“I have known Neebe perhaps fifteen or twenty years. I was in the habit of meeting some of them daily, at labor meetings or at the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. I am myself interested in labor movements, formerly the Labor Party of the United States. It changed its name into the Socialistic Labor Party. I am a Socialist. I don’t consider myself an Anarchist. I am not a member of any group of the Internationals in the city, nor of the Lehr und Wehr Verein. I was present at interviews between the reporter Wilkinson and Mr. Spies. I introduced Mr. Wilkinson to Mr. Spies at the Arbeiter-Zeitung office in the forenoon, and on the evening of the same day, I believe, I was present at a conversation between them at a restaurant on Madison Street. We took supper there together.”
“State the conversation which took place there between Spies and the reporter.”
“Mr. Wilkinson asked him how many members belonged to the military societies of organized trade and labor unions. Spies said that there were many thousand; that these organizations were open to everybody, and at meetings people were asked to become members, but their names would not be known, because they would be numbered, and they didn’t keep any record of names. Mr. Spies laid some toothpicks on the table so as to show the position of armed men on tops of houses, on street corners, and how they could keep a company of militia or police in check by the use of dynamite bombs. The conversation was carried on in a conversational tone, half joking, etc., and it lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, while we were taking our supper.”
On cross-examination Mr. Gruenhut stated that he had heard no reference to any attack to be made on the first of May, and in the re-direct examination he said, with reference to Spies’ attitude on the eight-hour movement:
“At the start he said he did not believe they would get it, and then it would not amount to anything anyhow; it was only a palliative measure—not radical enough. As I recollect, I brought him a list of the different organizations in Chicago, and we were trying to pick out those which needed organization, and the packers and a great many others were directly organized by these men for the eight-hour movement. We were in constant consultation about organizing those trades which had not been organized before. I don’t suppose he ever said that he was in favor of the eight-hour movement. I don’t know that he was ever enthusiastically in favor of the eight-hour movement, but he was enthusiastically in favor of the eight-hour movement that we had talked about on Monday. There never had been a general eight-hour mass-meeting. There had been a mass-meeting representing the great assemblies, at the Armory, but not the Central Labor Union. It was a Socialistic organization; was not represented there. In October, 1885, there had been a mass-meeting of the Socialistic organizations in favor of the eight-hour movement at West Twelfth Street Turner Hall. I was not there. At the time I had that conversation with Mr. Spies and the others present about a mass-meeting to be held, we did not know where the meeting was to be held at all. We only considered the advisability of holding a mass-meeting on the question of the eight-hour movement in the open air. There are only three or four places where you can hold such a meeting; either the lake front or Market Square or the Haymarket. At that time I am sure I saw Spies, Rau and Neebe almost every day, but I could not tell whether the meeting was agreed upon on Saturday or Monday, night or day; but there was a general agreement upon having one general mass-meeting in the open air. It was not sure whether the meeting was to be in the forenoon, afternoon or night, but at last we came to the conclusion it ought to be at night. My recollection is that Spies said to Wilkinson, at the time of that conversation, that the military associations were open and free to everybody; that they meet, advertise their meetings, have picnics and advertise them, and meet in halls, even in open ground, at Sheffield, or out on the prairie. That proposed mass-meeting was to be an eight-hour meeting and an indignation meeting over the killing of men at McCormick’s at the same time. Parsons and Spies, during conversations within the twelve months before the bomb was thrown, said that arming meant the use of dynamite bombs by individuals; all men should individually self-help, as against a squad of policeman or company of militia, so that they need not be an army.”
F. H. Newman, a physician, attended some of the officers wounded at the Haymarket, and identified an iron nut extracted from Hahn. He had also examined some ten or twelve officers, and had found some bullets and fragments of a combination of metals much lighter than lead. “The fragments were also much lighter,” he said, “than the bullets, varying very much in size, from perhaps what we would call 22-caliber up to 45-caliber. The bullets also varied in size. This piece of metal I took from the heel of Officer Barber. It made a ragged wound and was buried in the bone; crushed the bone considerably, fractured it in several places. I examined the wounds of one officer who had a large ragged wound in the liver. He died within a few hours. It could have been a wound produced by a bullet, if the bullet was very ragged, spread out considerably, as they do sometimes.”
Maxwell E. Dickson, a newspaper reporter, had had several interviews with Parsons. He said:
“The last time I met Mr. Parsons, either the latter part of last year or the commencement of this year, he gave me two or three papers, and one of them contained one or two diagrams, a plan of warfare. Parsons stated that the social revolution would be brought about in the way that paper would describe. In November of last year, some time after that demonstration on the Market Square, I remarked to Parsons, in a sort of joking way, ‘You are not going to blow up anybody, are you?’ He said: ‘I don’t say that we won’t, I don’t know that we won’t, but you will see the revolution brought about, and sooner than you think for.’ I attended a number of meetings at which some of the defendants spoke.
“The Twelfth Street Turner Hall meeting was a meeting called for the purpose of discussing the Socialistic platform. A circular had been issued, in which public men, clergy, employers and others who were interested in the social question were invited to be present to discuss the question of the social movement. The hall was crowded. During the meeting Mr. Parsons made a speech, during which he said that the degradation of labor was brought about by what was known as the rights of private property; he quoted a long line of statistics, showing that an average man with a capital of five thousand dollars was enabled to make four thousand dollars a year, and thus get rich, while his employé, who made the money for him, obtained but $340, and there were upwards of two million heads of families who were in want, or bordering on want, making their living either by theft, robbery or any such occupation as they could get work in; and he said that, while they were the champions of free speech and social order, it would be hard for the man who stood in the way of liberty, fraternity and equality to all. Later on Fielden spoke and said that the majority of men were starving because of over-production, and went on to show that overcoats were being sent to Africa, to the Congo states, which were needed at home, and he could not understand how that was. As a Socialist, he believed in the equal rights of every man to live. The present condition of the laboring man was due to the domination of capital, and they could expect no remedy from legislatures, and there were enough present in the hall to take Chicago from the grasp of the capitalists; that capital must divide with labor; that the time was coming when a contest would arise between capital and labor. He was no alarmist, but the Socialist should be prepared for the victory when it did come. Several other persons spoke after that. Then Spies spoke in German, advising the workingmen to organize in order to obtain their rights, and that they might be prepared for the emergency. Then there were resolutions adopted denouncing the capitalists, the editors and clergymen, and those who had refused to come to hear the truth spoken and discuss the question, whereupon the meeting adjourned.
