CHRIS SPIES.
From a Photograph taken by the Police.
But all this unexpected interference in what he regarded as his own business only tended to make Spies desperate, and, spurred on by his outside Anarchist friends, who had likewise become indignant over a public intermeddling in a love affair, he dropped his diplomacy and resolved that the wishes of his ardent lady love should not be baffled either by officials or by the public. Miss Nina in her unreasoning infatuation readily acquiesced in the suggestion of a proxy marriage, and Justice Engelhardt was consulted. This gentleman claimed that under the statutes such a marriage would be valid, and he consented to a performance of the ceremony. Accordingly, on the 29th of January, 1887, a proxy marriage was performed between Miss Nina and Chris Spies, a brother of the doomed man. The attorneys of Chicago regarded the ceremony as illegal, but the Anarchists considered it as binding as if directly contracted.
Miss Nina continued her visits to the jail after this mock proceeding, but lynx-eyed officials saw to it that there was no one present during her interviews with Spies to secretly and legally splice them together. She was devoted to him at all times and all the time, and whenever she was not well enough to visit him for some days or was kept away by other circumstances, she would write him tender missives of love and encouragement. She clung to him to the last, and in their final interview, two days preceding his execution, she wept most bitterly.
MISS GRETCHEN SPIES.
From a Photograph.
Her love was remarkable, but throughout it all Spies proved himself wholly unworthy. He was a reprobate cunningly playing upon her feelings, caring very little for her, and he must have known that her station in life at that time made her an unsuitable companion. For him, however, she renounced friends and all. After his death she went into deep mourning, hung a cabinet photograph of him in the parlor window of her father’s fashionable residence on Huron Street, and locked herself in against the outer world for a number of days. She still cherishes Spies’ memory and keeps in her parlor a marble bust of the executed Anarchist. Recently she has been extending her acquaintanceship among Anarchists outside of Chicago, and she has lately visited some of the most rabid and demonstrative Socialists at Ottawa, Illinois.
Spies was born in Friedewald, in the province of Hesse, Germany, in 1855. He came to America in 1872, and one year later arrived in Chicago, where he engaged in various occupations until he relieved Paul Grottkau as editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1876. His identification with Socialism began in Chicago in 1875. He was unmarried and supported his mother and a sister, Miss Gretchen Spies. He has two brothers in Chicago, Chris and Henry.
MICHAEL SCHWAB.
From a Photograph taken by the Police.
Michael Schwab, when confronted by the officers, looked like an exclamation point, and had his long, bushy hairs been porcupine quills, each would have stood straight on end. He was bewildered, dumbfounded, and there was a distant, far-off expression in his eye. He realized that he was in trouble, and to the many questions put to him by the officers he stammered apologetic but non-committal answers. It was clearly to be seen that he had been like clay in the potter’s hand, a mere dupe of his associates. He was far less talented and less active than the other leaders, but still in his own way he had played quite a conspicuous part in the Anarchist drama. He had seen something of the world as a peripatetic book-binder. Through his varied experience, his nature had grown irritable and crusty, and Anarchy seemed the only thing suited to right the wrongs of mankind. He fell in with the ideas of the cranks in Chicago, and soon wormed himself into an assistant editorial position of $18 a week on the Arbeiter-Zeitung. In appearance Schwab was ungainly and ferocious, but when put to the test he was calm and mild as a lamb. The only thing really vicious about him was in his incendiary writings and speeches. He aimed with his limited capacity to be a great leader, but the moment he got into the clutches of the law and found himself in peril of his life he retracted everything which he had so persistently and stubbornly advocated. His new troubles brought out the fact that he had written and spoken simply for the money that was in the business, and not because he sincerely believed in the theories he preached. He was at all times a supple tool in the hands of Spies and Parsons, and during the remainder of his days in the penitentiary he will have ample opportunities to repent of his past misdeeds.