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. [Illustration: THE CALL FOR THE HAYMARKET MEETING.—I. Photographic Engraving, direct from the Original.] 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.