THE HAYMARKET TRAGEDY.
Fired with indignation at the slaughter at the McCormick meeting, Spies and others of his group issued a call for a meeting on the night of May 4, at the Haymarket, to protest against the police assaults. Spies opened the meeting, and was followed by Fielden. Observers agreed that the meeting was proceeding in perfect quiet, so quietly that the Mayor of Chicago, who was present to suppress it if necessary, went home—when suddenly one hundred and eighty policemen, with arms in readiness, appeared and peremptorily ordered the meeting to disperse. It seems that without pausing for a reply they immediately charged, and began clubbing and mauling the few hundred persons present. At this juncture a small bomb, thrown by someone, exploded in the ranks of the police, felling sixty and killing one. The police instantly began firing into the crowd.
No one has ever been able to find out definitely who threw the bomb. Suspicions were not lacking that it was done by a mercenary of corporate wealth. At Pittsburg, in 1877, as we have seen, the Pennsylvania railroad hirelings deliberately destroyed property and incited riot in order to charge the strikers with crime. In the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania, subsidized detectives had provoked trouble during the strikes, and by means of bogus evidence and packed juries had hung some labor leaders and imprisoned others.
The hurling of the bomb, whether done by a secret emissary, or by a sympathizer with labor, proved the lever which the propertied classes had been feverishly awaiting. Spies, Fielding and their comrades were at once cast into jail; the newspapers invented wild yarns of conspiracies and midnight plots, and raucously demanded the hanging of the leaders. The trifling formality of waiting until their guilt had been proved was not considered. The most significant event, however, was the secret meeting of about three hundred leading American capitalists to plan the suppression of "anarchy." Very horrified they professed themselves to be at violent outrages and destruction of property and life. Their views were given wide circulation and commendation; they were the finest types of commercial success and prestige. They were the owners of railroads that slaughtered thousands of human beings every year, because of the demands of profit; of factories which sucked the very life out of their toilers, and which filled the hospitals, slums, brothels and graveyards with an ever-increasing assemblage; every man in that conclave, as a beneficiary of the existing system, had drained his fortune from the sweat, sorrow, miseries and death agonies of a multitude of workers. [Footnote: This seems a very sweeping and extraordinary prejudicial statement. It should be remembered, however, that these capitalists, both individually and collectively, had contested the passage of every proposed law, the aim of which was to improve conditions for the workers on the railroads and in mines and factories. Time after time they succeeded in defeating or ignoring this legislation. Although the number of workers killed or injured in accidents every year was enormous, and although the number slain by diseases contracted in workshops or dwellings was even greater, the capitalists insisted that the law had no right to interfere with the conduct of their "private business.">[ These were the men who came forth to form the "Citizens' Association," and within a few hours subscribed $100,000 as a fighting fund.