Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the ConspiratorsSchaack, Michael J.
History
Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators
When Lingg had been ushered into the office of the East Chicago Avenue
Station, the shackles were removed from his wrists, and he was given a
chair. He became quiet in his new surroundings, and grudgingly answered
a few simple questions. His thumb giving him considerable pain, some
liniment was procured from a neighboring drug store, and the wound
dressed. He was then assigned to an apartment below, and left to his
own thoughts.
In the afternoon he was brought up to the office.
“What is your name?” I asked him.
“Lingg,” curtly replied the prisoner.
“Ah, yes; but how do you spell it?”
“L-i-n-gg,” came the spelling.
“Yes; but give us your full name.”
“It is Louis or Ludwig Lingg. I am twenty-one years and eight months
old.”
He was asked a great many questions. Some he refused to answer, and
others he answered promptly and with pleasure, especially when they
touched on killing capitalists and capitalistic editors, as he called
them. He had no use, he said, for these people, and thought that
if they could be taken away suddenly the world would be satisfied
and happy. He remarked that he did not blame the police very much,
because they were workingmen themselves, but there was one officer, he
said, that he perfectly despised. It was John Bonfield. If he could
have blown him to atoms, he thought, he might become reconciled to
a great many things as they then existed. He finally gave to me and
to Assistant State’s Attorney Furthmann, in the presence of Officers
Stift, Rehm, Loewenstein, Schuettler and Hoffman, a brief account of
himself and his movements, but he said that he would rather die than
give information against any one. He did not deny what others had
stated about him, but further he would not go. He was informed by Mr.
Furthmann how strict the law was against conspiracies, but the only
answer he vouchsafed was that the laws would not remain in force much
longer; that the working people would make laws to suit themselves,
and they would not allow any higher power to dictate to them. For
his own part, he could work and was willing to work, he said, but he
wanted his share of the profits. He thought the police had made fools
of themselves in the movement the Anarchists had inaugurated. If they
had only known enough, he said, to have held back, the capitalists
would have been forced to submit; but now the police had spoiled their
own chances for gain for years to come. They would be sorry for it, he
added. If the Anarchists had won in Chicago, he further stated, all the
other large cities would have fallen into line, and wretchedness and
poverty would have been banished forever.
[Illustration: IRON BOLT FOUND IN LINGG’S TRUNK. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
Designed, according to Lingg’s own statement, to connect the halves of
a composition bomb weighing twelve pounds. “The Haymarket bomb,” said
he, “killed six. The one which I was going to make with that bolt would
kill six dozen.” Four such bolts were found.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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