“Well, I can’t answer that.”
August Vincent Theodore Spies was next put on the stand to testify in his own behalf. He said:
“May 4th last I was one of the editors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. I occupied that position since 1880. Prior to that I was engaged in this country principally in the furniture business. I am a member of the Socialistic Publishing Society, which is organized under the laws of the State of Illinois, and by which the Arbeiter-Zeitung was published. I was an employé of that society in my position as editor, and as such was subject to their control as to the general policy of the paper.
“At a meeting of the Central Labor Union in the evening of Sunday, May 2, at 54 West Lake Street, which I attended in the capacity of a reporter, I was invited by one or two delegates to address a meeting of the Lumber-shovers’ Union on the afternoon of May 3, on the corner of Twenty-second or Twentieth and Blue Island Avenue. As there were no other speakers, I went out. When I came there was a crowd of 6,000 to 7,000 people assembled on the prairie. When I was invited, which was the first information I received of the meeting, nothing was said to me about any relationship of Mr. McCormick’s employés to that meeting. I did not know that the locality of the meeting was in the immediate neighborhood of McCormick’s. I arrived there, as near as I can judge, a little after three o’clock. Several men were speaking from a car in the Bohemian or Polish language; they were very poor speakers, and small crowds of those assembled detached themselves to the side and talked together. Balthasar Rau introduced me to the chairman of the meeting. I don’t remember his name; he testified here. I asked him if I was to speak there, and he said yes. I waited for about ten minutes while reports came in from the different owners of the lumber-yards as to the demand made by the union, which was eight hours’ work at twenty-two cents per hour. They then elected a committee to wait upon the bosses to find out what concessions they would make, if any. Thereupon I was introduced to address the meeting, and spoke from fifteen to twenty minutes. Having spoken two or three times almost every day for the preceding two or three weeks, I was almost prostrated, and spoke very calmly, and told the people, who in my judgment were not of a very high intellectual grade, to stand together and to enforce their demands at all hazards; otherwise the single bosses would one by one defeat them. While I was speaking I heard somebody in the rear, probably a hundred feet away from me, cry out something in a language which I didn’t understand—perhaps Bohemian or Polish. After the meeting I was told that this man had called upon them to follow him up to McCormick’s. I should judge about two hundred persons, standing a little ways apart from the main body, detached themselves and went away. I didn’t know where they were going until probably five minutes later I heard firing, and about that time I stopped speaking and inquired where the pistol shots came from, and was told that some men had gone up there to stone McCormick’s ‘scabs’ and that the police had fired upon them. I stopped there probably another five or six minutes, during which time I was elected a member of the committee to visit the bosses, when two patrol wagons came up in great haste on the Black Road, so-called, driving towards McCormick’s, followed immediately by about seventy-five policemen on foot, and then other patrol wagons came. I jumped from the car and went up to McCormick’s. They were shooting all the while. I thought it must be quite a battle. In front of McCormick’s factory there are some railroad tracks, on which a number of freight-cars were standing. The people were running away and hiding behind these freight-cars as much as they could, to keep out of the way of the pistol-firing. The fight was going on behind the cars. When I came up there on this prairie, right in front of McCormick’s, I saw a policeman run after and fire at people who were fleeing, running away.
SPIES ADDRESSING THE STRIKERS AT MCCORMICK’S.
My blood was boiling, and, seeing unarmed men, women and children, who were running away, fired upon, I think in that moment I could have done almost anything. At that moment a young Irishman, who probably knew me or had seen me at the meeting, came running from behind the cars and said: ‘What kind of a—— —— business is this? What h——l of a union is that? What people are these who will let those men be shot down here like dogs? I just come from there; we have carried away two men dead, and there are a number of others lying on the ground who will most likely die. At least twenty or twenty-five must have been shot who ran away or were carried away by friends.’ Of course I could not do anything there. I went back to where the meeting had been, which was about three blocks away. I told some of them what was going on at McCormick’s, but they were unconcerned and went home. I took a car and went down town. The same evening I wrote the report of the meeting which appeared in the Arbeiter-Zeitung of the next day. Immediately after I came to the office I wrote the so-called Revenge circular, except the heading, ‘Revenge.’ At the time I wrote it I believed the statement that six workingmen had been killed that afternoon at McCormick’s. I wrote at first that two had been killed, and after seeing the report in the five o’clock News I changed the two to six, based upon the information contained in the News. I believe 2,500 copies of that circular were printed, but not more than half of them distributed, for I saw quite a lot of them in the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung on the morning I was arrested. At the time I wrote it I was still laboring under the excitement of the scene and the hour. I was very indignant.