Chicago History | Summer 1986 by Chicago History Museum

SUMMER 1986

~-CHICAGO . HISTORY

v Â·

CHICAGO HISTORYThe Magazine of the Chicago Historical Socie~

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EDITOR R USSELL LEWIS

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Summer 1986 Volume XV, Number 2

ASSOCIATE EDITOR M EG W ALTER EDITORIAL ASSIS'L\NT ALETA Z AK DESIGNER

CONTENTS

LISA GINZEL DESIGN ASSISTANT

Anarchism: The Movement Behind the Martyrs BRUCE C. NELSON

MIC H ELLE K OGAN PHOTOGRAPHY WILLI AM J ENN INGS J ANE REGAN

Cop)Tight 1987 by th e Chi cago Historica l Society Clark Street a t North Avenue Chi cago, IL 606 14 ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing 111 this journ al are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and Ammco: History and Life. Footno ted manuscripts of the ar1jcl es appea,-ing in this issue are avai lable in the Chi cago Hi storical Society's Pub lications Office. Cover: "Liberty is not Anarchy, " by Tlwmas Nast, Harper's Weekly, Sep/ember 4, 1886, CHS Library.

Haymarket, 1886!

Cataclysm and Cultural Consciousness: Chicago and the Haymarket Trial CARL S. SMITH

Chicago's Martyrs: A Parable for the People ANN MASSA

DEPARTMENTS

3 64

From the Editor Review Essay STEVEN ROSSW URM

Book Reviews

Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS Philip D. Block III, Chairman Philip W. Hummer, Vice-Chairman Richard H. Needham, Vice-Chairman

Bryan S. Reid,Jr., Treasurer Mrs. ewton N. Minow, Secretary Stewart S. Dixon, Immediate Past Chairman

Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director

TRUSTEES Philip D. Block III Laurence Booth Mrs. Pastora San Juan Cafferty Stewart S. Dixon William M. Drake Philip W. Hummer Edgar 0. Jannotta Philip E. Kelley Mrs. Brooks McCormick John T McCutcheon,Jr.

William J. McDono ugh Robert Meers Mrs. ewton N. Minow Richard H. Needham Potter Palmer Mrs. Edward S. Petersen Bryan S. Reid,Jr. Edward Byron Sm ith ,.Jr. Dempsey J. Travis Mrs. Abra Prentice Wilkin

LIFE T RUSTEES Cyrus Co lter l\[rs. Frank D. Mayer Andrew McNally III Mrs. C. Phillip Mi ll er Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken

HONORARY TRUSTEES Harold Washington, Mayor, City of Chicago Walter A. Nersch,Jr., President, Chicago Park District The Ch icago Historical Socie ty is a privately endowed institution devoted lO co ll ecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the city of Ch icago, the state of Illin ois, and selected areas of American history. It must look to its members and friends fo r continuing financial support. Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. Membership Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's goals and activities. Classes of annual membership and dues are as fo ll ows: In dividua l, $25; Family, $30. Members receive 1.he Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago Hist01y; a quarterly newsleuer, Past-Times; a quarterly Calen&tr of Events listing Society programs; invitations to specia l even Ls; free adm ission to the bui lding at a ll times; reserved seats al films and concerts in our auditorium; and a IO percent discount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. Hours The Museum is open daily from 9:30 A. M. to 4:30 P. ~I.; Sunday from 12:00 NOO:--1 to 5:00 P. M . The Library and ~lan uscripts Collect.ion are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 A. ~I. to 4:30 P. M. All other research collections are open by appointment. The Society is closed on Christ.mas, ew Year's, and Thanksgiving days. Education and Public Programs Guided tours, slide lectures, ga llery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from pre-school through senior citizen , are offered. Admission Fees for Non-members Adults, $1.50; C hil dren (6-17), 50Â˘; Senior Citizens, 50Â˘. Admi sion is free on Mondays.

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FROM THE EDITOR

Eighteen hundred eighty-six was a year of contrast and conflict. In May, the first dynamite bomb thrown in America killed eight policemen breaking up a workers' protest meeting in Chicago's Haymarket Square. In October, officials dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the French government's tribute to the American Revolution and symbol of the land of opportunity. Perhaps this strange paradox is a good measure of these difficult times. More strikes occurred in 1886 than in any other year of the century. Increasing industrialization widened the gap between workers and employers. The disparity between rich and poor became exaggerated; the wealthy grew comfortable, the poor, in great numbers, discontented. In Chicago, the intensifying conflict between capital and labor cast a pall over the city; police and workers clashed in pitched battles more and more frequently. The issues-oppression in the workplace, long hours, inadequate pay-were often obscured by emotion, nativism, chauvinism, and rhetoric. Into the midst of this charged atmosphere, someone threw a dynamite bomb. To many, it was the logical result of the escalating economic struggle. To others, it was proof of the threat to the American way of life from Chicago's teeming immigrant community. For members of that community, it meant zealous persecution, suspicion, and discrimination. To anarchists, it heralded the glorious revolution. To the eight who stood trial, it meant death or imprisonment. To the American system of jurisprudence, it led ultimately to embarrassment. The Haymarket bomb commanded the attention of the world; whatever their opinions, few people were untouched or unmoved by the explosion and its consequences. The richness and complexity of the Haymarket Affair has made it fascinating study for political, labor, social, and cultural historians. In this issue we explore some new ideas in the continuing debate over its events. Bruce Nelson sets the stage with an examination of socialism and anarchy in Chicago, and our chronological photographic essay places the event in the context of the movement for the eight-hour workday. Carl Smith looks at the trial of the Haymarket anarchists with an eye toward the impact of catastrophe on the course of history; Ann Massa discusses the reactions of poet Harriet Monroe and other contemporary observers to the affair. Finally, Steven Rosswurm brings us up to date on Haymarket scholarship in his book review essay, and our reviewers consider several relevant works. In one sense, the exploding Haymarket bomb brought into focus the social and cultural energy of the time. Around the world, people from all walks of life paused to contemplate its ramifications. We continue to do so one hundred years later. MW

Anarchism: The Movement Behind the Martyrs By Bruce C. Nelson

"... Socialism in America is an anomaly, and Chicago is the last place on the continent where it would exist were it not for the dregs of foreign immigration which find lodgement here." Chicago Daily News,January 14, 1886 of May 4, 1886, a bomb was thrown into the ranks of 130 police men who had just begun to break up a small crowd of workingmen in Haymarket Square. Those workers had come to protest the deaths of three strikers at the McConnick Reaper Works the day before; their meeting had bee n called by anarchists from the International Working Peoples' Association (IWPA). Ignoring the mayor's assessment that the gathe1ing was peaceful , an ambitious police officer chose to break it up: his order to disperse signaled the bomb. The explosion killed one policeman instantly, and seven more died later. The subsequent skinnish between the forces of order and anarchy left about seventy policemen and more tl1an a hundred workingmen killed or wounded. The ensuing trial , conviction, and execution of the "Haymarket martyrs" became a milestone in the history of Chicago, its labor movement, and the nation . The Haymarket Affair became symbol and proof of the explosiveness of the "labor question." The story of the Haymarket Riot may be too dramatic and familiar. There has been "excessive interest" in the Affair, as Herbert Gutman once charged; indeed "most studies have devoted too much attention to too little." The two scholarly accounts, Henry David's 77ze History of the Ha:yrnarket Affair (1936) and Paul Avrich's The Haymarket Tragedy (1984), both narratives, conclude that the bomb thrower came from inside Chicago's anarchist movement. Despite a different approach and the use of new material by Avrich, the two books cover much the same ground. But the trial and

the scholarship based on its transcripts have slighted the history of Chicago's anarchist moveme nt. Inside the courtroom a foreshortened cast of conspirators moved inexorably toward the gallows. The investigation was legal , not historica l: ne ith e r judge nor prosecutor nor jury was interested in the development of the politi ca l movement led by the martyrs, only in their conviction and exec ution. The history of the Haymarket Affair seems tTapped in ''.juridical interpreta tion ." The Haymarket centen nial provides an opportuni ty to move away from the bomb-throwing in cident, the trial, and the subsequent events of the Haymarket Affair and a chance to examine the movement behind th e martyrs. Why was Chicago such fertil e ground for the development of anarchism and the emergence of social-revolutionaries? Who were these anarchists? What did the anarchists think before the Haymarket Riot?

Bruce C. Nelson received his Ph.D. in 1986 from Northern Illinois University, where he has taught in the Department of History.

Anarchists dRmonstmted against the opening of the new Chicago Board of 7)-ade in 1885, dRuouucing il as a symbol of "starvation for the masses-privilege and luxu1y for a Jew."

ON TIIE NIGIIT

Economy, Society, and the Working Class By th e Great Fire of 1871, Chicago was already changing from a merchant-dominated commercial and transportation economy with a minor craft-based sector to a modem, corporate, industrial economy producing both capital and consumer goods. In the last four decades of the nineteenth century, fully 45 percent of the city's workers were employed in manufacturing. Between 1880 and 1890 Chicago became one of the nation's leading industrial centers. In number of manufacturing establishments it ranked sixth in 1880 and fourth in 1890. In number of employees, total wages,

Chicago History, Summer 1986 capital invested, gross value of products, and value added in manufacturing, it ranked third behind New York City and Philadelphia in 1880 and 1890. Chicago's indust:Jialization coincided with two economic depressions: tJ1e first from 1873 to 1878, tJ,e second from 1882 to 1886. BotJ, were part of th e international "Long Depression'· from 1873 Lo 1896. The second depression, which bottomed oul in tJ1 e winter of 1884-85, reinforced the hardships of the first and was felt more severely as unemployment soared. According LO the Trades Assembly's statistician, one-third of the city's carpenters were idle in January 1885, cigarmakers worked only seven hours a day for $8 a week, and coopers were averaging $6 to $8 a week. "In Chicago," he said, "39 per cent of the working classes were in enforced idleness:' In February "hundreds" tJ1ronged the Relief and Aid Society offices on LaSalle Sa·eet "looking for bread"; in March IJ1e county poor farm was "literally overrun and infested by a·amps from Chicago." Unemployment undercut tJ1e labor movement, as depres ion promoted recapitalization, the introduction of new machinery, and tJ1e expansion of

managerial control over the production process. Uneven economic development created very different experiences for workers. Large factories coexisted witJ1 smaller workshops and sweatshops; some bosses were close and visible, others were distant and unseen. The work experiences of skilled and unskilled laborers , indoor and outdoor workingmen, steady and sea5onal laborers, machine tenders and hand workers were all very different. Despite a common location and similar long-term patterns, Chicago's workers did not share the same changes in the workplace. Those who owned the means of production and distribution reaped the wealth. Philip Armour made his fortune in meal packing, Cyrus McCom1ick in agricultural implements, R. R. Donnelley in printing, George Pullman in railroad cars, Richard Crane in pipes and plumbing fixtures. Potter Palm er's hotel bore his name, and the fortunes of Marshall Field, Levi Leiter, and John Farwell came from dry goods. Most were Yankees, although there were some immigrants within the elite. Chicago was their city; they had built it and

In /)rcr-mber 1873 Chicago wit11essPd thefint in a series of''breod riots:· whm throngs of 1memj,loy,d workers demon.1trotnl against the Reliefand Aid Soci,tyfor the rPl.ease off1111ds lo ford thl' h11ng,y 0~1;m1iud by tlw Socialistic Labor Porty, the 1875 rally illustrated heri• attracted th.01,sonds of demonstrators conying /mgr rrd bm111p1~.

Chicago'.1 rapid economic develojmwnt created ve,y di!Jermt experiences for workers. Manufacturing before !he industrial era was carried out by rrr,ftsmen who made an entire product in small slwps or al home, such as this shoe,naker and hirnpprentices (above). The factory view below, c. 1892, reveals !he changing nature of work and the regimentation of the workplace in the industrial era.

Between 1880 and 1890 Chicago became one of the nation's leading industrial centas. Situated on the sh.ores of Lake Michigan and bisected by a major river, it was a natural port. Large businesses with bulk shipping needs-lumbf!1)'(lrds, /Jlaning mills, grain elevators, and brickyards-were l-0wted almzg the riverfront. These indwtries provided work, and soon a patchwork quill of ethnic neighborhoods sprang up around them. In the last four decades of the nineteenth cenlwy, -15 /Jercent of the city's workers W(â&#x20AC;˘re employed i11 manufacturing.

then rebuilt it after the disastrous fire of 1871. Those who owned little more than their labor power fared accordingly. The Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics' Third Biennial Report, 1884 gathered information on the income and expenses of 354 of Chicago's working-class families. Almost 50 percent were in debt or on the verge of indebtedness. About 40 percent of a working-class family's income was spent on food; rent consumed another 20 percent, and less than 2 percent went to savings which equalled about one month's renL Compared to Potter Palmer who owned a $600,000 mansion and much of the real estate on the North Side, only 7 percent of the Bureau's sample owned their own homes. And in contrast to Mrs. Palmer, "stately, regal, handsome, wearing her diamond tiara and famous rope of pearls, [who] ruled as the queen of America's second largest city," about 26 percent of Chicago's working-class families supplemented the head-of-household's earnings with those of wives and children. Chicago's economic development was based on its incredible growth: from 1860 to 1890, the city's population more than doubled every ten years. First- and second-generation Germans comprised 33 percent of the populace, the native born of 8

native stock made up 24 percent, the Irish 18 percent, and the Scandinavians 8 percent. Immigrants from the British Isles (English, Scottish , and Welsh) and Bohemians accounted for 5 percent each, the Poles comprised 4 percent, the French 1 percent, and blacks l percent. The remaining groups were small and scattered. Measured by ethnicity, the native born made up less than one-quarter of the population; the "dregs of foreign immigration" and their children comp1ised 76 percent. Differences between those ethnic groups reverberated throughout city life: in occupation, wealth, and residence . The native born dominated whitecollar employment; immigrants dominated the blue-collar work force. In 1881 Josef Gruenhut, the Trades Assembly's statistician, noted that "the American artisan ... has vanished from the scene," leaving Chicago's industry "a European colony." Chicago's wealth was distributed largely along ethnic lines and most was concentrated among the native born and English speaking. In turn, the differences in occupation and wealth were reflected in residential choice. Immigrants concentrated in enclaves: the North Side was recognizably German; on the Southwest Side the Bohemians claimed

Pilsen, the Irish Bridgeport; the native-born elite lived on North Michigan and South Prairie avenues. One of Chicago's eighteen wards was home to 65 percent of the city's Poles, another to 61 percent of the Bohemians, a third to 56 percent of the Danes, a fourth to 52 percent of the Norwegians. Relations among those ethnic communities were strained by language differences, competing economic interests, and cultural conflicts. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung noted this in 1871: "Between the Germans and the Irish, the Germans and the Americans there is, on the whole, little social intercourse." Older settlers had taken and still held skilled positions; new arrivals took semi-skilled and unskilled work. The distribution of occupations reinforced ethnic rivaliies. The native born and English speaking dominated the white-collar occupations, while the Gennans and Scandinavians dominated the skilled blue-collar jobs, and the Irish, Bohemians, and Poles, the unskilled. On the Southwest Side, the Irish and the Bohemians repeatedly clashed over jobs in tl1e lumber district. Within the trades, wage scales reflected both organizational and ethnic differences. Gennan carpenters, for example, generally received lower wages than did American-born co-workers. 'The deepest line of division within the working classes," David Montgomery once argued, "was that of religion!' It would be wrong to see a simple dichotomy between Protestants and Catholics; a third group, composed of deists, freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists, was also present, especially witl1in the city's German, Scandinavian, and Czech communities. Two major Protestant revivals, the first in 1876, the second in 1886, sharpened the difference between sinners and the saved, between Christians and the irreligious. Chicago's working class was fragmented by differences in skill, occupation, language, and culture. Working in different industries, earning different wages, living in different neighborhoods, workers worshipped, believed, and voted in very different ways. Despite the common exposure to industJialization, ethnic identifications repeatedly undercut class experiences and class solidarity. Indeed, the hostility and tl1e competition suggest t11at the singular "working class" might be replaced with the plural "working classes."

The Course of Radicalization Having taken part in the Civil War, which abolished

Thi1 banner was probably displayed on Thanksgiving Day, 1884, during a Markel Square rally protesting Govemor Richard Ogi.esby's annual Thanksgiving Da:y message. It expresses a biller but typical workingman's sentiment.

chattel slavery, leaders and members of the American labor movement sought to move "beyond equality" during the era of Reconstruction. They moved for a legislated reduction of hours, then for political and financial reforms; they experimented with both producers' and consumers' cooperatives as alternatives to competitive industry. Skilled workers built local and national unions; the unskilled resorted to bread riots and communitybased stJÂˇikes. Both the organizing labor movement and the largely unorganized working class were in the process of learning what histo1ians Eric Hobsbawm and David Montgomery have called "the habits of solidarity" an9 "the rules of the game!' In periods of intense agitation-as in 1867 during the massive strike for the eight-hour day, in 1873 during the unemployment demonstrations, in 1877 during tl1e Great Railroad Strike, in 1882 during the Knights of Labor's first membership explosion, and in 1886 during the second great eight-hour movement-class subsumed ethnicity. These events should not be seen as mere spasms triggered by panic and distress; between 1870 and 1886 Chicago's workers acted as an emerging class. Throughout that period the labor movement in all of its forms-labor reform, workers' parties, 9

Chicago History, Summer 1986

For lhree days du.ring lhe 11alionwide railroad strike off'uly 1877, Chicago's street.\ ove1florVl'd with worke1:1. At lhe viaduct al H(l/sted and Sixlemlh ;lreels, federal troops conjionled a mililant crowd. A /Jilclzed baule e,mml during which a dozen civilians were killnl and twictâ&#x20AC;˘ as many wowuled.

trade unions, the Knights, the socialists, and the anarchists-confronted a fragmented working class. Throughout that same period Chicago's socialists and anarchists played a crucial role in uniting the working classes across the ethnic, skill, sexual, and craft lines that divided them. Socialism in Chicago dates from 1854 when H. Rosch published a German-language newspaper, Der Proletarier. By the end of the Civil War, the city was the home of a section of the International Workingrnen's Association (the First International). In 1874 the IWA fused with the International Social and Political Workingrnen's Association to form the Workingmen's Party of Illinois. Two years later the WPI joined with several other organizations to found the Workingmen's Party of the United States. In December 1877 the WPUS changed its name to the Socialistic Labor Party (SLP). By 1880 Chicago's SLP had split into two factions. One remained 10

loya l 10 the party; the dissident and radical faction seceded and founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) in 1881. The radical formed the International Working Peoples' Association (IWPA) in 1883, and Chicago became the center of the American anarchist movement. The frequency with which the movement changed its name obscures four essential continuities: of organization, of a corps of socialist agitators unconcerned with label , of members who followed those leaders, and of ideological evolution. Beneath those changing labels were a process of radicalization and a socialist movement. The first groups called themselves "workingmen's" parties, and not until 1878 did the label "socialist" appear. The debate over that label reflected an evolution from artisan republicanism to socialism. The events that mark that process-the politicization of the militia, the decline of artisan

Anarchism republican institutions, the emergence of an avowedly socialist movement-happened sequentially and reflected changes in the social relations of production and in the self-conscious presence of a permanent wage-earning, propertyless class. Between ÂˇJ878 and 1882 the SLP was the electoral expression of working-class discontent. It elected one state senator, three state representatives, and five municipal aldermen. In 1879 its mayoral candidate polled 11,818 votes, some 20 percent of the total, and so eroded Republican strength that Democrat Carter H. Harrison won the first of four consecutive mayoral elections. Within the city council, however, its aldermen proved powerless; they were consigned to minor committees, their bills tabled or ruled out of ordec At the state capital they were consistently outvoted by rural representatives and the two-party system . At each election the SLP was threatened by fusion with one of the regular parties; between elections its representatives faced gerrymandering, promises of patronage, and the practice of vote fraud. In the spring of 1880 one of its aldermanic candidates was counted out, and the party spent almost $2,000 and ten months to legally seat him. The SLP was unable to attract native-born or Englishspeaking voters or to effectively challenge the two-party system, and the 1879 mayoral election proved to be the "zenith" of the SLP's political powec lt lost votes in every subsequent election. As the SLP slipped into impotence, the majority of its members, led by the most radical of its leaders, renounced the electoral struggle for socialism and left to join the IWPA. They assembled at a Congress of North American Socialists in Pittsburgh in October 1883, set out a manifesto, and returned to agitate for the coming revolution. From only 400 "anarchists" in Chicago in 1883, the movement grew in the next three years. By 1886 there were twenty-six anarchist groups in and around Chicago. While the Haymarket martyrs were the most prominent, behind tl1em were about 2,500 active IWPA members, and behind them were about 20,000 members of what Albert Parsons called "the sympathetic following." Between 1880 and 1886 the movement published eight newspapers in four languages: The ALann in English; Den Nye Tid in Dano-Norwegian; BudoUC1wst and Lampclw in Czech; the ArbPiter-Zeitung, Die Facke/, Vorbote, and the Anarchist in German. Those papers were issued

seven days a week and enjoyed a total circulation of more than 30,000 in 1886. Who were tl1ese anarchists? Using Chicago's press (both anarchist and commercial), the Haymarket trial transcripts, and the published versions of a1i-est reports, we can identify 723 individual IWPA members. The "average anarchist" was male, thirtysix years old in 1886, and had been a Chicago resident for about seven years. About 50 percent of the sample was German, 15 percent native born , another 15 percent Bohemian, and the remaining 20 percent Scandinavian, Irish, and European. Almost two-thirds were skilled workers or artisans; most had served their apprenticeships before emigration, owned their own tools, and worked in small shops. They were married, most had families, and many of their wives were active in the movement. Measured by age, ethnicity, occupation, and family size, rank-and-file anarchists look very much like other nineteenth-century Chicagoans.

Anarchist Ideology I follow four commandments. Thou shalt deny God and love Truth; therefore I am an atheist. Thou shalt oppose tyranny and seek liberty; therefore I am a republican. Thou shalt repudiate property and champion equality; therefore I am a communist. Thou shalt hate oppression and foment revolution; therefore I am a revolutionary. Long live the social revolution! Johann Most, Die Freiheit,.July 15, 1882

Most's creed serves now as a convenient catalog of four threads in the cloth of anarchist ideology: atheism, republicanism, communism, and revolution. The argument here, which considers those four threads in slightly different orde1~ is that Chicago's anarchists can be best understood as revolutionary socialists, the self-conscious heirs of the German and French proletariat's failed revolutions of 1848. Throughout the 1870s the workingmen's parties had been labeled "communist" by the bourgeois press. With the birth of the SLP in 1878 the press used both "communist" and "socialist" interchangeably, tl1en the latter gained currency. In 1881, according to Albert Parsons, "the capitalistic press began to stigmatize us as Anarchists, and to denounce us as enemies to all law and government." In response "we began to allude to ourselves as anarchists, and that name which was at first imputed to us as a dishonm~ we came to 11

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During lhe 1880s Chicago produred numerous socialist and 1.abor-oriented newspapers, many in fo reign languages. Branded as violent bomb makers bent on destroying society, ana rchists actually drooled most of their e-ne,gies to /1romoting their ideas in /1rint.

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Anarchimi cherish and to defend with pride." Although it became a badge of honor, the movement preferred the a~jective "socialist." Thus The Alarm's subtitle identified it as "A Socialist Weekly" (after Oecember 188-1- as "A Socialist Fortnightly"); the weekly meetings of the local IWPAgroups published in Vorbote and the Arbeiter-Zeitung were reported under the headline "Socialistic Meetings"; there was a "Socialist Men's Choir," and a "Reel Men's Choir," not an "Anarchistic" one. With one exception (Anarchist) that term never appeared in the titles, subtitles, or headlines of the IWPA's other Chicago organs. The IWPA mingled two republican traditions: an indigenous, Anglo-American one, the other immigrant, European, and almost alien in comparison. Although born in different places under different conditions, these traditions shared notions, heroes, and vocabulary. Both Anglo-American and European republicans believed in the sovereignty of the people and in limited government with a system of checks and balances. Both held that property ought to be widely dispersed , that antimonopoly vigilance was imperative, and that luxUI)' and wealth signaled the conuption of the republic. Both native and immigrant republicans shared what Eric Foner has described as "a passionate attachment to equality ... a belief that independence-the ability to resist personal or economic coercion-was an essential atlribute of the republican citizelll)', and a commitment to the labor them)' of value, along with its corollary, that labor should receive the full value of its product." Chicago's anarchists embraced the French revolutionary slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and republican images pervaded their rhetoric. The republic depended upon the independence and active involvement of its citizenry. Yet capitalist development destroyed independence, the concentration of wealth conupted the republic, and greed perverted the political process. Despite rampant vote fraud , the anarchists did not reject the electoral process or the republican ideal until 1880. They had already broken with republican political economy when they identifi ed private property- the private ownership of the means of production-as the cause of corruption, economic depression , and social revolution. That identification was an i1Teconcilable breach with the notion that liberty and property were entwined. Instead, anarchists a1gued that a free society should be based

on the cooperative organization of production. Chicago's anarchists were economic socialists who had broken with Anglo-American republicans and bourgeois political economy over the sanctity of private property, which they believed had destroyed the promise of a republic and brought with it wage slavery. "Workingmen who believe they have equal rights," advised The Sociali5t, should walk, after work, through the fashionable avenues," whose residents had bought the workingman's rights because they owned both his labor and their own capital. "State Socialism ," argued Parsons, "is the natural production of the age. It is the end of republican government. .. the complete union of all in one, and one for all alike." A month earlier The Alarm had almost presented the IWPA as a vanguard party, arguing: "The International is a labor organization composed of people who arc devoting their Lime, their energy, their money and their lives to bring about the abolition of economic slavery and the complete emancipation of the working class from the tyranny of capital." Anarchist rhetoric was replete with phrases like "the abolition of slavery" and the "emancipation of the working class." In his first Chicago speech, Paul Grottkau, a German refugee who became \lorbote's editor, linked tJ1e two: "Whereas the Ame1icans had evinced a spirit of liberty in ransoming the Negro," he could only "hope tJ1at eventually the rights of white laboring men would also be respected." What kind of socialism did they embrace? In short, all kinds. In the ranks of the SLP, the RSP, and the IWPA we can find Owenites, Fouricrists, Capetians, Blancists, Blanquists, Lassalleans, Marxists. Some of them had been active socialists before emigration: Louis Pio and A. W. Hansen were among the founders of the Danish Social Democratic party;Josef Pecka, Norbert Zou la, and .Jacob Mikolanda were early members, if not the founders, of the Czech socialist movement;Julius Vahlteich had been Ferdinand Lassalle's secretary and a socialist delegate to the German Reichstag; both Grottkau and Gustav Lyser had joined the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiter \lerein; and Dr. James Taylor, of the American Group, proudly told the Haymarket ju11Âˇ that he had learned socialism from Robert Dale Owen's fatJ1er. Others, including Parsons, Fielden, and Neebe among the Haymarket defendants, learned of socialism in America, and particularly in Chicago. 13

Chicago Hi,story, Summer 1986

·TO ARMS! TU ARMS! To-Day Expects Ever7 Man to Do u-1s Daty,

Vhlcaro

Be Ready at the Signal to Out, Blami Shoot, and BooJ; Uommunists. ' The fmHant First. Armtd to the Teetb, Btadf u4 Eapr for tile Pray, Llltewlae

ear

• Otber

PanC'J SeldJe.. Y and tbe Bl•e•

Coated "' Peelers.'' .,

n-e aed l'lar Will

Be l'lamated •

8 &-, M . in l'J'Ollt of tlle &t• Def lhlildiilr.

ineteenth-century socialism was still fluid; socialist theOI)' had not yet hardened into schools or sects. The books and writers that the socialists read and urged others to read reflect that diversity. The IWPA recommended Marx, Engels, Bebe! , and Liebknecht to Gennan readers; and Most, Bakunin, Hyndman, Reclus, and Gronlund to readers of English. This was not eclecticism, but the reflection of a movement still sorting out and developing its thought, ideology, and strategy. Chicago's anarchists were social-revolutionaries who had broken with the SLP over the strategy for achieving socialism, not over the goal. During a violent strike in 1875,John Simmens prophesied a "proletarian revolution within a few decades." A decade later the Progressive Cigar Makers and the 14

The ruling rlass,,s Jrequent(y ca rriNi out th,,ir threaLf of violmt reJ>risal during /m i ods of labor unrrst. On F'!'bnwry 20, 1875, the Chicago Times called Chicagoans to arms to deje11d their city during the bread rials.

Central Labor Union proclaimed their belief "that the only means whereby the emancipation of mankind can be brought about is the open rebellion of the robbed class ... against the existing economic and political institutions." There was, as David noted , an "annoying vagueness" about the anarchists' notion of revolution; indeed, "it rarely occuJTed to the leaders of the movement to clarify the meaning of the term 'social revolution' for the benefit of themselves and their followers." For Parsons, it meant "the time when the wage-laborers of this and other countries will assert their rightsnatural rights-and maintain them by force of anns. The social revolution means the expropriation of the means of production and the resources of life'.' There was no ambiguity about the weaponry to

These bombs were recovered hy /mlice and llSed as evidence in the I laymarket trial. Chemical analysis revealPd them to he madefrom the same combination of metals in the type used in printing The /\ Jann and thi! Arbeiter-Zeitung. Thi5, according to the prosecution, added to till' euidi!nce against the dRfn1dants.

Anarchism

The Lehr- u nd We h r-Verei n, an armedself--defense group organiud by Genna.n workers in 1875, believed the Constitution guaranteed their right to bear mans, SujJ/Jorters of the republican ideal, they carried symbols of both the American and French revolutions in public demonstrations,

be used, The articles on "Dynamite," 't\ssassination," "Explosives," and "Streetfighting," that appeared in The Alarm from 1884 through 1886 are infamous, Many reappeared, first as evidence in the Haymarket trial, then in contemporary accounts, and still later in scholarly histories, Twenty years after his pardon, Oscar Neebe was still "indignant at the 'defense' literature that made the victims bleating lambs, They were emphatically brave soldiers, and Engel was an out-and-out militarist." Johann Most's pamphlet Revolutionare Kriegswissenschafl became the anarchist bible, and a translation of its title page is an accurate description: The Science of Revolutionary War,' A Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine and Dynamite, Cun-Cotton, Fulminating i\1ercury, Bombs, Fuse, Poisons, ete, By embracing revolution they broke with republican notions of the state and social evolution, The Pittsburgh Manifesto thundered that "the political institutions of our time are th e agencies nannn:f carried in labor marches and meetings. One of the challenges the I\V/1\ and SLP fi1ced was to unite working people of different 1111tivnalitie.1 under the flag ofsorial revolution.

of the propertied class" and that "their mission is the upholding of the privileges of their masters." If some anarchists denied the legitimacy of any government, the majority seemed unpersuaded; ye t both groups believed in the "destruction of the existing class rule ... [and] the establishment of a free society:' Convinced that the ruling class would "never resign their privilege volunta1ily ... there remains but one recourse-FORCE! Our forefathers have not only told us ... that force is justifiable ... but tl1ey themselves have set the immemorial example:' Chicago's anarchists pointed to four political revolutions, two within their lifetimes, as major social revolutions. They were farthest removed from the American Revolution, but they still celebrated Tom Paine's birthday, venerated George Washington, and quoted Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. The French Revolution of 1789 was almost as distant, and the anarchists chose to remember Gracchus Babeuf, its most radical figure, and his followers as heroes. The two most important revolutions for Chicago's anarchists were those of 1848 and 1871 which were 17

Chirago'.1 .1ocialists romanticiud th, Frmch Ht'VOlution, adopting its philosophit's, symbols, a11d slogansfor their own 11uwt'lnent. The Cen11a11 Nroolutions of 18-18 and the />ariJ Commune of 187 I were fresh in lhe minds of American social rf'UO!ulimw ries who 11)('re eagn· tofo llow thP.lame path. ,\/ore llum 25,000 people al/ended this commemoration of /h f' ·Dawn of Liberty·•(left-).

Grand Anniversary! In commemoration of lbe

DAWN OF LIBERTY in UK8 anci 1871, -to be helWal lh<'-

Exposition Building, Lake Frout, on Baturda¥ Bve,, Maroh 22d, 18'79 The Feath·,J \TW be gt ven under the auspice• or the

SOCIALISTIC LABOR PARTY, - and putlclpated In h~· lht>-

Trades Unions, the Lehr- & Wehr-Verein, .-\~D OTHF.R ORG.-\:'\IZ.\TI0:'\'4.

Speeches will b& ma.de in different languages. 8El'ER.lL EX CELL.A. N T OJW II ESTR. I S. The L &1u: . .,:-1> W &Rll- \'ER! I N OF CHJC"AOO ilnittructho ;.n,I Protective Club)

w UI J{fre a p,11.l

DRILLING EXHIBITION, rrupor arrangeruunw baa been IDMl.e for ..U k.loda of refreehmeote and ..eata. Ord f!r 'Will be pn1perly maJot&lned. TI C: Kt:TN, bo11.&h t hi .......- - . ta et.., tor U.nt - d lAdle•-

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linked as "the Dawn of Liberty.' The Paris Commune of 1871 became the model for social revolution, in their words: "a remarkab le struggle for industrial freedom,""the 1isingofthe French working people," "a revolt of the profound ly oppressed against their capitalist masters:' Each March , from 1872 through 1909, the movement honored "those who gave their lives that labor might be free." From the two communes they chose to celebrate August Blanqui, General Dombrowski, Charles Delescluze, and Louise Michel as heroes. Chicago's anarchists, like Marx, believed that "the struggle of tJ1e working class against the capitalist class and its state [had] entered upon a new phase." There was more than a streak of romanticism in all their talk of revolution. The glorious revolution was just around the corner, needing but a single spark. Some had convinced themselves of "an already approaching revolution" which "promises to be much grander than that at the close of the last century." Parsons spoke fond ly, "We see it coming. We predict it, we hai l withjoy!""Tremble, oppressors of the world!" procla imed the Pittsburgh Manifesto. "Not far beyond your purbli nd

Anarchism sight there dawns the scarlet and sable lights of the Judgement Day." For some, revolution meant the millennium. Most anarchists expected it would be a godless millennium, for they were atheists and freethinkers. One wtote to the Detroit Labor Leaf a week after the Haymarket Riot: "The authorities are making a point against them that they do not believe in God. The police are principally Irish Catholics, and were glad to have a pretext to make the attack'.' Not all freethinkers were socialists, but most socialists were freethinkers. On one hand, freethinking organizations (the German Freidenkerverein, the Skandinavisk Fritaenkere Forening, or the Bohemian Svoboda obec Chicagu) were breeding grounds for socialism; the Reverend E. A. Adams, a contemporary, put it succinctly: "The result of atheism always must be anarchism ." On the other hand, socialist irreligion polarized working people and labor organizations. Germanspeaking marchers ca1Tied banners emblazoned with "Down with Throne, Altar and Moneybags!"; the Czechs carried "No God, o Master." Few were believers; still fewer attended church. Most subscribed to Bakunin's denunciation of God and State. Freethought and atheism contributed to their conceptions of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and to their assault on both property and authority. At the same time, however, their lack of faith proved intolerable for those trade unionists in the Trades Assembly who sought the support of Protestant ministers and for the Knights of Labor, who enjoyed close ties to the Catholic church. In 1852 Walt Whitman judged New York "the most radical city in America." By 1886, if not 1880, Chicago had assumed that honor. The pace of industrialization and proletarianization in Chicago explains the rates of alienation and radicalization. Between 1870 and 1900 the city's economy had been transformed into the fourth largest manufacturing center in the nation. Such rapid industrialization was the result of intense capitalization, technological and managerial innovation, deskilling, mergers, and plant expansion. Those changes took place wit11in a g,·owing, diversifying economy and reverberated throughout a frag,nented social structure. The socialists of the SLP and the anarchists of the [WPA were committed to organizing across t11e ethnic, skill, sexual, and craft lines that fragmented the city's working classes. They led demonstrations of the unemployed in 1873, had

attempted to restrain t11e crowd during the 1877 railroad strike, carried working,nen's demands to the polls between 1877 and 1882, and captured almost 12,000 mayoral votes in 1879. Repeated vote fraud and electoral failures turned many away from electoral socialism. They embraced instead a curious combination of practical economic organization and romantic revolution. The talk of revolution scared middle-class Chicagoans at least as much as atheism and socialism. By 1886, when they seemed to be leading the fight for the eight-hour day, the anarchists in the IWPA numbered no more than about 2,500. Their militancy was vocal and visible, and that, perhaps, is why five had to die, and three went to prison. The Daily News was wrong: socialism was not an "anomaly," and Chicago was not "t11e last place on the continent where it would exist." For Further Reading Few firsthand accounts of the anarchist movement exist. Among the most valuable are the Thomas and Elizabeth Morgan Papers (University of Illinois, ChampaignUrbana), the George Schilling Collection (Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield), and the Albert Parsons Papers (The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison). The most importantsources for this article are Chicago's newspapers, but researchers must be aware of biases. the Daily News, Herald, lnter•Ocean, Times, and 'fribunP provide one point of view. Three of Chicago's socialist newspapers are useful: Der Deutsche Arbeiter, Chicago Volks•Zeitung ( 1877-79), and The Socialist ( 1878-79); the New York Der Sozialist ( 1885-87) ca1Tied a regu Jar Chicago column. Chicago's International Working Peoples' Association published eight papers between 1880 and 1886, but only four have survived: Vorbote (]874-1924), Chicagoer A rbeiter•Zeilung ( 1876-1910), Die Fackel (1879-19 IO), and The Alarm (1884-86). Only two issues of Anarchist ( 1886) exist. Also useful are Chicago's foreign• language papers: the lllinois Staals-Zeitung (Gern1an), Hemjdal (Danish). Skandinaven (Norwegian), Svenska 7hlnmen (Swedish), and Svornost (Czech). All five were sampled in the WPA's Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey and arc available in translation.

Illustrations 5, from Century Magazine (1893), CHS Library; 6, CHS, ICHi· 19695; 7 top, from Sketches of Lynn ( 1880); 7 bottom, CHS, ICHi-04064; 8, CHS, ICHi-20064; 9, from Anarchy and Anarchists ( 1889), CHS Library; 10, from Anarchy and Anarchists; 12, the Anarchist and The Alarm, courtesy of H.P. Kraus, New York, all others, CHS Library; 14, from Chicago Times, February 20, 1875, CHS Library; 15, 16, 17, 18 top, from Anarchy and Anarchists; 18 bottom, from The Socialist, March 15, 1879, CHS Library. 19

Haymarket, 1886!

Engraving of shoemakers, N D. ~H,lls & Co. shoe fac tory, Chicago, from Weste rn Ma nu fac turer, September 23, 18 74.

The Changing Nature of Work

Drtail of silk banner carried in j){lrades /1y thP J\loebel Arbeiter Union No. l (Chicago Grr111a11 F11mit11re \\orkers' Union), c. 1877. Gift of ,\/ill Division of Carpenters' District Council.

Unless otherwis1' noted, all images are from Cl IS co/l,,ctions.

During the nineteenth century, America's economy underwent a dramatic shift from a traditional system dominated by farmers and day laborers to an industrial one requiring men and women to work in factories. Traditional workers labored long hours, their timetables regulated by the seasons and the tasks; most products were made by craftsmen who worked in small shops. The Industrial Revolution introduced a new regimentation to Americans' lives. Application of the principle of interchangeable parts increased production and lowered operating costs for most manufacturers, but it transformed work into a series of simple and monotonous tasks. By the 1870s and 1880s, unskilled, semi-skilled, and even skilled workers labored ten- to twelve-hour days without seasonal breaks, doing these repetitive factory tasks. Opposed to such oppressive conditions, workers made the length of the workday one of the central issues of the American labor movement. The industrial workers of Chicago, most of whom were foreign born, united to campaign for a nationwide mandatory, eight-hour workday. The Haymarket Riot of 1886 and its repercussions became an important symbol of this campaign. 21

A Polarized City

Their discontent growing, workers from all trades and skill levels joined unions and political parties in hope of achieving an eight-hour day and other reforms. Thousands of workers flocked to organizations like the Knights of Labor; members of the Socialistic Labor Party pinned their hopes on the electoral system. Still other workers adopted the radical philosophy of anarchy, advocating social change by any means, including violence. But despite much talk of bombs, anarchist leaders relied more on fiery speeches and strongly worded publications such as The Alarm and the German-language Anarchist to win supporters for their cause. In response to increasing worker militancy, Chicago's Police Inspector John Bonfield enlarged the city police force and equipped it like an army. Chicago businessmen, alarmed by the violent nationwide Great Railroad Strike of 1877, demanded local strengthening of the militia and built inner-city armories, like that of the First Regiment Illinois ational Guard on Wabash Avenue. Workers reacted to the police buildup by organizing self-defense units such as the Bohemian Sharpshooters, the German Lehr- und Wehr-\krein (Education and Defense Society), and the Irish Labor Guards. These groups functioned as quasi-military "workingmen's militias," and when the Verein began drilling in formation , the press focused much attention on the armed "socialists and communists."

Engmvingof mnnben of the Le hr- und We hrVe1Âˇcin ,/ro111 Anarch) a nd Ana rchists, by Michael J. Schaack, 1889.

(9'.,,.-b-WAl.iON 'Pl:Rl<l)(S. Chic.to .

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Sheet music COvt'r of "hrst Regiment I.NC.

Parade March, " Chicago, 1880.

Albert Parsons (1848-1887) Anarchist

In passionate speeches and strongly worded publications, labor agitator Albert Parsons denounced industrial capitalism for creating a proletariat of "wage slaves" under the domination of propertied masters. Of Puritan ancestry and southern bred, Parsons fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War before embracing socialism. A Chicago resident since 1873 , he had been fired from his job as a typesetter following a speech during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He stayed in the city to edit The Socialist and later The Alarm despite warnings to leave. Convinced that America was on the verge of social revolution, Parsons drifted steadily from socialism to anarchism.

One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS. The Alarm, April 24, 1886

Hrs/ Regiment of Illinois National C ua.rd pamding on M ichigan Averrue, c. 1886. ICHi- 19 706.

Countdown to Riot

Forty thousand workers went out on strike on May 1, 1886, to demand eight hours' work for ten hours' pay. The Chicago-based ational Eight-Hour Association argued that the eight-hour workday would reduce the overproduction that caused unemployment and economic depression, while stressing the prosperity, good health, and spiritual benefits that would accompany a shorter workday. On May 3, police shot and killed several strikers at McCormick Reaper Works. Angered at the treatment of the demonstrators, revolutionaries called for a protest meeting the following evening in Haymarket Square, at Randolph and Des Plaines streets.

.Pint J'actol')' in the Worl â&#x20AC;˘

TO ADOPT THE

El6HT-HOUR

SYSTEâ&#x20AC;˘ .

Advertisement for the Eight-Hour Plug Tobacco Company of Quincy, Illinois, from the Knights of Labor newspaper, April 10, 1886.

Riot at McConnick Reaper H0rks, May 3, 1886,Jrom The Grap hi c News, May 15, 1886.

Attention Workingmen!

MASS-MEETING TO-NIGHT, at 7.30 o'clock, ~-

.A.T ~ - - - - - - ••

HAYMARKET, RandOIDh St., Bot. IlBSDIBiilBS and Hals led Good Speakers will be present to denounce the la.test atrocious act of the police, the ehooting of our fellow-workmen yesterday afternoon . THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

~djtung, ~rb~itrr ! ilJlttffen~~erfamntlung (-'J l'Otl l ' ~

There are two dangerous ruffians at large in this city .... One of them is named Parsons. The other i,s named Spies .... Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble does occur! Chicago Mail, i\llay 1, 1886

-')eute ~benb,!!S ltl)r, onf bem

~tumorft i'llln1'olvt,,~trot)l', ;tui;dwu u----~-----..:'. . ':i)t>effoi1ml• 11 . .Oolftt>1' ,,2;tt·. H\""Qlnli ll!ebner iuerben ben nwe[t,n ~d111rl,11if1,id1 bn l 'ol t\<1. 1110,·m j1, geflmt ~lud11111ttug unjm '8rnber njd1oil, noi,lin . ~ai'J ~!tcuti11,(£on1itc

Broadside, Chicago, 1886.

August Spies (1855-1887) Anarchist

But for the death of his father in 1872, August Spies might have become a forester in Germany rather than one of Chicago's leading anarchists. Forced to leave school by this change in family circumstances, Spies immigrated to the United States. In Chicago, his own prosperity as owner of a small upholstery shop did not blind him to the distressing conditions of the workers. The basic tenets of socialism, which Spies first encountered at a meeting in 1875, seemed to explain the root causes of their misery. The suppression of the 1877 railroad strike and the fraud that cheated a Socialist candidate of an election victory in 1880, drew him first to activism and then to anarchism. In 1880 he became editor of the German workers' newspaper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Because of his sharp attacks on Chicago's business leaders, Spies earned their hatred, intensified by his command of English and German which enabled him to unite native and foreign-born workers against their bosses.

"The First Dynamite Bomb Thrown in America"

The Haymarket meeting was drawing to a close at about 10:30 r. M . on May 4 when police advanced and attempted to disperse the crowd. When an unidentified person threw a bomb into the ranks of police, the officers fired back and the crowd scattered. Eight policemen died of bomb and gunshot wounds; civilians suffered as many losses. For many Americans, the Haymarket Riot came to symbolize the rising menace of anarchists and foreigners.

Engraving of thP I laymarket Riot, J\,/a)' 4, 1886, fro m Anarch)' a nd Ana rchi sts, 1889.

Engraving of Des Plaines Street Police Station afler U,e I la)'market Riot.from T h e Grap hic News, May 15, 1886.

Haymarket Square, c. 1886. l Cl-li-04640.

J\lajJ of Haymarket area.from I listo ry of th e Chi cago Po li ce, 1887.

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Samuel Fielden (1847-1922) Anarchist

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Fielden was the third and fi nal speaker at the Haymarket meeting. Born in England, he we nt to work in a textile mill at the age of eight, becoming interested in labor reforms th rough his fa ther's activism. He came to Chicago in 187 1 and worked as a laborer. Later, he bough t a team and earned his livi ng hauling stone. By the 1880s Fielden was an ardent socialist and persuasive orator at radical gatherings. At the Haymarket meeting he urged his listeners to " throttle," " kill ," and "stab" the la\v.

RANDOLPH

... (/J

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"'aw UPLANATION Ot· DU.OKAlill. A-TheW•1ou. • ••-Jrupeetor Bonlli!ld, Captatu Ward, Lle uteol.Dt Steele. ij B B B B a~u: compao.le. of pollcemeu.

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â&#x20AC;˘: 1eee ::-

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PoRTRAITS Of PERSONS CONV, (:TED OF COMPLICITY THEREWITH

The Trial

They attempted to destroy Society. Society must destroy them. Chicago Herald July 22-23, 1886

1fo de card for David Bradley ,11Jg. Co., Chicago, c. 1887.

A roundup ofs11.1/Ject1,jro111 An archy a nd Anarchists, 1889.

Immediately after the riot, Chicago police mounted a reign of terror against the city's anarchists. Of the scores of suspects accused of conspiracy and murder, eight men stood trial: August Spies, Louis Lingg, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, George Engel , Oscar Nee be, Michael Schwab, and Albert Parsons. Although all were avowed anarchists, several had not attended the Haymarket meeting on May 4. The sensational trial began on June 21, 1886, with considerable press and public fanfare. The defense attorney, William Black, claimed that there was no evidence linking the defendants to the unidentified bomb thrower, while state prosecutor Julius Grinnell charged that the words of the anarchists had incited the unknown bomber. The trial ended in late August when the jury pronounced all defendants guilty. Seven were sentenced to death; Neebe was to serve fifteen years. The proceedings and the conduct of presiding Judge Joseph Gary remain controversial to this day. 28

Srmefrom 1-/aymarkel lrial, from An archy a nd Ana rchists, 1889.

George Engel (1836-1887) Anarchist

Orphaned at age twelve, Engel knew the hardships of an itinerant painter's life in Germany. Bringing his family to America in 1873, he was disappointed to find conditions similar to those he had fled. He first learned of socialism from a fellow worker in a wagon factory. After 1876, when he and his wife opened a toy store, he helped organize the Socialistic Labor Party and worked to elect its candidates. Disgusted by evidence of election fraud in 1880, he rejected the ballot and all methods of reform short of armed conflict. Considering Spies's Arbeiter-Zeitung too conservative, Engel started the Anarchist in January 1886 to agitate for full-blown class warfare.

Protests, Appeal.s, and a Time of Waiting

While awaiting execution in the Cook County Jail , the anarchists, with the help of their attorney, continued to protest the outcome of the trial. Lucy Parsons, the devoted companion and supporter of Albert Parsons, spearheaded a campaign to win freedom for the condemned men. Nina Van Zandt, a wealthy and welleducated socialite, became intrigued wilh Albert Spies and his theories during the course of the trial. She married him by proxy in January 1887. Van Zandt helped Spies w1ite his autobiography, which she published after his death.Just before th e condemned men were to die, Lingg committed suicide in prison . .Jail .1ce11e. fro111 Frank Les li e's lllus1rated Newspap<'r, October I, 1887.

August SpiPs injail,from Ha,-pe r's Weeki)', November 19, 1887.

[Law] holds that whoever advises murder is himself guilty of the murder that is committed in pursuance of his advice .... judge Gary~ address to the anarchists, October 9, 1886

Lingg's suicide.from The Pictoria l West, November 20, 1887.

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Louis Lingg (1864-1887) Anarchist

Lingg arrived in Chicago from Germany in 1885 . Influenced in part by family hardship, he was totally committed to revolution and anarchy. A carpenter by training, Lingg worked as an organizer for the International Carpenters' and Joiners' Union. He was also a delegate to the Central Labor Union. 1\venty-one years old, he was considered unusually handsome and energetic by his comrades. He spent the afternoon of May 4 making dynamite bombs. He later took the bombs to Neff's Hall , an anarchist meeting place on the Near North Side, where he remained for the rest of the evening.

The Hanging and the Funeral

r.'11graving of the hangings.from Th e Pi ctoria l West, November 188 7.

F:11gmvi11g of the condemned marching lo the scaffold, f rom Fra nk Leslie's lllu s1ra1ed l\ ewspa pe r, Nowmber 19, 1887.

Finally, the governor of Illinois commuted the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment. But appeals on behalf of Spies, Parsons, Engel, and Fischer were unsuccessful, and they were hanged on ovember 11, 1887. Hundreds of armed policemen guarded the jail on the day of the hangings, which were carried out in a calm but eerie atmosphere. Afterwards, thousands of mourners joined the funeral procession to Waldh im Cemetery. 32

The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today! Last words of August Spies

Adolph Fischer (1858-1887) Anarchist

Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life. Last words of Adolph Fischer

Hurrah for anarchy! Last words of George Engel

... I

Reared in a socialist family in Bremen, Germany, Adolph Fischer was already a confirmed radical when he immigrated to America in 1873 at age fifteen. He learned the printing trade from his older brother, who published a German-language weekly in Arkansas. In 1883 he brought his wife and child to settle in Chicago, where he became a printer at the German socialist newspaper, Arbeiter-Zeitung. He joined the fWPA and became an active militant in the Lehr- und Wehr-Verein, the workingman's militia. He and Engel founded the Anarchist to promote violent revolution as the only possible cure for the social evils of industrialism.

Will I be allowed to speak, 0 men of America? Let me speak, Sheriff Matson. Let the voice of the people be heard! 0 .... Last words of Albert Parsons

Engraving off uneral procession, f rom. Th e Pictoria l West, November 1887.

Amnesty and Aftermath

must restore to Illinois the constitution and the law; and first of all, we must reverse the judgement in the anarchist case, where both were over-thrown. The Trial of th e Judgement: A Revi ew of the Anarchist Case, 1888 by Gen. M. M. 7rumbull

Oscar Neebe (1850-1916) Anarchist

Although Neebe was born in New York, he was raised in his family's native Germany. Back in the United States at the age of fourteen , he worked for several years as a bartender, cook, and metalsmith. Settling in Chicago in 1877 , he threw himself into the socialist movement, organizing workers and demonstrations. Fired from his factory job and blacklisted as an agitator, Neebe struggled to survive. He later formed a small yeast company with three partners and earned a comfortable living. He did not attend the Haymarket meeting.

After the executions, citizens outraged by the trial began to work for amnesty for the three surviving anarchists. In June 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld denounced the guilty verdict and pardoned Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab. After careful study of the trial transcripts, Altgeld based his decision on his belief that the proceedings had been unjust. He was heavily criticized for the pardon. The eight policemen who died from wounds suffered during the Haymarket Riot became the martyrs of law and order. To honor them, a life-sized bronze figure of a Chicago policeman was dedicated in Haymarket Square in 1889. Vandalized and moved several times, the monument now stands at the Police Training Academy at 1300 WJackson Boulevard. Socialists worldwide eulogized the Haymarket anarchists. In 1893 a monument was erected in their honor in Waldheim Cemetery, ten miles west of the city, where all but Fielden are buried. Lucy Parsons continued her work as an ardent spokesperson for the oppressed, publishing Albert's speeches and writings, editing newspapers, speaking 34

Michael Schwab (1853-1898) Anarchist

Orphaned in Bavaria at the age of twelve, Schwab spent long hours reading German classics. Later , he was apprenticed to a bookbinder, joined a trade union, and became a socialist. Schwab abhorred the poverty he saw in German cities and left for America in 1879, where he observed equally "terrible abuses." At the time of his arrest Schwab had been associate editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung for several years. On the evening of the Haymarket Riot he was addressing a meeting at the Deering Reaper Works on the far Northwest Side.

Lucy Parsons, with portrait of Albert Parsons, c. 1940. Gift of David Rothstein.

Police monument in Haymarket

Square, 1889,from Select Chicago, by A. Willemann, 1889.

at rallies, and helping to found the Industrial Workers of the World. She died in 1942 at age ninety. Chicago remained a divided city well into the twentieth century, business and labor unable to reconcile their differences. Led by the American Federation of Labor, the eight-hour movement persisted in spite of management's opposition. In 1938, more than a half century after the violent campaign that united thousands of workers, President Franklin P. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law, finally mandating a nationwide eight-hour day. 35

Cataclysm and Cultural Consciousness: Chicago and the Haymarket Trial By Carl S. Smith

"Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. lou cannot put it out." August Spies, 1886

Hc,ymarkÂŁt Square, May 4, 1886.

like Haymarket have an imaginative as well as a tangible history. In an important sense, this imaginative history -the way things work themselves out in the individual and collective consciousness, as opposed to physical damage done and action taken-defines the social meaning of an evenL What distinguishes Haymarket from most other disorders, both natural and manmacte, is its imaginative range and richness. Haymarket was the most notorious and widely resonating social upheaval of its time, and the one whose continuing presence as fact and symbol has CATASTROPHES AND MAJOR DISRUPTIONS

been the strongest and widest. The homemade bomb that immediately killed Officer Mathias Degan and led shortly after to the deaths of six other Chicago policemen (one more died several years later from his wounds) undoubtedly had more far-reaching effects than even its unknown maker ever anticipated, for it set off a fundamental reconsideration of the nature of urban community and modern life. Cataclysmic moments test the adequacy of a society's shared ideas about itself, as individuals and groups attempt to explain what has happened, or demand that someone explain it for them. The first response is self-defense, as people try to make troubling events fit into established patterns of belief, expression_, and action. Next follows any necessary adjustments of these patterns. At such points of heightened stress, cu ltural values and the conventional forms in which they are communicated and shared become most visible, as they are defended and attacked, reaffirmed and altered . Those developments that are most troubling are the ones that require the most adjustment. What slowly emerges is what people believe about the nature of experience, or at least what they want to believe. What they believe shapes the reality in which they live. Almost from the moment the bomb exploded, Haymarket has been intensel y discussed, analyzed, and debated. The bombing, the trial, the appeals, the executions, and the pardons were widely reported and commented on in daily newspapers and tl1e periodical press, as well as in countless speeches, sermons, and pamphlets. Several histories of the case, all highly partisan, soon appeared. A few of these were written by central participants, including Captain Michael Schaack, commander of the Chicago Avenue police station and one of the leaders of the original investigation; and Dyer Lum, the anarchist editor and spokesman who is believed to have smuggled into Cook County Jail tl1e explosives with which Louis Lingg killed himself rather than submit to the hangman. Haymarket soon figured in fiction, from dime novels (even before the verdict was in, the New Carl S. Smith is assistant professor of English and Urban Affairs and director of the Program in American Culture at Northwestern University.

Chicago History, Summer 1986

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1 Write,:r used images associated with the Haymarket Affair to stir the public~ imagination and to /;lay on its fear of urban chaos. Two of the most prominent images were the wild-e)'edforeign agitator (above) and the exploding dynamite bom.b (above right), which remains a powe1ful symbol of destruction today. By contrast, the slem visage of Captain Michael Schaack (right) was a reassuring reminder of the strength of law and order.

Cataclysm be buried. Haymarket has hardly been the sole property of outsiders and dissenters, for it has also served as a reminder of the sacrifices made to preserve the sanctity of law and order. When in 1969 someone evidently protesting the Vietnam War blew up tl1e monument to the dead policemen that had been dedicated eighty years earlier in Haymarket Square, an outraged Mayor Richard Daley led the emotional pub lic outcry. The statue was repaired, but a year later it was bombed once more, leading to extraordinary secu1ity measures and its eventual removal to presumably safe refuge in tl1e Chicago Police Academy. Advocates of political ideas of every conceivable saipe still invoke Haymarket to legitimize and substantiate their own causes. Outside the Chicago Historical Society on the day its Haymarket centennial exhibition opened, an anarchist group claimed that tl1e Society had distorted the truth about Haymarket. A RECORD OF THE

Terrible Scenes of May 4, I 886. Chicago and New York:

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., 1886.

~-?-----------------J York Detective Library issued The Red Flag; or The Anarchists of Chicago) to Frank Hanis's melodramatic and inaccurate treatment in The Bomb (1908). As a result of Haymarket, the more general topics of radicalism and unrest also became more prevalent in stories and novels, most notably in A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), by William Dean Howells, who was a lonely if outspoken member of the American literary community in defense of the accused. In addition, Haymarket contributed importantly to what has been called "the cataclysmic consciousness" in American thought, which generated scores of both reasoned and crackpot books and articles about tl1e g1im future of civilization and dozens of utopian and dystopian novels and treatises which centrally discussed urban chaos and class conflict. Haymarket quickly entered the folk culture of labor, radical , and immigrant groups who mythologized the accused as martyr in pageant, song, and story. To this day, it is recalled when labor strife or otl1er conflicts with civil authority flare up. Pilgrims still commune with the monumentto the hanged men at Waldheim Cemetery west of the city, at whose base radical activists yet yearn to

Chicago History, Summer 1986 Another leafleteer urged that the commemoration be dedicated to attacking "the Zionist connection to apartheid, Naziism, Central America and the atomic bomb." But it is important to go back and sort through the discussions of Haymarket in its more immediate context if we are to understand its significance in its own time. Upheavals like Haymarket qualify our understanding of urbanization as an evolutionary process of increasing rationalization and discipline, specialization and interdependence, organization and control. In this respect, Haymarket is especially interesting as the focus of a sharply contested debate over the future direction of the United States at the very time the nation was becoming an urban, industrial society. More than any other element of the Haymarket Affair, the trial of the men held responsible for Degan's death provided the central forum for the discussion of what this violent civil unrest meant in tem1s of the development of the contemporary city. Like many famous criminal and political trials, the Haymarket case was a grand performance in which the major characters addressed not each other but the world. In the days after the bombing, the police, under the opportunistic Captain Schaack From June 21 to August 20, 1886, Chicago and the world witnessed one of the century '.5 most sensationaliud trials. At issue was not just thP guilt or innocence of the defendants, but two conflicting vinvs ofsociety. "Law is on trial, anarchy is on trial, "proclaimed state prosecut01julius Grinnell. Followed closely in the press by a public eagerfor revenge, the trial was a tmvesty ofjustice. JudgeJoseph Gary (inset right) even invited women to sit on the bench with him during the proceedings, a clear violation ofjudicial protocol.

and others, conducted a fiercely aggressive roundup of radical activists. Their investigation of these alleged subversives paid little regard to due process and civil rights. On May 27 the grand jury indicted ten anarchists (two avoided trial, one by testifying for the state, the other by fleeing the country). With difficulty the accused found legal counsel, and, despite their attempt to postpone the trial to a time when more calm and reasoned judgment might be possible, proceedings began in the Cook County Court House at Hubbard and

Cataclysm Dearborn streets on June 21, less than seven weeks after the bombing. The opening day witnessed one of the trial's most dramatic events, when defendant Albert Parsons came out of safe hiding in Wisconsin to declare his innocence and stand with the other accused. Parsons was the editor of the leading English-language anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, and, along with co-defendant August Spies, the most visib ly active leader of the movement. From Parsons's surrender to the jury's verdict on August

20, the trial was so unfair and irregular that, apart from its other significance, it was one of the mo l shamefully handled cases in American legal history. It was a travesty that would have been appropriate to Gilbertand Sullivan or the Marx Brothers, were it not played with a real gallows ::it the end. Jury selection took up almost half the time of the trial, since bailiff Henry Ryce filled the pool with men who freely admitted their be lief in the defendants' guilt. Judge Joseph E. Gary refused to dismiss such individuals for cause and even

Chicago History, Summer 1986 qualified two men who were friends or relatives of the murdered policemen, forcing the defense to use up its peremptory challenges and to accept a hostile middle-class jury. Gary then muzzled the defense and gave wide latitude to the prosecution, allowing the state to inu-oduce highly questionable and sensational evidence, including the gory garments of the wounded policemen and an array of bombs and other terrorist devices with no bearing on the case at hand. The testimony of key prosecution "witnesses" was easily refuted , however, so that prosecutor] ulius Grinnell finally had to concede that he could neither prove that any of the accused anarchists had thrown the bomb nor say conclusively who did. Instead, he and Gary convinced the willingjurors that they could convict tJ1e accused as conspirators who had encouraged the throwing of the murderous bomb, even though only two of them had anything to do with planning the meeting. (Those who actually showed up to speak were not the planners, only four of the accused had been at the meeting at all, and, most important, no one knew who tJ1rew the bomb or why he threw it.) The u-ial was still the one place where the defendants had a chance to debate with the authorities what had happened at Haymarket. In court, each side tried to go beyond the immediate issue of guilt or innocence to discredit what it characterized as the social vision of the other. Both sides offered messages of alarm and reassurance, explaining why this awful event could take place and how the deeper clangers and dilemmas it revealed could be resolved. In so doing, they presented t0 the world competing conceptions of contemporary reality tJ1at included an analysis of the nature of order and disorder, and a definition of what constitutes normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable social tJ10ught and action in the city. Reminiscences of the trial indicate that the defendants and their attorneys disagreed Âˇo ver the tactics of their defense. The accused apparently wanted to turn the trial into a public forum in which tl1ey would explain their whole ideology in addition to answering the murder charge. Aware of the unpopularity of the anarchists' ideas and tl1e flimsiness of tl1e indictment, their lawyers advised that tl1e u-ial was about the killing of Degan and concentrated on proving that their clients had no hand in this act. Any approach to 42

tl1eir defense was certain to fai I, but the anarchists' strategy was probably more to the point, for the stnined legal arguments of the prosecution and judge reveal that the murder charge was a convenient hook on which to fasten the vague and unlegislated crime of radical dissent. Even if the often violent public rhetoric of anarchism (which included the advocacy of armed force) in some way contributed to the Haymarket bloodshed, it is generally accepted by tJ1ose who have examined the case that the state indicted the accused more for tlleir beliefs tllan for their actions. But this analysis partly misses the mark, for they were characterized as representatives of a kind of anarchy they did not preach. In theory, at least, they advanced a carefully articulated constructive political program. Yet this was willfully ignored by tile prosecution and jury, who in their frenzy insisted that the bombing could only be interpreted as an unjustified and senseless attack on tile whole notion of society itself. The fact that the murdered men were policeofficial representatives of law and order supposedly acting courageously to disperse an unruly mob-intensified this feeling and made this crime stand out above otl1er political acts of violence. It was irrelevant that in actuality the police had advanced witl1out cause on an orderly gathering when all but a few hundred people had already left Even Chicago MayorCarterH. Harrison , who was present at Haymarket Square until shortly before the police arrived, considered what he saw and heard tame by contemporary standards. Grinnell as much as admitted that he charged tile eight defendants mainly because they were representatives of a dangerous movement, and that by the same principle he could have prosecuted dozens more. He stated that the accused intended not to murder Mathias Degan, but to "kill the systemthe system of law:' Grinnell added, "Law is on trial, anarchy is on tTial...." The prosecution defended the order of things in Chicago and America as beneficial to all. Society required law and order, and good citizens would discover their greatest chance for happiness and fulfillment by finding a useful and productive niche. The problem with the anarchists This cartoon, publi,hed al thP time of the verdict, J101trays thP rPcu1ring image of law and govemmPnl triumphing over 1111' voice of radical rh,se-111. The eighl anarrhisL1 on trial were convicted notfor throwing the bomb, but for encouraging the act.

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Chicago History, Summer 1986 was that they refused to fit in. They were too lazy to work to earn the benefits that society promised. Assistant defense lawyer Moses Solomon argued that the evidence "shows conclusively that they are men of broad feelings of humanity, that their only desire has been, and their lives are consecrated to, the betterment of their fellow-men ." But assistant state's attorney Francis Walker countered, "There is not one of them ... that bears upon his face the stamp of sensibility or of heart, and there can be no argument made when they talk about the motive to justify murder and the advice of murder, only from the malignant heart." Seven years after the trial,Judge Gary defended his conduct by claiming that "the real passions at the bottom of the hearts of the anarchists were envy and hatred of all people whose condition in life was better than their own, who were more prosperous than themselves ...." For their evidence, the defense offered the selfless dedication of the accused to the workingman. The prosecution presented the bomb. The bomb, of course, was the one central fact that both sides had to explain. The prosecution placed it within an analysis of current events that saw order as a precarious ideal constantly threatened by these cowardly malcontents who would destroy what they foolishly and arrogantly refused to join. The value and vulnerability of the established order provided the rationale for taking harsh measures against those who would oppose it. Grinnell cited speeches and articles by the defendants (Parsons and Spies, editor of the Germanlanguage anarchist paper Arbeiter-Zeitung, were held accountable against their protests for every word published in the journals they edited) and anarchists in America and abroad that called for the use of dynamite and other violent means to overthrow the system. This system, the prosecution argued, was based on reason, not just on law and order. The anarchists had conspired to violate sacred hum~n principles, and the bomb was a monstrous affront to the sanctity of civilization. Six of the defendants were German, and one, Samuel Fielden, was British (only Parsons was native born), but it was their politics rather than their ethnic backgrounds that really made them "foreign" and removed any scruples about the proper methods of expunging them as a threat to society. Their highest crime was not murder but treason, a term with no legal meaning in this trial but. which was nonetheless 44

used repeatedly. In his opening remarks, Grinnell compared the throwing of the bomb to the firing on Fort Sumter, asserting that this later ouu-age was far worse since it involved cowardly terror tactics rather than open warfare. The convicted men answered these broader charges personally in their final statements before sentencing in early October. For three extraordinary days, each of them in turn addressed the court. Their speeches, which were later published to help support their cause, varied greatly in length and tone. Parsons spoke last and longest, taking some eight hours over two days, pausing occasionally to ask without success for a brief rest. What they all tried to do, besides declare their innocence, was to put in the most positive terms the anarchist vision of society as it was and as it should be. Parsons described anarchism as a form of socialism, which he defined, citing no less authoritative a source than Webster's dictionary, as "a theory of "Liberty (to go ifyou do not like ti1R instituliom

of our f?t,public) Or (commit murder and you

will be punished with) Death." Thomas Nast implies here that Americans would not tolerate anyone questioning the autlw,ity of tl1Rirfun dame11ta/ laws and institutions. So 1111cn111J011ab/e were tluy with the alien politirs of anarrh)\ that it became imperatiw to quell the movement by auy means.

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Cataclysm society which advocates a more precise, more orderly, and more harmonious arrangement of the social relations of mankind [than] that[which] has hitherto prevailed." (The emphases are Parsons's.) He distinguished it from state socialism, or governmental control of everything, as a condition with "neither rulers nor law-makers of any kind." The anarchist, like the state socialist, "seeks to ameliorate and emancipate the wage laborers," but not by legislative enactment. Parsons continued, "The Anarchists seek the same ends by the abrogation of law, by the abolition of all government, leaving the people free to unite or disunite:' According to Parsons, he and his associates were strongly resistant to centralized control of any kind as inherently repressive and anti-democratic, but they were devoted to the very ideals that the state claimed it was protecting, notably peace, harmony, and order. The anarchists, however, desired a stable society based on free association between men and women who would regulate

themselves without imposed rules. Anarchy promised an ultimate form of democratic equality based on natural law and free of a capitalist elite and exploitation, where urban variety was a source of vitality and strength. To the convicted men, the prosecution was in the service of a strictly hierarchical rather than horizontally organized society and a repressive government (and by definition every government was repressive). The ruling class forced its will on the worker through legislative law. Its institutions were the predatory corporation, the inhuman factory system, the Board of Trade, and paternalistic company towns like nearby Pullman. Several of the accused downplayed the anarchistspeeches, publications, and other documents produced as evidence of their armed opposition to authority. Of the eight defendants, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were the most active in their support of violent measures, and Louis Lingg proudly admitted to making bombs, but these three joined with the others in denying any

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Chicago History, Summer 1986 connection to the Haymarket bombing. Spies and Parsons argued that they never committed such an action or advocated it in a specific instance. They claimed that they only urged workers to be prepared if the authorities resorted to force, citing how often this happened. With greater rhetorical effect, they tried to prove how their accusers' own language encouraged deadly conflict. Spies cited stories on bombs from major Chicago papers that were no less inflammatory than those in the anarchist press. He pointed out that the Arbeiter-Zeitung on some occasions merely translated articles from the Times that advocated using dynamite against striking workers, and that the Daily News carried information on the making of explosives that was a more likely inspiration for the Haymarket bomb than any anarchist publication. Parsons recalled the violent statements of leading capitalists, asking, "Did not these monopolists bring about the inception of this language?" He sarcastically referred to a recent speech by Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby that described current conditions as a "social volcano." "What did he mean?" Parsons asked. "If he had made that remark at the Haymarket [meeting] he would be in this box here to-day, and turned over to the hangman." He maintained that the bomb was the work of an agent of capital, since it obviously aided the monopolists and hurt the workers. "Their speeches, their utterances, their newspapers openly counseled and advised by 'speech and print' just such things," Parsons explained, turning the judge's loose interpretation of conspira_cy against the prominent figures he quoted: "The question, to use your honor's language, is 'not whether they did it with their own hands, but whether they (the monopolists) set causes at work which did end in the Haymarket tragedy?' By their own proposals I have shown you that they did." As for the bomb itself, the anarchists placed it within an almost placidly fatalistic view of social cataclysm. They argued that what happened at Haymarket was a result and not a cause of social disorder, and that it was symptomatic of an advanced and warlike stage of industrial capitalism inherently doomed to catastrophe. It was wroag to accuse them since they prophesied rather than preached the inevitable collapse that must naturally come when force is all that holds society together. Spies compared social revolutions in their sources to earthquakes and cyclones as "the effect of certain 46

causes and conditions." Society was in turmoil only because of the recalcitrance of capital. On the far side of the revolution awaited the happy tranquillity of democratic anarchy. All the anarchists challenged the basic conventional vocabulary of the state and, in so doing, the assumptions behind the terms on which they were tried. This strategy employed the kind of reversals so familiar in the classic American anarchist text, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. They did not simply state that anarchism was on the side of nature, reason, and harmony, but that the "system" was in fact opposed to its own official ideals. The sentence of the court, Parsons argued, "is the verdict of passion, born in passion, nurtured in passion, and is the sum totality of the organized passion of the city of Chicago." The police were criminals who had savagely attacked the crowd at Haymarket. Their order was disorder; their law was lawlessness. The preservation of the tate, said Spies, "means the preservation of vice in every form. And last but not least, it means the preservation of the class struggle, of strikes, riots, and bloodshed." He indicted his accusers with the charges they raised against him : "You, who oppose the natural course of things, you are the real revolutionists. You and you alone are the conspirators and destructionists!" In short, civilization was savagely uncivilized and barbarous,j ustifying itself through the ritual sacrifice of seven anarchists (the jury sentenced Oscar Neebe to fifteen years at hard labor while condemning the others to death) for the dead policemen. The police and the factory owners and the newspapers were guilty of conspiracy against the workers. It was they who were anarchists, if anarchy was simplistically equated with mindless terrorism. The language of the system was a network of lies since there was in the United States no free competition or individuality or progress as claimed, but monopoly and enforced obedience. It was the anarchists, furthermore, who were defending fundamental American values and had kept the democratic faith. Spies stated that they were sentenced to death "because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice!" George Engel claimed that his only crime was "[t]hat I have labored to bring about a system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard

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millions, through the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and misery.... The statute laws we have are in opposition to the laws of nature, in that they rob the great masses of their rights to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."' The language of this last remark, and of many others like it, answered the accusation of foreignness and treason by accusing the state itself of betraying hallowed national ideals. Spies repeatedly cited the links between anarchist ideology and the Declaration of Independence and other writings of the Founding Fathers, all of whom , he and the others claimed, would have been hanged in Judge Gary's court. "The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend," Samuel Fielden added . "It will live to repent it." Louis Lingg ended his short statement on a much more defiant note:"/ despise

you. I despise your order; your laws, your force-propped authority. HANG ME FOR IT!" The conduct of the trial reflected the will of many prominent Chicago citizens, including George Pullman, Philip Annour, Marshall Field, and Cyrus McCormick,Jr. According to historian Paul Avrich, Pullman, Armour, and Field were among some three hundred Chicagoans who secretly pledged over$100,000 to aid the families of the policemen killed or injured at Haymarket and to help out the investigation and prosecution of anarchy and sedition. Schaack's history of the case, which placed Haymarket in the context of "the red terror and the social revolution in America and Europe," described such contributors as "public spirited citizens who wished the Jaw vindicated and order preserved in Chicago." He explained that he spent their money to hire spies "who were familiar with 47

Chicago History, Summer 1986 the Anarchists and their haunts." McC01mick, whose lockout of union workers in February of 1886 was an important step on the road to Haymarket, contributed large sums to the police over the next several years to support the investigation of subversives. The foreman of the jury was a salesman for Marshall Field, who used his considerable influence to block a movement for clemency among leaders of the business community in the days before the execution on November 11, 1887. Grinnell and Gary were able jurists who acted as unreasonably as they did in this case because they, too, believed that men like the anarchists put the stability of the social order seriously at risk. To understand the paranoid and vindictive response to the accused, we should keep in mind how fluid and precarious this social order seemed to both social leaders and anarchists in 1886. The American economy was in an unpredictable and apparently uncontrollable rhythm of boom and bust that would not stabilize for another decade. Immigrants from abroad and throughout America were coming into urban centers in unprecedented numbers to produce and consume astonishing quantities of goods made with new machines and techniques. They found themselves working and living in an environment with no precedent-the modern industrial city-a wholly fabricated world of offices and industries, in which the measure of an individual's worth was his status within the system . In this new context, major civil disorders were part of the landscape. During the decade preceding Haymarket, Chicago had witnessed a series of violent outbreaks, the most traumatic being the battles between citizens, police, and soldiers during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The mid-1880s were especially troubled times. In late April of 1885, protesters staged a major demonstration at the opening of the new Board of Trade building. This featured a procession singing the "Marseillaise" led by women can-ying black and red flags. Parsons advised his listeners on tl1is occasion to lay by their wages to buy guns and urged them to learn how to make and use dynamite. On May 4, 1885, a year to the day before Haymarket, the Illinois militia fired upon unarmed striking quarrymen at Lemont, southwest of the city, killing at least two people. The Haymarket meeting itself was called to protest what labor leaders saw as a murderous attack by police on workers who scuffled with scabs outside the 48

McConnick plant on Blue Island Avenue on May 3. Two days before the McCormick outbreak, Parsons had led 80,000 marchers along Michigan Avenue, under the close surveillance of the police, hired detectives, and the slate militia. This parade, which is considered by many lo be the first commemoration of May Day in honor of labo1~ was part of a nationwide strike for the eight-hour day. Behind these events lay countless other national and international demonstrations and conflicts, beginning at least as far back as the Paris Commune of 1871, the anniversary of which was religiously celebrated by the anarchists. Chicago appeared to challenge any idea of social control. In the 1880s the city's population grew from 500,000 to over a million. It is no wonder that the issue of foreignness was so important in tl1e trial, for almost everyone involved had come from somewhere else, and each was trying to justify his own conception of the proper organization of society. Not only all eight defendants but virtually all twelve jurors, the pro ecutor, and the judge were born and raised to adulthood somewhere else. Before sentencing, Spies pointed out that he had been a resident of Illinois "fully as long as Grinnell, and probably have been as good

Cataclysm The prosecution's charge of conspiracy against the anarchists conjured up scenes like th.is one of underground meetings. Judge Gwy instmcted th,, j Ill)' to dete,-mine wlll'ther or not "illl're was in existence in this county and State a conspirrJC)' lo overthrow the existing order of Society.. "

a citizen ...." Pullman came from upstate New York, Field from small-town Massachusetts. Even Mayor Harrison was a former Kentucky planter who was in his thirties when he settled in the city to practice law. At issue in the trial was the definition of the community they were all ma king together, and it is littl e wonder that the first-gen e ration elite was so anxiously defensive and protective of the world

it had made. Hanging the anarchists seemed to deal effectively with the doubts that all man made social disorders raise, especia ll y in a community lacking the confidence of a long history and firmly establish ed traditions. Regardless of what one tl1inks of the anarchists or th e ir d e fense , there is trutl1 in their claim that their trial demonstrated how desperate their accusers were to convict them at all costs. And the number of large-scale disruptions, including Haymarket, that befell America's cities in the late ninetee ntl1 century bears out their observation that modern industrial society, for all its organization, is constantly prone to the cataclysms and catastrophes that were so distressing to propone nts of the estab lished order. Major disasters whose ca uses lay outside human intention and agency-like the Chicago Fire or the San Francisco Earthquake-tested a city severely but could eventually be explained and mythologized in a way tl1at interpreted them as blessings in disguise , as sources of unification and revitalization. Indeed, Chicago's and San Francisco's boosters bragged about the titanic scale of their natural catastrophes as evidence of their cities' irrepressible spirit and inevitable preeminence. But the aftershocks of man made upheavals like Haymarket were harder to absorb, for they seemed to indicate something

Social caiOf'lysms like Haymarket so threatened modem industrial society that it responded with equal violence.

Chicago History, Summer 1986 fundamentally wrong with the status quo. While the prosecution tried to picture the accused as deviants and outlaws, the defense argued the unsettling point that tl1e greatest danger to tl1e community was from within, that its severest firetraps and fault lines were social. Haymarket furnished evidence for one of the paradoxical lessons of complex social organizations-that disorder cannot be excluded because it is part of the system itself, and that the effort to contain disruptions may have the opposite effect. A post-fire Chicago might try to pass stricter building codes, but it could not fireproof against radicalism. Haymarket furthered the view of contemporary life as volatile, embattled, and perilous, and of dissent as a sign of weakness and danger to be met with suspicion and alarm. In respect to urban culture in particular, it contributed to the popular conception of the city as a place we enter expecting unpleasant confrontations and anonymous acts of meaningless violence, which, for all their apparent unnaturalness, are somehow more authentic than tl1e civility that urbanity preaches. In its own time Haymarket encouraged the already common practice of cultural critics to use metaphors of natural catastrophe to describe contemporary conditions. Observers of all sorts were convinced that America was tl1reatened by a social volcano, a tidal wave, a whirlpool, a pile of kindling about to ignite. They seemed to agree with Spies when he warned, "Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand." In hanging the anarchists, the state was trying to stop the fire by smothering tl1e "inflammatory" rhetoric of dissent. Such a means was ineffective in the long run. The condemned men , hoods over their heads, each shouted out a final declaration from the scaffold. Parsons, the last to speak, had just proclaimed, "Let the voice of the people be heard!" when the trap dropped, apparently quieting him and the others forever. But Spies's last words, which became tl1e source of the inscription on the Waldheim monument, were accurately prophetic: "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!" The court did not accept Spies's politics, but it implicitly agreed with his assessment that society 50

was in upheaval, which was why it had to assert its authority by taking his life. The immediate effect of Haymarket was to strengthen this authority. Appeals to the supreme courts of Illinois and of the United States failed, as did the attempt to secure reprieves for the five condemned men who refused to ask for clemency (Fielden and Michael Schwab did appeal to Governor Oglesby, who commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment). Schaack and John Bonfield , the police inspector who precipitated the bombing by ordering his men to advance on the peaceable rally in the Haymarket, eagerly fanned the fires of fear by inventing new conspiracies to advance their own ambitions. (Both, however, were soon cashiered for petty corruption, as was the officer who posed for tl1e embattled police memorial.) And, in spite of Governor John Peter Altgeld's uncompromising full pardon of the three surviving defendants in 1893, the state won the rhetorical battle. Haymarket set the pattern for the subsequent repression of real and imagined subversives at times of cultural crisis and for tl1e discrediting of philosophical anarchism as wildeyed terrorism preached by crazy, lazy, bombhurling aliens. Characterizing dissenters as dirty, foreign, and treacherous was an attempt to fortify and legitimize the institutions they questioned against even more moderate attack. The courts could not admit that there was any justice in the claims of the accused, for to do so would require a public acknowledgment that there were real problems with these institutions. In his pardon of Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab, Altgeld pointed out that the reaction to the anarchists far exceeded any physical danger actually posed by this small and disorganized group. The real threat was in the popular imagination, where the accused came to stand for the precariousness of social stability in an age of major dislocations, massive inequities, and unknown prospects. Put more simply, they were hanged because both injustice and dynamite existed, and, taken together, this was frightening. "What you see, and what you try to grasp," Spies told the court, "is nothing but the deceptive reflex of the stings of your bad conscience." Part of the tragedy of Haymarket is how little Governor Altgfld 's pardon of the three prisoners shocked the public and elicited negative reaction i11 the press.

Chicago History, Summer 1986 was learned from it at the time. Refusing to explore the roots of social confl ict and dreading wholesale chaos, most Chicagoans of power and influence retreated into the false security of an order based on fear rather than on positive principles. Reasonable reforms were delayed in the resort to simp listic exp lanations that would clarify in the least troubling way what had occurred on the evening of May 4, 1886. Altgeld displayed candor and courage when he explicitly rejected the request for mere executive clemency from "several thousand merchants, bankers,judges, lawyers, and other prominent citizens of Chicago" who "base their appeal on the ground that, assuming the prisoners to be guilty, they have been punished enough." To have accepted this lin e of reasoning would

have been to sustain the lie tJ1at there had been a fair trial, that justice had been served, and that the system was sound. The legacy of Haymarket keeps coming back to the dramatic fact of the bomb. This modern force of dynamite, tJ1rown by an undiscovered and hence inscrutable assailant, exploded witJ1 terrifying implications that refused to be exp lained away. Amoral and imprecise, dynamite was appallingly effective, a devastatingly democratic tool of instant reform. At the trial, Parsons pointed out that it could make any man equal to organized authority. He quoted military leaders, including army commander-in-chief Philip Sheridan, in proclaiming that this weapon altered the balance of power as much as had the invention of gunpowder.

Cataclysm "The Pinkertons, the police, the militia, are absolutely worthless in the presence of dynamite," he warned, declaring, "Force is the law of the universe; force is the law of nature, and this newly discovered force makes all men equal and therefore free." What Parsons did not acknowledge was that th is force tore indiscriminately into all notions of civilized order-including an anarchist one-as readily as it tore apart the body of Mathias Degan. While not so calculated or cosmic as catastrophes such as the Great War, the Holocaust., or Hiroshima, tJ1e Haymarket bombing was one of tJ1ose moments that demonstrated the teITible capabilities of manmade modernity as it iITeversibly reshaped the temper of its time.

For Further Reading This essay was prepared with the support of an NEH Fellowship at The Newben-y Library. A complete set of uÂˇansc1ipts of the Haymarket trial is located in the Archives and lanuscripts Collection at the Chicago Historical Society. For further analysis and comment on the uÂˇial, turn to Dyer Daniel Lum's A Concise Hislo1y of the Creal Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886 (New York: Arno Press, 1969, reprint of 1886 ed.), and to The Accused and the Accusers: The famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists in Court ( ew York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969). Also helpful are 1884-88 issues of The Alami, an anarchist newspaper published in Chicago.

Illustrations 36-37, from Harpers Weekly, May 15, 1886, CHS Libra1-y; 38, 39 top, CHS Library; 39 bottom, from Anarchy and Anarchists ( 1889), CHS Library; 40-41, CHS, ICH i-16058; 43, CHS Library;44-45, from Harper's \#ekly,June 5, 1886, CHS Library; 4 7, CHS, !CH i-16071; 48-49 top, from Anarchy and Anarchists, CHS Libra1-y; 49 bottom, from Franil Leslie'.5 ILLustrated Newspaper, May 15, 1886, courtesy of The Newben-y Library, Chicago; 51, from Franil Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, c. 1893; 52-53, CHS, ICHi-03674.

Haymarket Square, May -I, 1886.

Chicago's Martyrs: A Parable for the People By Ann Massa

Poet Harriet Monroe watched with the rest of the world as the Haymarket Affair unfolded. Struck by the poignancy of the events, she struggled with the meaning they held for her in her personal, unpubli,shed reflections.

was drafting her autobiography in the 1930s, the problem was what to leave out. Through four drafts, Macmillan's editorial staff gradually reduced a manuscript that threatened to in clude most of Monroe's Poetry ed itoria ls and much of her ed itorial correspondence. Monroe in 191 2 founded th e first magazine in America to be devoted solely to the publication and criticism of poetry. But she considered the first fifty-two yearÂˇs of her life prior to Poetry to be as significant as her years with that magazine. And so, even in its published version, A Poet's Life ( 1938), her autobiography did not reach "The Birth of an Idea" -Poetry-until page 243. The first 242 pages dealt with her ancestors, her childhood, and her adolescence; with her work as an essayist, a playwright, and an art criti c. She had had the en tree not only to Edmund Clarence Stedman's New York but to Bernard Berenson's Florence, Robert Louis Stevensori's England, and Louis Sullivan's Ch icago. She had kept diaries and preserved letters since her school days, and as she nostalgically and enthusiasticall y relived her life for her autob iography, she tended to the verbatim transcription of her materials. Much of the non-Poetry material and thejuvenalia is of doubtful importance; one deliberate omission is of consid erable inte rest. HaJTiet Monroe was unwilling to reprint what she had written abo ut the Haymarket Riot and trial, for that writing "implied approva l of the mass execution of the seven so-called anarchists which my more mature judgment denounces as an hysterical public crime and a blot on the city's honm~" Ha1Tiet Monroe was perhaps oversensitive about her intolerance, which was not untypical for that time. Like the rest of Ch icago, she read in the WIIEN HARRIET ~IONROE

Ann Massa is professor of American Literature at Leeds University, Eng/,and, and is an American Studies specialist.

Tribune and the Daily News reports and editorials which, as Pau l Avrich has noted in The Haymarket 7i-agedy, "played up the radical threat and reported each harangue or demonstration as if it were the first blow of a revolution." The anarchists "were painted as a li ens, modern fanatics, bent on desecrating law and order and uprooting the econom ic system responsible for America's prosperity and freedom." Carl Sandburg, Monroe's contemporary and protege, remembered his conv iction that the anarchists "were not regular people, and they didn't belong to the human race. This I believed along with millions of other people reading and talking about the trial." Liberal Chicago attorney Charles C. Bonney "he ld that the throwing of the bomb constituted a waiver of trial and a plea of guilty.'' Perhaps Harriet Monroe's fatJ1e1~ attorney Henry Stanton Monroe, well known for his defense of the underprivileged, held the same point of view. His daughter, later in life, was to campa ign for tJ1e eight-hour day; her"The Sweater's Lament" describes the pitiful wages and working conditions of women and chi ldren. She read her"Work.ing Girl's Song" to the Second Interstate Conference of the Women's National Tracie Union, held in Chicago in 1912, and the poem was subsequently printed in Life and Labor, the movement's journal. She a lso wrote a "Workingman's Song" a nd o ne to â&#x20AC;˘~ Shadow Chi ld ." During the Great Depression, she entered imaginatively into the state of mind of an American Comm uni t. Yes, I'm a Commun ist-how can any man With a heart inside of him be anyth ing else! The system's rotten we live under. ... It gives us starving ch ildren, millions of them, Here in a land bursting with milk and honey And wheat and automobi les. An' nobody kn ows What to do next to right the people's wrongs And put bread in the ir moutJ1s.

Pictured here around 1885, 1-larriet Monroe was nearly twenty-six yam old al the time of the 1-!aymarhet Hiot. She died in 1936.

It was understandable, then, that the elderly Han-iet Monroe was ashamed of the "anarchy strophe" of her ''Auditorium Ode," read at the opening night of Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building in 1889. She presented only one side, one interpretation of the incident of May 4, 1886, when a bomb was thrown into the ranks of policemen dispersing a workers' meeting near Haymarket Square. Anarch)' upreared A visage haggard, bleared That sneered "your nag is a brilliant rag ... Its stripes I tear And in the mire I drag."

She was ashamed, too , of a lengthy entry in her diary, an entry in many ways a sadly accurate reflection of contemporary feeling: emotional , fearful, strident. It contained a number of judgments that Monroe would subsequently have denied. Her fatalistic sense of permanent inequalities; her affirmation of "retributive justice"; her belief that the law had been fairly administered; he r lui-id contention that "their [the anarchists'] idol delights in blood, demands human sacrifices." But Harriet Monroe's response was also remarkably and commendably untypical in that she was able to see the anarchists as human beings,

idealists, even , and to give a kind of credit both to their point of view and to their conduct after arrest and imprisonment. With a sense of the dramatic, she saved up her reflections on the Haymarket Affair for two long entries in her diary. Nov. 11th, 1887, 11:30 a.m .... At this hour Spies, Parsons, Engel and Fischer, four of the seven anarchists are dying or preparing to die. Lingg's mutilated body [he had blown himself up in his cell] awaits those of his friends. The sky is blue, with white clouds coursing rapidly over it; the sun is shining brightly & a fresh pure breeze is blowing from the lake. People are busy with their usual pursuits, the usual noises are in the streets, increased only by the cries of newsboys. All things are as they were before; nothing in the course of either man or nature indicates that the state is now setting its red seal to this victory of the law.

Her use of the phrase "red seal" suggests her uneasiness at one form of bloodshedding being answered by another; and the incongruity between the deaths and the day clearly puzzled her. She looked for answers; conventional ones at first, and strongly expressed. How will it all end? Are these men indeed the apostles ofa new creed which will gleam outat'mad moments in murderous, incendiary flashes, growing stronger and more strong until society is revolutionized) Will the

Chicago History, Summer 1986

surging masses of the poor and ignorant, imbued with the desperate hope of wild revenge for the inequalities of fate, arise at last like a destroying flood and engulf the structure of civilization? Are these men, dying & dead, martyrs to the cause of progress? Will they be apostles from their graves, their names the watchword of the new crusade, their blood [thirstiness] the end of the new faith? I cannot think it. Their god is a monstrosity, their creed the deification of the impossible. Their idol delights in blood, demands human sacrifices and works for a selfish end, seeking to desuÂˇoy only that it may enjoy. ot thus ungenerously has the world been moved. She journeys not toward a chaos of darkness, but ever nearer to the light. The annihilation of all governments can never be any more possible than it is today, unless evolution takes a backward course, and men sink even to the beast Against such fanatical destroyers as these who die today, against enthusiasts who would drag her backward and nullify her achievements, society must protect herself. Technically if not morally guilty of murder, these men in a deeper sense were guilty of treason, a crime more dangerous than murder, and their punishment is exemplary rather than absolute. They tried to overthrow the law, and they fell upon her sword. They provoked the battle which has gone against them. Whatever the future may decree in this conflict between anarchy and law, the victory is now with the law.

This passionate, reactionary passage reveals an optimistic, Social Darwinistic thrust, and is not without compassion. Harriet Monroe accepts the inequalities of fate, the survival of the fittest, but she feels for the masses of the poor and ignorant and the desperation of their hope. Her distinction between technical and moral guilt, like her compassion, was untypical of contemporary reaction. _The kinds of things the anarchists said-any anarchists-seemed to the majority of people to justify their execution, irrespective of any proven involvement in the wounding of more than seventy people and the killing of eight policemen at the Haymarket. (It is still not known who threw the bomb.) Monroe clearly had some sense of the distinction between political crime and civil murder; and if she concluded that treason is most dangerous, and that exemplary punishmentjustifiable, she still seems unsure that the punishment for treason should be as for murder. She shared the prevalent belief that the anarchist credo threatened a civilization she wanted preserved; but she was far from the "panicked" and "vicious" response which was so widespread. She continued in her diary on November 12, when the executions had taken place:

And yet one must pity and admire men who die gallantly for any cause which they associate with tl1e good of the people. Parsons giving himself up for trial, after condemnation demanding"liberty or death," and saying"If the state can afford to hang me I can afford to be hanged;" Fischer scorning the idea of suicide, saying he was willing to grace the gallows, and exclaiming even under the beam, with the noose around his neck and the cap over his face, "This is tl1e happiest moment in my life!" Surely there is something mournfully admirable in constancy and energy so heroically wasted.

Monroe made detailed distinctions between the characters of the anarchists, showing that she had followed the trial closely, thoughtfully, and imaginatively. Engel seems to have been of a more impassive mould. Spies was an egotist; he was not "absolute for death," nor strong enough to be consistent to his p1inciples. He joined with Schwab and Fielden in a rather humble petition to the Governor for mercy, and a few days later, seeing tl1at he had lost caste by that act and wishing to do sometl1ing dramatic to redeem himself, wrote a most absurd letter to the same official generously offering himself as a "human sacrifice" in case the others might be pardoned. This, when his life was already forfeit, stepped over the sublime to the ridiculous.

Monroe's capacity to see beyond the immediate event to the people involved extended to a concern for the fate of the much-publicized Nina Van Zandt, a wealthy pharmacist's daughter, who fell in love with Spies during the trial and married him by proxy outside the jail. His [Spies's] treatment of Nina Van Zandt ha been strangely capricious. Suffering her attentions at fir t, treating he1~ during their year's intercourse and proxy relationship, sometimes with interest or affection , but often, even near the end , with the coldest indifference he finally during their last interview, the first where personal contact was allowed-covered her with caresses and satisfied to the uUTiost her infatuated love and the uÂˇagic color of he1Âˇ grief. Her passion and her woe have had tl1e world fora back1,rround, and to her mind at least, have gained an epic exaltation by their conspicuousness. It is quite possible that the loves of August and Nina will go down to history, gathering pathos as the years go by (as such romances always do) and losing the leaven of craziness which has made their progress rather ridiculous to us who wiuiessed it. But her fate in men's memories depends largely on what she does with her life. If she can be constant to the end-above all, if she could devote herself to the work from which death has rescued him (like tl1e fiery Mrs. Parsons, who is going to raise the revolutionists)-her poor mistaken love will be the cause of some place in the universal sympathy.

Chicago~ Martyrs

! ltm'iet Monroe, c. /935

Harriet Monroe was certainly sympathetic as she speculated on this strange relationship; sympathetic even to the point of writing unsarcastically about Spies's "work"! Nina Van Zandt, somewhat less disciplined and organized than the formidable Lucy Parsons, did, in her own way, keep the faith. After the executions she published the autobiography that she had helped Spies to write. By the time of her death in 1936, twice manied and divorced, Nina had become an o~jectofsome general concern in Chicago, where she kept an open house for cats and bums and preached an incoherent radicalism in the city's street-corner Hobo College. The last paragraph of the diary enn-y concerned Louis Lingg. Characteristicall y, Monroe's typical impulse to condemn-"it was fit that this destroyer should at last destroy himself"-wa cancelled out hr he r untypical, deeply humane reaction to the news that Lingg was an illegitimate child. Romanticall y, she identified him as a misfit like the young bomb tJ1rower Hyacinth Robinson in Henry James's The Princess Casamassima ( 1885).

Of all the anarchists young Lingg was perhaps the guiltiest, certainly the fiercest, the most doggedly obstinate and uncompromising. His courage Look a different turn from Fischer's-not as fine a turn. Fischer scorned suicide-Lingg scorned to die as his captors decreed and defied them all by blowing himself up. Less human tJian any of the others, a fondler of explosives from childhood, perhaps it was fit that this destroyer should at last destroy himself. It seems that Louis Lingg, the dead anarchist, was an illegitimate, like poor Hyacinth. His father was a young German noble on the estates of whose father his mother was a dependent. His mother afterwards married and her child took his stepfather's name, but he was taunted by his play-fellows with his illegitimacy and being sensitive he developed the most ferocious hatred of his father and tJ1e upper classes generally. He was well nigh mad on that subject, and cared not a rap for his life. It appeared that his instrument of death was a dynamite bomb and it killed him in just the same way that one of the Haymarket policemen was killed-such is ren-ibutive justice.

Thus Haniet Monroe's diary entry ended, on a note that she prefetTed not to recall. But the enn-y as a whole reveals a questioning, thoughtful, and sensitive woman. 57

Chicago History, Summer 1986

Although Harriet Monroe chose not to publish her reactions to the Haymarket Affair, many others did. Judging from their autobiographies, memoirs, and recollections, Americans were deeply moved to a wide range of opinion. Collected here are the personal reflections of several noted eyewitnesses to the Haymarket era.

Charles H. Hermann (1871- ?)

c. 1910

Like many other Chicago businessmen, Charles Hermann felt threatened by the specter of anarchy In connection with my mention of the Haymarket riot, it was a strange coincidence that one of the first men with whom I became well acquainted was a mild, soft-spoken gentleman named Van Zandt. He was employed by the Kirk Soap Company as head of their perfume department, and father of the Nina Van Zandt who fell in love with August Spies one of the several anarchists who were convicted for their guilt in connection with the Haymarket riot. She insisted on visiting

him daily in his cell, and through her actions during and after that famous trial, the young woman became nationally known from the front page stories throughout the country. Through my employment with Chapin & Gore, I became well acquainted with State's Attorney Grinnell, who prosecuted those anarchists. The anarchists' trial was probably the most sensational in the history of the coun try. Its result was of great importance to the nation, and particularly to Chicago. Those bewhiskered, long-haired radicals, with their "gift of gab" were spreading dangerous, foreign doctrines from soap boxes on the city's lake front and in many other sections. If I remember correctly, eight of them were convicted, five to be hanged, and three to life imprisonment. One of the five who were to be hanged cheated the gallows. He had an accomplice smuggle a small bomb into his cell. This he placed in his mouth, lit the fuse, and when that bomb went off, most of his head went with it. His name was Lingg. The next morning some clever headline writer named him "No Hang Lingg'.' The others were hanged. When John P. Altgeld was elected governor, he saw fit to pardon the three who were sentenced to prison . They and their kind crawled into holes and were scared out of their racket for years. However, the governor's act was an unpopular one and it was generally known that his leanings were to the "left"; but the convictions of those anarchists had the effect of discouraging radicals who have no liking for the good old American way of life.

Recollections of Life and Doings in Chicago,

1945

Chicago '.s Martyrs

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

1953

Sandburg remembers his boyish reactions to the Haymarket Affair; reactions which apparently were shared by many adults in rural Illinois and around the nation. Then came the murder trial of eight men and we saw in the Chicago papers black-andwhite drawings of their faces and they looked exactly like what we expected, hard, mean, slimy faces. We saw pictures of the twelve men on the jury and they looked like what we expected, nice, honest, decent faces. We learned the word for the men on trial, anarchists, and they hated the rich and called policemen "bloodhounds'. ' They were not regular people and they didn't belong to the human race, for they seemed more like slimy animals who prowl, sneak, and kill in the dark. This I believed along with millions of other people reading and talking about the trial. I didn't meet or hear of anyone in our town who didn't so believe then, at that time .. We walked from school that afternoon of November 11 a block and a half south on Seminary Street. On the other side of the street we saw walking fast toward us a rail road man we knew. We heard him call out, as he went on walking fa st, to another railroad man about ten feet ahead of us. I can never forget the four words that came from that man across the street. He had the big news of the day and was glad to spread it. The four words were "Well, they hanged 'eml" That was all. The man was more than satisfied,

went on walking fast, more than happy. You could tell that by his voice, by the way he sang it out with a glad howl. No need to say more. Everybody knew what had gone before. The end of the story was "Well, they hanged 'em!" Something tight in me came loose and it was the same with the other kids. We looked into each other's faces and said, "I'm glad it's over, ain't you?" and, "They had it coming to them and I'm glad they're dead," and "A lot of people will be glad today, won't they?" .... Five years later I sat in a gallery and heard John Peter Altgeld in a campaign speech in the Opera House. Not a word came from him about the Haymarket bomb and the anarchists. But a few months after he was elected governor he pardoned the three "anarchists" at Joliet and gave out a sixteen -thousand word message on why he did it. It took me over two hours to give a slow reading to that message in a Chicago newspaper. Parts of it I read more than twice. "The jury which tried the case was a packed jury selected to con vict," wrote Altgeld . He named the jurymen who had said in court that they had read about the case and they believed the men on trial were guilty. With the kind of a jury that was picked it was sure beforehand that the men on trial would be found guilty. The governor wrote that the judge threw in questions and remarks before and during the trial showing he believed them guilty before the evidence was in, and instead of a fair trial it was a farce and a mockery of justice. The man who threw the bomb had escaped and there was no evidence to show that he was connected in any way with the men on trial. The police of Chicago had shot and killed strikers, wrote the governor, and they had broken up labor meetings and had beaten many heads bloody-and the man who threw the bomb probably did it on his own for "personal revenge'.' I knew as I moved through that sixteenthousand-word message, crammed with what I now took to be sober facts and truth, that I wasn't the same boy as five years before when I was glad about four men hanged. The feeling grew on me that I had been a little crazy, "off my nut," along with millions of people like myself gone somewhat crazy .... Years later I heard Edgar Lee Masters, who had known Altgeld, saying, "He had violet eyes, strange and quiet violet eyes. They stripped him to the bone, drove him into a

Chicago History, Summer 1986 terrible loneliness, but I don't believe those who say he died of a broken heart. He had hidden strengths. In his fifty-four years he lived a thousand years. It could be that five hundred years from now his name will stand out like that of Cromwell or William of Orange'.' Something like that ran Masters' talk. It was a far cry back to that afternoon when I heard those four words in a glad howl, "Well, they hanged 'em '"

Always the Young Strangers, 1953

Emma Goldman (1869- 1940)

them, I saw Greie motioning to me. I was startled, my heart beat violently, and my feet felt leaden. When I approached her, she took me by the hand and said: "I never saw a face that reflected such a tumult of emotions as yours. You must be feeling the impending tragedy intensely. Do you know the men 7" In a trembling voice I replied: "Unfortunately not, but I do feel the case with every fibre, and when I heard you speak, it seemed to me as if I knew them'.' She put her hand on my shou lder. "I have a feeling that you will know them better as you learn their ideal, and that you will make their cause your own'.' I walked home in a dream. Sister Helena was already asleep, but I had to share my experience with her. I woke her up and recited to her the whole story, giving almost a verbatim account of the speech. I must have been very dramatic, because Helena exclaimed: "The next thing I'll hear about my little sister is that she, too, is a dangerous anarchist'.'

Living My Life, Vol. I, 1931

Clarence Da rro w (1857-1938)

1906

The Haymarket Affair moved the young Emma Goldman to embrace anarchy, whose banner she enthusiastically carried throughout her life. At the end of Greie's speech I knew what I had surmised all along: the Chicago men were innocent. They were to be put to death for their ideal. But what was their ideal? Johanna Greie spoke of Parsons, Spies, Lingg, and the others as socialists, but I was ignorant of the real meaning of socialism . What I had heard from the local speakers had impressed me as colourless and mechanistic On the other hand, the papers called these men anarchists, bomb-throwers. What was anarchism I It was all very puzzling. But I had no time for further contemplation. The people were filing out, and I got up to leave. Greie, t he chairman, and a group of friends were stil l on the platform. As I turned towards

c. 1929

From his standpoint as a close personal friend and one-time legal associate of Governor John Peter Altgeld, Darrow recalls the pardoning of the surviving Haymarket anarchists in his autobiography. I have always felt sure that in the pardoning of the men Governor Altgeld would not have been true to his office and himself had he fai led to act. But I feel that Governor Altgeld

Chicago s Martyrs was wrong in laying all the blame to Judge Gary, the trial judge. Undoubtedly his rulings were biased and unfair, but where is the man who, under the lashing of the crowd, is not biased and unfair? If Judge Gary erred, the Supreme Court was still more to blame; it required one whole volume of the Supreme Court reports for explanations and excuses to justify the judgment of the trial court, and to pal liate and excuse the verdict of the jury; and their decision came a year after the trial, and there were seven judges who might have divided the responsibility. To severely blame Judge Gary meant blaming a judge for not being one in ten thousand, and few men can be that and live. If only Governor Altgeld had consulted some one I believe the great mass of the criticism directep against him would have been spared. He needed but to marshal the influential men from all ranks that had petitioned for the pardon; he needed but to point out that Governor Oglesby had saved their lives, and to call the attention of his censors to the fierce and bitter passions that reigned supreme at the time of the trial. But Altgeld never shirked responsibility. He accepted, and seemed almost to court the opposition of the world. I never ventured to tell him that he should have or might have performed his act in any other manner. And now he and all his family have long since passed to dust, and only his work and the memory remain . Many a time I have said that posterity would vindicate him. But it w ill not; a man's record, rightly or wrongly, is settled as he goes along . Posterity has affairs of its own to look after. I went to the State Capitol as often as I could after the pardon was granted. The great building seemed lonely and abandoned. The governor's suite of rooms were barren and deserted. He was almost always alone. Still there was at least one man, brave and true, and understanding, who found no day too short and no night too dark to serve the man he loved. This was George A Schilling, the secretary of labor. Mr. Schilling was about the first man I met when I came to Chicago, and he has been a close friend ever since. He is still living, at the age of eighty-one. I used to go to the governor's quarter and sit and look at him in silence, just to be with him. He was never a great talker. Few really thoughtful people are voluble. Altgeld never gossipped; he never spoke of trifling things,

and on the platform he almost never told a story Yet, now and then, he would do that atrocious thing, but fortunately the stories never seemed to belong to the man or fit the time or place. A speaker asks an audience to come and listen to his views, and they have done him the honor to come. Out of the whole span of life they have done him the honor to come. Out of the whole span of life they have but an hour or two in which they can be together to consider the matter in hand . Life and such hours are too important and scarce to be wasted on the mere repetition of stories, most of which could be, and probably have been, read or heard before. Instead of yielding idle conversation it might profit one to culti vate silence and contemplation. After all, every one virtually spends most of the time alone, or wishing he could be alone. Altgeld was essentially a lonely man . And those were appa llingly lonely days after the pardoning of the anarchists. The public let loose its vials of wrath and malice on his devoted head. But he did not wince and never complained. He could not tolerate sympathy. He felt that it was an assumption of superiority and the suggestion of defeat The brave man goes straight ahead. He moves silently but with the force of the glacier or fate itself. His heart may be torn and bleed ing, but it never shows in his face, and he is too proud to explain even when he knows that a word would make things right Altgeld never moaned or cried in his agony, but went straight onward down his appointed path though he knew that it led to doom. The second time Altgeld ran for office was some two years after the pardon message. By that time his friends were rallying around him, and even the time-server and hypocrite once more sat on his doorstep, asking for alms. The vote he received was not less than the rest of the ticket; in many places it was more. The newspapers, the profiteers, the money-mongers, and the pharisees, fought him bitterly; but in the humble dwelling places of the poor, in the factories and mills, among the failures, the misfits and despised, he was worshipped almost as a god. For the ma imed and beaten, the sightless and voiceless, he was eyes and ears, and a flaming tongue crying in the wilderness for kindness and humanity and understanding.

The Story of My Life, 1932

Chicago History, Summer 1986

Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)

of Shelley. A general uprising did not come at their bidding, not even in Chicago. Only one bomb was thrown, only one policeman was killed, and no guns were used. The military of that revolution could have been put down by a few constables, not to mention state troops, nor to consider the Federal Army. It was fear that saw danger in the meetings at Greif's Hall, and in the fulminations of the Arbeiter Zeitung. It was the narcotic of strange idealism that led the anarchists to believe that they could change the social order. The Tale of Chicago, 1933

Graham Taylor (1851-1938)

7922

Attorney and poet Masters brought both talents to bear in these paragraphs excerpted from his history of Chicago. The Anarchist Case, as it came to be called, made law for Chicago in all future labor trou ble. By the application of the rules of conspiracy to the facts of that case, every labor leader was put in peril in the conduct of a strike. The later use of the injunctive writ in such disputes which became notorious and oppressive in Chicago in the hands of chancellors in equity, was based upon a conspiracy theory, namely, that men had combined to injure the business, if not the property, of the employer. A conspiracy once being formed, and that by the simple fact of simultaneous quitting of the service of the master, all that happened thereafter of disorder, or violence or killing was legally traceable to the act of leaders in calling and manning the strike. The fate of the anarchists laid a menacing hand upon labor from those days forward and caused labor to resort to violence in sullen hopelessness; while the work and the hopes of the anarchists were no more useful to labor than the revolutionary lyrics

c. 1930

For Taylor, a pioneer social worker and founder of Chicago Commons, the Haymarket Affair strengthened his belief in the law Although while in the East I had shared the country-wide indorsement of their conviction and penalty, ever since, at closer range, that verdict of the jury of public opinion has been challenged by these two questions: Was it just to condemn men for their opinions, however abhorrent, who were indicted solely for murder? Might it not have been better public policy at least to let the lifeblood of these executed men run in their own veins rather than to have let it inoculate the blood running in the veins of so many

Chicago '.5 Martyrs others throughout the land and all over the world with a virus for which they were condemned 7 But neither by my own or others' questioning opinions have I been swerved in my abiding loyalty to law as not only the indispensable basis and bond of any social oraer, but also as the best friend of us each and all. Nor have I ever failed to challenge by spoken and w ritten word the lawlessness of lawbreakers both high and low, or to refute the claim of idealists that mankind is inherently good enough to do without law as far from the facts of experience Pioneering on Social Frontiers, 1930

Jane Addams (1860- 1935)

The widespread fear and mass hysteria following the execution of four anarchists and the imprisonment of four others remained an important factor in a social struggle extending over decades and served for many people as a justification for wholesale hatred against foreign radicals because they were all considered anarchists. It became a patriotic matter to denounce the eight-hour day, higher wages and co ll ective bargaining as anarchistic plots to destroy American institutions. This hideous disaster also greatly accentuated the conventional hostility between the huge city and its neighbors, affording such dramatic proof of the wickedness of Chicago that the down-state legislators for many years not only deliberately prevented the city from obtaining the legislation which it so often needed but denied it the freedom to legislate for itself. My Friend, Julia Lathrop, 1935

Excerpts

1892

Addams reflected on the Haymarket A ffair in her biography of colleague Julia Lathrop.

It is of course difficult to estimate the effect of the Haymarket Riot upon a mind like Julia Lathrop's which must have been already preoccupied with the eternal question aroused by the inequalities of human existence. I was myself an invalid during much of the decade of the eighties and was abroad during the year of the Riot and the hectic year following, but the Haymarket Riot belongs in this early chapter because of its profound influence upon the social outlook of thousands of people, an influence which she shared.

54- 57, from the diary of Harriet Monroe, the Harriet Monroe Papers, Department of Special Collections, The University of Chicago Library. 58, from Recollections of Life and Doings in Chicago, copyright 1945 by Charles H. Hermann, Normandie House. 59-60, from Always the Young Strangers, copyright 1952, 1953 by Carl Sandburg: renewed 1980, 1981 by Margaret Sandburg, Janet Sandburg, and Helga Sandburg (rile. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 60, from Living My Life by Emma Goldman, copyright 1931 by Alfred Knopf, Inc., reprinted 1970 by Dover Publications, Inc. 60- 61, Clarence Darrow, excerpted from The Story of My Life. Copyright 1932 Charles Scribner's Sons; copyright renewed ÂŠ 1960 Mary D. Simonson, Jessie D. Lyon and Blanche D. Chase. Reproduced with permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 62, from The Tale of Chicago by Edgar Lee Masters, copyright 1933, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Reprinted by permission of The Putnam Publishing Group. 62 - 63, from Pioneering on Social Frontiers by Graham Taylor, copyright 1930, The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. 63, reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Company from My Friend, Julia Lathrop by Jane Addams . Copyright ÂŠ 1935 by Macmillan Publishing Company.

Illustrations 55, 57, Department of Special Collections, The Uni versity of Chicago Library; 58, from "The Ice Palace," CHS Library; 59, CHS, Prints and Photographs Collection; 60 left, CHS, ICHi-20045; 60 right, CHS, Prints and Photographs Collection; 62 left, courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library; 62 right, CHS, lCHi-20044; 63, CHS, ICHi-20048.

REVIEW ESSAY Writers of all persuasions have recorded the history of the Haymarket Affair. Steven Rosswurm surveys this body of literature, now a century old.

THI' DEEP PASSIONS AND C:I.ASHIN(; VALUES galvanized

by the Haymarket Affair guaranteed a rush to record its history and meaning long before the four martyrs ascended their scaffold. The press, virtually unanimous in demanding execution, quickly developed the stereotype of the bomb-throwing, unwashed, wild-eyed anarchist that became the mainstay of cartoonists, editorial writers, and popular culture. From the other side, the anarchists and thei1- defense committee labored to set the record straight. Dyer Lum's condensation of the trial record (A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists, Chicago: Socialistic Publishing Company, 1887; reprinted 1969), which played an important role in persuading the public of the trial's injustice, remains a useful source to this day. So are the defendants' autobiographies, which appeared in local papers and have been collected and published (Philip S. Foner, ed. , The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, New York: Humanities Press, 1969). The controversy over Haymarket's meaning only intens ifi ed after the executions. In 1889 Michael J. Schaack, a police officer who helped create (and vigorously exploited) the post-Haymarket "Red Scare," published Anarchy and Anarchists (Chicago: F. J. Schulte). Subtitled A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe and dedicated to the trial judge and prosecULor, Anarchy and Anarchists is often more fictitious than factual; yet its 700 pages of half-truths, outright lies, and lurid illustrations a lso contain important documents and evidence that the police collected, which can be found nowhere else. George N. McLean's The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America (Chicago: R. G. Badoux & Co., 1888; republished 1972) is of little interest except as an indicator of the solidification of the anarchist stereotype. Those who opposed the verdict and an increasingly jingoistic definition of Americanism persevered in contesting the official story. Radicals wrote Steven Rosswurm teaches history at Lake Forest CoUege.

ex tensively on Haymarket, commemorated May 4 and November 11, and dedicated a monument at Waldheim Cemetery in 1893 (four years after the police did the same in Haymarket Square). Lucy Parsons, Albert's widow, wo1-kecl indefatigably to keep the martyrs' memory alive . In 1887 she published Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis; in 1889, The Life of Albert Parsons; and in 1910,

The Famous Speeches of thf Eight Chicago Anarchists. The latter work, reprinted in 1969, presents the speech es that the eight defendants gave to the court after the guilty verdict was delivered. Despite enduring interest in the affair; the first book-length scholarly tTeatment of Haymarket did not appear until 1936. Henry David's The Hi.st01y of the Haymarket Affair(New York: FaITar & Rinehart), reprinted in 1958 by Russell & Russell and published in paperback (without source notes) in 1963, is generally aITanged chronologically. After examining the position of labor in post-Civil War America, David discusses tl1e development of"social revolutiona1y" tl1ought, the Pittsburgh Congress, and the establishment of tl1e International Working People's Association (lWPA). David then outlines the Chicago anarchists' ideology: though "to systematize" their ideas "deprives their thought of an essential trait," they were headed toward what would be cal led anarcho-commun ism-"communistic in its economic aspects and anarchistic in its 'political' implications." The Chicago group, the IWPA's center, vehemently rejected electoral politics, advocating violence as the necessary means of establishing a socialist society; it was, however, much more committed to working with in and through labor unions than the rest of the lWPA. David then discusses the police-initiated violence at the McCormick Reaper Works on May 3, the meeting and bomb throwing on May 4, and the subsequent trial. Although convinced that an anarchist threw the bomb, David demonstrates conclusively that none of those who stood trial had anything to do with it. In tile wake of May 4, Chicago's police, with public support, launched

Caver of Anarchy and Anarchists, uy Michflelj. Schnack, CHS Library.

America's first "Red Scare," trampling the Bill of Rights in their eagerness to attack radical groups and labor unions. Within this contextof"communal iITationality and hysteria," there was no chance of a fair trial; the guilty verdict was "both swift and popular." David's account tracks the defense and subsequent appeals, examining the slow change in public opinion, Louis Lingg's suicide, the executions, and Governor John Peter Altgeld's pardon in 1893. Though its writing is uninspired, The History of lhe Haymarket Affair is in many ways still unsurpassed. David expertly covered the major aspects of the event, placed Haymarket within the context of capitalist indusuialization, and sorted out the complex legal issues of the uÂˇial and appeal process. There arc some weaknesses in the work. While David took the anarchist movement seriously, he equivocated on several significant issues. On one hand , the anarchists' strategy- particularly their emphasis on violence and formation of armed groups- seemed more European than American,

and their appeal was mainly to the foreign born. Their "experiment in planned futility" had "little impact"; the eight-hour movement was "only indirectly related" to Haymarket. On the other hand, capital-labor relations after the Civil War provided "considerable justification" for their advocacy of violence and self-defense, and their energetic work for the eight-hour movement, after initial criticism , was "to some degree responsible for [its] scope and vigoi:" David also made little effort to situate Haymarket witJ1in the particular context of Chicago's evolving class relationships. Much in his work lends itself to this task, yet he offers littJe explicit discussion. Forty years passed before new material on Haymarket appeared. Amid the Bicentennial worship of an imaginary America, the Illinois Labor History Society in 1976 published William Adel man's Haymarket Revisited, while the Charles H. Ke1T Company simultaneously issued for the Society Carolyn Ashbaugh's Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionwy. Haymarket Revisited, recently reissued by KetT, is an excellent popular introduction. It works well as a tour guide to the "labor history sites and ethnic neighborhoods connected" with Haymarket, offering clear maps, concise directions, fascinating detail, and lively writing. Adel man's history of the event, sketched in an introduction and embedded wiLI1in tl1e tours, is less successful in its determination to present the anarchists as no more or less than American dissenters treated unjustly by LI1e courts and popular opinion. Otherwise, this is a fine introduction to Haymarket; even the knowledgeable will enjoy and profit from the Lours. Ashbaugh's biography of Lucy Parsons is a welcome contribution to the Haymarket bibliography. Though Ashbaugh says little new about the event itself, Lucy emerges from Albert's shadow as the important organizer, writer, and speaker she was. Apparently primarily of Afro-American ancestry, Lucy Parsons consistently denied "her black heritage," in "a te1Tible indictment of the racist society which made her feel compelled to do so." Lucy was "more vigorous in her support of propaganda by the deed" than Albert; in speeches and writings-for example, "To Tramps" and "Dynamite!"-she urged her audience to avenge themselves upon their oppressors. Ashbaugh sets this violent rhetoric within the context of routine police brutality and an atmosphere in which tl1e

Chicago History, Summer 1986 Tribune recommended poisoning bread as a solution 10 the "tramp problem"; but she often portrays it as an indicator of the IWPA's conect political stance, rather than a suggestion of the group's marginal Latus or a response to a set of ve11路 specific conditions. In 1984 Paul Avrich, as part of' an ambitious international study of anarchism, published The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton University Press: paperback, 1986). In many ways Avrich 's work, although using some new sources, differs very little from David 's. The main components of the story are pretty much the same, and, like David, Avrich believes tl1e bomb was thrown by someone in the anarchist movement. The Haymarket Tragedy, however, is a superbly written nanative with a drama and urgency seldom found in historical works. It is now the primer for an understanding of' Haymarket. The strength of Avrich's study derives from his effort lo make Haymarket a "human story:' Con\'inced that a biographical approach is the best means to that end, Avrich centers his work on Albert Parsons and August Spies. The result is dazzling: tl1e author takes us so effecti\'ely into the defendants' point of view that their route to anarchism seems both logical and reasonable; Alben Parsons's transformation from Confederate soldier lo social revolutionary is a good example of the power of this approach. The defendants, Avrich shows, were part of a larger movement that had its own '路counterculture," which belied the popular image of anarchists. Along the way, A.\'rich uses the biographical approach to introduce us to all the defendants as well as other anarchists, including Dyer Lum, Lizzie Holmes, and William Holmes. This biographical approach also has its weaknesses. Avrich rightly does not want the "chief personalities" to be 路'lost in a maze of tendencies and developments," but he sometimes goes too far in the other direction. We get little sense, for example, of the Chicago trade-union movement that the anarchists took so seriously. And like David, Avrich makes scant effort to place Haymarket within tl1e wider context of Chicago's development. In this Haymarket centennial year, yet another spectacular work has appeared : The Haymarket Scrapbook, published by the Ken Company. The Scrapbook is a large-scale, innovatively designed collection of essays, illustrations, photographs, poems, and songs. Ils first section, "The Martyrs & 66

Their Movement," provides a good introduction to the defendants and their milieu. In their own word , we learn about the lives of the eight and what motivated them; we also see them as contempor,ll)' illustrators saw them and as historians have portrayed them . The second section, "Defense & Amnesty," focuses both on !hose who worked to free the anarchists and on those not of the elite who opposed them. The third and final section, "The He1itage," o-aces the event's continuing impact in the twentieth century. The Haymarket Scrapbook works on many levels. First, it is a remarkable intellectual accomplishment. Editors Dave Roediger and Franklin Rosemont ha,路e gathered much of the best and most recent historical work on Haymarket and anarchism. Among the most important essays are Roediger on blacks and the IWPA; Paul and Elizabeth Garon on the May 4 broadside variants; Avrich on his newest suggested bomb thrower; S1even Sapolsky on HonoreJaxon; Richard Drinnon on Theodore Roosevelt and the "urban frontier"; and Rosemont on the anarchi t image in popular culture. The Scrapbook is a usefu I orientation to the impact of Haymarket on international anarchism. It also introduces us to many obscure but important anarchist figures-Kate Austin and George Francis Ti-ain, for instance. Its reprinling of poems, songs, and illustrations brings ro life the littleknown anarchist press. The Haymarket ScrafJbook as a whole has a powerful, almosl visceral impact. One contributor to the Scrapboo/1 recently completed a dissertation that is the best depiction of the anarchist movement to elate. Bruce C. Nelson's "Dancing & Picnicking Anarchists?," taken from "C ulture and Conspiracy: A Social History of Chicago Anarchism, 1870-1900" (Ph.D. dissertation, Northern lllinois University, 1985), describes in loving detail the anarchists' dances, picnics, parades, club life, and commemorations of the Paris Commune or 1871. The anarchists, elson shows, created "a community in which workers could live, dance, sing, picnic and parade after work and outside the workplace-a community which tried to serve its members, from the christening or their children to their funerals ...." Nelson's dissertation, based upon exhaustive research using Chicago's foreign-language radical press, examines virtually every aspect of anarchist life, arguing that historians have underestimated the strength and appeal of the movement that

Review Essay produced the Haymarket defendants. Despite this wealth of historical work, several important questions about Haymarket linge1~ First, there is the issue of what Floyd Dell, in an essay reprinted in The Haymarket Scrapbook, called "bombtalking:' Almost everyone mentions, in Dell 's words, the "co ntrast between the peaceable li ves of the Anarchists" and their rhetorical embrace of viole nce, but the discussion has not go ne far eno ugh. Avrich's examination of this issue, in his chapter "Cult of Dynamite," is thorough, but he fa il s to integrate comp lete ly his in sights about the impact this advocacy of vio lence made on the "publi c mind" and the ruling class as h e ana lyzes the anarchist movement as a who le. Dell argued that "bomb-talking" was a "sign of weakness." Was that so? Nelson shows that on the eve of Haymarket the anarch ist trades federation was the largest in Ch icago; its membership, however, was largely foreign born. Did "bomb-talkin g," as George Schilling argued in his 1893 letter to Lucy Parsons, primarily appeal to "the more recent importations, who have been brutalized by centuries of European despotism ... [and] in whose breasts the flames of revenge are most easi ly kindled"? Second, what was the relationship between "bomb-talking" and the "Red Scare"? Everyone agrees that the vast majority of the public initi all y favored execution. Part of that sentim ent may be attributed to the power of the popular press. Part was undoubtedly due, again in Schi lling's words, to tJ1e im pact of"bomb-talking": " ... you terrorize the public mincl .... Your agitation inspires fear; it shocks the public mind and conscience and in evitably ca lls for strong and brutal men to meet force with force." Part of it was probably clue, as e lson implies, to ethnic and religious rivalries generally in Chicago and specifically with in the working class. One senses, however, that tJ1ere were other forces operating at a deeper psychological leve l; other reasons that, in Robert Herrick's words, "the people were crazy to be lied lo." Finally, there is the issue of the sign ifi cance of the Haymarket Affair in Ch icago's developing class relations. For a discussion of this question, we must turn to Ri chard Schneirov's work. ln an essay on the Knights of Labor in The Haymarket Scrapbook, and in an unpublished dissertation ("The Knights of Labor in the C hicago Labor Movementancl in Municipal Politics, 1877- 1887," Northern Illin ois University, 1984), Schneirov situates

Haymarket within a larger context. Mayor Caner Harrison, first elected in 1879 and still serving in 1886, "temporaril )Âˇ reversed the class polarization" of the 1870s by defending foreign-born "leisure customs," appointing sociali ts to important political positions, supporting"socialist sponsored" legislation , and reining in the police, who had brutally intervened in labo r disputes. Then , under intense pressure from t.he ruling class, whose short-term interests were suffering, Harrison appo inted john Bonfield as police inspector~ Al once Bonfield reinstituted the po li cy of breaking strikes; he initiated the pro-capitalist police brutality during the 1885 streetcar workers' strike and the 1886 McCormick molders' strike. From the latter came the May meeting and the bomb, but a lso a tremendous (a lbe it tern porary) growth in the Knights of Labor and the United Labor Party's efforts in the fall of 1886. The anarchists' near-religious vision o f how th e good soc iety wo uld appear, their emp hasis on armed se lf-defense, and their "bomb-talking" seem in many ways to have been a specifi c-often se lfclefeati ng-response to the overt class warfare and what Schneirov ca ll s the "mass strikes" that occurred before and after the "socia l compact between workingmen and the loca l political order:' Once the ruling class had its corpses, something approac hin g the "socia l co mpac t" ultim a te ly reappeared, but it rested a lm ost entirely upon ski lled workers; the unskilled were left to their own devices. In Chicago: City on the Make, Nelson Algren wrote of the "big dark grudge cast by the four stand ing in white muslin robes."Talented people have illuminated Haymarket's history, but some of its shadow remains. We still need a better idea of the implicatio ns of Haymarket for Chi cago's development; we sti ll need a study of tJ1e origins of popular support for the "Reel Scare." It is the lauer, with th e issues of social change versus stab il ity sti ll much on the agenda, tJ1at is of first importance.

BooK REVIEWS American Workers, American Unions, 1920-1985

by Robert Zieger Ba lti more : Th e j o hns Hopkins Un ivcrsit)' Press, 1986.

S25 clo th , , 9.95 pa JJCI".

T HIS EXCELLENT BOO K by a

leading labo r historian su rveys th e histoJ)' of th e Ame rica n labo r m ove me nt since 1920. Writte n clea rl y and based o n th e latest sc ho larshi p (witho ut fo o m o tes, howeve r), it provides substa ntive, compact, and analyti cal bac kgro und fo r acad emi c and no nacade mic reade rs a like. While utili zing socia l histo ri ans' research on worke rs' fa milies, communities, a nd cul tural lives, th e a uth or restri cts his foc us to the o rga ni zed labo r move ment. His inte rest in uni o ns is mo re th an scientifi c. Ziege r feels th a t " ... no fo rce in Ame ri can life in th e twe nti eth ce ntu ry riva ls th e uni o ns as th e e mbodim e nts of th e publi c and collecti ve as pirati o ns o f wo rking people:' Througho ut th e work, th e a uth o r de fe nds America's distin ctive ly co nse rvative, "practi ca l" bra nd o f uni o nism. He rejects analyses th at argue that a militant, latentl y left-win g rank and fil e has been co mpromised by a n o pponunisti c labor move me nt collabo rating with the do min ant socio-po litical o rd e r. Ziege r stresses "extern al forces," principa ll y New Deal la bo r legislati o n and policy, ove r th e "un comm o n" ac li\'ism o f wo rke rs in explaining th e "rebirtl1 of th e uni o ns" durin g th e 1930s. He re minds us th a t wo rke rs join ed union leaders in wide ly supportin g th e party of Fra nklin D. Roosevelt a nd rare ly backed "explicitl y a ntica pita list" prog ra ms during and afte r the Great Depression . Zieger defends th e decisio ns of labor leade rs to pled ge "no-strike" a nd acce pt medi ati o n of labor disputes by th e Na ti o nal War La bo r Boa rd (N WLB) d uring Wo rl d War II. H e is aware th at wa rtim e po licy d e le te ri o usly e mbroiled unio ns in th e "po liti co-ad ministrative srructure." Still , he argues, most wo rke rs backed th e war effo rt, eve n wh e n th ey joined the wave o f brief, "wildcat" sto ppages between late 1943 and ea rl y 1945. T he wartim e po liti ca l clima te mea n1 th a t uni o ns co uld a ppea r "un coope rative" o nl y at th e pri ce of direct re press io n. Moreove r, durin g th e wa r uni o ns co mpl e ted th e ir pe netrati o n of bas ic industry, th anks in pa rt to th e NWLB's "ma inte nance of me mbe rship" po li cy. Th e uni o ns fl exed th e ir muscles in 1946 to create th e greatest sa;ke year in U. S. history. But if postwar settl eme nts bowed impressive wage gain , th ey a lso es tablished manage me nt's supre macy in no n-wage eco nomi c decisio n ma king, frustratin g bo th radi ca ls and m ainstream lead ers of th e Co ng ress of Industria l Organi zati o ns (CIO). Furth erm o re, strikes fu e led middle-class fears, culminating in th e passage of th e Taft-H artl ey Act (1947), whi ch attacked significant Communist influence witl1in th e CIO. By Ziege r's a na lys is, it a lso ch anged tl1 e Natio nal Labor Re lati o ns Board (me ce ntra l age ncy 68

resulting fro m New Deal la bo r legislati o n) "fro m a n ad vocate of uni onism" to a "ne utral bod y" for whi ch "uni o ns were no mo re th a n coeq ua l parlll e rs" with em ploye rs and me public. Ziege r ap plauds me fa ilure of labo r leaders LO o pe nl y protest and defy l11e Taft-H artl ey Act He fee ls mat persistent American obstacles- including weak "class iden tificati on" amo ng workers-prevented labo r fro m "going it a lo ne" politica ll y, so th at "re luctant co mpliance" com bined with "ste pped-up political acti o n" o n be ha lf of labor's a ll y, th e De mocrati c party, was th e o nl y "practi cal" respo nse. With th e co ming o f th e Co ld Wai; this situati o n precipita ted labo r's inte rn a l purge o f Communists, who had used th e ir strategic positio n in ce rta in CIO uni o ns to mo bilize su p po rt fo r th e 1948 third -party candidacy of He nr)' Wa llace. Postwar labo r leade rs exchanged the milita nt image a nd seemin g po te nti al radi calism of th e 1930s fo r "a pa rti cul ar visio n of ad va nced ca pita lism." Th ey placed uni o ns at th e ce nter of a progressive De mocrati c coali ti o n whi ch cham p io ned th e wa nin g legacy o f ew Dea l libe ra lism a nd programs for a broad stratum of lowerin co me citi ze ns. Th ro ugh th e 1960s a n increasingly stabl e, professio na l, a nd ce naÂˇa li zed la bo r move me nt nego ti a ted e la bo ra te co ntracts restri cting th e worke rs' right to strike a nd tl1 e ir input into produ cti o n decisio ns, in return fo r unprecede nte d fin a ncia l ga ins a nd in nova ti ve frin ge be nefit pac kages un de n vriue n by U.S. eco no mi c ex pa nsio n. During th a t turbul e m decade, uni o ns faced bitter cri ticism fro m rad icals a nd libe ra ls fo r sup po rting th e Vie tn am Wa r and fo r fa iling to e radi cate rac ism in th e ir ranks. Ziege r partl y ackn owled ges so me va lidi ty in th ese c1; ticisms but he gi ves unio n leade rs th e last word co ncernin g labor's fo re ign a nd do mes ti c po licies in th e 1960s. Zieger concludes by exa mining fac tors res po nsible sin ce 1968 fo r th e re markabl e e rosio n of uni o n powe r, fro m "de industria lizati o n" to th e rightwa rd shift o f th e co unll)''s politica l a nd labor- law systems. Aga inst curre nt nco-co nservati ve a nd rad ica l cri ticism , he cites rece nt sw d ies whi ch show th at uni o ns re main a n indispe nsa ble de mocrati c force within th e wo rking cla sand Ame ri ca n socie ty as a wh o le. Some may no t share Zieger's read iness to a p plaud uni o n leaders' ca uti o us and de fe nsive co urse. T hey will po int o ut that many of labor's cuJTe nt d ile mm as re prese nt the biue r harves t o f th e fa ilu re of uni o ns to cha lle nge Ame ri ca's Cold War co nse nsus. Zi ege r co nclud es th at no alte rn ative pa th was ava ila bl e, an answe r he seems to base o n a realisti c assessme nt of th e ba la nce o f po liti cal a nd class fo rces in t:we nti e th -centut)' Ame ri ca. His co nclusio n is diffi cult to prove, howeve r, since few of Ame ri ca's burea ucraticall y e ntre nched postwar labo r leaders ha\'e sea rched for eve n a glimme r of th at ÂˇÂˇroad no t ta ke n." Despite this fl aw, American Workers, American Unions is an exrre me ly useful boo k fo r l110se wishing to un de rsta nd mod e rn a nd co nte mpo rary labor history. Ziege r's sympa thy fo r the la bo r move me nt has undo ubtedl y he lped him to write th e best sho rt history LO elate of Am e ri ca n unio ns afte r Wo rld War I. PAU L STREET

SUN Y-B1

C H AMTO

Engraving offoundry from Illustrated Annual Cata logue, McCormick Machines, 1885. Courtesy of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States by David A. Hounshell Baltimore: The.Johns Hopkins L:ni\C~rsity Press, 1984. $'.{8.50 cloth, S l路U.15 papei:

A J'l{INCIPAI. Tl I EME of the history of American technology is the development in the Uni 1ed S1ates of a unique manufactu1-ing technology that came 10 be call ed "mass production." The sto1-y is popularly believed to have begun with Eli Whitney's 1798 contract with the War Department to produce firearms using interchangeable parts. The volume production of various con umer goods was thought to have followed a simple linear process of technological diffusion as the methods employee! in the arms industry came lO be adapted to clockmaking, the manufacture of sewing machines, agiicultural machinery, typewriters, bicycles, and finally, automob il e . Along the way a veritable pantheon of American heroes of invention and entrepreneurship make their appearances on the stage-Whitney, Oliver Evans, Samuel Colt, Isaac Singer, Cyrus McCormick, and Henry Fore!. During the last twenty-five years, historians have gradually revised our understanding of this process. Eli Whitney is no longer "the father of mass production," and it is to the U. S. Ordinance Department rather than to private entrepreneurs that we now look for the seminal innovations in the production of small arms using interchangeable pans. Until the publication of Da,路id Hounshelrs From the Amerirnn Sy.item lo Mass Production, historians have not full)' understood exactly how and why the manufacturing processes employed in the government arsena ls spread to other industries. Hounshell's work provides a

clear picture of how this transfer occurred. The book begins with a survey of the pre-Civil War era of arms and clock manufacturing and de,路otes subsequent chapters to ana lyses of the sewing machine, furniture, farm machine, and bicycle industries during the later nineteenth centu1-y. Hounshell's intensive study of se lected firms in these industries shows that the diffusion of what was originally called '路armo1-y practice" (later "the American System of Manufactures") was surprisingly slow and sporadic rather than smooth and lin ea1'. Of particular interest is his identification of the mechanism of diffusion by specific individuals trained in the armories and later hired by manufacturers in other industries. Hounshell further argues that mass production as first practiced by Henry Ford-who maximized production while simu ltaneously minimi7ing costsmarked a distinct break with nineteenth-century manufacturing and became obsolete in 1927 by the time the fifteen millionth i\lodel Trolled off the assemb ly line. The standardized uniformity of Ford's product was its own undoing, Hounshell argues. By contrast, General Motors introduced what the author calls "flexible mass production"-producing a range of different automobiles th at responded to the company's annua l model change marketing strategy. Fi-om the American System to Mass Production concludes with a particularlr insightfu l chapter entitled "The Ethos of Mass Production,'' which looks at arti tic works such as Charles Chaplin's Modem Times and Diego Rivera's monumental murals, Detroit Industry. Hounshell analyzes them as critical responses to the system of standardization and the authoritarian control of human life implied by mass production. The ca e histories of two Chicago firms Hounshell studied allow us to explore his thesis in more detail. The McCormick Reaper Works, establis hed in Chicago by Cyrus Hall McCormick in 184 7, was one of the city's industrial giants and the dominant firm in its industry.

Chicago History, Summer 1986 Contrary to promotional claims made at the time, the production methods employed by McCormick were almost totally unaffected by the innovations of the American System of Manufactures. The McCormick Works was directed by Cyrus's brother Leander, who gained his knowledge of manufacturing as a blacksmith in a small Virginia shop. Hounshell desoibes the McCormick Works as essentially a giant blacksmith's shop until as late as 1880. The firm relied on skilled machinists, blacksmiths, and woodworkers to assemble and finish each of its machines without apparently being aware of the customized jigs and fixtures and specialized machine tools that allowed other manufacturers, employing less skilled workers, to greatly increase their levels of production. A long-simmering feud between Cyrus and Leander culminated in Leander's replacement as factory superintendent in 1880. Cyrus hired Lewis Wilkenson, a mechanic with manufacturing experience from the Colt armory in Hartford. Connecticut, the Connecticut Firearms Company, and the Wilson Sewing Machine Company-all leaders in ew England annory practice. Soon thereafter, the McCom1ick Works adopted the American System of Manufactures and realized a 250 percent increase in its prnduction of harvesting machines between 1880 and 1884. If, in the case of the McCormick Works, Chicago is an example of the retarded adoption of the new manufacturing technology, the city also offers a case of"state-ofthe-art" innovation . Hounshell's analysis of the bicycle industry introduces us to the Western Wheel Company of Chicago, makers of the "Crescent" bicycle. The dominant firms in the industry, such as the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hartford , Connecticut, were the direct heirs to the New England armory methods of interchangeable parts assembly. That tradition was weak in Chicago, allowing a radically different technique of manufacture to develop. Instead of forging or precisely machining parts for assembly, the Western Wheel Works developed inexpensive stamping techniques for pressing sheet metal into a myriad of bicycle parts. The American bicycle industry went into decline after 1897. but Henry Ford adopted a combination of Pope's advanced armory practice and the Western Wheel Works stamping techniques. Ford added the moving assembly line, which led to modern mass production. From the American System to Mass Production is not "hardware history," as many works in the history of technology have been characterized. Hounshell has written a social history of American manufacturing. For that we are in his debt. The society that we learn about, however, is an elite one-the manufacturer, his managers, and engineers or mechanics-those who designed, controlled, and directed the production process. Missing are the voices from the shop floor as well as the testimony of the increasingly materialistic consumers, or the advertisers who manipulated them into buying the cornucopia of goods produced by these new technologies. But these are only suggestions for future inquiries; their absence does not detract from Hounshell's masterful work. PETER H . COUSINS HENRY FORD ML.:SEUM A D GREENFIELD VILLAGE

The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America byjohn Bodnar Bloomington: Indiana Universil)' Press. 1985. S27.50.

HISTORIANS WHO HAVEATTF.MPTF.D LO descJ"be the collective immigrant experience have usually been subjected to both widespread criticism and praise. Oscar Handlin's prize-winning 1951 publication, The UjJrooled, was criticized by many scholars for blurring traditional distinctions between immigrant groups and exaggerating the u·auma involved in the act of immigration. Handlin depicted immigrants as having been "uprooted" from thei1· rural cultures by forces almost completely beyond their control. They came to the United States with hopes of escaping poverty and deprivation, but in most cases these hopes were frustrated. According to Handlin, most immigrants were forced to join together to create a niche for themselves in a complex urban society where their rural values were quickly ouU11oded. John Boclnar's The Trans/Jlanted: A History of Immigranls in Urban Ammca marks the emergence of tJ1e next stage in the evolution of immigration and ethnic scholarship. Like Handlin's work, it will undoubtedly cause a great stir among historians. Bodnar successfully treads the thin line between generaliling about immigrants and acknowledging their distinctions. He indicates that by examining the collective immigrant experience, he did not "seek to render unimportant ethnic or even class analysis but only to suggest a meaningful level of analysis exists beyond the older view tJ1at immigrants were members of a particular ethnic group or that tJ1ey were only humble workers." Bodnar's analysis of the urban immigrant experience features a refreshing approach derived from the autJ1or's thorough knowledge of a wide variety of sourcesdocumentary and quantitative source material, oral interviews, and the works of other scholars. He discards traditional scholarly distinctions between the "old immig1·ants" of northern and western Europe and the "new immigrams" of the southern and eastern nations of the continent. Bodnar comfortably includes Japanese and Mexican immigrants-groups historians have treated separately from their European coumerparts-in his discussion of collective immigrant experience. In The Transplanted, Bodnar argues that the immigrant response Lo urban America can be examined as a whole because the newcomers are more alike than different. All immigrants to America were forced to confront industrial capitalism in its advanced stages. Upon arrival in tJ1e United States, however, most immigrants had already come into contact with capitalism and the early stages of industrialization. These forces had already begun Lo transform their homelands and create tJie conditions that led to their emigration. Bodnar indicates that capitalism altered tJ1e economic and social Oft.en sharing ethnic backgrounds, policemen and workers were not inherently al odds. Most of the eight policemen killed at Haymarket were Irish. From Anarchy and Anarchists.

Book Reviews

TIIE 11.\\''.\IARKET 1\IART\'RS. 1.

John J. BarnÂˇtt. 5. Tl11 ,111.1s l,t d,kn .

;\ficha<'l ShC'<'han. 3. (, :\latl1ias J. Degan.

Timothy Flavin.

Nels Hansen .

Timothy Sullivan.

George Muller. 71

Chicago History, Summer 1986 structure or the immigran1s' homelands in two wa)'s. The developmenl or transportation networks linking industrial cities to rural areas made cheaper manufactured goods readily available to larger numbers of people. These manufactured goods were less expensi\'e 1han those made b}' rural craftsmen and collage producers whose work helped supplemcnl 1heir agricultural income. The same networks also created huge markets in industrial cities for ag1 icultural produce. Subsistence fanning gradually gave \\'ay 10 mechani;,cd commercial farming and speciali,ation in cash crops. The rise of machine-made goods and the commercialization of agriculture affected some regions more than others. Emigration to America was most likei)' to occur from the regions where economic changes displaced a significanl number or workers. For example, Bodnar found that little emigration took place from mountainous regions such as the Balkans because there \\'ere few transportation lines 10 bring in factoryproduced goods, and the topography of the region was unsuitable for commercial agriculture. It appears, then , that people did not emigrate randomly in roughly equal proportions from all pans or anr given nation. Emigration was a rational re ·ponse on a regional basis to the economic displacemenl or workers. In the regions \\'here the emergence or capitalism undermined the traditional economic and social orde1; emigration did not occur all al once or in all levels of society. Bodnar finds that 1hc firs1 lo leave their homelands were artisans. craftsmen . and small lando\\'ners who left (usually in famil)' groups) as their social status began to erode. They left their native regions with modes1 savings and fe\\' irnentions of returning. According to Bodnar, Lhese firs1 emigrants were most likely 10 become the more innuential members of their American ethnic communi1y. A sec<llld , larger wa\'e of emigrants followed. Mos1 of them were poorer and of lower social stalus than their predecessors; they owned no land. They were most affected by the increasing scarcit) of land and the rise in population that man) Europe;m nations experienced in the late nineteenth and earl) twentii:th centuries. i\1ost emigrated without their families (at least initiallr) \\'ith plans of returning to their native regions to buy property after acquiring sufficient resources in America. Thus, Bodnar lays to rest the myth that all or America's immigra111s were poor and down1rodden. The spread of industrial capitalism into certain parts of Europe displaced millions or individuals from the middle ranks of the social S)'Stems of their homelands. Although many of these people came to Ame1·ica by themsel\'es, Bodnar finds that immigration \\'aS usually part or a family stntegy to deal with economic change. Few immigrants came to America without the guidance or assistance of famil)' or kin. Family members already living in Ame1-ica pro\'ided newcomers with inforn1ation about what to expect in the lJnitcd States, what their needs would be, and how to end up where kin and other compatriots were residing. The family was able to provide new immigrant with some immediate needs such as a job or housing, but ultimately it had to serve the growing demands of

industrial capitalism. Although the immigrant family proved to be a resilienl institution adept at providing for its members on a daily basis, Bodnar finds that kinship ties were not as effective in helping to achieve longer range goals, especially those concerning occupation al mobility. He argues that family or kinship ties led to clustering in specific occupations or industries. Poles, for example, dominated the metals industry. Economic slumps in some trades or industries frequently led 10 hard times in the ethnic neighborhoods. Many immigrants, especially those who came in the second wave , were unable to make use of' pre-migratory occupational skills because employers had preconceived notions about the work habits and abilities or different ethnic groups. For example, many Italian laborers had acquired expe1ience in the building trades in their homeland , but they were not hired here because employers bclie\'ed the) preferred working outdoors. Although immigrant families often cooperated in pro\'iding for the well-being of their kin group, these newcomers did not constitute homogeneous or undifferentiated groups. Bodnar's examination of' immigrants' labm~ political , religious. and fraternal organi1.ations indicates that internal discord characterized all ethnic groups. Some of these cli"isions were along class lines. In his chapter, ·'The Rise of the Immigrant Working Class,'' Bodnar argues that the social class cli\'isions that became e\'idenl in American ethnic groups had their roots in the homeland. The position of the immigrant middle class \\'as a difficult one; its members oscillated bct\1ccn "separateness and inl'ohcment " \,·ith the working class. Although Bodnar's arguments arc carefully constructed and fully documcn1cd , it is not clear how the \'a1-ious a~pccts or the immigrant experience relate to each other and industrial capitalism. This leaves the aulhor \\'ith the complex task or tying together a number of loose ends in the conclusion. fortunately, Bodnar is successful. I lis exploration of class differences " ·ithin ethnic groups might ha\'e been enhanced had he not di\ided his discussion of lhe immigrant middle class and the immigrants· social mobilit\ expectations into l\\'O chapters. These, howe\·e1; arc minor shortcomings. The book is an important re,carch tool and a pleasure to read - a rare combination. The 7hmsj1/anled is one or the most important studies or American immigration to appear in man) years. Students of A111e1~ican immigration are indebted to l\odnar for addressing some or 1hc major myths concerning American immigration and for a work that can serve as a model for other scholarship. He con\'incingly argues that although the capi1alist ,ystcm dictated to a considerable extent the direction of immigrants· li\'eS, the) did not passi\'ely accept all aspects of American life; ·' ... they made sure that they had something to say about it." KRIS' ! I'\ SZYl.\'L\, BAILE\' C\R:\ECII-.-l\1FI .I .O:\ U:S:l\' ERSIT\'