by Philip Dray
The prospect of an “apocalyptic breakdown” that would shock societies into self-recognition and change, likely through acts of terror the anarchists called attentats, or “propaganda by the deed,” was likely better suited, if at all, to authoritarian societies in which citizens had little other opportunity, such as the ballot or the courts, to effect change. The fact that the United States possessed such options, and that anarchism was more an ideal than a program, diminished its appeal to pragmatic Americans, and indeed frightened many. The daily press took a dim, condescending view of the anarchist fringe, which it considered juvenile and maladjusted. Harper’s Weekly advised:
The present situation has shown that there are two very different kinds of so-called labor movements. There are those which seek redress for real grievances, when the demand for redress is so reasonable that it commands general sympathy and support, and there are those which spring from certain social theories, and seek the violent overthrow of the existing social order. These last are mainly led by foreigners who scarcely speak our language, and who have no knowledge of the country nor comprehension of American institutions.28
Yet it is a measure of how deeply alienated many workers felt in American industrial society of the Gilded Age that anarchy, despite its lack of clarity, attracted both serious devotees and the merely curious. “We are the birds of the coming storm,” August Spies liked to say, “the prophets of the revolution.”29 Even for the generally clearheaded Albert Parsons, notes a biographer, “principles of anarchism, socialism and equalitarianism were hopelessly entangled.” He recognized inherent value in each and tended to use the concepts interchangeably, as his memberships in various causes and groups overlapped. “We are called Communists, or Socialists, or Anarchists,” Parsons conceded. “We accept all three of the terms.”30
BY 1884 CHICAGO’S CENTRAL LABOR UNION had two thousand members, chiefly Germans and Poles, and a lively journal, the Alarm, edited by Albert Parsons,31 which urged readers to “join with your comrades in the warfare against your deadly foe—poverty—and against the accursed system that rewards industry … and makes of this fair earth a slave pen.” The Alarm enjoyed a subscription list of twenty-five hundred, although its pass-along readership was likely much higher.32 Parsons was also a popular soapbox speaker, his appearances at rallies and meetings regularly attracting substantial audiences of keen-eared listeners; like his friend August Spies, he exhorted workingmen to arm themselves. Both men did so in the context of advocating workers’ self-defense, but the Alarm, per Johann Most, carried a regular column dealing with the technical aspects of bomb-making and the various properties of dynamite and nitroglycerin, the articles provocatively titled “Explosives: A Practical Lesson in Popular Chemistry; The Manufacture of Dynamite Made Easy,”33 or “Bombs! The Weapon of the Social Revolutionist Placed Within the Reach of All.”34 Even Parsons’s wife, Lucy, got into the act, allowing herself to be quoted by the Chicago Tribune, “Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or knife and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out.”35
But was this all talk? Most, Spies, and Parsons clearly used the symbolism of dynamite as an expressive metaphor, a means of articulating their utter contempt for authority; yet none of them ever personally acted on the principle, or urged others to do so in a specific instance. Of course their exaggerated threats—including Most’s prediction that “sooner or later the red flag of the revolution will wave over Independence Hall” in Philadelphia—were understandably troubling to Chicago businessmen such as Marshall Field and Cyrus McCormick Jr., as well as the police.36 Such flaming rhetoric tended to make even the most legitimate demands of organized labor dangerous and insurrectionary, so that “every striker was a foreigner and every foreigner a Communist, Anarchist, Socialist or Nihilist.”37 No less an authority on lethal conflict than General William Tecumseh Sherman saw looming in the anarchists’ speech “an armed contest between Capital and Labor … [who] will oppose each other not with words and arguments and ballots, but with shot and shell, gunpowder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howlings of the lower strata, and they mean to stop them”38; the Chicago Tribune reassured its readers that “Judge Lynch is an American by birth and character” and that “every lamp-post in Chicago will be decorated with a communistic carcass if necessary.”39
The anarchists were playing a dangerous game, one frightening enough to Chicago’s business and government elites that Illinois in 1878 prohibited all paramilitary organizations not part of the state militia. But in fact, any such official restrictions were routinely ignored. Among German workingmen in nineteenth-century America, self-defense belonged to a proud tradition. Recreational Schutzengesellschaften, or shooting clubs, where members took target practice or carried their guns into the countryside on weekend outings, were a corollary to the popular gymnasiums, or turnverein, which emphasized physical fitness and were central to German American social life. The German community even had its own American military hero and patron saint, the Prussian militarist Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who had joined General Washington’s staff in 1777 and trained the Continental army at Valley Forge, and who was honored in annual festivities. During the Civil War many turnverein in Northern cities such as New York and Chicago had sent German American fighting units to the Union army, and they proudly retained their flags, uniforms, and soldierly customs.
No doubt the idea of a coming “workers’ society” seemed almost tangible at the massive picnics held on the southwest side of Chicago at Wright’s Grove, in the north side at Ogden’s Grove, with its revolving stage and a band shell, or along Lake Michigan. For these events entire neighborhoods emptied out of a Sunday afternoon to eat, drink, lounge, watch acrobatics and shooting contests, and mingle in the sunshine. Especially popular were the annual March 18 celebrations marking the anniversary of the Paris Commune, events that were martial in character and featured neighborhood “defense corps” parading with guns and bayonets to the rousing sounds of “La Marseillaise” and shouts of “Vive la Commune!” A highlight was occasional appearances by actual survivors of the Commune itself.40
In April 1885 there was an incident even radical Chicagoans likely did not dare expect—a violent confrontation with capital in which the workers came out on top. Located south of town, the McCormick Reaper Company was, with its two thousand employees, the world’s largest farm implement manufacturer. Workers had struck McCormick over “poor pay, long work hours,” and their frustration with “the insulting and dictatorial bearing of the foremen and superintendent.” The company responded by bringing in scabs protected by detested “Pinkerton pups.” When a rumor spread that strikers had been fired upon, a group of them boldly ambushed two wagons being used by the Pinkertons, dragging the detectives to the ground and beating several of them senseless. Inside one of the vehicles the strikers discovered two cases of Winchester rifles and twenty-five Colt revolvers, which they seized.
McCormick executives were caught off guard by the workers’ terrorizing of the Pinkertons, and with their great factory largely idle and the roads leading to it blocked by strikers, they asked for a parlay. A company spokesman met with a workers’ delegation and, after “dealing in palaver and taffy until it disgusted the committee,” offered terms of compromise and acceded to many of the employees’ demands, including a wage increase. The Alarm cheered the victory as “the most exciting, serious and determined struggle between capitalists and wage laborers that has occurred in Chicago in several years,” and termed McCormick’s capitulation “an unconditional surrender.” Both Parsons and Spies emphasized the heroic example the McCormick workers had given in conquering force with force.41
But the episode would have serious ramifications. As a result of the workers’ bravado, Mayor Carter Harrison, who had dedicated his efforts to maintaining a relative calm between workers and the police, came under pressure from local businessmen to institute stronger checks on ra
dical agitation. In October 1885 he promoted to police inspector one of the city’s toughest cops, Captain John Bonfield, who was so feared in the city’s ethnic enclaves, he was known as “Black Jack” or simply “The Clubber.”
The decision certainly was not typical of Harrison, a joyful rustic from Kentucky who was popular with voters and famously in love with his job and his city—his “bride,” as he called Chicago, “who laves her beautiful limbs daily in Lake Michigan and comes out clean and pure every morning.”42 He was often to be seen riding through the streets on a black bay mare, cigar in hand, his shirt festooned with tiny diamonds, hat at a rakish tilt. “He was thrilled with the sensation of being on parade,” recalled a memoirist, “and never grew weary of seeing himself pass by.”43 Born into a family that claimed descent from Pocahontas, Harrison had been educated at Yale, had traveled widely in Europe, and had done exceedingly well in Chicago real estate; as mayor he had secured the loyalty of the city’s working neighborhoods by learning a smattering of several immigrant languages and showing up regularly at block parties and ethnic celebrations. Unlike some politicians who did such things stiffly and out of a sense of obligation, Harrison actually appeared to be enjoying himself. Influential Chicagoans such as Daily News publisher Melville Stone tolerated the mayor so long as his outgoing demeanor kept the working class quiet, but in the wake of the McCormick violence they demanded a firmer guarantee of protection.44
Bonfield, the man who embodied the new policy, had been with the police since the 1877 railroad disturbances and had won several promotions for his willingness to take on assignments in areas of the city considered dangerous. These lonely postings led to Bonfield’s suggestion for a unique innovation—a system of call boxes so that a patrolman walking a beat in a remote area could notify headquarters for backup if trouble arose. The concept, which made use of the then-emerging technology of the telephone, was implemented in Chicago and soon replicated elsewhere in America. Bonfield’s real value, however, was his courage in aggressive street actions. During a July 1885 confrontation with striking trolley car employees, he had ordered his men to clear protestors from a street, and when demonstrators had refused to budge, deriding the officers as “scabs” and “rats,” an infuriated Bonfield had personally led his troops directly into the crowd. He was seen pounding protestors into submission, even gashing the heads of two strikers’ representatives who had approached him, seeing his captain’s uniform, in hopes of calming the situation. One of Mayor Harrison’s own sons was among the many hundreds of people bruised by cops that afternoon.45 There was some pro forma grousing over Bonfield’s excessive behavior in the affair, but in truth his performance had made a very favorable impression.
RADICAL LABOR ELEMENTS HAD INITIALLY disparaged the plan by Samuel Gompers and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions to use May 1, 1886, as a day of nationwide demonstration and a general strike in support of the eight-hour cause. They derided the campaign as “soothing syrup for babies, but of no consequence to grown men,”46 with Johann Most predicting the “eight-hour fraud” would never squelch “the revolutionary tension,”47 and the Alarm writing it off as “literal foolishness.”48
The eight-hour cause had proven a compelling rallying cry, however, as recently as September 5 1882, when it was one of the themes featured in a “monster labor festival” in New York City. The daylong event, scheduled in early September so as to flex labor’s strength at the opening of the fall political season, brought ten thousand trade unionists from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City to Union Square, many in their work uniforms or shop aprons. Five hundred jewelers marched tapping canes along the pavement, the cigar makers’ unions distributed free stogies, along with numerous bands and floats as well as a sizable turnout from Typographical Union No. 6, which had helped in the event’s preparations along with the Knights of Labor. The workers, “determined to show their numerical strength in order to satisfy the politicians of this city that they must not be trifled with,” marched around the square’s perimeter behind Grand Marshal William McNabe and a multitude of banners declaring LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH and LABOR BUILT THIS REPUBLIC AND LABOR SHALL RULE IT. Other signs denounced convict labor or demanded the closing of stores at 6 p.m.; one in particular that caught the attention of the city’s editorial writers, PAY NO RENT, was a tribute to the Paris Commune. Assorted clergy and union dignitaries watched approvingly from a reviewing stand at the northern end of the square. It was reportedly one of these impressed observers who dubbed the passing spectacle “Labor Day,” the beginning of the American tradition honoring an annual workers’ holiday.49
By February 1886 the Alarm had come around to the view that the popular “eight-hour movement is a sign of the progressive ideas underlying the entire labor movement,”50 and Parsons and his fellow anarchists embraced it for its potential to humiliate and inconvenience the industrial system. “Winning the eight-hour day would give the workers more leisure in which to train for the greater task of emancipating themselves from capitalism,” he wrote.51 Always fond of lacing his arguments with statistics (and sharing them with an audience), Parsons soon became enamored of data suggesting that, historically, shortened hours led to increased wages, “more leisure from mere drudge work,” and the opportunity for workers to “minister to their higher aspirations.”52
However, it appeared that something other than “higher aspirations” preoccupied the Alarm in the week before Chicago’s big May 1 eight-hour demonstration, when the paper ran the headline “To Arms! American Workingmen Are Called Upon to Arm Themselves.” The article that followed discounted existing options for progress in electoral politics, religion, and industry, and demanded to know if the present generation had the audacity of early American revolutionaries such as Paul Revere.53 The conservative Chicago Mail, apparently deciding it had had enough of the Alarm’s provocations, replied: “There are two dangerous ruffians at large in this city, two sneaking cowards who are trying to create trouble. One of them is named Parsons; the other is named Spies…. Mark them for today. Keep them in view. Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble does occur.”54
There were other public warnings that any radical shenanigans on May 1 would be quashed at once by Inspector Bonfield and his men, but in fact the day’s events were largely calm and orderly, despite Chicago’s having the nation’s largest eight-hour rally and parade, with nearly one hundred thousand people marching down Michigan Avenue. Tens of thousands also turned out in New York, Detroit, Milwaukee, and other cities, and more than a thousand factories across the country suffered strike actions in observance of the day’s event. While there was some friction elsewhere, the mammoth Chicago outpouring was fairly anticlimactic. “Expecting Armageddon,” notes an historian, “Chicago felt a little cheated at getting only peace.”55
Monday, May 3, however, brought a far different result: another riot at McCormick Reaper. The company was still smarting over its capitulation to the workers the previous spring. That settlement, in which the company had agreed to boost wages, had proved a bitter pill for the firm’s executives, who had to suffer the annoyance of hearing radical propagandists cheer “the people” for humbling the mighty McCormick. In early 1886 it chose to once again move aggressively against employees, dismissing a large number of skilled iron molders so they could be replaced by new pneumatic molding machines. Other workers walked out in sympathy, demanding the rehiring of the molders and higher pay for unskilled employees. McCormick replied by importing three hundred scabs to take the strikers’ jobs, but this time, instead of Pinkertons, the firm arranged for a special 350-man force of police organized by Inspector Bonfield to protect the scabs and the firm’s property. Even with this police coverage tension persisted; there were several brawls and exchanges of insults between the ousted workers and their replacements.
On May 3, August Spies was in the vicinity of the McCormick factory at an unrelated rally of lumber workers, when sh
ots were heard coming from the McCormick site: a shift change was under way and the usual taunting of scabs had apparently escalated. Some of those in Spies’s audience were McCormick workers, and they immediately ran toward the scene of the fighting. In the ensuing fracas, Bonfield’s police savagely beat dozens of workers and shot four men to death. Enraged, Spies returned to his newspaper office and produced what would become known as “the Revenge Circular.” Under the single word “Revenge” ran the bold headline “Workingmen, to Arms!!!” and a text that was equally fiery:
You have for years endured the most abject humiliations; you have endured the pangs of hunger and want; you have worked yourself to death; your children you have sacrificed to the factory lords…. If you are men, if you are the sons of grand sires who have shed their blood to free you, then you will rise in your might … and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms, we call you. To arms!56
To protest the slaughter at McCormick a rally was called for the next evening at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. “Good speakers will be present to denounce the latest atrocious act of the police, the shooting of our fellow-workmen yesterday afternoon,” it was promised.
Perhaps because many workers had marched only a few days before in the big eight-hour rally, or due to fears of police violence after what had occurred at McCormick, only about three thousand people rather than the twenty-five thousand organizers had hoped for materialized the evening of May 4 in Haymarket Square. The square was far too large for the modest turnout, so those in charge maneuvered an empty wagon into an alley to provide a platform for the speakers. The gathering was peaceful, and Mayor Harrison came and mingled with the crowd as Spies and Parsons spoke. It was a breezy evening, threatening rain, and Harrison was forced to strike several matches in order to keep his cigar lit; when someone advised him that in doing so he’d give himself away to the crowd, he insisted that he didn’t mind because “I want the people to know their mayor is here.”