Presently a patrol wagon loaded with officers plowed through the turbulent mass, and, securing the ground between the mob and the buildings, began driving out and dispersing the rioters. This only served to infuriate the Anarchists, who fired in the direction of the police and hurled a shower of stones. The officers remonstrated in vain, warning the mob to keep back, and finally made a rush upon the rioters with revolvers drawn, shooting right and left.
CHARGING THE MOB.
The crowd swayed to and fro, retreated slightly, then rallied again, and, diverging to either side in a jumbled but compact body, seemed bent on holding their ground and fighting for every inch of it. But the dashing and aggressive movements of the police, backed by courage and discipline, soon demonstrated to the howling rabble the hopelessness of the struggle. The very air seemed charged with bullets, clubs and missiles. Revolvers clicked furiously, the exigencies of the moment necessitating their use on the part of the police, and several revolutionists bit the dust, maimed and wounded. What seems strange is that none were killed in this furious onslaught.
The mob, which numbered fully 8,000, was soon put to precipitate flight. Some of the most vicious leaders, however, kept up a rattling fire of guns, revolvers, brickbats and sticks so long as their retreat was measurably covered by the fleeing mob surrounding them. Several of these leaders, with their weapons still smoking, were subsequently overtaken, disarmed and locked up.
During all this short affray, Spies was nowhere to be seen, but, the moment all danger seemed past, he emerged from his seclusion, breathing courage and vengeance. He bounded into the field like one ready to sacrifice himself for his cause, but cautiously kept himself where no stray bullets might reach him. Another singular feature in connection with the part he played in the affair was his attempt to parade his own heroic virtues, by implication, in the denunciations and upbraidings he heaped upon his comrades in the account published of the riot on the very afternoon after its occurrence. This is what he said in the Arbeiter-Zeitung:
OFFICER CASEY’S PERIL.
The writer of this hastened to the factory as soon as the first shots were fired, and a comrade urged the assembly to hasten to the rescue of their brothers, who were being murdered, but none stirred.... The writer ran back. He implored the people to come along,—those who had revolvers in their pockets,—but it was in vain. With an exasperating indifference they put their hands in their pockets and marched home, babbling as if the whole affair did not concern them in the least. The revolvers were still cracking, and fresh detachments of police, here and there bombarded with stones, were hastening to the battle-ground. The battle was lost!
A riot on a smaller scale occurred shortly after this in another locality, instigated by the Anarchists who had been so severely repulsed in the afternoon. After the McCormick outbreak one of the wounded strikers was taken in a patrol wagon to the Twelfth Street Station, and thence to his home on Seventeenth Street. Officer Casey was one of the men in charge of the wagon, and remained behind at the house to take a report of the man’s name, his residence and the nature of his injuries. When the officer came out of the wounded man’s home, he was set upon by a mob, shouting: