Remembering the Haymarket anarchists: a hundred years later - Haymarket Square Riots, 1886

Lesley Wischmann

REMEMBERING THE HAYMARKET ANARCHISTS: A HUNDRED YEARS LATER

May 4, 1970. The Ohio National Guard turns and fires on a group of student protestors. Four students die and nine are wounded. The country responds with a deafening outcry: a small percentage condemn the state-sanctioned murder but the overwhelming majority applaud the application of "law and order.'

Protests over the war in Vietnam, in which students played a major role, had divided the country and the authorities resorted to the time-honored tradition of executing a few to silence the masses. And, as usual, the strategy worked. Kent State marked the zenith of the student protest movement.

Ironically, while the National Guard gunned down the students at Kent State, Mayor Richard Daley was rededicating the Haymarket Square police memorial which the Weathermen, SDS's radical fringe, bombed on October 6, 1969. "Dedicated by Chicago . . . to her Defenders in the Riot of May 4, 1886,' the Haymarket Square Memorial honored law-enforcement officials who used repression to help strangle the burgeoning labor movement of the late nineteenth century.

Throughout the 1850s, an increasing number or workers organized around the demand for an eight-hour workday. Hundreds of Eight Hour Leagues sprang up throughout the country. Under pressure, in March, 1867 the Illinois General Assembly declared eight hours to be the "legal work day in the State of Illinois.' But workers continued to be subjected to 10, 12, and 14 hour days. A steady pool of unemployed filled the jobs of those who refused to work the long hours.

The Federation of Organized Trade and Labor (later the American Federation of Labor) declared May 1, 1886--the first May Day--the deadline for implementing the eight-hour day. That May, 340,000 workers in 12,000 factories joined the nationwide strikes, despite the opposition of Terrance Powderly and the national Knights of Labor. The Chicago Knights, influenced by Albert Parsons, enthusiastically endorsed the resolution.

On May 1, Albert Parsons, accompanied by his wife and two children, led a march of 80,000 through the streets of Chicago. Many of the 1,500 men who had been locked out of their jobs at the McCormick plant since February 16 joined in. Police and Pinkertons watched the procession from rooftops with their rifles poised. But after rousing speeches by Parsons, August Spies, and others, the enthusiastic crowd dispersed without incident. Within a couple of days, somewhere between 65,000 and 80,000 Chicago workers went on strike.

On May 3, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, spoke to a crowd of 6,000 striking lumber-shovers down the road from the McCormick plant. When the shift bell rang, some in the audience headed for the plant gates to heckle the McCormick scabs. Almost immediately Police Inspector John Bonfield arrived and a disturbance broke out. Spies went to see what was happening and found himself caught in a flurry of police clubs and a hail of bullets. The number of workers killed and injured was never reliably established; most were too afraid to seek medical care.

Outraged, Spies hurried to his office where he wrote an angry circular headed "Workingmen, to Arms!' A compositor added the word "REVENGE!' thinking it made a good title. Some 1500 copies of the so-called "Revenge circular' were distributed. Angry Chicago laborers got angrier reading Spies's account of the McCormick incident in the May 4 Arbeiter-Zeitung which also contained an article by Michael Schwab announcing "The war of the classes is at hand.'

Meanwhile, a group of leaders including Adolph Fischer and George Engel called for a rally that evening in the Haymarket. Fischer was responsible for finding speakers and printing handbills. His original notice ended "Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!' but August Spies refused to speak unless the line was deleted. The copy was changed but some of the original handbills were circulated.

Approximately 2,500 people gathered that night. Adolph Fischer dropped by for a few minutes then drifted over to Zepf's Hall for a drink. George Engel stayed home to play cards with his wife and some friends. When no speakers appeared, the crowd grew restless.

Spies arrived around 8:30. Scheduled to address the crowd in German, Spies had been in no hurry since the foreign language speeches always came last. But finding the rally in a shambles, he quickly mounted an old wagon and began speaking. Friends searched the crowd for others to help him out.

Albert Parsons, just back from Cincinnati, showed up after about fifteen minutes and took over. Around 10:00, Parsons turned the platform over to Samuel Fielden and left with his wife, Lucy, to join Fischer in the nearby tavern.

Fielden had spent the afternoon of May 4 hauling gravel for the roadbeds into Waldheim Cemetery and was unaware of the planned rally until shortly before he arrived in the Haymarket. Unprepared to speak, he did his best to hold the crowd's attention. He was winding up when Police Inspector Bonfield and 180 of his men appeared.

Bonfield demanded that the assembly disperse "immediately and peaceably.' As Fielden replied, "But Captain, we are peaceable,' an explosion rocked the crowd. A bomb had been thrown into the police ranks. The police began firing wildly. By the time it was over, seven policemen and at least four civilians lay dying. Between one and tow hundred police and civilians, including Samuel Fielden and August Spies's brother, were wounded. Yet only policeman Mathias Degan died from the bomb blast; police gunfire wounded the rest.

An unnamed policeman told the Chicago Tribune on June 27th: "I also know it to be a fact that a very large number of the police were wounded by each other's revolvers. . . . There was a blunder on the part of the man who commanded the police on the night of the Haymarket murders or this fearful slaughter would not have occurred. Bonfield made the blunder, and is held responsible for its effects by every man injured there.'

Who threw the bomb is a mystery. The police claimed it was an anarchist; Albert Parsons believed it was an agent provocateur. Governor John Altgeld concluded in 1893 that "the bomb was, in all probability, thrown by someone seeking personal revenge.'

In his comprehensive study, Paul Avrich concludes that the bomb was thrown by an anarchist. The anarchist most often suspected was Rudolph Schnaubelt, brother-in-law of Michael Schwab. But Avrich dismisses Schnaubelt, who was arrested and released twice after the bombing.

Schnaubelt did not match the description given by John Bernett, the only impartial witness who saw the bomb-thrower and, Avrich points out, Schnaubelt's own actions would seem inconsistent with that of the bomb-thrower: "Would Schnaubelt have seated himself on the speakers' wagon if he was carrying a bomb in his pocket? Even more, would he have gone to police headquarters the day after the incident to try to secure (Michael) Schwab's release? These questions alone would suffice to cast doubt on the accusations against him.'

Avrich's conclusion that the bomber was an anarchist is based in large part on statements by anarchists such as Robert Reitzel and Dyer Lum. After the executions, Reitzel told Dr. Urban Hartung, "The bomb-thrower is known, but let us forget about it; even if he had confessed, the lives of our comrades could not have been saved.'

In an 1891 essay, Dyer Lum states that on the afternoon of May 4, August Spies dispatched Balthasar Rau to notify the militants that no arms were to be brought to the Haymarket. But, writes Lum, "one man disobeyed that order; always self-determined, he acted upon his own responsibility, preferring to be prepared for resistance to onslaught rather than to quietly imitate the spiritual "lamb led to slaughter.''

Lum says the eight defendants did not know the bomb-thrower's identity, although it eventually became known to two of them "but neither Spies nor Parsons . . ..' Avrich believes the two who knew were Engel and Fischer. According to Lum, the name of the bomb-thrower "was never mentioned in the trial and is today unknown to the public.'

One of the great female anarchists and an intimate friend of Dyer Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre also implied knowledge of the bomb-thrower's identity. In her 1899 memorial speech, de Cleyre stated: "The Haymarket bomb was the defense of a man who stood upon the constitutional declaration that the right of free speech, and the right of people peaceably to assemble, shall not be abridged.'

And in 1907, de Cleyre said: ". . . our comrades being slain, I can see no motive for the bomb-thrower's ever revealing his identity. A masked and silent figure, he has passed across the world, and left his mark upon it. What does it matter now who he was; it was not one of the eight men whom the State punished for it.'

From these clues, Avrich concludes that the bomb-thrower was probably a German member of the anarchist armed sections contacted by Balthasar Rau; that he was known within the movement but was not a major figure; that his identity remained unknown except for a small circle of militant anarchists; and that, according to John Bernett's testimony, he was about five feet nine or ten and wore a mustache but no beard.

After his book was published, Avrich received a letter from Dr. Adah Maurer, a psychologist in Berkeley, California. She asked about a "J. P. Meng,' whom Avrich identified as a member of the Chicago anarchist delegation to the Pittsburgh Congress of 1883. Could the initials be wrong, asked Maurer? She believed the reference was to her grandfather, George Meng, whom Maurer also suspected of having thrown the bomb.

Upon checking, Avrich discovered that the delegate's name was indeed George and not J. P. Meng. What, then, of Dr. Maurer's suggestion that Meng was the bomb-thrower? Maurer gave Avrich the following information: Meng was born in Bavaria around 1840 and came to the United States as a young man. He settled in Chicago, found work as a teamster, married, and had two daughters, Kate and Louisa. Louisa was Dr. Maurer's mother. By 1883, Meng had joined the militant North Side Group of the International Working People's Association, whose members included Oscar Neebe, Balthasar Rau, Rudolph Schnaubelt, and Louis Lingg.

Louisa told her daughter several times without explanation that Meng was the bomb-thrower: "He was the one,' she said. Louisa also spoke of the night shortly after the Haymarket bombing when she discovered a man named Rudolph hiding in their barn. Rudolph was a comrade of her father's and "they talked all night in the kitchen.'

According to Maurer, Meng died in a saloon fire a few years before her birth in 1907 and she could offer no physical description of Meng. Still, Avrich finds Maurer's story compelling, "for it fits the accepted facts; it contains information-- about Rudolph Schnaubelt, for instance--that is not commonly known; and it tallies with the description of the bomb-thrower by Dyer Lum--a German anarchist, a "self-determined' militant in the Chicago groups, a known figure in the movement . . . but not one of its principal leaders and not mentioned at the trial. Dr. Maurer's story has the ring of truth, and I am inclined to believe it.'

While the identity of the bomb-thrower has provided a puzzle for scholars, the issue was irrelevant at the Haymarket trial. Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Michael Schwab, Oscar Neebe, and Louis Lingg were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, not bomb-throwing. Of these eight, only Fielden and Spies were present when the bomb exploded. But State Attorney Julius S. Grinnell declared: "Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions.'

What ideas so threatened the social structure? Albert Parsons defined anarchy as "the negation of force, the elimination of all authority in social affairs; it is the denial or the right of domination of one man over another. It is the diffusion of rights, of power, of duties, equally and freely among all the people.' Spies said, "Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.' And for Louis Lingg: "Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another . . .'

Still, it was the stereotyped image of bomb-throwing, bloodthirsty criminal maniacs that pervaded the courtroom when the trial began on June 21, 1886. As the trial began, only seven of the men were in custody. Parsons, fearing the worst after the bombing, fled Chicago and successfully eluded arrest for six weeks. But after consulting with his wife and attorneys, Parsons decided to surrender and be tried with his comrades. This would weigh heavily in his favor, everyone agreed. Thus, with the trial about to begin, Parsons walked into the courtroom and dramatically presented himself to the authorities.

From the beginning, the trial was a charade. A special bailiff handpicked the potential jurors and made no secret of the plan: "I am calling such men as the defendants will have to challenge peremptorily and waste their time and challenges. Then they will have to take such men as the prosecution wants.' The tactic worked. A relative of one of the police victims and others with open prejudices were seated on the jury.

During the prosecution's case, witnesses lied, changed their stories, and contradicted each other. Evidence was fabricated or suppressed to support the official version. For the most part, the prosecution's case relied on inflammatory articles, written by the defendants and others, from the radical Chicago newspapers.

The best show in town, the trial drew large crowds. Throughout the proceedings the jury played cards while pretty young socialites joined Judge Gary on the bench. Among those who came to see and be seen was Rose Sara Nina Stuart Clarke Van Zandt, a Vassar graduate and heiress to a sizable fortune.

Van Zandt later recalled the fashionable escapade: "I did not know any of the accused when, during the comedy called trial, I entered the courtroom . . . expecting to see a rare collection of stupid, vicious, and criminal-looking men. I was greatly surprised to find that several of them, so far from corresponding with this description, had intelligent, kindly, and good faces. I became interested. I soon found that the officers of the court and the entire police and detective force were bent upon the conviction of these men--not because of any crime of theirs, but because of their connection with the labor movement.'

Van Zandt began to visit the prisoners in Cook County Jail and a friendship with August Spies soon developed into something more. But Van Zandt's visits were disrupted by new regulations allowing only prisoners' wives to visit after hours. "It was clear to me that my efforts in behalf of the prisoners, in behalf of justice, were disagreeable to a certain class interested in their extermination--a feeling only intensified by my social standing and connections.' Spies and Van Zandt decided to marry but officials refused to consent and the ceremony had to be performed by proxy with Spies's brother standing in.

Following the marriage, Van Zandt was reviled by the press, hounded by neighbors and deprived of a half-million-dollar inheritance from her aunt because Nina had failed to make a "suitable marriage.' But Van Zandt Spies remained committed to the cause, publishing Spies's autobiography and lecturing frequently on Haymarket after her husband's execution.

The most prominent witness for the defendants was Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison. Concerned about potential trouble, Harrison had gone to the Haymarket rally on May 4. After a while he saw no reason for alarm and proceeded to the police station where he told Bonfield to send his men home. Bonfield agreed, then marched his men over to the Haymarket as soon as the Mayor left.

Despite Harrison's testimony, the anarchists were convicted, as expected. Seven were sentenced to die by hanging: seven anarchists for seven policemen. The eighth defendant, Oscar Neebe, received a 15-year sentence despite the State's Attorney's request that the charges against him be dropped.

A year of legal and public maneuvering followed but to no avail. During the last days, Fielden, Spies, and Schwab petitioned for executive clemency, for which they were denounced by many of their comrades. Then, two days before the scheduled execution, Spies withdrew his request and in a second letter to the governor, he wrote: "I beg you to prevent a sevenfold murder upon men whose only crime is that they are idealists; that they long for a better future for all. If legal murder there must be, let one, let mine suffice.' The Governor granted the petitions from Fielden and Schwab, reducing their sentences to life imprisonment.

On November 6, five days before the scheduled executions, the prisoners were moved and their cells searched. The police announced they had found four bombs in Louis Lingg's cell. Parsons was incredulous, maintaining that the bombs were planted to stem the growing tide of public sympathy. Others believed Lingg had secreted the bombs.

Louis Lingg, 23 at the time of his death, was the youngest and most radical of the martyrs. Lingg had made bombs, advocated the use of force, and throughout the trial displayed a passionate disinterest in the proceedings, preferring to read rather than listen to the testimony.

Captain Schaack wrote later that Lingg's "teeth gnashed with rage, and his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets with savage scorn. . . . He fumed in his cage like an imprisoned beast of prey. He was speechless with anger, and every motion betrayed an energy of passion that was fearful to behold.' Lingg, according to Schaack, was "the most dangerous anarchist in all Chicago.'

The anarchists and their supporters also disagreed about Lingg. Spies called him "irresponsible' and a "monomaniac.' Michael Schwab acknowledged he was "not on friendly terms' with Lingg "a surly sort of fellow . . . somebody with whom you do not care to become acquainted.' Some supporters even hoped to overturn the verdicts by proving Lingg insane.

But others regarded him as a hero. Voltairine de Cleyre referred to Lingg as "that brave, beautiful boy . . ..' and Emma Goldman called him "the sublime hero among the eight. His unbending spirit, his utter contempt for his accusers and judges, his willpower . . . everything about that boy of twenty-two [sic] lent romance and beauty to his personality. He became the beacon of our lives.'

Lingg's impassioned final speech to the court gives a glimpse of the man:

I tell you frankly and openly, I am for force. I have already told Captain Schaack, "if they use cannons against us, we shall use dynamite against them.' I repeat that I am the enemy of the "order' of today, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. . . . Perhaps you think, "you'll throw no more bombs'; but let me assure you I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then--mark my words--they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope do I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!

On "Black Friday,' November 11, 1987, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, and Albert Parsons mounted the gallows and were hanged.

Lucy Parsons, accompanied by her two children and best friend, Lizzie Holmes, tried desperately to see her husband one last time before the execution, but the police sent them from one post to the next, promising help further down the line. With time running out and the children shivering from the cold and crying, Lucy attempted to cross the police line. Lucy, Lizzie, and the two children were arrested, taken to the Chicago Avenue Station, strip-searched and placed in separate cells.

Shortly after noon, a matron came by and announced, "It's all over.' Lizzie Holmes listened to the "low, despairing moans' of her friend until they were released three hours later.

Louis Lingg, however, avoided the gallows. On the day before the executions, Lingg smoked a cigar and then placed a dynamite cap in his mouth and lit it. The explosion blew away half his face. He lingered in torturous pain for several hours before dying. Some claimed the police put dynamite in his cigar but most believed that the defiant Lingg committed suicide to cheat the executioner.

In a letter to Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman wrote: "[The police] knew well enough that Lingg would have to die. Why then should they want to kill him? On the other hand, Lingg was probably the kind of man who'd prefer to die by his own hand.'

Voltairine de Cleyre knew Lingg killed himself and said so in an 1897 speech: "November 10th! Lingg triumphs over the Law through a dynamite cartridge given him in a cigar by a friend.' That friend, de Cleyre told her son, was Dyer Lum. Lum wrote of his friend, "Devoted and fearless, never for an instant allowing false hope to swerve him from the path of principle, [Lingg] died as he had lived--a child of nature.'

Following the executions, the martyrs' bodies were returned to their homes. The body of Lingg, who had no family, was taken to the home and toy shop of George Engel with whom he had become very close. An offer to pay several thousand dollars for Lingg's body by a road shows that wanted to put it on display was furiously rejected by Engel's widow.

When Albert's body was brought to their small, third-floor apartment, Lucy Parsons broke down and fainted. Lizzie Holmes stayed with her throughout the day while Samuel Fielden's wife attempted to console the two young children.

The home where August Spies lived with his mother, brother, and sisters still stands in Chicago's Wicker Park, and the scene described in the 1887 Daily News can easily be imagined: "Long strips of white and black crepe swung from the doorbell. At the top of the symbols of mourning was a large black rose, made also of crepe, and from the middle of the rose streamers of red fluttered in the breeze. . . .'

The November 13th funeral began with Spies's coffin being loaded onto a wagon as his family climbed into a waiting carriage. Winding through Chicago, the cortege stopped at each of the martyrs' homes to collect another body. People fell in behind the wagons and carriages as they wound somberly through the streets of Chicago. The funeral cortege was said to be the largest in Chicago's history as an estimated 200,000 people lined the streets and marched behind the hearses.

Apprehensive authorities laid down strict guidelines: no banners, flags, or arms; dirges were the only permissible music; speeches and demonstrations were forbidden; and the funeral could pass through the downtown area only between noon and two o'clock. The prohibitions were broken just once. "As the procession began to move down Milwaukee Avenue, a veteran of the Civil War stepped quickly in front of the first rank and unfurled a small American flag. The old veteran was not molested by the police; he carried the flag to the end of the march.'

The procession ended at the old Wisconsin Central Station where 30 specially-hired railroad cars waited to transport the families to Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park. Others found their own way to the cemetery where 10,000 gathered to hear William Black, the anarchists' attorney, deliver the eulogy:

They were called Anarchists. They were painted and presented to the world as men loving violence, riot, and bloodshed for their own sake; as men full of an unextinguishable and causeless hatred against the existing order. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were men who loved peace, men of gentle instincts, men of gracious tenderness of heart, loved by those who knew them, trusted by those who came to understand the loyalty and purity of their lives . . . and the whole of their thought and their philosophy, as Anarchists, was the establishment of an order of society that should be symbolized in the words, "order without force.'

As the sun set, the bodies of August Spies, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer were laid in a temporary vault. On December 18, the bodies were transferred to a permanent grave.

Today, a striking monument by sculptor Albert Weiner graces the Haymarket grave. Cast in bronze and inspired by "The Marseillaise,' a woman braced for struggle places a laurel wreath on the head of a fallen worker. Inscribed on the monument's base are the words shouted by August Spies as the gallows floor dropped: "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.' A portion of Governor John Altgeld's pardon message is on the back. Of the eight martyrs, all but Samuel Fielden are buried here.

The Haymarket Monument is surrounded by the graves of other well-known activists. Albert Parsons' widow, Lucy, and their two children are nearby as is Nina Van Zandt Spies. Van Zandt Spies' grave is unmarked because there was no money to buy a headstone.

Near the memorial is Dissenter's Row where a prominent headstone marks the grave of Emma Goldman, who died in Canada in 1940. The marker bears a bronze bas-relief portrait. Close by are the more modest stones of Harry Kelly, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Z. Foster, Eugene Dennis, Voltairine de Cleyre, Ben Reitman, and Alexander Trachtenberg.

After "Big Bill' Haywood died in Moscow in 1928, half his cremated remains were buried in the Kremlin Wall and the other half were scattered from the base of the Monument at Waldheim.

Joe Hill, executed by the state of Utah on November 19, 1915, was brought back to Chicago by the IWW. Five thousand people attended a Thanksgiving Day funeral after which Joe Hill's body was cremated. His ashes were divided into envelopes and distributed to every state, except Utah, as well as South America, Europe, Asia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. On May 1, 1916, the envelopes were opened simultaneously and Joe Hill was spread over the world. The Illinois ashes were dispersed from Waldheim.

And then there is Mort Schaffner, who died in 1973. In high school, Schaffner protected the firing of four teachers for their anti-Vietnam activities and at 18, he challenged the election laws by running for Niles Township School Board. His name was removed from the ballot but three weeks later the law was changed. When he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 20, his family chose to bury him here to remind pilgrims to Waldheim that the struggle for social change goes on.

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