of them!

YOUR BROTHERS.

Not content with this, Spies also wrote and published, in the Arbeiter-Zeitung of May 4, the following:

_BLOOD!—Lead and Powder as a Cure for Dissatisfied Workingmen.—About Six Laborers Mortally, and Four Times that Number Slightly, Wounded.—Thus are the Eight-hour Men Intimidated!—This is Law and Order.—Brave Girls Parading the City!—The Law and Order Beasts Frighten Hungry Children away with Clubs._

Six months ago, when the eight-hour movement began, representatives of the I. A. A. called upon workmen to arm if they would enforce their demand. Would the occurrence of yesterday have been possible had that advice been followed? Yesterday, at McCormick’s factory, so far as can now be ascertained, four workmen were killed and twenty-five more or less seriously wounded. If members who defended themselves with stones (a few of them had little snappers in the shape of revolvers) had been provided with good weapons and one single dynamite bomb, not one of the murderers would have escaped his well-merited fate. This massacre was to fill the workmen of this city with fear. Will it succeed?

A meeting of the lumber employés was held yesterday at the Black Road to appoint a committee to wait on the committee of the owners and present the demands agreed upon. It was an immense meeting. Several speeches were made in English, German and Polish. Finally Mr. Spies was introduced, when a Pole cried, “That is a Socialist,” and great disapprobation was expressed, but the speaker continued, telling them that they must realize their strength, and must not recede from their demands; that the issue lay in their hands, and needed only resolution on their part.

At this point some one cried, “On to McCormick’s! Let us drive off the scabs,” and about two hundred ran toward McCormick’s. The speaker, not knowing what occurred, continued his speech, and was appointed afterwards a member of the committee to notify the bosses of the action.

Then a Pole spoke, when a patrol wagon rushed up to McCormick’s, and the crowd began to break up. Shortly shots were heard near McCormick’s factory, and about seventy-five well-fed, large and strong murderers, under command of a fat police lieutenant, marched by followed by three more patrol wagons full of law and order beasts. Two hundred police were there in less than ten minutes, firing on fleeing workingmen and women. The writer hastened to the factory, while a comrade urged the assembly to rescue their brothers, unavailingly. A young Irishman said to the writer: “What miserable (—— ——) are those who will not turn a hand while their brothers are being shot down in cold blood! We have dragged away two. I think they are dead. If you have any influence with the people, for Heaven’s sake, run back and urge them to follow you.” The writer did so in vain. The revolvers were still cracking; fresh policemen arriving; and the battle was lost. It was about half-past three that the little crowd from the meeting reached McCormick’s factory. Policeman West tried to hold them back with his revolver, but was put to flight with a shower of stones and roughly handled. The crowd bombarded the factory windows with stones and demolished the guard-house. The scabs were in mortal terror, when the Hinman Street patrol wagon arrived. They were about to attack the crowd with their clubs, when a shower of stones was thrown, followed the next minute by the firing by the police upon the strikers. It was pretended subsequently that they fired over their heads. The strikers had a few revolvers and returned the fire. Meantime, more police arrived, and then the whole band opened fire on the people. The people fought with stones, and are said to have disabled four policemen. The gang, as always, fired upon the fleeing, while women and men carried away the severely wounded. How many were injured cannot be told. A dying boy, Joseph Doebick, was brought home on an express wagon by two policemen. The crowd threatened to lynch the officer, but were prevented by a patrol wagon. Various strikers were arrested. McCormick said that “August Spies made a speech to a few thousand Anarchists and then put himself at the head of a crowd and attacked our works. Our workmen fled, and meantime the police came and sent a lot of Anarchists away with bleeding heads.”

Mark well the language,—seeking to inflame the minds of the Socialists by maliciously stating that four men had been killed, when in fact not one was fatally injured,—its bitter invective, its cunning phraseology, its rude eloquence and its passionate appeal. All were well calculated to stir up revengeful feelings at a time when public sentiment ran high throughout the city. The events following close upon the heels of the eight-hour strike were critical in the extreme, and none knew the exact situation better than the Anarchist leaders. Their course had been shaped with special reference to it.

Their secret plottings were directed by the events of the hour. The time had come, they felt, when the Commune should be proclaimed. It would not do, they urged, to let the opportunity pass. The failure of the McCormick riot at once suggested retaliation in a manner best known to themselves, and the circular was fulminated with a clear knowledge that its import would be readily understood by all in the dark secret of their conspiracy.

But that there might be no misdirected effort, and that all might be properly instructed for the emergency, it was deemed best to hold a secret conference. The hour seemed to have arrived when their armed sections, the various groups of the order trained in the use of guns and explosives, should be brought into requisition, and the police in particular and the public in general be made to feel their power. How best to accomplish this purpose had been uppermost in their minds from the moment of their disaster at the reaper works. A conflict between the police and the strikers had been counted upon as a certainty under their inspiration, and plans looking to the best means of taking advantage of this strike as well as the eight-hour strike had been discussed even before the McCormick riot.

Only so short a time as the day before that event, the members of the second company of the Lehr und Wehr Verein and of the Northwest Side groups had met in joint session at Bohemian Hall, on Emma Street, and considered the probabilities in view of the eight-hour movement. They clearly foresaw a conflict, and, among other things, discussed a plan to meet that contingency. This plan, proposed by Engel and indorsed by Fischer, and subsequently confessed by one of the conspirators present at that meeting, was that whenever it came to a conflict between the police and the Northwest groups, bombs should be thrown into the police stations. The riflemen of the Lehr und Wehr Verein should post themselves in line at a certain distance, and whoever came out of the stations should be shot down. They would then come into the heart of the city, where the fight would commence in earnest. The members of the Northwest Side groups were counseled to mutually assist each other in making the attack upon the police, and “if any one had anything with him, he should use it.” “As the police would endeavor to subdue the workingmen by sending all their available force to the place of attack, the Anarchists could easily blow up the stations, and such officers as might effect an escape from the buildings could be killed by their riflemen. Then they would cut the telegraph wires so as to prevent communication with other stations, after which they would proceed to the nearest station and destroy that. On their way they would throw fire bombs at some of the buildings, and this would call out the Fire Department and prevent the firemen from being called upon to quell the riot. While proceeding thus they would secure reinforcements, and, in the intense excitement following, the police as well as militia would become confused and divided in counsel as to the points where they could do the most effective service. The attacks should be almost simultaneous in different parts of the city at a given signal. When they all finally reached the center of the city, they would set fire to the most prominent buildings and attack the jail, open the doors and set free the inmates to join them in future movements.”

This plan, it is almost needless to remark, was unanimously adopted. But concerted action was necessary among all the groups, and in view of the “skull-cracking,” to use their own phrase, on the afternoon of May 3, a secret conference of all groups was determined upon as a supplement to Spies’ pronunciamento and as an incitement to future revolutionary movements. A notice understood by all in the armed sections—“Y, come Monday evening”—was inserted in the Arbeiter-Zeitung. The commander of the Lehr und Wehr Verein rented a beer basement at No. 54 West Lake Street, known to the followers of Socialism as Greif’s Hall, and along towards eight o’clock representatives of all the armed sections of the Internationale gathered there. In order that the utmost privacy might be maintained, guards were posted both at the front and rear entrances with instructions to permit no one to stand on the outside and to admit only trusted adherents.

When the session opened there were between seventy and eighty members of the various sections present. Their deliberations were presided over by Gottfried Waller, who subsequently became an important witness for the State.

Spies’ “Revenge circular,” written late that afternoon, was distributed in the meeting, and its sentiments were heartily seconded by all present. Engel finally submitted the plan already given, and some discussion followed, participated in by various members. Fischer considered the plan admirable, and, lest there might be evidence of weakness, he stated that if any man acted the part of a coward, his own dagger or a bullet from his rifle should pierce that man’s heart. Inquiries being made with reference to a supply of bombs, he suggested that the members manufacture them on their own account. The best thing, he said, was to procure a tin coffee-bottle, fill it with benzine, attach a cap and fuse, and they would have a most effective bomb.

Engel’s plan went through with a rush. Having now agreed upon a definite course, it was necessary to adopt a signal to warn the sections of danger and summon them to action. Fischer was equal to the occasion. He proposed the German word “Ruhe,”—signifying “rest” or “peace,”—and added that whenever it should appear in the “Letter-box” column of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, all would know that the moment for decisive action had been reached, and that all were expected to repair promptly to their appointed meeting-places, fully armed and ready for duty. The suggestion was adopted.

But what are plans without being fortified by enthusiasm on the part of the mob expected to carry them out? The Socialistic heart must be fired to a proper pitch of frenzy. Every soul must be made to feel that the cause of Socialism is his own. A mass-meeting was just the thing, and a mass-meeting it was decided by this august band of conspirators to call. The time was the only point in controversy. The chairman insisted on holding it the following morning on Market Square, which is a widening of Market Street between Madison and Randolph Streets, but Fischer protested, because, as he said, it was a “mouse trap,” and insisted that the meeting be held in the evening, when they could bring out a crowd of no less than 25,000 people, and that the Haymarket be the place. There, he said, they would have greater security in case of disturbance, and more and better means of escape. His counsel finally prevailed, and after a call had been suitably drafted, Fischer was intrusted with its printing.

Remembering that “what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” the meeting decided to appoint a committee, consisting of one or two members from each group. This committee was to keep a close watch on all movements that might be made at Haymarket Square and in different parts of the city, and, in the event of a conflict, to promptly report it to the members of the various armed sections by the insertion in the Arbeiter-Zeitung of the word “Ruhe” if there was trouble during the day, or illuminating the sky with a red light at night. If either signal could not be conveniently used, then they were to notify the members individually.

Before the conclusion of this secret conclave, every one present was directed to notify absent members of what had been done, and Rudolph Schnaubelt, who has since been proven the thrower of the bomb which scattered death and devastation on the following evening, wished to go even further and have Socialists in other cities notified so that the proposed revolution might become general. The instigators of the meeting just described were Spies, Parsons, Fielden and Neebe, but for some reason they failed to put in an appearance.

In accordance with arrangements, the call for the mass-meeting was printed the next morning. There were two versions of this call. Fac-similes of both are given.

In the afternoon of May 4 the signal word “Ruhe” appeared in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and all the armed men proceeded to place themselves in readiness for the conflict. They also devoted themselves energetically to cultivating revengeful sentiments. While making their preparations for the projected riot, they communicated the plan decided upon to every member of the order, and all were urged to come fully armed with such weapons as they might possess.

But their greatest reliance was placed in the use of dynamite. This highly explosive material was regarded as the chief arm of their cause. For many weeks, the leaders had experimented with it. Some six weeks before the disastrous Haymarket riot, Louis Lingg had brought a bomb to the house of William Seliger, No. 442 Sedgwick Street, where he boarded, and announced his intention of making other bombs like it. Before this he had provided himself with dynamite, the money for its purchase having been realized at a ball given some time previously and turned over to him to use in experiments. Being out of employment at the time, he devoted himself energetically to experiments with that material, and produced large gas-pipe bombs. One of these he took out to a grove north of the city, and, placing it in the crotch of a tree, exploded it, splitting the tree to pieces. The result of the test appears to have been satisfactory, and he next gave his attention to the manufacture of globular shells. In the casting of these he used the kitchen stove to melt his metal, and often received the assistance of Seliger, Thielen and Hermann. All day Tuesday, May 4, he worked most persistently and seemed in a great hurry to make as many bombs as possible. He was helped on that day by the parties named and two others, Hueber and Munzenberger. Before the close of the day they had finished over a hundred bombs. While they were at work Lehman visited them and carried home a satchel of dynamite, which he subsequently, after the Haymarket riot, buried out on the prairie, and which was afterwards disinterred by the police. Not alone did he and his friends experiment with dynamite, but it appears that Spies, Parsons, Fischer, Fielden and Schwab also tried their hands at it and handled the deadly stuff at the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. They had several bombs there and made no secret of the purpose for which they intended them. The office was afterwards discovered to be an arsenal of revolvers and dynamite.

After the bombs had been completed by Lingg and his assistants, Lingg and Seliger put them in a trunk or satchel and carried them over towards Neff’s Hall, at No. 58 Clybourn Avenue. On the way they were met by Munzenberger, who took the trunk, and, placing it on his shoulder, carried it the rest of the distance. At this time—it being evening—there was a meeting of painters in a hall at the rear of Neff’s saloon, and the package was placed at the entrance for a moment’s exhibition. Lingg asked the proprietor if any one had called and inquired for him, and, on being answered in the negative, proceeded with Seliger and Munzenberger into the hallway connecting the saloon and the assembly-room. Placing the trunk on the floor, he opened it for inspection. Several parties examined the bombs and took some of them away. Seliger helped himself to two and kept them until after the Haymarket explosion, when he hid them under a sidewalk on Sigel Street. Lingg, Seliger and Munzenberger then left the premises. The direction the last-named took is a matter in doubt. Neff had never seen him before, Lehman did not know him, and Seliger had not even learned his name.

It is clear that all this work was part of the conspiracy concocted at Greif’s Hall the previous evening. It is also well settled that Munzenberger was the chosen agent to secure the bombs and see that they were placed in the hands of trusted Anarchists for use at the proper moment. The secrecy surrounding the latter’s identity was in complete accord with the method of procedure outlined in the instructions given to Socialists:

In the commission of a deed, a comrade who does not live at the place of action, that is, a comrade of some other place, ought, if possibility admits, to participate in the action, or, formulated difficulty, a revolutionary deed ought to be enacted where one is not known.

Still further steps were taken to precipitate the revolution. In conformity with the Monday night plan, armed men were to be stationed, on the evening of Tuesday, in the vicinity of the police stations. We find that Lingg, Seliger, Lehman, Smidke, Thielen and two large unknown men were in the vicinity of the North Avenue Station. They skulked about the corners of the streets leading to that station, between eight and ten o’clock, fully armed with bombs and ready for desperate deeds. Others, who had secured bombs at Neff’s Hall, went further northward and hovered around the police station near the corner of Webster and Lincoln Avenues. Seliger and Lingg also paid that vicinity a visit. There were also armed men at Deering, where a meeting of striking workingmen was held, and which was addressed by Schwab after he had left the Haymarket. Anarchists also posted themselves in the vicinity of the Chicago Avenue Station. Men were also near the North Avenue Station, and some twenty-five posted themselves at the corner of Halsted and Randolph Streets, two blocks from the Desplaines Street Station. Spies and Schwab entered this group and held some secret consultation with the leaders. Fischer and Waller were also close to that station.

It furthermore appears that several men called on Tuesday evening at Waller’s residence while he was eating his supper and desired him to accompany them to Wicker Park, saying that they “wanted to be at their post.” Two of these men were Krueger and Kraemer, belonging to the “armed sections.” Some men also called at Engel’s store, and one of them exhibited a revolver. Another, a stranger, explained to a comrade that he was waiting for some “pills.” He waited only five minutes, when a young girl about ten or twelve years of age came in, carrying a mysterious package. This she handed to the stranger, who stepped behind a screen and then hastened out.

It is thus manifest that the various parties were bent on a carnival of riot and destruction and only awaited the proper signal from the committee. The men intrusted with the secrets of pillage, murder and general destruction belonged to what was known in the order as the “Revolutionary Group.” The plan was not communicated to any one else. The utmost secrecy had to be maintained for its successful accomplishment, and the conspiracy was only communicated to such as had proved themselves in the past, by word and deed, in full accord with revolutionary methods. The “revolutionary party” consisted of the Lehr und Wehr Verein, commanded by Breitenfeld; the Northwest Side group, under command of Engel, Fischer and Grumm; the North Side group, commanded by Neebe, Lingg and Hermann; the American group, commanded by Spies, Parsons and Fielden; the Karl Marx group, directed by Schilling; the Freiheit group and the armed sections of the International Carpenters’ Union and Metal-workers’ Union. These various sections, or groups, were under the management of a general committee which included among its leading spirits Spies, Schwab, Parsons, Neebe, Rau, Hirschberger, Deusch and Bélz. This committee met at stated periods at the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and formulated orders for the guidance of the groups. Its expenses were met by monthly contributions from all the Socialistic societies. It was under the inspiration of this committee that the Monday night meeting was held. Why the signal for a concerted raid on the police stations, the burning of buildings and the slaughter of capitalists was not given on the fateful night of the Haymarket riot,—or, if given, as seems to be believed in many quarters, in Fielden’s declaration, “We are peaceable,” why it was not carried out completely,—is not explicable upon any other hypothesis than that the courage of the trusted leaders failed them at the critical moment.

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Chapter VIII

The Air Full of Rumors—A Riot Feared—Police Preparations—Bonfield in Command—The Haymarket—Strategic Value of the Anarchists’ Position—Crane’s Alley—The Theory of Street Warfare—Inflaming the Mob—Schnaubelt and his Bomb—“Throttle the Law”—The Limit of Patience Reached—“In the Name of the People, Disperse”—The Signal Given—The Crash of Dynamite First Heard on an American Street—Murder in the Air—A Rally and a Charge—The Anarchists Swept Away—A Battle Worthy of Veterans.

WITH such active work among the conspirators as I have shown, it was only a question of time when some terrible catastrophe would ensue through the instrumentality of the powerful bombs they had manufactured. The public mind was in a state of fear and suspense, not knowing the direction whence threatened devastation and destruction might appear. The incendiary speeches were enough to excite trepidation, and the appearance of the “Revenge circular” fanned the excitement into general alarm and indignation. The McCormick attack proved conclusively that the Anarchists meant to practice what they preached. After their rout and defeat, they were heard to express regret that they had not taken forcible possession of the works before the arrival of the police and then received the officers with a volley of fire-arms, as had once been contemplated in a star-chamber session of one of their “revolutionary groups.” The air was full of rumors, and the general public was convinced that some great disaster would occur unless the police promptly forbade the holding of further revolutionary meetings. The Mayor’s attention had been called to the possible results if such meetings were permitted to continue, and he, in turn, directed the Police Department to keep close watch of the gathering called for the Haymarket Square and disperse it in case the speakers used inflammatory language. During the day many of the Spies circulars had been distributed in the vicinity of the McCormick establishment, and it was expected that many of the enraged strikers from that locality would attend the meeting. It was clear that, in view of the temper of the Socialists, only slight encouragement would be required to produce a disturbance, and it was of the utmost importance that prompt action should be taken at the first sign of trouble. It subsequently transpired that the leaders had intended to make the speeches threatening in order to invite a charge upon the crowd by the police, and then, during the confusion, to carry out the Monday night programme.

The city authorities fully comprehended the situation, but concluded not to interfere with the meeting unless the discussion should be attended with violent threats. In order to be prepared for any emergency, however, it was deemed best to concentrate a large force in the vicinity of the meeting—at the Desplaines Street Station. One hundred men from Capt. Ward’s district, the Third Precinct, under command of Lieuts. Bowler, Stanton, Penzen and Beard, twenty-six men from the Central Detail under command of Lieut. Hubbard and Sergt. Fitzpatrick, and fifty men from the Fourth Precinct, under Lieuts. Steele and Quinn, were accordingly assigned for special service that evening. Inspector John Bonfield was ordered to assume command of the whole force, and his instructions were to direct the detectives to mingle with the crowd, and, if anything of an incendiary nature was advised by the speakers, to direct the officers to disperse the gathering.

The meeting had been called for 7:30 o’clock, and at that hour quite a number had assembled in the vicinity of Haymarket Square. This square is simply a widening of Randolph Street between Desplaines and Halsted Streets; and in years past was used by farmers for the sale of hay and produce. It was for this place that the call had been issued, but for certain reasons the meeting was held ninety feet north of Randolph, on Desplaines Street, near the intersection of an alley which has since passed into public fame as “Crane’s alley.” In sight almost of this alley was Zepf’s Hall, on the northeast corner of Lake and Desplaines Streets, and about two blocks further east on Lake Street were Florus’ Hall and Greif’s Hall—all notorious resorts and headquarters for Anarchists. On the evening in question these places and surrounding streets leading to the meeting-place were crowded with strikers and Socialist sympathizers, some within the saloons regaling themselves with beer and some jostling each other on the thoroughfares, either going for liquids or returning to the meeting after having for the moment satisfied the “inner man.” Here was a condition of things that would permit an easy mingling in, and ready escape through, the crowd, in the event of inauguration of the revolutionary plan adopted the evening previous. The throngs would serve as a cover for apparently safe operations. Another advantage gained by holding the meeting at the point indicated was that the street was dimly lighted, and, as the building in front of which the speaking took place was a manufacturing establishment,—that of Crane Bros.,—not used or lighted at night, and as the alley contiguous to the speaker’s stand formed an L with another alley leading to Randolph Street, there were points of seeming safety for a conflict with the police. Besides, the point was about 350 feet north of the Desplaines Street Police Station, and it was evidently calculated that when the police should attack the crowd, that part of the Monday night programme about blowing up the stations could easily be carried into effect.

These were the undoubted reasons for effecting the change. The reader will remember that one of the objections urged by Fischer against holding the meeting on Market Square was that it was a “mouse trap,” and one of his potential arguments for the Haymarket was that it was a safer place for the execution of their plot. There was thus a “method in their madness.” All the contingencies had evidently been very carefully considered.

But, as I have already stated, the hour had arrived for calling the meeting to order, and as there appeared no one to assume prompt charge, the crowd exhibited some manifestations of impatience. About eight o’clock there were perhaps 3,000 people in the vicinity of the chosen place, and some fifteen or twenty minutes later Spies put in an appearance. He mounted the truck wagon improvised as a speaker’s stand and inquired for Parsons. Receiving no response, he got down, and, meeting Schwab, the two entered the alley, where there was quite a crowd, and where they were overheard using the words “pistols” and “police,” and Schwab was heard to ask, “Is one enough or had we better go and get more?” Both then disappeared up the street, and it is a fair presumption—borne out by the fact that they had entered a group of Anarchists on the corner of Halsted and Randolph Streets, as noted in the preceding chapter, and other circumstances—that they went to secure bombs. Spies shortly returned, and, meeting Schnaubelt, held a short conversation with him, at the same time handing him something, which Schnaubelt put carefully in a side-pocket. Spies again mounted the wagon (the hour being about 8:40—Schnaubelt standing near him), and began a speech in English. It is needless, at this point, to reproduce the speech, as its substance appears later on, both as given by the reporters and as written out subsequently by Spies. But both reports fail to give a proper conception of its insidious effect on the audience. It bore mainly on the grievances of labor, the treatment of the strikers by McCormick, and an explanation of his (Spies’) connection with the disturbances of the day previous. The lesson he drew from the occurrence at McCormick’s was “that workingmen must arm themselves for defense, so that they may be able to cope with the Government hirelings of their masters.”

Parsons had meanwhile been sent for, and on the conclusion of Spies’ harangue was introduced. He reviewed the labor discontent in the country, the troubles growing out of it, touched on monopoly, criticised the so-called “capitalistic press,” scored the banks, explained Socialism, excoriated the system of elections, and terminated his remarks by appealing to his hearers to defend themselves and asserting that, if the demands of the working classes were refused, it meant war. His speech, like that of Spies, was mild as compared with what would be expected on such an occasion. Perhaps this is accounted for by the fact that during their harangues Mayor Harrison mingled in the throng and paid close attention to the sentiments of the speakers. He afterwards characterized Parsons’ effort as “a good political speech,” and, being apparently satisfied that there would be no trouble, left for the Desplaines Street Police Station, giving his impressions of the gathering to the Captain in charge and telling Bonfield that there seemed to be no further use for holding the force in reserve.

No sooner had Harrison left for the station and thence for his own house, than the next speaker, Fielden, grew bolder in his remarks and sent the words rolling hot and fast over an oily, voluble and vindictive tongue. He opened with a reference to the insecurity of the working classes under the present social system, drifted to the McCormick strike, in which men, he said, were “shot down by the law in cold blood, in the city of Chicago, in the protection of property,” and held that the strikers had “nothing more to do with the law except to lay hands on it, and throttle it until it makes its last kick. Throttle it! Kill it! Stab it! Can we do anything,” he asked, “except by the strong arm of resistance? The skirmish lines have met. The people have been shot. Men, women and children have not been spared by the capitalists and the minions of private capital. It had no mercy—neither ought you. You are called upon to defend yourselves, your lives, your future. I have some resistance in me. I know that you have, too.”

At this juncture the police made their appearance. During the remarks of Spies and Parsons, detectives had frequently reported to the station that only moderate, temperate sentiments were being uttered, but after Fielden had got fairly worked up to his subject, this was changed. The crowd was being wrought up to a high point of excitement, and there were frequent interjections of approval and shouts of indignation. Fielden’s was just such a speech as they had expected to hear. Very little was required to incite them to the perpetration of desperate deeds. Like a sculptor with his plastic model, Fielden had molded his audience to suit the purpose of the occasion. With his rough and ready eloquence he stirred up their innermost passions. His biting allusions to capitalists caught the hearts of the uncouth mob as with grappling-hooks, and his appeals for the destruction of existing laws shook them as a whirlwind.

It would be as well, he said, for workmen to die fighting as to starve to death. “Exterminate the capitalists, and do it to-night!” The officers detailed to watch the proceedings saw that the speech portended no good, and they communicated the facts to Inspector Bonfield. Even then the Inspector hesitated. To use his own language, in the report he sent to Superintendent Ebersold: “Wanting to be clearly within the law, and wishing to leave no room for doubt as to the propriety of our actions, I did not act on the first reports, but sent the officers back to make further observations. A few minutes after ten o’clock, the officers returned and reported that the crowd were getting excited and the speaker growing more incendiary in his language. I then felt that to hesitate any longer would be criminal, and gave the order to fall in and move our force forward on Waldo Place,”—a short street south of the Desplaines Street Station.

The force formed into four divisions. The companies of Lieuts. Steele and Quinn formed the first; those of Lieuts. Stanton and Bowler, the second; those of Lieut. Hubbard and Sergt. Fitzpatrick, the third; and two companies commanded by Lieuts. Beard and Penzen constituted the fourth, forming the rear guard, which had orders to form right and left on Randolph Street, to guard the rear from any attack from the Haymarket. These various divisions thus covered the street from curb to curb. Inspector Bonfield and Capt. Ward led the forces, in front of the first division. On seeing them advancing in the distance, Fielden exclaimed:

“Here come the bloodhounds. You do your duty, and I’ll do mine!”

Arriving on the ground, they found the agitator right in the midst of his incendiary exhortations, that point where he was telling his Anarchist zealots that he had some resistance in him, and assuring them that he knew they had too. At that moment the police were ordered to halt within a few feet of the truck wagon, and Capt. Ward, advancing to within three feet of the speaker, said:

“I command you, in the name of the people of the State, to immediately and peaceably disperse.”

Turning to the crowd, he continued: “I command you and you to assist.”

Fielden had meanwhile jumped off the wagon, and, as he reached the sidewalk, declared in a clear, loud tone of voice:

“We are peaceable.”

This must have been the secret signal,—it has about it suggestions of the word “Ruhe,”—and no sooner had it been uttered than a spark flashed through the air. It looked like the lighted remnant of a cigar, but hissed like a miniature skyrocket. It fell in the ranks of the second division and near the dividing-line between the companies of Lieuts. Stanton and Bowler, just south of where the speaking had taken place.

A terrific explosion followed—the detonation was heard for blocks around. The direction in which the bomb—for such it was—had been thrown was by way of the east sidewalk from the alley. It had been hurled by a person in the shadow of that narrow yet crowded passageway on the same side of, and only a few feet from, the speaker’s stand.

The explosion created frightful havoc and terrible dismay. It was instantly followed by a volley of small fire-arms from the mob on the sidewalk and in the street in front of the police force, all directed against the officers. They were for the moment stunned and terror-stricken. In the immediate vicinity of the explosion, the entire column under Stanton and Bowler and many of the first and third divisions were hurled to the ground, some killed, and many in the agonies of death.

As soon as the first flash of the tragic shock had passed, and even on the instant the mob began firing, Inspector Bonfield rallied the policemen who remained unscathed, and ordered a running fire of revolvers on the desperate Anarchists. Lieuts. Steele and Quinn charged the crowd on the street from curb to curb, and Lieuts. Hubbard and Fitzpatrick, with such men as were left them of the Special Detail, swept both sidewalks with a brisk and rattling fire.

The rush of the officers was like that of a mighty torrent in a narrow channel—they carried everything before them and swept down all hapless enough to fall under their fire or batons. The masterly courage and brilliant dash of the men soon sent the Anarchists flying in every direction, and a more desperate scramble for life and safety was never witnessed. Even the most defiant conspirators lost their wits and hunted nooks and recesses of buildings to seclude themselves till they could effect an escape without imminent danger of bullets or of being crushed by the precipitate mob.

Fielden, so brave and fearless on the appearance of the police, pulled a revolver while crouching beneath the protection of the truck wheels, fired at the officers, and then took to his heels and disappeared. Spies had friendly assistance in getting off the truck, and hastened pell-mell through the crowd in a frantic endeavor to get under cover. He finally reached safety, while his brother, who was with him on the wagon, got away with a slight wound. Parsons seems to have taken time by the forelock and nervously awaited developments in the bar-room of Zepf’s Hall.

Fischer had been among the crowd while Spies and Parsons spoke, but he was in the company of Parsons at Zepf’s when the explosion occurred. Schnaubelt, who had sat on the wagon with his hands in his pockets until Fielden began his speech, hurried through the mob, after sending the missile on its deadly mission, and got away without a scratch. Other lesser yet influential lights in the Anarchist combination found friendly refuge, and, as subsequently developed, lost no time in reaching home as soon as possible. How any of these leaders who were in the midst of the awful carnage managed to escape, while other of their comrades suffered, is not clear, unless they dodged from one secluded spot to another, while the storm raged at its height—and there are many circumstances showing that this was the case. At any rate the point is immaterial: the fact remains that they were all found lacking in courage at the critical moment, and each seemed more concerned about his own safety than that of his fellow revolutionists.

Owing to the masterly charge of the police, the conflict was of short duration, but, while it lasted, it produced a scene of confusion, death and bloodshed not equaled in the annals of American riots in its extent and far-reaching results. The hissing of bullets, the groans of the dying, the cries of the wounded and the imprecations of the fleeing made a combination of horrors which those present will never forget.

No sooner had the field been cleared of the mob than Inspector Bonfield set to work caring for the dead and wounded. They were found scattered in every direction. Many of the officers lay prostrate where they had fallen, and to the north, where the mob had disputed the ground with the police, lay many an Anarchist. On door-steps and in the recesses of buildings were found wounded and maimed. The police looked after all and rendered assistance alike to friend and foe. The dead, dying and wounded were conveyed to the Desplaines Street Station, where numerous physicians were called into service.

In subsequently speaking of the bravery of his men on this occasion, in his report to the Chief of Police, Inspector Bonfield very truly said:

It has been asserted that regular troops have become panic-stricken from less cause. I see no way to account for it except this. The soldier acts as part of a machine. Rarely, if ever, when on duty, is he allowed to act as an individual or to use his personal judgment. A police officer’s training teaches him to be self-reliant. Day after day and night after night he goes on duty alone, and, when in conflict with the thief and burglar, he has to depend upon his own individual exertions. The soldier being a part of a machine, it follows that, when a part of it gives out, the rest is useless until the injury is repaired. The policeman, being a machine in himself, rarely, if ever, gives up until he is laid on the ground and unable to rise again. In conclusion, I beg leave to report that the conduct of the men and officers, with few exceptions, was admirable—as a military man said to me the next day, “worthy the heroes of a hundred battles.”

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Chapter IX

The Dead and the Wounded—Moans of Anguish in the Police Station—Caring for Friend and Foe—Counting the Cost—A City’s Sympathy—The Death List—Sketches of the Men—The Doctors’ Work—Dynamite Havoc—Veterans of the Haymarket—A Roll of Honor—The Anarchist Loss—Guesses at their Dead—Concealing Wounded Rioters—The Explosion a Failure—Disappointment of the Terrorists.

THE scene at the Desplaines Street Station was one which would appal the stoutest heart. Every available place in the building was utilized, and one could scarcely move about the various rooms without fear of accidentally touching a wound or jarring a fractured limb. In many instances mangled Anarchists were placed side by side with injured officers. The floors literally ran with blood dripping and flowing from the lacerated bodies of the victims of the riot. The air was filled with moans from the dying and groans of anguish from the wounded. As the news had spread throughout the city of the terrible slaughter, wives, daughters, relatives and friends of officers as well as of Anarchists, who had failed to report at home or to send tidings of their whereabouts, hastened to the station and sought admission. Being refused, these set up wailing and lamentations about the doors of the station, and the doleful sounds made the situation all the more sorrowful within.

Everything in the power of man was done to alleviate the suffering and to make the patients as comfortable as possible. Drs. Murphy, Lee and Henrotin, department physicians, were energetically at work, and, with every appliance possible, administered comparative relief and ease from the excruciating pains of the suffering. The more seriously wounded, when possible, were taken to the Cook County Hospital. Throughout the night following the riot, the early morning and the day succeeding, the utmost care was given the patients, and throughout the city for days and weeks the one inquiry, the one great sympathy, was with reference to the wounded officers and their condition. The whole heart of the city was centered in their recovery. Everywhere the living as well as the dead heroes were accorded the highest praise. The culprits who had sought to subvert law and order in murder and pillage were execrated on all hands. For days and weeks, the city never for a moment relaxed its interest. From the time the men had been brought into the station, it was long a question as to how many would succumb to their wounds. Care and attention without ceasing served to rescue many from an untimely grave; but even those who were finally restored to their families and friends, crippled and maimed as they were, hovered between life and death on a very slender thread through many a restless night and weary day and through long weeks and agonizing months. The devotion of friends and the skill of physicians nerved the men to strength and patience. That only eight should have died out of so great a number as were mangled, lacerated and shattered by the powerful bomb and pierced by bullets, attests the merits of the treatment.

The only one who was almost instantly killed was Officer Mathias J. Degan. The following list will serve to show the names of the officers killed and wounded, the stations they belonged to, their residences, the nature of their wounds, their condition and other circumstances:

MATHIAS J. DEGAN—Third Precinct, West Lake Street Station; residence, No. 626 South Canal Street. Almost instantly killed. He was born October 29, 1851, and joined the police force December 15, 1884. He was a widower, having lost his wife just before joining the force, and left a young son. He was a brave officer, efficient in all his duties, and highly esteemed.

MICHAEL SHEEHAN—Third Precinct; residence, No. 163 Barber Street. Wounded in the back just below the ninth rib. The bullet lay in the abdomen, and, after its removal by the surgeon, he collapsed and died on the 9th of May. He was twenty-nine years of age, born in Ireland, and came to America in 1879. He joined the force December 15, 1884, and had only one relative in America, a brother, his parents still living in the old country. He was a very bright, prompt and efficient officer, and had excellent prospects before him. He was unmarried.

GEORGE MULLER—Third Precinct; residence, No. 836 West Madison Street; was shot in the left side, the bullet passing down through the body and lodging on the right side above the hip bone. He suffered more than any of the others and was in terrible agony. He would not consent to an operation, and finally his right lung collapsed, making his breathing very difficult. He expired on the 6th of May. He was twenty-eight years of age. Born in Oswego, N. Y., where his parents lived, and to which place his remains were sent. Muller, on coming to Chicago, began as a teamster, and became connected with the Police Department December 15, 1884, being assigned for duty at the Desplaines Street Station. He was a finely built, muscular young man, and became quite a favorite with his associates because of his quiet habits and genial manners. At the time of his death he was engaged to Miss Mary McAvoy.

JOHN J. BARRETT—Third Precinct; residence, No. 99 East Erie Street; was shot in the liver, from which a piece of shell was removed, and he had a bad fracture of the elbow. The heel bone of one leg was carried away. With so many serious wounds, he lay in the hospital almost unconscious until the day of his death, May 6. He was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1860, and came to Chicago with his parents when only four years of age. Here he attended the public schools, and then learned the molder’s trade, which he abandoned on January 15, 1885, to join the police force, being assigned to duty at the Desplaines Street Station. He was a brave and efficient officer and always ready to do his part in any emergency. He had been married only a few months preceding his death, and left a wife, a widowed mother, three sisters and a younger brother.

THOMAS REDDEN—Third Precinct; residence, No. 109 Walnut Street; received a bad fracture of the left leg three inches below the knee, from which a large portion of the bone was entirely carried away. He also had bullet wounds in the left cheek and right elbow, and some wounds in the back. Pieces of shell were found in the leg and elbow. He died May 16. He was fifty years of age, and had been connected with the police force for twelve years, joining it on April 1, 1874. He was attached to the West Lake Street Station, and was looked upon as an exemplary and trusted officer. He left a wife and two young children.

TIMOTHY FLAVIN—Fourth Precinct; residence, No. 504 North Ashland Avenue; was struck with a piece of shell four inches above the ankle joint, tearing away a portion of the large bone and fracturing the small bone. He also had two wounds just below the shoulder joint in the right arm, caused by a shell, and there were two shell wounds in the back, one passing into the abdomen and the other into the lung. His leg was amputated above the knee, the second day after the explosion, and he had besides a large piece torn out of his right hip. He died on May 8. He was born in Listowel, Ireland, and came to America in 1880 with a young wife, whom he had married on the day of his departure. He had worked as a teamster, and joined the police force on December 15, 1884, being assigned to duty at the Rawson Street Station. He left a wife and three small children.

NELS HANSEN—Fourth Precinct; residence, No. 28 Fowler Street; received shell wounds in body, arms and legs, and one of his limbs had to be amputated. He lost considerable blood, but lingered along in intense agony until May 14, when he died. He was a native of Sweden, having came to Chicago a great number of years ago, joining the force December 15, 1884, and was about fifty years of age. He left a wife and two children.

TIMOTHY SULLIVAN, of the Third Precinct, was the last to die from the effects of the Haymarket riot; this brave officer lingered until June 13, 1888. He resided at No. 123 Hickory Street, and was a widower, four children mourning his loss. The illness from which he died was the direct result of a bullet wound just above the left knee.

The following is a list of the wounded officers belonging to the Third Precinct:

August C. Keller; residence, No. 36 Greenwich Street; shell wound in right side and ball wound in left side; wife and five children.

Thomas McHenry; residence, 376 W. Polk Street; shell wound in left knee and three shell wounds in left hip; single; had a sister and blind mother to support.

John E. Doyle, 142½ W. Jackson Street; bullet wounds in back and calf of each leg; serious; wife and one child.

John A. King, 1411 Wabash Avenue; jaw-bone fractured by shell and two bullet wounds in right leg below the knee; serious; single.

Nicholas Shannon, Jr., No. 24 Miller Street; thirteen shell wounds on right side and five shell wounds on left side; serious; wife and three children.

James Conway, No. 185 Morgan Street; bullet wound in right leg; single.

Patrick Hartford, No. 228 Noble Street; shell wound in right ankle, two toes on left foot amputated, bullet wound in left side; wife and four children.

Patrick Nash, Desplaines Street Station; bruises on left shoulder, inflicted by a stick; single.

Arthur Connolly, No. 318 West Huron Street; two shell wounds in left leg; bone slightly fractured; wife.

Louis Johnson, No. 40 West Erie Street; shell wound in left leg; wife and four children.

M. M. Cardin, No. 18 North Peoria Street; bullet wound in calf of each leg; wife and two children.

Adam Barber, No. 321 West Jackson Street; shell wound left leg, bullet wound in right breast; bullet not extracted; wife and one child.

Henry F. Smith, bullet wound in right shoulder; quite serious, wife and two children in California.

Frank Tyrell, No. 228 Lincoln Street; bullet in right hip near spine; wife and two children; wife sick in County Hospital at the time of the riot.

James A. Brady, No. 146 West Van Buren Street; shell wound in left leg, slight injury to toes of left foot and shell wound in left thigh; single.

John Reed, No. 237 South Halsted Street; shell wound in left leg and bullet wound in right knee; bullet not removed; single.

Patrick McLaughlin, No. 965 Thirty-seventh Court; bruised on right side, leg and hip, injuries slight; wife and two children.

Frank Murphy, No. 980 Walnut Street; trampled on, three ribs broken; wife and three children.

Lawrence Murphy, No. 317½ Fulton Street; shell wounds on left side of neck and left knee, part of left foot amputated; wife.

Michael Madden, No. 119 South Green Street; shot in left lung on May 5th, after which he shot and killed his Anarchist assailant; wife and seven children.

The following belonged to the West Lake Street Station of the Third Precinct:

Lieut. James P. Stanton, residence No. 584 Carroll Avenue; shell wound in right side, bullet wound in right hip, bullet wound in calf of leg; wife and three children.

Thomas Brophy, No. 25 Nixon Street; slight injury to left leg; reported for duty; wife.

Bernard Murphy, No. 325 East Twenty-second Street; bullet wound in left thigh, shell wound on right side of head and chin; not dangerous; wife.

Charles H. Fink, No. 154 South Sangamon Street; three shell wounds in left leg and two wounds in right leg; not dangerous; wife.

Joseph Norman, No. 612 Walnut Street; bullet passed through right foot and slight injury to finger on left hand; wife and two children.

Peter Butterly, No. 436 West Twelfth Street; bullet wound in right arm and small wound on each leg near knee; wife and one child.

Alexander Jamison, No. 129 Gurley Street; bullet wound in left leg; serious; wife and seven children.

Michael Horan, bullet wound in left thigh, not removed; slight shell wound on left arm; single.

Thomas Hennessy, No. 287 Fulton Street; shell wound on left thigh, slight; has mother, who is crippled, and two sisters to support.

William Burns, No. 602 West Van Buren Street; slight shell wound on left ankle; single.

James Plunkett, No. 15½ Depuyster Street; struck with club and trampled upon; wife.

Charles W. Whitney, No. 453 South Robey Street; shell wound in left breast; shell not removed; single.

Jacob Hansen, No. 137 North Morgan Street; right leg amputated over the knee, three shell wounds in left leg; wife and one child.

Martin Cullen, No. 236 Washtenaw Avenue; right collar bone fractured and slight injury to left knee; wife and five children.

Simon Klidzis, No. 158 Carroll Street; shot in calf of left leg; serious; wife and three children.

Julius L. Simonson, No. 241 West Huron Street; shot in arm near shoulder; very serious; wife and two children.

John K. McMahon, No. 118 North Green Street; shell wound in calf of left leg, shell not found; ball wound left leg near knee, very serious; wife and two children.

Simon McMahon, No. 913 North Ashland Avenue; shot in right arm and two wounds in right leg; wife and five children.

Edward W. Ruel, No. 136 North Peoria Street; shot in right ankle, bullet not removed; serious; single.

Alexander Halvorson, No. 850 North Oakley Avenue; shot in both legs, ball not extracted; single.

Carl E. Johnson, No. 339 West Erie Street; shot in left elbow; wife and two children.

Peter McCormick, No. 473 West Erie Street; slight shot wound in left arm; wife.

Christopher Gaynor, No. 45 Fay Street; slight bruise on left arm; wife.

The following belonged to the Fourth Precinct:

S. J. Werneke, No. 73 West Division Street; shot in left side of head, ball not found; serious; wife and two children.

Patrick McNulty, No. 691 North Leavitt Street; shot in right leg and both hips; dangerous; wife and three children.

Samuel Hilgo, No. 452 Milwaukee Avenue; shot in right leg; not serious; single.

Herman Krueger, No. 184 Ramsey Street; shot in right knee; not serious; wife and two children.

Joseph A. Gilso, No. 8 Emma Street; slightly injured in back and leg; not serious; wife and six children.

Edward Barrell, No. 297 West Ohio Street; shot in right leg; quite serious; wife and six children.

Freeman Steele, No. 30 Rice Street; slightly wounded in back; not serious; single.

James P. Johnson, No. 740 Dixon Street; right knee sprained; not serious; wife and three children.

Benjamin F. Snell, No. 138 Mozart Street; shot in right leg; not serious; single.

The following belonged to the Central Detail:

James H. Wilson, No. 810 Austin Avenue; seriously injured in abdomen by shell; wife and five children.

Daniel Hogan, No. 526 Austin Avenue; shot in calf of right leg and hand; very serious; wife and daughter.

M. O’Brien, No. 495 Fifth Avenue; shell wound in left thigh; very serious; wife and two children.

Fred A. Andrew, No. 1018 North Halsted Street; wounded in leg, not serious; wife.

Jacob Ebinger, No. 235 Thirty-seventh Street; shell wound in back of left hand; not serious; wife and three children.

John J. Kelley, No. 194 Sheffield Avenue; shell wound on left hand; not serious; wife and three children.

Patrick Lavin, No. 42 Sholto Street; finger hurt by shell; married.

Officer Terrehll had a shell wound in the right thigh.

Patrick Hartford had an opening in the ankle joint. The shell was removed. A portion of his left foot, with the toes, was carried away.

Arthur Conelly had a compound fracture of the tibia. The shell struck him about two inches below the knee, tore away a piece of bone of the fibula, perforated the tibia and lodged about the middle of the large bone of the leg, a short distance below the knee. A piece of shell was removed.

Lawrence Murphy had fifteen shell wounds, one in the neck, three or four in the arms, and one in his left foot; the last, weighing almost an ounce and a half, lodged at the base of the great toe and left his foot hanging by a piece of skin. The foot had to be amputated about two inches farther back. He had a piece two inches square taken out of the anterior surface of his leg. He had two perforating wounds in the left thigh and a number in the right.

Edward Barrett had two shell wounds in the neighborhood of the knee joint, turning out large pieces of flesh and leaving ragged wounds on the surface.

J. H. King was struck in the chin by a piece of shell which went through his upper lip; another piece carried away about an inch of his lower jaw-bone.

J. H. Grady had severe flesh wounds, both in the thigh and legs. Some pieces of shell were taken out of them.

John Doyle had several wounds about the legs, in the neighborhood of the knee joint.

The list shows the character of the wounds and the condition of the officers just after the eventful night. Some of those who died lingered along for some time after, but the name of Timothy Sullivan was the last to add to the death-list. Some of the sixty-eight wounded men have since returned to active duty, but many are maimed for life and incapacitated for work.

It is impossible to say how many of the Anarchists were killed or wounded. As soon as they were in a condition to be moved, those in the Desplaines Street Station were turned over to their relatives and friends. The Anarchists have never attempted to give a correct list, or even an approximate estimate, of the men wounded or killed on their side. The number, however, was largely in excess of that on the side of the police. After the moment’s bewilderment, the officers dashed on the enemy and fired round after round. Being good marksmen, they fired to kill, and many revolutionists must have gone home, either assisted by comrades or unassisted, with wounds that resulted fatally or maimed them for life. Some of those in the station had dangerous wounds, and they were for the most part men who had become separated, in the confusion, from their companions, or trampled upon so that they could not get up and limp to a safe place. It is known that many secret funerals were held from Anarchist localities in the dead hour of night. For many months previous to the Haymarket explosion the Anarchists had descanted loudly on the destructive potency of dynamite. One bomb, they maintained, was equivalent to a regiment of militia. A little dynamite, properly put up, could be carried in a vest pocket and used to destroy a large body of police. They probably reasoned that if it was known that many more of their number had fallen than on the side of the police, it would not only tend to diminish the faith of their adherents in the real virtues of dynamite, but would prove that the police were more than able to cope with the Social Revolution, even though the revolutionists depended on that powerful agency. The public is not, therefore, likely ever to know how many of their number suffered.

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