“How came you to know so much?” I inquired; “that is to say, how do you know the names of the members?”
“Well, I have a friend, and he told me all these things, but he ran away from the city. I don’t know where he is now.”
“What is his name and where did he live?”
“He is a carpenter. I used to call him Carl. He lived on Randolph Street, near Union.”
Further inquiries failed to elicit anything of importance, and he was turned loose to wander at his own sweet pleasure.
Emil Mende, a German, was a man thoroughly capable of desperate deeds. He lived at No. 51 Meagher Street, and so villainous a disposition did he possess that his own sister and his brother-in-law were obliged to report him at the station. Even the people in his own neighborhood feared him, and those that knew him best shunned him. He was a dangerous man. For two months preceding May 4, he boasted how the Anarchists would blow up the city and kill every one who was not an Anarchist. He talked about it so often and in such an earnest way that his neighbors grew apprehensive lest he might set fire to the neighborhood. The children would run across the street to avoid meeting him. He was always full of liquor, and his chief study was how to get a living without work. He thought he had found it in Anarchy, and he stood ready to commit any crime to accomplish his purpose. He became a drunken loafer through attending Anarchistic meetings, and when his sister remonstrated with him he turned against her and threatened to kill her. His conduct finally became so unbearable that his brother-in-law, Emil Sauer, gave information against him to the police. Mende, he said, belonged to the Lehr und Wehr Verein of the Southwest Side group and would assemble with his comrades in lonely, retired places, where the police could not see them drill. They would sneak into the buildings selected for their meeting-places, and after their drills they would quietly sneak out again, like so many thieves who had committed a successful burglary. Sauer said he had come to know many of the members, but he did not know their names or where they lived. They all had numbers, were well armed with rifles and revolvers, and they drilled frequently.
“I remember the night of May 4,” said Sauer, “Mende left the house about eight o’clock. He looked wild and desperate. He carried with him a huge revolver and a lot of cartridges. About eleven o’clock the same evening, after the bomb had exploded, he came sneaking home, and had in his possession two rifles and three dynamite bombs. He brought them all into the house at first, and, becoming alarmed, he took them all to No. 647 South Canal Street. There he was seen either going under the house or under the sidewalk. When he came out he had nothing with him. Mende, when he first began to attend the meetings, had very little to say about Anarchy. He kept on, and during the six months preceding the Haymarket riot he was perfectly crazy on the subject. After he had become a member of the armed group, he would speak of nothing else but killing people and destroying the city. On the evening of May 4, before leaving home, he said:
“‘This is our night. This night we will show our strength. I would like to see any one oppose us. Nothing can stand before us. Before daylight to-morrow blood will flow deep in the streets, and the air will be hot. Then we will have a new government.’
“After he had been gone about twenty minutes, some one came in and asked for him. The man looked like a starved-out cut-throat. He was told that Mende had gone. The fellow remarked, ‘Then it is all right. I know where to find him.’ He pulled his hat over his eyes, turned up his coat collar and disappeared. This man was watched. He went west from our house, and about a block away he met five other men. They all went west together.
“On the afternoon of May 4, Mende said to me: