The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in ChicagoMcLean, George N.
History
The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in Chicago
McLean, George N.
Anarchists -- United States; Haymarket Square Riot, Chicago, Ill., 1886
He is thirty-one years old, and came to this county from Germany in
1872. Spies speaks with a marked accent, but very distinctly. He is
cool and collected apparently, and sits back in the witness chair very
much at ease.
He has been a member of the Socialistic Publishing Society, and that
concern exercised control over the policy of the _Arbeiter Zeitung_, of
which paper the witness was editor for six years. Spies said he was at
a meeting on the "black road" on May 3. Spies reached the meeting on
the "black road" about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. There was a crowd
of perhaps three thousand present. Some men were speaking, but they
were very poor speakers, and the crowd was not interested. Balthazar
Rau was with him, and introduced him to the chairman of the meeting. It
was called for the purpose of discussing the eight-hour question. While
Spies was there a committee was appointed to wait on the bosses; then
he was introduced, and spoke for possibly twenty minutes. Spies went on:
"I was almost prostrated. I had been speaking two or three times daily
for the past two or three weeks, and was very much worn. I did not
jump around and wave my hands as one witness testified here on the
stand, and I made a very common-place, ordinary speech. I told the men
to hold together, to stand by their union, or they would not succeed.
That was the substance of what I said. While I was speaking some one
cried out in an unknown tongue, and about two hundred men detached
themselves from the crowd and went on to McCormick's. Pretty soon I
heard firing, and on inquiring what was the matter was told the men had
attacked McCormick's men, and that the police were firing on them. I
stopped for about five minutes, was elected a member of the committee;
then I went to McCormick's. A lot of cars were standing on the tracks.
The men were hiding behind these cars, others were running, while the
police were firing on the flying people. The sight of this made my
blood boil. At that time I could have done almost anything, I was so
excited. A young Irishman came out from behind one of the cars. I think
he knew me and said: 'What kind of ---- business is this? There are two
men over there dead; the police have killed them.' I asked him how many
were killed. He said five or six, and that twenty-five or thirty were
injured. I came down town then and wrote the report which appeared in
the _Arbeiter Zeitung_ the next day."
"Did you write the 'Revenge Circular'?"--"Yes; only I did not write the
word 'Revenge.'"
"Can you tell how that word happened to be put in the circular?"--"I
cannot."
"How many of those circulars were distributed?"--"About twenty-five
hundred."
"How soon was it written after your return to the
office?"--"Immediately."
"At that time were you still laboring under the excitement incident to
the riot?"--"I was."
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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