Otto Baum was one of the desperate Anarchists who made the air blue with imprecations against capital. He would have been gathered in with the others had it not been for his special care to keep out of the reach of the police. He lived at No. 137 Cleveland Avenue, was married and had three children, and, when he worked, which he rarely did, it was at the carpenter’s trade. He was a strong, robust man, nearly six feet high, and with black hair, full, black beard, and piercing black eyes, he presented a rather vicious appearance. When he first came to Chicago, some four years preceding the Haymarket meeting, he joined the Socialists, and he soon became a full-fledged Anarchist. He belonged to the notorious International Carpenters’ Union No. 1. This union had then a thousand members, and Baum’s number was 100. About two years ago the union changed its number to 241, and a worse set of Anarchists could not be found in the United States than the members of this organization just before the 4th of May, 1886. They were provided with all kinds of arms—revolvers, daggers, rifles, dynamite and fire-cans. Lingg was one of the leading spirits in this revolutionary gang. After the Haymarket explosion, when the police took up a hot pursuit of the conspirators, Baum changed his residence with his family and carefully kept off the streets during the daytime. On the conclusion of the trial of the leading conspirators, he became emboldened over the immunity he had enjoyed from arrest, and crawled out of his hole, like a coon does in the spring-time.
So great was Baum’s interest in Anarchy that he wholly neglected his family. He never troubled himself about wife or children, but hung around saloons guzzling beer and breathing vengeance against the police and society. He went lower and lower from day to day, and frequently reeled home in a drunken stupor, only to abuse his family. About a year and a half ago, when his last child was born, his neglect had left not a mouthful in the house, and, had it not been for the kindly assistance of friends and neighbors, the family would have been in a most deplorable condition. When the child was a week old, the wife, poor and sickly as she was, had to leave the house and seek work to supply the family with the necessaries of life. With food thus obtained, almost at the sacrifice of the poor woman’s life, the burly brute of a husband was always first at the table, and eagerly devoured what she had provided. Did he seek to obtain employment? Not at all. He preferred loafing and talking about Anarchy. The poor wife’s uncomplaining toil he rewarded with abuse and cruelty, calling her the vilest of names, and even kicking her about as if she were made of rubber. She was a delicate, sickly woman, but she bore his fiendish treatment, hoping that a change would come over him after the law had made an example of other Anarchists. But the change did not come, and finally she determined to seek the protection of the courts. Accordingly she went to the Chicago Avenue Police Court on the 6th of February, 1888, with her infant in her arms, and swore out a warrant against her husband.
The lazy giant was at once arrested, and on the next morning the poor woman appeared to testify against him. Being unable to speak English, an interpreter was called, and during the recital of her grievances and the many indignities imposed upon her by her liege lord, the court-room was as quiet almost as a death-chamber. All eagerly listened to her troubles, and, her statements being given in such a simple, convincing manner, many eyes were moist with tears. Justice Kersten, who presides over this court, has no regard for wife-beaters, and he promptly fined Baum $50.
“That,” said he, in an emphatic manner, “will keep you locked up for one hundred and three days.”
The brute was then locked up where so many of his former associates had been incarcerated two years previously, and in the afternoon he was sent to the House of Correction by Bailiff Scanlan.
During this episode it came out that Baum had been quite active in Anarchist circles, and at the time the Anarchists were confined in the County Jail he was engaged in an attempt to gather a mob to effect their liberation. One night he went about saying that he was determined to kill somebody before the next morning. The more he talked, the more frenzied he became, and with his frenzy grew his thirst for liquor, the need of which he felt to get up his courage to the required pitch. A few hours afterwards he was found in the yard fronting his house, asleep and “dead drunk.” The only courage he ever displayed was in lording it over his wife and beating her almost to death. He was a type of a very large class of Anarchists. He would call the better class of people tyrants, because they did not fill his pockets with plenty of money so that he could get drunk as often as he desired, but in his own household he was the meanest of tyrants.
THE WIFE-BEATER’S TRIAL.
Had Mrs. Baum been a little shrewder, she would not have had to endure his brutalities as long as she did. There are many other wives of Anarchists who are ill-treated by their husbands, but some of these managed to bring their lords to their senses by a neat ruse. While the investigations into the deeds of the Anarchists were going on the bandits would almost crawl into a sewer to get out of the way of the police, and, noticing the timely fright that overcame the “reds” whenever an officer or detective appeared in their midst, many shrewd wives quieted wrathful husbands by threatening to go out and see me. This ruse, I learn, was often resorted to to avert a beating from a drunken Anarchist.