Great Fortunes from Railroads

by Gustavus Myers

The details of the trial will not be gone into here. The trial itself is now everywhere recognized as having been a tragic farce. The jury, it is clear, was purposely drawn from the employing class, or their dependents; of a thousand talesmen summoned, only five or six belonged to the working class. The malignant class nature of the trial was revealed by the questions asked of the talesmen; nearly all declared that they had a prejudice against Socialists, Anarchists and Communists. Soon the blindest could see that the conviction of the group was determined upon in advance, and that it was but the visible evidence of a huge conspiracy to terrorize the whole working class.

The theory upon which the group was prosecuted was that they were actively engaged in a conspiracy against the existing authorities, and that they advocated violence and bloodshed. No jurist would now presume to contend that the slightest evidence was adduced to prove this. But all were rushed to conviction: Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887, after fruitless appeals to the higher courts; Lingg committed suicide in prison, and Fielden, Neebe and Schwab were sentenced to long terms in prison. The four executed leaders met their death with the heroic calmness of martyrdom. "Let the voice of the people be heard!" were Parsons' last words. Fielden, Neebe and Schwab might have rotted away in prison, were it not that one of the noblest-minded and most maligned men of his time, in the person of John P. Altgeld, was Governor of Illinois in 1893. Governor Altgeld pardoned them on these grounds, which he undoubtedly proved in an exhaustive review: (1) The jury was a packed one selected to convict; (2) the jurors were prejudiced; (3) no guilt was proved; (4) the State's attorney had admitted no case against Neebe, yet he had been imprisoned; (5)the trial judge (Gary) was either so prejudiced or subservient to class influence that he did not or could not give a fair trial. Even many of those who denounced Altgeld for this action, now admit that his grounds were justified.

THE LABOR UPRISING IN NEW YORK.

In the meanwhile, between the time of the Haymarket episode and the hanging and imprisonment of the Chicago group, the labor movement in New York City had assumed so strong a political form that the ruling class was seized with consternation. The Knights of Labor, then at the summit of organization and solidarity, were ripe for independent political action; the effects of the years of active propaganda carried on in their ranks by the Socialists and Single-Tax advocates now began to show fruit. At the critical time, when the labor unions were wavering in the decision as to whether they ought to strike out politically or not, the ruling class supplied the necessary vital impulsion. While in Chicago the courts were being used to condemn the labor leaders to death or prison, in the East they were used to paralyze the weapons of offense and defence by which the unions were able to carry on their industrial warfare.

The conviction, in New York City, of certain members of a union for declaring a boycott, proved the one compelling force needed to mass all of the unions and radical societies and individuals into a mighty movement resulting in an independent labor party. To meet this exigency an effort was made by the politicians to buy off Henry George, the distinguished Single-Tax advocate, who was recognized as the leader of the labor party. But this flanking attempt at bribing an incorruptible man failed; the labor unions proceeded to nominate George for Mayor, and a campaign was begun of an ardor, vigor and enthusiasm such as had not been known since the Workingmen's party movement in 1829.

The election was for local officers of the foremost city in the United States—a point of vantage worth contending for, since the moral effect of such a victory of the working class would be incalculable, even if short-lived. To the ruling classes the triumph of the labor unions, while restricted to one city, would unmistakably denote the glimmerings of the beginning of the end of their regime. Such rebellious movements are highly contagious; from the confines of one municipality they sweep on to other sections, stimulating action and inspiring emulation. The New York labor campaign of 1886 was an intrinsic part and result of the general labor movement throughout the United States. And it was the most significant manifestation of the onward march of the workers; elsewhere the labor unions had not gone beyond the stage of agitation and industrial warfare; but in New York, with the most acute perception of the real road it must traverse, the labor movement had plunged boldly into political action. It realized that it must get hold of the governmental powers. Its antagonists, the capitalists, had long had a rigid grip on them, and had used them almost wholly as they willed.

But the capitalist class was even more doggedly determined upon retaining and intensifying those powers. Government was an essential requisite to its plans and development. The small capitalists bitterly fought the great; but both agreed that Government with its legislators, laws, precedents, and the habits of thought it created, must be capitalistic. Both saw in the uprising of labor a prospective overturning of conditions.

From this identity of interest a singular concrete alliance resulted. The great capitalists, whom the middle-class had denounced as pirates, now became the decorous and orthodox "saviors of society," with the small capitalists trailing behind their leadership, and shouting their praises as the upholders of law and the conservators of order. In Chicago the same men who had bribed legislators and common councils to give them public franchises, and who had hugely swindled and stolen under guise of law, had been the principals in calling for the execution and imprisonment of the group of labor leaders, and this they had decreed in the name of law. In New York City a pretext for dealing similarly with the labor leaders was entirely lacking, but another method was found effective in the subjugation and dispersion of the movement.

CAPITALIST TRIUMPH BY FRAUD.

This was the familiar one of corruption and fraud. It was a method in the exercise of which the capitalists as a class had proved themselves adepts; they now summoned to their aid all of the ignoble and subterranean devices of criminal politics.