What greater insult can be offered to the children of freedom than for people of foreign birth to usurp the birthrights and trample upon the institutions for which their fathers bled and died? Never before were citizens of any country placed on trial for so grave and flagrant a transgression, who received such consideration and fairness at the hands of the administrators of law and justice as did the participants in the Haymarket tragedy. In view of the deep turpitude of their crime great credit is due to all the standard papers of the city of Chicago, and the Press of the United States, for the fair and impartial manner in which they represented the Anarchists' case during the trial and pending the execution. The articles appearing from time to time in their columns seemed ever tempered with mercy. Yet firmness characterized all their expressed opinions. The institutions of our country are dear to every true and loyal American. The outrage perpetrated upon our high order of civilization called for life in exchange for the lives sacrificed by the tragic events of the night of May the 4th, 1886. Every right-thinking journalist acknowledged the justice of the sentence and said, so let it be; believing that when "judgment and justice are abroad in the land the people will learn righteousness." CHAPTER II. Anarchists--Their Nationality--The First Agitation--Leaders--Anarchy--The "Revenge" Circular--The Haymarket Meeting--The Massacre. Scarcely has the chronicler of time recorded fifty years in the eventful history of Chicago since it was known only as a little trading post for the Indians of the west and northwest, but being the central and distributing point for the interminable fertile territories stretching away toward the land of the setting sun, its progress in wealth and population has been unprecedented. The superior facilities for obtaining supplies, and the demand for implements for agricultural purposes, have conspired to render Chicago one of the most important commercial cities on the globe. And to-day it stands the grainery of the American Continent, the great repository and commercial reservoir of continental America, with a cosmopolitan population of over seven hundred thousand. Capitalists engaged in mammoth manufacturing enterprises like McCormick and others, in order to secure cheap labor to the exclusion of native skilled workmen, have imported to this country thousands of foreigners who, after gaining a foothold in the land, have turned upon their employers in organized bands with measures intended to be revolutionary. The troublesome element consisted largely of the ignorant lower classes of Bavarians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Germans, Austrians, and others who held secret meetings in organized groups armed and equipped like the nihilists of Russia, and the communists of France. [Illustration: THE HAYMARKET MASSACRE.]