Chapter XXII (2)

“I was about four feet behind Stanton’s and Bowler’s companies. My company was about six feet behind me. I could hear the sound of the voices at the wagon, but couldn’t hear exactly what was said. I saw the bomb when it was about six feet from the ground—a little tail of fire quivering as it fell not more than six feet in front of me. The bomb immediately exploded, and as far as I could see the entire division in front of me disappeared, except the two ends; but a great many of them got up again in a kind of disorder, and then I flanked the left of the division. There was no firing before the explosion of that bomb. The firing began almost immediately on both sides of the street and north of me. I, being on the left, rushed my division of the company right around toward the sidewalk, and commenced answering the charge from that quarter, and Fitzpatrick went the other way, to the east, and he commenced shooting right into the crowd on the sidewalk, faced them right and left. In our company we had our regular revolvers in our pockets, and we had a larger revolver in the sockets attached to our belts, on the outside. The club in the socket and the revolver in the socket were both hanging to the left side of each officer. Pistols and clubs were all in the pockets until the explosion of the bomb.”

S. J. WERNEKE, police officer, who was hit with a bullet in the head at the Haymarket, testified that he heard Engel at 703 Milwaukee Avenue in February, 1886, “advise every man in the audience to join them, and urged the people to save up three or four dollars to buy a revolver that was good enough to shoot these policemen down. I was at the Haymarket in Lieut. Steele’s company. Got hit with a bullet in the head.”

JOHN J. RYAN next took the witness-stand. He testified:

“I am a retired officer of the United States navy. Live at 274 North Clark Street. Lived in Chicago for three years. Have seen the defendants Spies, Neebe, Parsons, Fielden and Schwab on the occasion of their Sunday afternoon meetings during the summer of last year and the year previous. I heard some of them speak there, namely, Spies, Parsons and Fielden, in the English language. I can only designate particularly two meetings, one previous to the picnic they had last year, and one on the Sunday directly after it. That was in July of last year, I think. I cannot say that I saw Mr. Spies at either of those meetings. Mr. Parsons I remember at one of them.”

“State what he said,” put in the State’s Attorney.

“He was speaking in a general way,” said the witness, “about trouble with the workingmen and the people, what he called the proletariat class, and spoke about their enemies, the police and the constituted authorities; that the authorities would use the police and militia and they would have to use force against them. He advised them to purchase rifles. If they had not money enough for that, then to buy pistols, and if they couldn’t buy pistols they could buy sufficient dynamite for twenty-five cents to blow up a building the size of the Pullman building?”

“What, if anything, did you hear Fielden say at that meeting?”

“The speeches were very nearly alike; they spoke about dynamite and fire-arms to be used against the police, and any one who opposed them in their designs; they wanted things their way and to regulate society. The speeches were alike Sunday after Sunday. I heard Spies speak on the lake front before and after the meetings I mention; he represented, as he said, the oppressed class, the workingmen, as opposed to the capitalists and property-owners; the latter were the enemy of the workingmen; if they couldn’t get their rights in a peaceable manner they must get them in a forcible way. I heard that talk about ten or fifteen times; the meetings were held there every Sunday until late in the fall. After the picnic, Mr. Parsons, I think—I won’t be sure of that—spoke about the young German experimenting with dynamite at this picnic; that this young German had a small quantity of dynamite in a tomato-can; it was thrown into a pond or lake, and he spoke of the force this amount of dynamite exerted, and what could be done with it in destroying buildings and property in the city.”

On cross-examination Mr. Ryan stated:

“Those lake front meetings were held publicly in plain view to everybody in every instance. The largest number of persons I ever saw attend one of these meetings was not more than 150. The meetings that I attended usually lasted two or three hours. I heard two or three other persons speak on the lake front at those meetings—Mr. Henry, Mrs. Parsons, Mrs. Holmes, and, one Sunday, a young Englishman whose name I did not hear; also an Irishman whose name I never heard. The meetings were held about half past two. The speeches were made in a loud, clear tone, sometimes very loud when they would get excited. A policeman who evidently had charge of the park was usually around there. It was a general propagation of ideas and doctrines, down there on the lake front. Once I heard Mr. Parsons say that now was the time to do it. I heard the opinion expressed there that the workingmen would have to secure their rights by force, and therefore should be prepared for it.”

Fig. 2.

1. Package left at Judge Tree’s house.

2. Package left at C. B. & Q. offices.]

HARRY WILKINSON, a reporter for the _Daily News_, testified as follows:

“On Thanksgiving Day, last year, I heard Mr. Parsons speak on the Market Square. He advised the workingmen who were present (there were several hundred there), to stand together, and to use force in procuring their rights. He told them that they were slaves; that out of a certain sum of money the per cent. they got was too small; it ought to be more evenly divided with the man who employed them. I don’t recollect that he said at that time anything as to the means or manner of force to be used, or against whom.

“Last January I had several conversations with Mr. Spies, probably half a dozen. I first saw Mr. Spies a few days after the 1st of January of this year in regard to the matter published in this paper (indicating copy of Chicago _Daily News_ of January 13, 1886). I wrote up the result of my talk with Mr. Spies for that paper; it was not all published. I inquired of Spies about an explosive which had been placed on Judge Lambert Tree’s steps, and one that was placed in the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad offices, and he emphatically denied that those machines were either made or placed by Socialists or Anarchists, and proved it by showing me that they were entirely different in character to those used by the Socialists. He showed me this bomb (indicating), which he described as the Czar; I took it with me. He spoke of the wonderful destructive power of the Czar bomb; said it was the same kind that had been used by Nihilists in destroying the Czar. I told him that I thought it was a pretty tall story, and he became somewhat excited and produced this, and said that there were others, larger than that, run by mechanical power—clock-work bombs—and he gave me that in a small room adjoining the counting-room office of the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_. He denied that those things were made at the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ office; he said they were made by other persons and that there were several thousand of them in Chicago distributed, and that at some times they were distributed through the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ office; that those who could make bombs made more than they could use, and those that could make them gave them to those that could not; that that one was one of the samples. I asked Mr. Spies if I could take that (the bomb) and show it to Mr. Stone, and I took it over there and didn’t bring it back. On another occasion, Mr. Spies and Mr. Gruenhut and myself went to dinner together, and he told us there about the organization of their people in a rather boastful manner; how they had gone out on excursions on nice summer mornings, some miles out of the city, and practiced throwing these bombs; the manner of exploding them; that they had demonstrated that bombs made of compound metal were much better than the other kind, and that a fuse bomb with a detonating cap inside was by far the best; and how at one attempt made in his presence one of their machines had been exploded in the midst of a little grove, and that it had entirely demolished the scenery; blown down four or five trees.

As illustrated in _Daily News_ of Jan. 14, 1886, from specimens shown and description given by August Spies.]

He further described to me some very tall and very strong men, who could throw a large-size bomb weighing five pounds, fifty paces; and stated how, in case of a conflict with the police or militia, when the latter would come marching up a street, they would be received by the throwers formed in the shape of the letter V in the mouth of the street just crossing the intersection, illustrating this by taking some little toothpicks out of a vase on the table, laying them down and making a street intersection. He stated the militia would probably not stay to see a second or a third bomb go off. If the conflict should occur at any of the principal street intersections in the city, some of those organized men would be on the tops of houses ready to throw bombs overboard among the advancing troops or police. All these matters had been investigated; the men were all thoroughly trained and organized. The means of access to the house-tops of street intersections was a matter of common information among their adherents. He said they had no leaders; one was instructed as well as another, and when the great day came each one would know his duty and do it. I tried to find out when this would probably occur, and he did not fix the date precisely or approximately at that time. At another of those interviews he said it would probably occur in the first conflict between the police and the strikers; that if there would be a universal strike for this eight-hour system there would probably be a conflict of some sort brought about in some way between the First and Second Regiment of the Illinois National Guards and the police, and the dynamite upon the other hand. In trying to get at the probable number of them, I understood him that there were probably eight or ten thousand.

“He spoke of other larger bombs, as large as a cigar-box, to be exploded by electricity, which would be placed under a street in case they decided to barricade any section of the city, that they had experimented with. That certain members of the organization had in their possession a complete detail, maps and plans of the underground system of the city. That these machines would either destroy everybody that was above them when they went off, or so tear up the street as to make it impassable. He told me that the ordinary dynamite of commerce was about a 60 or 66 per cent. dynamite; that they made a finer quality by importing infusorial earth and mixing it themselves; that was about a 90 per cent. quality. He showed me no dynamite. I don’t think he gave me any information about Herr Most’s ‘Science of Revolutionary Warfare.’ I understood that the object of all this was the bettering of the workingmen’s condition by the demolition of their oppressors. He vaguely spoke of a list of prominent citizens who might suddenly be blown up one at a time or all at once. I frequently said that I didn’t believe much in the story he told me. He simply uttered the renewed declarations.

As published in _Daily News_, Jan. 14, 1886.]

“I had this conversation with Spies in the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ at his own desk, on the left-hand side as you entered the door in the editorial room. Mr. Schwab was there once or twice when I was in. I was not acquainted with him personally. The conversations which I have chiefly detailed here took place in the Chicago Oyster House and in a little room detached from the counting-room down-stairs where he kept those specimen bombs. He got this bomb from one of those little pigeonholes in that room.

“He particularly mentioned the Market Square, and that it would take a very few men to fortify that street against all the police and militia in Chicago, and that they would have the tunnel at their back for a convenient place of retreat for those who were not engaged in throwing the shells, or for women and children whom they might care to take there. They were to receive the police or militia with their line formed in the shape of a letter V, the open end of the letter V facing toward the street intersection. Then there were to be others to reinforce them, as it were, on the tops of houses, at those corners. The plan here in this copy of the _Daily News_ of January 14th, I drew from one that he made right on the table cloth as we sat at dinner together, except that he did not put in these little squares, but explained to me where these would be, and laid toothpicks to make these lines. Those dotted lines and the other dotted lines are to represent the dynamiters on tops of houses.”

On cross-examination Mr. Wilkinson testified:

“I got leave of Mr. Spies to carry the bomb off and show it to Mr. Stone. I am now twenty-six years old. Have been in the newspaper business about four years. I came to Chicago in September of last year. I was assigned to this work with Mr. Spies by Mr. Stone personally. I advised Mr. Spies of that fact. The circulation of the _Daily News_, according to its official statistics, was about 165,000. After that conversation in the presence of Joe Gruenhut, I had also an interview with Gruenhut. Mr. Gruenhut said that the conflict to which our conversation referred at the table would occur probably on the 1st of May, or within a few days thereafter, and that it might extend all over the country. He spoke of the conflict between the workingmen who were to strike for eight hours and their natural enemies, the police and militia. I don’t remember that anything was said about the capitalists. The Haymarket was not mentioned.

“I did not take any notes while the conversation with Mr. Spies was going on. I wrote them up the first opportunity I afterwards had. Spies said, as near as I could calculate, that they had about 9,000 bombs. As to those tall men who could throw a five-pound bomb fifty paces, my recollection is that it was a company referred to, without number. There were four or five only of that company, as I understood, who could throw a five-pound bomb—that is a large-sized shell—and fifty yards is a long distance to throw a shell. He described the character of the organizations; that if there were three the first would know the second and the second the third, but not the third the first; that it was Nihilistic in its character, and that they were known by other means than names. I don’t think I asked Spies about how many men were interested in this project that were drilling and getting ready. I don’t recollect his saying anything about that, but I concluded that there were as many men as there were bombs, or more. There was some delay of about three or four days in the publication of my article after it was prepared.

“I did not believe all Spies said. I believed about half of it. The article written by me is wound up by the suggestion that when dressed to cold facts it was like a scarecrow flapping in the corn-field. I did not write that. That was edited by some one who told me he didn’t believe as much of the matter as I did. I remember a communication from Mr. Spies in the _Daily News_, after this article. I think I helped ‘fix it up,’ put a head-line on it. The original was then used as copy. I never saw it afterwards. Joe Gruenhut is a Socialist.”

GUSTAV LEHMAN gave his testimony as follows:

“I am a carpenter. On May 4th I lived at 41 Freeman Street. I lived there six months. Have been in this country and in this city four years. I was born in Prussia. I attended a meeting at 54 West Lake Street on the evening of May 3d. Got there a quarter of nine. I went there from my home by myself. I was about to go to a carpenters’ meeting at Zepf’s Hall, but I met several persons who were going to 54 West Lake Street. I saw a copy of the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ containing the notice ‘Y—Komme Montag Abend.’ It meant that the armed ones should attend the meeting at 54 West Lake Street. When I got there the meeting was in session. Somebody made a motion to post somebody at the door, and then I went out to the sidewalk, by the door, that no one who was going to the water-closet could remain there and listen. I was stationed on the sidewalk, where the steps were leading down, maybe a good half hour. I went into the meeting twice. I heard that large man, with the blonde mustache, say he was going to have hand-bills printed and distributed. There were present at the meeting Seliger, Thielen, myself, my brother, Fischer, Breitenfeld and the Hermanns. That is about all I remember. I don’t know how Engel looks.

“I cannot tell whether Lingg was in the basement, but he went home with me. We had a little quarrel. Lingg came up to us from behind, on the sidewalk, and said to us, ‘You are all oxen, fools.’ I asked him what had taken place at the meeting, where we were just coming from. Lingg told me that if I wanted to know something I should come to 58 Clybourn Avenue the next evening. There were present Seliger, my brother, and one other man. The next day I worked on Sedgwick Street. After I quit work, at three o’clock, I met a gentleman, Schneideke, and we went to Lingg’s. Got there about five o’clock. I saw there Lingg, Seliger, and a blacksmith, whose name I don’t know, and Hubner. I stayed there about ten minutes. They did some work in the bed-room. I couldn’t understand what they were doing. I did not work at anything. Lingg and Huebner had a cloth tied around their faces. I had gone there because my countryman wanted to buy a revolver. After I left I went home with my countryman. At about seven o’clock I went back to Lingg’s, and stayed there perhaps ten minutes. They were still busy in the bed-room. Hubner was cutting a fuse, or a coil of fuse, into pieces. I saw something like that fuse (indicating a coil of fuse) and caps. I didn’t do anything there. They were making these fuse and caps in the front room. That afternoon Lingg gave me a small hand satchel, with a tin box in it, and three round bombs, and two coils of fuse and some caps. This here (indicating) is the box which he gave me. It was said that dynamite was in it. It was nearly full. This box of caps (indicating) I found afterwards in the satchel. Lingg said to me he wanted me to keep these things so that no one could find them. I took them home with me, to the wood-shed; got up at three o’clock that night and carried them away to the prairie, about Clybourn Avenue, behind Ogden’s Grove.

“After supper on that Tuesday evening I was about to go to Uhlich’s Hall, but there was no carpenters’ meeting there. Then I was about to go home, but we went to 58 Clybourn Avenue, Neff’s Hall, because of what Lingg had told us Monday night. Schneideke was with me. We stayed at Neff’s Hall about ten minutes. We got there about half past nine. I did not see anybody there whom I knew but the barkeeper. After leaving Neff’s Hall we went up Clybourn Avenue to Larrabee Street. We had no special place in view. I got home about eleven o’clock. We met Seliger and Lingg standing together on the sidewalk on Larrabee Street, near Clybourn Avenue. We stood there with them, but one—I don’t know whether it was Seliger or Lingg—remarked: ‘We four should not keep together.’ Then we went towards North Avenue, along Larrabee Street. Near North Avenue we met Thielen. I afterwards went to the prairie with a detective, about May 19th or 20th, to find the things that Lingg had given me. The bombs and the dynamite, the fuse and the caps were still there.”

“Have you ever been a member of any Socialistic organization?”

“I have been a member of the North Side Group of the International Workingmen’s Association. I belonged to the group about three months prior to the 4th of May. The group met at 58 Clybourn Avenue, regularly, every Monday evening. We talked together there, advised together, and reviewed what had happened among the workingmen during the week. We had hunting-guns and shot-guns with which we drilled. I kept my gun at my house.”

“Did you ever attend a dance at Florus’ Hall?”

“Yes, about March of this year. It was a ball of the Carpenters’ Union. Lingg was present there. There was about ten or ten and a half dollars’ profit on the beer. The money, according to a resolution passed at the next meeting of the Carpenters’ Union, at 71 West Lake Street, was handed over to Lingg, with the instruction to buy dynamite with it, and experiment with it to find out how it was used. I heard Engel make a speech at 58 Clybourn Avenue, about January or February of this year, before the assembled workingmen of the North Side. He said those who could not buy revolvers should buy dynamite. It was cheap and easily handled. A gas-pipe was to be taken and a wooden plug put into the ends, and it was to be filled with dynamite. Then the other end is also closed up with a wooden plug, and old nails are tied around the pipe by means of wire. Then a hole is bored into one end of it, and a fuse with a cap is put into that hole. I was chairman at that meeting. Engel said some gas-pipe was to be found on the West Side, near the river, near the bridge.”

On cross-examination Lehman stated:

“The meeting at which Engel spoke was a public, open-door meeting. A notice under the signal ‘Y,’ which was understood to be the call for a meeting at 54 West Lake Street, I have seen once before. I belonged to the armed section for about three or four months. The meetings of the armed section at 54 West Lake Street were irregular, governed by such a notice in the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_. I did not see Lingg at 54 West Lake Street that Monday night. I don’t know that he was there. As we went home he came up to us from behind on the sidewalk. Whether he was there or not I cannot say. When I went to Clybourn Avenue Tuesday night, Lingg was not there. Seliger went down in the basement at the meeting at 54 Lake Street Monday night. He was there for some time, but I cannot tell how long. I am sure about that. We went there together from where the carpenters’ meeting was to have taken place. I, my brother, he and several others went down together. I am as sure of Seliger’s having been down there in the basement that night as of any fact that I have testified to.”

JEREMIAH SULLIVAN, a detective, testified:

“I was on the Market Square on the night of the inauguration of the Board of Trade with Officer Trehorn. When we got down there, there was quite a large crowd. One or two people were talking in German and trying to hold the crowd until the speakers came. Mr. Schwab came there first, and Parsons and Fielden came, and I believe this man (indicating Lingg). Parsons spoke about the Board of Trade, and showed some figures how the poor man was robbed. Then he denounced the police as bloodhounds, the militia as servants of the capitalists, robbing the laboring classes, and invited them all in a body to go there and partake of some of those twenty-dollar dishes that they had up at the Board of Trade building. They were to get there by force. Mr. Fielden spoke after him. He denounced the police and militia as bloodhounds. At that time there was a company of militia on Market Square for the purpose of drilling. Mr. Schwab was there at the time, and called the attention of the crowd to the militia, and they all started off toward the militia. Schwab spoke in German. Officer Trehorn and I went over there and asked the militia to disperse, and they marched up Water Street. Then I came back and listened to Mr. Fielden, who urged the crowd to force themselves in a body and partake of those dishes. Then they all marched in a body, some carrying red flags. I saw in the procession Schwab, Parsons, Fielden, and I am not positive as to that young fellow (Lingg). There was no United States flag in the procession. There was a platoon of police at every crossing. The procession stopped at 107 Fifth Avenue. Parsons went in and spoke from the window. He denounced the policemen as bloodhounds, and the militia also, and stated how they stopped them from going in there and partaking of the food; that a good many of his audience did not have clothes and could not afford to pay twenty cents for a meal, let alone twenty dollars, and wanted them to go and follow him, and he would make a raid on those different places, mentioning Marshall Field’s and one or two other places. After him Fielden spoke, and wanted them all to go down with him in a body and he would lead them. I met Williamson, the reporter, just as he was coming down-stairs, that evening. We went up-stairs with him. I shook hands with Mr. Fielden and spoke to him. They did not know me as a policeman. Fielden, Parsons and Schwab were there. Spies was at the desk. Parsons asked Spies for this dynamite. He brought it over, and Parsons told how it could be used; that if it was thrown into a line of police or militia it would take the whole platoon. He also exhibited a coil of fuse. I said: ‘You can get that in any quarry. They use that in blasting powder.’ He said: ‘It comes in good to load these with—to touch these off with,’ referring to dynamite shells. I saw some caps there about the size of a 22-caliber cartridge. The substance which he showed was dynamite. It looked like red sand. It was shaped about a foot long, and about an inch and a half in diameter. I asked one of them why they didn’t go into the Board of Trade building. They said that they were not prepared that night; that there were too many of the bloodhounds before them on the street, but the next time they would turn out they would meet them with their own weapons and worse.”

MORITZ NEFF testified:

“I live at 58 Clybourn Avenue, known as Thüringer Hall, also as Neff’s Hall, since seven years. I keep a saloon there. Back of the saloon is a hall. The North Side group used to meet there. I know all the defendants. On the night when the bomb was thrown I was at my saloon. Louis Lingg came in, in company with Seliger and another man whom I had not seen before. This stranger carried the satchel. It was a common bag, probably about a foot and a half long and six inches wide. He put it on the counter, after that on the floor. Lingg and Seliger were standing by, and Lingg asked me if some one had asked for him. That stranger, whose name I afterwards found out to be Muntzenberg, carried the satchel on his shoulder; that was ten or fifteen minutes after eight. I told Lingg that nobody had inquired for him. Then Muntzenberg picked up the bag and went out the side door, in the rear of the room, followed by Lingg and Seliger. I have not seen the bag since. There was a large meeting of painters, probably two hundred, in the hall that evening. For this reason I opened this door in the rear of the saloon, so that people going to that meeting would not be compelled to go through the saloon. I saw Lingg and Seliger again that night about eleven o’clock. Nobody had inquired in the meantime for Lingg. I saw Hubner there before Lingg came. I saw Thielen on the sidewalk in front of the saloon, but not inside. The two Lehmans were there after Lingg had left. They were out on the sidewalk, not inside. The first time Lingg stayed about five or ten minutes. He went out through the saloon. I did not see Seliger and Muntzenberg go out through the saloon. Before Lingg and Seliger came back, at about eleven o’clock, several individuals had come into the saloon, among them the Hermanns, the two Lehmans, the two Hagemans and Hirschberger. Lingg and Seliger dropped in a little later. They were all talking together. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I heard one of them halloa out very loud, ‘That is all your fault.’ I heard them also say that the bomb had been thrown among the police and some of them had been killed. They came from the meeting.

“Engel addressed the North Side group in my hall in February last winter. It was a public agitation meeting of the North Side group, advertised in the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_.”

“What did Engel say?”

“He wanted money for a new paper, the _Anarchist_, started by the Northwest Side group and two of the South Side groups. He said the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_ was not outspoken enough in those Anarchistic principles; therefore they started this paper. They distributed some of these papers. Later on he gave a kind of history of revolutions in the old country, stated that the nobility of France were only forced to give up their privileges by brute force; that the slaveholders in the South were compelled by force to liberate their slaves, and the present wage-slavery would be done away with only by force also. And he advised them to arm themselves, and if guns were too dear for them they should use cheaper weapons—dynamite or anything they could get hold of to fight the enemy. To make bombs, anything that was hollow in the shape of gas-pipes would do. That is all I heard him say. I wasn’t present all the time. I bought a copy of the _Anarchist_ that night for five cents. This here (indicating) is one of the copies, dated January 1, 1886. This is one of the copies distributed that night. Engel did not distribute it himself. Two other gentlemen who were there did that.”