24 January. An explosion of Atlas Powder A (American make), in Westminster Hall. Three persons were injured severely, and others slightly, and very considerable damage was done to the Hall and surroundings.
24 January. An explosion in the House of Commons (probably caused by a similar amount of the same explosive). No persons were injured, but very considerable damage was done to the Houses of Parliament.
February. A discovery of dynamite (of American make) in a house in Harrow Road, Paddington.
9 March. A discovery of Atlas Powder A in the roof of a saw-mill at Bootle.
As a result of these various conspiracies and political outrages, twenty-nine persons were convicted.
Some of the bombs used in the London explosions were very ingeniously made. Usually they had a clock-work arrangement which released a hammer and exploded the infernal machine at the time set. Others again had a time fuse depending upon the percolation of acid through parchment. In every case, however, the destruction wrought by the explosives was ridiculously disappointing to the conspirators, and in England as elsewhere the event proved that high explosives are a delusion and a snare from the revolutionist’s point of view. They are greatly more dangerous to the persons who employ them than to the people or the property against which they may be aimed.
CHAPTER III.
The Exodus to Chicago—Waiting for an Opportunity—A Political Party Formed—A Question of $600,000—The First Socialist Platform—Details of the Organization—Work at the Ballot-Box—Statistics of Socialist Progress—“The International Workingmen’s Party” and The “Workingmen’s Party of the United States”—The Eleven Commandments of Labor—How the Work was to be Done—A Curious Constitution—Beginnings of the Labor Press—The Union Congress—Criticising the Ballot-Box—The Executive Committee and its Powers—Annals of 1876—A Period of Preparation—The Great Railroad Strikes of 1877—The First Attack on Society—A Decisive Defeat—Trying Politics Again—The “Socialistic Party”—Its Leaders and its Aims—August Spies as an Editor—Buying the Arbeiter-Zeitung—How the Money was Raised—Anarchist Campaign Songs—The Group Organization—Plan of the Propaganda—Dynamite First Taught—“The Bureau of Information”—An Attack on Arbitration—No Compromise with Capital—Unity of the Internationalists and the Socialists.