Go to the polls and slaughter them
With ballots, instead of bullets, O!
One Dr. McIntosh could always be depended on for grinding out any quantity of doggerel of this kind for any occasion. The Socialists claimed that they would poll on the day of election—Nov. 5th—from 9,000 to 13,000 votes. Their calculations, like their utterances, were wild and wide off the mark, however, as their candidate for Sheriff, Ryan, only secured 5,980 votes, while Hoffman, Republican, had 16,592; Kern, Democrat, 16,586, and Dixon, Greenbacker, 4,491. They secured, however, a member of the State Senate, Sylvester Artley, and three members of the lower house of the Legislature—Leo Meilbeck, Charles Ehrhardt and Christian Meier.
MAX HOEDEL.
This gave them great confidence, and they pushed with greater vigor than ever their political work. Meetings were kept up throughout the winter, and, among other things, they discussed measures which they demanded from the Legislature in the interest of labor. These demands included reducing the hours of labor; the establishment of a bureau of labor statistics; abolishment of convict labor; sanitary inspection of food, dwellings, factories, work-shops and mines; abolition of child labor; liability of employers for all accidents to employés through the employers’ neglect, and priority of demands for wages over all other claims. They found time also to give their attention to their brethren in Europe, and at a meeting held Sunday, January 19, 1879, they adopted resolutions denouncing Bismarck for persecutions of workingmen in Germany. The pretext for these persecutions, they claimed, grew out of the attempts on the life of Emperor William by Hoedel and Dr. Nobiling. The would-be assassins, they confessed, had once been Socialists, but at the time of the attack had had nothing in common with the order. Hoedel, they said, had been expelled, and had subsequently joined the “Christian Socialistic Party,” which they asserted had the favor of the Government, and at the head of which was a Government official. They claimed that Hoedel had been instigated to the deed by the German court, and they even doubted that he had been beheaded in expiation of his crime. Hoedel, they said, had been simply an instrument in the hands of Bismarck, who wanted a pretext to persecute the Socialists and secure the passage of a bill in the Reichstag for their suppression. Under the provisions of that bill, they asserted, men, women and children were thrown into dungeons without trial, and they insisted that the Congress of the United States should voice their protest against such persecutions.
At nearly every large meeting held during the winter in question, Creech was to the front with new songs, among one the chorus of which ran thus:
Raise aloft the crimson banner, emblem of the free;
Mighty tyrants now are trembling, here and o’er the sea.
On the evening of March 22, 1879, they held the celebration in the Exposition Building already referred to. This was ostensibly in commemoration of the establishment of the Paris Commune in 1848 and again in 1871. The real purpose, however, was to obtain funds to defray the expenses incident to the coming spring campaign and to aid in making a daily out of their tri-weekly organ, the Arbeiter-Zeitung. There were from 20,000 to 25,000 people in the building, and the amount reported realized reached $4,500. There was speech-making by Dr. Ernst Schmidt, A. R. Parsons, Paul Grottkau, and lesser lights, and the various military companies of the organization strutted about in their uniforms, with belts, cartridge-boxes, bayonet scabbards and breech-loading Remingtons.
With part of the proceeds of this celebration, the Socialists fitted up campaign headquarters in a top-story room on the northeast corner of Madison and La Salle Streets, in the very heart of the business center. Their ticket covered all the offices from Mayor lo Aldermen. The only new names that figured on this ticket were those of N. H. Jorgensen, J. J. Alpeter, Robert Buck, Henry Johnson, Max Selle, George Brown, R. Lorenz, James Lynn and R. Van Deventer. The election occurred on the 1st of April, 1879, and their candidate for Mayor, Dr. Schmidt, secured 11,829 votes, while Carter H. Harrison, Democrat, scored 25,685, and A. M. Wright, Republican, 20,496. They elected three Aldermen, however—Alpeter from the Sixth Ward, Lorenz from the Fourteenth, and Meier, then in the Legislature, from the Sixteenth, which made, with Stauber, four representatives in the City Council.