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. [Illustration: THE HAYMARKET RIOT. THE EXPLOSION AND THE CONFLICT.] 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.” [Illustration: INSPECTOR JOHN BONFIELD.]