He spoke English very imperfectly, and with great difficulty, he manifested no desire to make progress in anything except in anarchy. The sinister expression of his countenance indicated a dogged stubborn and cruel nature, full of malice and hatred which led him to use this latest breath in a “hurrah for anarchy” upon the gallows. Such men behold nothing beautiful in nature, nor anything to admire in well organized society, under the mad misrule of anarchy controlled by such an element, society would soon lapse back to the days of primitive barbarism and superstition.
MICHAEL SCHWAB.
Michael Schwab was born near Mannheim, Germany, in 1853, and was educated in a convent. For several years he worked at the book-binding trade in various cities. He came to America in 1879.
He was a co-adjutor with August Spies in connection with the Arbeiter Zeitung. He was a pronounced socialist, though of a milder type than Spies, Parsons or Fischer. He was vacillating in his nature, and not calculated for a leader, but capable of being led. Had he chosen for his companions loyal and patriotic associates, he doubtless would have become a trusted citizen and a champion of American institutions instead of a propagator of anarchy which cost him the price of his liberty.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Oscar W. Neebe was born in New York city on the 12th day of July in the year 1850. His parents were German, and in order to give their children an education in German they removed from New York to Germany when Oscar was but a child. His boyhood and school days were spent in Hesse Cassel. But at the age of fourteen years he returned to New York and as he expresses himself, was glad to set foot once more upon the land of the free, where all men were equal regardless of color or nationality, for the war had just closed which had stricken the chains and festering fetters from the limbs of the African slave, which meant the unbarring of the dungeon of the mind, giving them the right to acquire an education which before was denied them, and making them heir to the inalienable rights of citizenship. He says “I saw the sun-browned soldiers of the federal army returning from the South where they had fought for liberty and freedom, and learned to love them as brothers when I heard them say: ‘There is now no more slavery.’”
Catching the inspiration of these words of Horace Greely: “Go West young man,” he accordingly came to Chicago at the age of sixteen years, but returned to New York again where he learned the trade of tinsmith and cornice-maker. But New York, with all its fascinations, failed to constitute him contented and happy, and in February, 1877, we find him again in Chicago where he commenced work for the Adams and Westlake Manufacturing Company. He states that he was discharged July 1, for daring to champion the working man, and at times was reduced to poverty and almost starvation because of his avowed proclivities as an agitator.
He had become identified with the socialistic agitators in 1877, and the active part and interest manifested by him in the socialists was largely responsible for his lack of success in obtaining and holding a situation. In 1878 he obtained a situation as salesman for the Riversdale Distillery Company, selling their compressed yeast.
His financial embarrassment threw him largely among the agitators of the Labor party, and in 1886, after the Haymarket riot, he was arrested and tried for murder or for complicity in the conspiracy which led to the massacre for which he received a sentence of fifteen years in the penitentiary.