Goddess of Anarchy

by Jacqueline Jones

  5. “Vive la Commune!… Blow it up with dynamite”: CT, April 29, 1885, 2; “the robbers’ roost”: LE, May 16, 1885; William Holmes, “Reminiscences,” ME (November 1907): 290–291; “permitted to make”: Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 1885; “unreasoning”: CT, April 30, 1885, 4; NYT, April 30, 1885, 1.

  6. “it was only a matter of time”: testimony of Marshall H. Williamson, vol. J, 7–8, CHS, HADC.

  7. “to show me”: testimony of Marshall H. Williamson, vol. J, 8, CHS, HADC; “Their manner”: ibid., 9.

  8. Testimony of Thomas L. Treharn, vol. J, 246–248, CHS, HADC; testimony of Jeremiah Sullivan, vol. J, 255–266, ibid.; Timothy Messer-Kruse, Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 119; Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 3, 125.

  9. “I love clamor”: Alarm, November 19, 1887; “force… revolt!”: Lucy E. Parsons, ed., Life of Albert R. Parsons with Brief History of the Labor Movement in America (Chicago: Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons, 1889), 65, 68. The Burke quotation: “I love clamor when there is abuse. The alarm bell disturbs the inhabitants, but saves them from being burnt in their beds.”

  10. Bruce Nelson, “‘We Can’t Get Them to Do Aggressive Work’: Chicago’s Anarchists and the Eight-Hour Movement,” ILWCH 29 (Spring 1986): 9; John R. Commons, David J. Saposs, Helen L. Sumner, E. B. Mittelman, H. E. Hoagland, John B. Andrews, and Selig Perlman, eds., History of Labour in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966 [1921–1935]), 378–381.

  11. Alarm, October 4, 1884.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. “bloodthirsty woman”: WP, January 11, 1885, 2.

  15. LE, April 4, 1885.

  16. Alarm, August 8, 1885.

  17. Ibid., September 18, 1885.

  18. Ibid., December 26, 1885.

  19. LE, March 27, 1886.

  20. “Lucy E. Parsons handbill”: Cleveland Leader, February 20, 1885; “the gospel… Chicago”: ibid., February 9, 1885, and Canton (OH) Repository, February 11, 1885, and February 26, 1885; “Dynamite”: ISJ, February 14, 1885; “little… terrors for her”: Chicago Herald, reprinted in WP, January 11, 1885, 2.

  21. “a negro… country”: NYT, January 26, 1885, 1; Messer-Kruse, Haymarket Conspiracy, 71, 114–116.

  22. “Bombs!”: Alarm, May 2, 1885; ibid., May 16, 1885; “One man”: ibid., October 18, 1884; “the equilibrium… impossible”: Parsons, ed., Life, 181; “Gunpowder brought”: Alarm, November 15, 1884.

  23. Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 165–166; “We believe”: Alarm, January 13, 1885.

  24. LE, April 25, 1885.

  25. Floyd Dell, “Bomb-Talking” in David Roediger and Franklin Rosemont, eds., Haymarket Scrapbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986), 74; “the dear stuff”: Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 76.

  26. Parsons, ed., Life, xxii–xxiii.

  27. Edith Abbott, “Wages of Unskilled Labor in the United States, 1850–1900,” JPE 13 (June 1905): 361–367; Herbert G. Gutman, “Alarm: Chicago and New York, 1884–1889,” in Joseph R. Conlin, ed., The American Radical Press, 1880–1960, vol. 2 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 380–386.

  28. Ad: Alarm, February 1, 1885; “Let every dirty”: CT, May 7, 1885, 3; Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013 [1976]), 63.

  29. “lady liberty… stood beneath”: Alarm, February 21, 1886; “Brave… society”: ibid., August 22, 1885; “Mrs. Parsons”: CT, July 27, 1885, 5; “no other class”: ibid., July 28, 1885, 4.

  30. Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 77.

  31. “Wives and children… assemblies”: CT, August 10, 1885, 8; “sour-headed… country”: ibid., July 28, 1885, 4; “go arm… substance and form”: testimony of Clarence P. Dresser, vol. J, 236, CHS, HADC.

  32. “like whipped curs… company has got”: CT, July 9, 1885, 2.

  33. I. D. Roes in Christian Recorder, March 7, 1889.

  34. See, for example, the following issues of Alarm: February 7, 1885, May 16, 1885, May 30, 1885, September 5, 1885, October 31, 1885, November 28, 1885. The format for the Wednesday evening meetings was a thirty- to fifty-minute presentation followed by respondents, each limited to ten minutes.

  35. “memorable incidents”: Parsons, ed., Life, 191.

  36. CT, August 9, 1888, 1.

  37. Parsons, ed., Life, 62.

  38. Ibid., 59; “conservative workingmen”: ibid., 31–32; ibid., 33; Alarm, December 26, 1885; Messer-Kruse, Haymarket Conspiracy, 125.

  39. Parsons, ed., Life, 39; “cold”: ibid., 56; “very dangerous… damnation”: Canton (OH) Repository, February 11, 1886; ibid., October 15, 1887.

  40. “the existing social order”: Canton (OH) Repository, October 15, 1887, 26; “Here in Cleveland”: Alarm, December 26, 1885.

  41. “Dynamiters”: Albert R. Parsons Papers, 1876–1893 (MSS 15A, Microfilm 523), Library Archives Division, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin (ARP Papers hereafter); “He Counsels”: clipping, Cleveland LH, December 20, 1885, in ibid.; Dallas WH, March 26, 1885; “the final outbreak… negress”: NYT, March 19, 1885, 5; CT, March 19, 1885, 6.

  42. “whose whole being”: Parsons, ed., Life, 60.

  CHAPTER 6: HAYMARKET

  1. Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 2015).

  2. NYT, September 8, 1885, 2; “To the Employes [sic] of Chicago [1885], Convention of the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the U.S.,” signed by the Trades Assembly of Chicago, ARP Papers; “meaningless affair… free republic”: Alarm, September 10, 1885; ibid., October 17, 1885; “The Voluntary Slaves”: ibid., September 19, 1885.

  3. Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864–1897 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 173; Bruce Nelson, “‘We Can’t Get Them to Do Aggressive Work’: Chicago’s Anarchists and the Eight-Hour Movement,” ILWCH 29 (Spring 1986): 4–6; Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 83–86.

  4. Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013 [1976]), 49.

  5. “if you started talking”: Box 1, Memos and Drafts on Motivation Folder, audio cassette #2 (Interview with Irving Abrams), Carolyn Ashbaugh Papers—Lucy Parsons Research Papers—The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois (Ashbaugh Papers hereafter).

  6. “Now printing”: quoted in Eric L. Hirsch, Urban Revolt: Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-Century Chicago Labor Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 104–105.

  7. Alarm, January 13, 1885; Albert Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as Defined by Some of Its Apostles (Chicago: Mrs. A. R. Parsons, 1887), 100; Michael J. Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror, and the Social Revolution in America and Europe, Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and Deed, the Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators (Chicago: F. Schulte, 1889), 108.

  8. “God has a grudge”: Alarm, May 30, 1885; Lucy E. Parsons, ed., Life of Albert R. Parsons with Brief History of the Labor Movement in America (Chicago: Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons, 1889), 40–41; Bruce Nelson, “Revival and Upheaval: Religion, Irreligion, and Chicago’s Working Class in 1886,” JSH 25 (Winter 1991): 235–238; William A. Mirola, Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago’s Eight-Hour Movement, 1866–1912 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Alarm, January 9, 1886; Herbert G. Gutman, “Protestantism and the American Labor Movement: The Christian Spirit in the Gilded Age,” AHR 72 (October 1966): 74–101.

  9. “Thankless Day”: Alarm, December 12, 1885; “You are to give”: Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 77; CT, November 30, 1884, 4; “a lie”: Alarm, December 12, 1884; CT, November
28, 1885, 4; Parsons, ed., Life, 73, 77.

  10. “twin relics”: Alarm, June 18, 1885; KL, September 18, 1886, 2; Alarm, January 13, 1885; “the dregs”: Alarm, April 4, 1885; “Her brother slaves”: Alarm, November 14, 1885.

  11. “rancid reform”: Alarm, April 4, 1885; “brave and humane”: Alarm, April 18, 1885.

  12. “silly and vain”: Albert Parsons, Anarchism, 109; CT, February 9, 1885, 1; “the dynamite assassins”: CT, March 2, 1885, 8.

  13. “The employers used… distress of the workers”: Mary Field Parton, ed., The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1925), 12–13; “Such speakers”: Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 124; Alarm, April 4, 1885.

  14. John R. Commons, David J. Saposs, Helen L. Sumner, E. B. Mittelman, H. E. Hoagland, John B. Andrews, and Selig Perlman, eds., History of Labour in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966 [1921–1935]), 366–374; Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois, Fourth Biennial Report (Springfield: H. K. Rokked, 1886), 446–453.

  15. Sidney H. Kessler, “The Organization of Negroes in the Knights of Labor,” JNH 37 (July 1952): 252, 259; Warren C. Whatley, “African-American Strikebreaking from the Civil War to the New Deal,” SSH 17 (Winter 1993): 525–558; George B. Cotkin, “Evictions, Strikebreakers, and Violence: Industrial Conflict in the Hocking Valley, 1884–1885,” OH (Spring 1978); John H. Keiser, “Black Strikebreakers and Racism in Illinois, 1865–1900,” JISHS 65 (1972): 313–326.

  16. David Roediger and Franklin Rosemont, eds., Haymarket Scrapbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986), 81–83.

  17. “Two Soul-Saving Sams”: Nelson, “Revival and Upheaval,” 246–247.

  18. Jeffrey S. Adler, “Shoot to Kill: The Use of Deadly Force by the Chicago Police, 1875–1920,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38 (Autumn 2007): 233–254; Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 166, 182; Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 143; “The club today”: quoted in Roediger and Rosemont, eds., Haymarket Scrapbook, 82; “socialism places”: Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 74; Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons, 61.

  19. “Mrs. Lucy Parsons”: Alarm, March 6, 1886; “contemplates making”: Alarm, April 3, 1886.

  20. CT, March 19, 1886, 5; “Who but a devoted… economic system”: Alarm, April 3, 1886; Rick Ward, “The Carrol County Court House Massacre, 1886: A Cold Case File,” Mississippi History Now, May 2012, http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/381/the-carroll-county-courthouse-massacre-1886-a-cold-case-file.

  21. Alarm, April 3, 1886.

  22. “And to the negro himself… incendiary”: ibid.; WP, March 21, 1886, 4; ibid., March 25, 1886, 2; “every conceivable”: NYT, March 19, 1886, 1.

  23. “the infernal machine”: LE, January 2, 1886; CT, May 1, 1886, 8; “anarchists”: Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists, 122–123.

  24. “stood for”: Alarm, March 20, 1886.

  25. “personally responsible”: Mail quoted in Avrich, Haymarket Tragedy, 187; Roediger and Rosemont, eds., Haymarket Scrapbook, 13; AZ, May 1, 1886.

  26. The following account is based on the eyewitness testimony of Lizzie Swank Holmes, in Parsons, ed., Life, 190–193, as well as her Haymarket trial testimony; Albert Parsons, CHS, HADC, www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/transcript/volumen/101-150/N108-143.htm; and secondary accounts provided by defense attorney William P. Black in Parsons, ed., Life, 100–109; Avrich, Haymarket Tragedy, 197–214; Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 177–178.

  27. “Good speakers… full force”: handbill in Haymarket Trial evidence, CHS, HADC, www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/transcript/trialtoc.htm#EXHIBITS.

  28. “shouting Amazons… Zeitung”: CT, May 4, 1886, 1; Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics, 197.

  29. “I think we ought”: Speech of Albert R. Parsons, in The Accused, the Accusers: The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court When Asked If They Had Anything to Say Why Sentence Should Not Be Passed upon Them. On October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1886, Chicago, Illinois (Chicago: Socialistic Publishing Society, 1886), 30 (also available online at CHS, HADC), 186; CT, May 5, 1886, 2; Mitrani, Rise, 190; CT, May 5, 1886, 2; LE, May 1, 1886; “American Group meets”: quoted in Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 87; ibid., 177; KL, October 23, 1886, 2; Parsons, ed., Life, 201.

  30. “Have you any… isn’t he”: testimony of Edgar E. Owen, vol. K, 214, CHS, HADC; testimony of Henry E. O. Heinemann, vol. I, 244–245, ibid.

  31. Persons attending the meeting included Mr. and Mrs. Timmons, John Waldo, Thomas Brown, William Snyder, William Patterson, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons, Lizzie Swank Holmes, and two men named Owens and Myers.

  32. “go over… yes”: testimony of Heinemann, vol. K, 252–253, CHS, HADC; “to write… milder”: testimony of G. P. English, vol. K, 296, 300, 306, ibid.

  33. “keep your eye upon it… peaceable”: quoted in Avrich, Haymarket Tragedy, 215–216.

  34. “slender tail”: NYT, May 6, 1886, 1.

  35. “many other arguments… took place”: Parsons, ed., Life, 193.

  36. “Spies, Parsons”: New York Tribune, May 6, 1886, 5; CT, May 7, 1886, 4.

  37. Messer-Kruse, Trial, 193n.56. The quotations are from Oscar Neebe in The Accused, the Accusers, 30; “brass cartridge”: Denver RMN, May 12, 1886, 1.

  38. “to shadow”: Cleveland PD, May 6, 1886, 2; CT, May 8, 1886, 2; ibid., May 7, 1886, 2; New York Tribune, May 10, 1886, 1.

  39. “minions… contempt”: Gail Ahrens, ed., Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality and Solidarity. Writings and Speeches, 1878–1937 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004), 51–53.

  40. “levanted”: Dallas MN, May 6, 1886; “His Early Career… worded”: Waco Day, May 6, 1886.

  41. “mongrel”: Galveston DN, May 16, 1886; Dallas MN, May 7, 1886; “an ordinary”: Cleveland PD, May 18, 1886; “a single family”: Dallas MN, May 6, 1886, 8.

  42. “reticent… ability”: Dallas MN, May 11, 1886, reprinted from the Chicago DN of May 8, 1886.

  43. “My ancestors”: Atchison DG, November 4, 1886.

  CHAPTER 7: BITTER FRUIT OF BRAGGADOCIO

  1. “poetry, music”: LE, February 20, 1886; “or stay”: ibid., April 24, 1886; testimony of Lizzie Swank Holmes, vol. M, 305–306, CHS, HADC; “there will be… beginning of the end”: LE, February 26, 1886.

  2. Sigmund Zeisler, Reminiscences of the Anarchist Case (Chicago: Literary Club, 1927), 19; Lucy E. Parsons, ed., Life of Albert R. Parsons with Brief History of the Labor Movement in America (Chicago: Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons, 1889), 193–195 (see the drawing of Albert in disguise between pages 185 and 186); Letter No. 2: “To A. R. Parsons, from his Friend and Brother, Simon B. Needham; also Letters from A. R. Parsons to his Friends at Waukesha,” ARP Papers; Firebrand, August 25, 1895.

  3. “liberty, fraternity… fragrant bloom”: “To A. R. Parsons,” August 12, 1880, ARP Papers; Parsons, ed., Life, 212.

  4. “The theory of anarchy”: testimony of Lizzie Mae Holmes, vol. M, 304, CHS, HADC.

  5. Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 192–194; KL, September 25, 1886, 4; “Anarchy’s Red Hand… and Fielden”: NYT, May 6, 1886, 1.

  6. “Public justice… murder”: quoted in Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 233.

  7. “well-educated”: Zeisler, Reminiscences, 19, 22–23; Parsons, ed., Life, 100–116; Carl Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Trial, and the Model Town of Pullman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 128–129.

  8. “stalking up and down… know him”: CT, June 22, 1886, 1; Parsons, ed., Life, 136, 197; KL, October 23, 1886, 3.

  9. “not only most ungrac
ious”: Zeisler, Reminiscences, 22–23; Parsons, Life, 103; “I thought” clipping, n.d. [c. August 22, 1886], ARP Papers.

  10. “jauntily attired”: CT, June 26, 1886, 4.

  11. “in a pleasant… rather sympathizers”: Cleveland PD, June 23, 1886, 6; Dallas MN, June 26, 1886.

  12. Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013 [1976]), 92.

  13. “falsely sailing”: Liberty, May 22, 1886; ibid., June 19, 1886; Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864–1897 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 222; “to defend… without a cause”: LE, May 8, 1886; ibid., May 15, 1886.

  14. “the core of conspiracy… utterances”: Michael J. Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror, and the Social Revolution in America and Europe, Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and Deed, the Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators (Chicago: F. Schulte, 1889), 133.

  15. “she was doing”: testimony of Clarence Dresser, vol. J, 226, CHS, HADC.

  16. “by general addresses”: Joseph E. Gary, “The Chicago Anarchists of 1886: The Crime, the Trial, and the Punishment,” Century Magazine 45 (April 1893): 812. For a rebuttal to Messer-Kruse, who argues that the trial was fair by the standards of the day, and that the defendants were indeed conspirators and to varying degrees guilty of the charges, see Richard Schneirov, “Still Not Guilty,” Labor 9 (2012): 29–33.

  17. Smith, Urban Disorder, 143–145.

  18. LE, July 24, 1886; Chicago Times, September 26, 1886; Parsons, ed., Life, 213–215.

  19. “practiced bomb-maker”: Zeisler, Reminiscences, 28; testimony of August Spies, vol. N, 57–58, CHS, HADC.

  20. “boldness and eloquence”: Parsons, ed., Life, 207.