On cross-examination Mr. Hull said:
“The firing of the revolvers startled me. I considered my position dangerous and tried to get around the corner. A few moments before the explosion of the bomb a threatening cloud came up, and Mr. Spies said the meeting would adjourn to 54 West Lake Street, I believe. At no time during the meeting was I as near as eight or ten feet from the speaker. I don’t believe I heard Fielden say, in a loud voice, ‘There come the bloodhounds! Now you do your duty and I’ll do mine,’ when the police were coming up. I remember that Mr. Fielden said ‘in conclusion,’ after I got my position on the stairs again, and when the police were forming and marching below. I was confused at the time I wrote my reports. (After examining his report in a copy of Daily News of May 5th, 1886:) I have said nowhere in this report that the crowd fired upon the police. I did say that the police required no orders before firing upon the crowd. I wrote this up about an hour after the occurrence. After describing the explosion of the bomb, I used this language in my report: ‘For an instant after the explosion the crowd seemed paralyzed, but, with the revolver shots cracking like a tattoo on a mighty drum, and the bullets flying in the air, the mob plunged away into the darkness with a yell of rage and fear.’ My recollection is that the bomb struck the ground about on a line with the south line of the alley. The bomb apparently fell north from the point where I first saw it in the air. I judge it came from the south, going west-northwest.”
A PICNIC OF THE “REDS” AT SHEFFIELD.
1. Experimenting with Dynamite. 2. Getting Inspiration. 3. Engel on the Stump.
4. “Hoch die Anarchie!” 5. Mrs. Parsons addressing the Crowd.
6. Children peddling Most’s Literature. 7. A Family Feast.
Whiting Allen, another reporter, was present at the Haymarket meeting in company with Mr. Tuttle, another newspaper man, and heard some of the speeches. Said the witness:
“Parsons was speaking when we got there. About the only thing that I could quote from his speech is this: ‘What good are these strikes going to do? Do you think that anything will be accomplished by them? Do you think the workingmen are going to gain their point? No, no; they will not. The result of them will be that you will have to go back to work for less money than you are getting.’ That is his language in effect. At one time he mentioned the name of Jay Gould. There were cries from the crowd, ‘Hang Jay Gould!’ ‘Throw him into the lake!’ and so on. He said, ‘No, no; that would not do any good. If you would hang Jay Gould now, there would be another, and perhaps a hundred, up to-morrow. It don’t do any good to hang one man; you have to kill them all, or get rid of them all.’ Then he went on to say that it was not the individual, but the system; that the government should be destroyed. It was the wrong government, and these people who supported it had to be destroyed. I heard him cry, ‘To arms!’ I cannot tell in what connection. The crowd was extremely turbulent. It seemed to be thoroughly in sympathy with the speakers; was extremely excited, and applauded almost every utterance. I staid there some ten or fifteen minutes. I then left and went to Zepf’s Hall. Later I came back again, when Fielden was speaking. When the bomb was thrown I was in the saloon of Zepf’s Hall, standing about the middle of the room at the time. I did not see any of the defendants there. They were not there to my knowledge. When I was down at the meeting, I pointed out to Mr. Tuttle Mr. Parsons, Fielden, Spies, and a man that I presume was Mr. Schwab, but was not certain. The general outline was that of Mr. Schwab. I could not get a full view of his face. That must have been half past nine.”
Charles R. Tuttle said he did not remember much of what Parsons spoke:
“Parsons made a series of references to existing strikes—one was the Southwestern strike—and to Jay Gould, the head of that system of railways, and the winding up of the peroration in connection with that created a great deal of excitement and many responses from the audience. He then spoke of the strike at McCormick’s, and detailed the suffering of the people who had wives and children, and who were being robbed by one whom I took to be Mr. McCormick, although I cannot say that was the idea; who were being robbed, anyway, by capitalists. And he said it was no wonder that these persons were struggling for their rights, and then said that the police had been called on by the capitalists to suppress the first indications of any movement on the part of the working people to stand up for rights, and he asked what they are going to do. One man—I believe the same one who had spoken when he referred to Gould—stuck up his hand with a revolver in it, and said, ‘We will shoot the devils,’ or some such expression, and I saw two others sticking up their hands, near to him, who made similar expressions, and had what I took to be at the time revolvers.”