The Haymarket Riot: Blood on The Streets of America
by More Prisoners of Eternity.
Industrial disputes were on the increase in fast-industrialising late nineteenth century America, and it was not uncommon for them to turn violent. Indeed, the factory owners would often employ agent-provocateurs to ensure that they did. On four May, 1886, events at Haymarket Square, Chicago, were to leave the city traumatised.
The massive influx of foreigners into the city, many of whom spoke no English, had caused great resentment, now they induced fear. Many, it was reported, were believed to be anarchists, communists, and atheists, all things considered to be anathema to the American way of life. They had brought with them the Godless politics of the Old World and now they wanted to bring revolution to the streets of Chicago. The leaders of the rally were arrested and were accused of inciting violence and committing murder.
The strike leaders were mostly immigrants of German descent. They were Auguste Spies, George Engel, Adolphe Fischer, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Oskar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Albert Parsons. No evidence was produced at their trial that could directly link them to the violence or the throwing of the bomb. But the media was hysterical in its pursuit of the murderers, someone must pay, if only to nip in the bud the prospect of bloody revolution. Still, the only premise for the prosecution seemed to be the fact that these were dangerous men. Despite the total lack of evidence 7 of the men were found guilty and sentenced to hang, the exception being Oskar Neebe who was sentenced to 15 years. The sentences were appealed to both the IIIinois Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States but the increasingly venomous attacks of the press who regularly described them as assassins and as bloody brutes, and the outrage of people throughout the United States, made any possibility of acquittal out of the question. The IIIinois Governor Richard Oglesby, perhaps out of a sense of guilt, commuted the sentences of Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment.
Just prior to his execution, Louis Lingg committed suicide. Someone had smuggled a suicide cap into his cell, he placed it between his teeth and exploded it. Despite it blowing off half his face he did not die for another agonising 6 hours.
On 11 November, 1887, the remaining prisoners, Spies, Fischer, Engel and Parsons were led out to be executed. They sang Le Marsellaise before Spies addressed the crowd, ” the time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” They all went to their deaths with dignity.
The short-term effects of the Haymarket Riot were a disaster for the trade union movement in America. Membership of the Knights of Labour went into free-fall as many of those who were immigrants, some of whom may have been illegal, aware of their vulnerability and not wanting to be associated with violence and political extremism, left in their droves. For decades after the Haymarket Riot public opinion in Chicago remained resolutely opposed to the trade union movement and to those who had been involved in the demonstration. in 1893, the IIIinois State Governor John Altgeld, pardoned Fielden, Neebe and Schwab and concluded that all 8 of the accused had been innocent. Instead he held the Chicago Police to be at fault for not holding to account and failing to rein in out of control Pinkerton Agents. Neither his actions or his opinions reflected public opinion however, and he never won another election.
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