HAYMARKET SQUARE RIOT, a dis turbance resulting in the murder of several policemen in Chicago, 4 May 1886, by a bomb thrown by an anarchist. The labor troubles had long been exploited by the anarchists (with whom the philosophic anarch ists disclaim connection), who denounced the efforts for shorter hours and better wages as tending merely to aggravate capitalistic slavery, and urged instead the general seizure of prop erty and the murder of its owners. In Feb ruary 1886 the McCormick Reaper Works had been closed on account of a demand for ex pulsion of some non-union men, but had re opened. Meantime a great eight-hour strike had left some 50,000 workmen unemployed in the city, and in view of an almost certain conflict with the police, George Engel proposed at a meeting in Bohemian Hall on 2 May, and the meeting indorsed, a plan to blow up the police stations, shoot the emerging police, cut the tele graph wires, fire buildings to engross the serv ice of the fire department and make a general jail delivery, that the prisoners might aid in a social revolution. The next day August Spies and others incited a meeting of the Lumber shovers' Union, 16,000 or more, principally Ger mans and Bohemians, to assail the McCormick Works in order to furnish an opportunity for carrying out this plan, though the works had no connection with this union. The mob attacked the works with stones and revolvers, but were driven off. No one was fatally injured, but Spies immediately issued a circular headed °Revenge P asserting that six workingmen had been killed and calling their brethren to arms. He also published a fierce article in his paper, the Arbester Zeitsusg, repeating the falsehood and declaring that there had been a to terrorize the workingmen, who should have had dynamite bombs instead of stones.. In the evening a meeting was held at Greif's Hall, at which Engel's plan was adopted. Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Samuel Fielde and Oscar W. Neebe spoke for a mass-meeting to further the plan above mentioned; at Adolf Fischer's suggestion it was fixed for next evening in Haymarket Square, that the dusk and the room for a great crowd might furnish more confusion and better means of escape. Rudolph Schnaubelt wished to have all socialists in other cities notified, so that there might 'be a general revolution. The signal was to be (Ruhe (Peace), which was printed in next afternoon's Arbeiter Zeitung. Meantime Louis Lingg and others worked all day preparing bombs, of which the newspaper office was found to be an arsenal, along with firearms, and with a confederate carried a satchel of them to a place where others helped themselves. The air was full of rumors of
intended violence and the mayor (Carter Har rison, Sr.) ordered the police to mix with the meeting and disperse it if incendiary language were used, and 176 policemen were concen trated at the nearest station. Spies and Par sons spoke first, but the mayor was in the crowd and they used mild language, till his suspicions were lulled and he left. Then Fielde began a frenzied and bloodthirsty harangue, calling for the °extermination° of the capital ists. The crowd grew so wild that shortly after 10 the police in four divisions appeared and covered the street, and while Fielde was speak ing, Captain Ward ordered the crowd to dis perse. Fielde called out °We are peaceable° (curiously like °Peace), and a bomb was at once thrown into the midst of the police, which exploded and caused frightful carnage, killing or mortally wounding eight policemen and in juring a great number more. The mob in stantly followed it up with a volley from rifles and revolvers, proving that they had been ex pecting the signal, but the police at once rallied and charged the mob, dispersing it in disorder. Of the police, besides those killed, 68 were wounded by shot or bombs, many maimed for life. Spies, Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, Fielde, Michael Schwab and Neebe were ar rested and tried as accessories before the fact: the first four were hanged 11 Nov. 1887; Lingg shattered his jaw in prison with a bomb and died; Fielde and Schwab were sentenced to prison for life and Neebe for 15 years. There was considerable dissatisfaction with this verdict throughout the country, even amongst people not in sympathy with the anarchists be cause none of the men had been clearly proven to have thrown the bomb. The last three were pardoned by Governor Altgeld (q.v.) in 1893, many prominent men of Chicago and through out the country having petitioned for their re lease on the ground that the evidence did not connect them with the actual throwing of the bomb, which was true, the evidence pointing strongly to Schnaubelt. Consult Altgeld, J. P., 'Reasons for Pardoning Fielde, Neebe and Schwab) (Chicago 1893) • Buchanan, J. R., 'Chicago Anarchists' (in dutlook,Vol. LXXVI, p. 117, New York 1904) ; Hill, F. T., 'Decisive Battles of Law) (New York 1907); Holmes, W., ed. 'The Chicago Martyrs, etc.' (in Free Society Library, No. 1, San Francisco 1899); Russell, C. E., 'These Shifting Scenes' (New York 1894); Supreme Court of Illinois, North ern Grand Division, 'August Spies et al. v. the People, (Chicago 1887).