John Ferguson, a resident of Chicago for seventeen years, and in the cloak business, passed the Haymarket, and, noticing a crowd there, stopped to listen to the speeches. He was accompanied by an acquaintance. They stood at the Randolph Street crossing and listened about fifteen minutes to Parsons’ speech. Said the witness:
“We could hear all of the speaking plainly, from where we stood, as the speakers were facing Randolph Street. During his speech, when he mentioned Jay Gould’s name, somebody said: ‘Throw him in the lake;’ and a man standing almost in front of me took his pipe from his mouth and halloaed out: ‘Hang him.’ Parsons replied that would do no good; a dozen more Jay Goulds would spring up in his place. ‘Socialism aims not at the life of individuals, but at the system.’ I didn’t hear any other responses from the crowd than those I mentioned. After Parsons concluded, another gentleman got up and began speaking about Congressman Foran. After a few minutes I saw quite a storm cloud come up. Some one interrupted the speaker with the remark: ‘There is a prospect of immediate storm, and those of you who wish to continue the meeting can adjourn to’—some hall, I don’t remember the name of it; but the speaker, resuming, said: ‘I haven’t but two or three words more to say, and then you can go home.’ I walked away from the meeting, across Randolph Street to the southwest corner. There I saw the police rush out from the station in a body. They whirled into the street and came down very rapidly toward us. The gentleman in command of the police was swinging his arm and told them to hurry up. After they had passed us we turned to walk south toward the station, and we heard a slight report, something like breaking boards, or like slapping a brick down on the pavement. We turned, and we had just about faced around, looking at the crowd, when we saw a fire flying out about six or eight feet above the heads of the crowd and falling down pretty near the center of the street. It was all dark for almost a second, perhaps, then there was a deafening roar. Then almost instantly we saw flashes from toward the middle of the street, south of Randolph on Desplaines, and heard reports. That side of the street where the crowd was was dark. At that time there did not appear to be any light there. Then we hurried away. I did not see any flashes from either side of the street. The majority of the crowd had gone away on the appearance of the approaching storm. The crowd was very orderly, as orderly a meeting as I ever saw anywhere in the street.
“It could not have been longer than five minutes from the time that Fielden said, ‘We will be through in a short time,’ that the police marched down the street. I am not a Socialist, nor an Anarchist, nor a Communist; I don’t know anything about what those terms mean.”
Ludwig Zeller went to the meeting about a quarter past ten, and took a position at a lamp-post near Crane’s alley. A few minutes thereafter the police came, and when they passed him he heard the command of the Captain, but heard no reply from anybody on the wagon or near the wagon.
“I turned and went south to Randolph Street, and in turning I saw a light go through the air about six, or eight, or ten feet south of the lamp. It went in a northwesterly direction, right into the middle of the street and in the middle of the police; then I heard an explosion and shooting, and I tried to get out, because there were a great many men falling around me, and a few were crying. I turned the corner on Randolph Street east toward Clinton. A great many people were running in the same direction; men were falling before me and on the side of me. I heard shooting immediately upon the explosion of the bomb. The shots came from behind me while I ran. The shots came from the center of the street, from north and northwest of me.
“On Sunday, May 2d, I was present at a meeting of the Central Labor Union as a delegate from the Cigar-makers’ Union, No. 15. The delegates of the Lumber-shovers’ Union at that meeting requested me, as a member of the agitation committee, to send a speaker to a meeting of the Lumber-shovers’ Union to be held on Monday, May 3d, at the Black Road. They wanted a good speaker, who could keep the meeting quiet and orderly. In the afternoon of the same day we had another meeting of the Central Labor Union, at which Mr. Spies was present as a reporter of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and I told him personally to go out to the meeting of the Lumber-shovers’ Union and speak in the name of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union is a body composed of delegates from about twenty-five or thirty different labor unions of the city. The Lumber-shovers’ Union is represented in the Central Labor Union by delegates. There are from fifteen to sixteen thousand laborers represented by those unions. The agitation committee to which I belonged was for the purpose of organizing different branches of trade who had no eight-hour organization at that time. I did not notice any firing back from the crowd at the police, either on Desplaines Street or Randolph Street.”
On cross-examination Mr. Zeller stated:
“Since last December, I don’t belong to any group. Prior to that I was a member of the group ‘Freiheit,’ which used to meet on Sherman Street. I only attended three meetings of that group. We had no numbers. I am not an Anarchist. I am a Socialist.
“I was standing about five or six feet south of that alley. I saw the fuse about eight or ten feet south of me. I didn’t know what it was. I saw behind that fuse something dark, but I couldn’t distinguish what it was. I was only looking where it was going. I cannot say what kind of looking thing it was; it seems to me it was more round, and about as big as a baseball. I cannot say who fired first after the bomb went off. I can’t say exactly whether the police fired—I didn’t see. On the wagon I only recognized Fielden. I was too far away from the wagon, and it was dark. The gas-light was lighted. I didn’t see anybody put it out.”