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. [Illustration: CHARGING THE MOB.]