the plant. The strikers saw them and cursed them, and called them names not fit to repeat. Just picture the scene, some six thousand striking members of two unions holding an outdoor mass meeting, and within sight of them, scabs leaving a plant. I saw what happened. The McCormick strikers began to move toward the plant. No one urged them; no one harangued them; they stopped listening and moved away toward the gates. Maybe they picked up some rocks; maybe they said things not nice to hearâbut before they did anything, the plant police started to fire. My god, it was like a war! The strikers were unarmed, and the police stood like men on a range, pistols at armâs length, rifles too, potting, potting away.
âThey say the plant called for reinforcementsâthat would take a little time, wouldnât it? But, within minutes, a patrol wagon filled with police dashed up, and behind them, on the double, came a detail of two hundred armed men.
âWell, it was the kind of a sight one would see in the old country, not here. The workers dropped like men on a battlefield. When they tried to stand fast, the police rushed them and clubbed them apart; when they broke and ran, the police followed them, clubbing them from the rear. It wasnât nice to see; it wasnât kind; it was a brute thing that made you want to go away and vomit. Thatâs what it made me do, but it made Spies rush back to the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and send out a wild call for a meeting at Haymarket Square to protest this thing. Thatâs how it began; it began because we were quiet and orderly on our day, May Day, and because it didnât satisfy them to have us that way. Better with gunsâwith guns they could make real trouble, and people would scream revolution.
âBut the point is that Parsons was not there, just as Parsons was not at Haymarket when the bomb was thrown. It wasnât only McCormick and the lumber shovers on strike; Pullman was on strike too, and Brunswick and the packing houses, and not only Chicago, but St. Louis, Cincinnati, New York, San Francisco. Parsons was everywhere he could be, but not here; Parsons was tired and sick; he would come home and collapse into bed. A labor organizer isnât a life to grow old with; first the stomach goes, then the legs, then, when youâve been beaten and clubbed enough, the head, the mind.
âSo they got up the meeting at Haymarket for the next day. They picked Haymarket because of its size; you see, Spies was like a man gone crazy when he came back from the McCormick plant, his head full of the wounded, the dying. He thought that the workers would come out by the tens of thousands to protest; but McCormick was only a small part of a giant struggle, and already the workers were being defeated. Everywhere, they were being smashed and broken, and what would one more meeting change? But donât underestimate Spiesâa brilliant man and honest, too; with the foreign-born workingmen, he was like Parsons with the Americans. He saw this as a chance not to be missed; if twenty thousand workers packed Haymarket Square, the whole trend of the eight-hour struggle might be reversed. PerhapsâI donât know; as I said, I donât agree with these men. To talk revolution is not to promote my fight, but to hinder it; that is the way I feel.
âBut twenty thousand men did not appear in Haymarket the next night. When Spies arrived, as you know, there were very few, and as the evening went on, the greatest size of the crowd was less than three thousand. And because the crowd was so small, they moved the meeting from Haymarket to Desplaines, between Lake and Randolph. But I am telling you about Parsons; that is my only reason for wasting your time this morning. I am telling you how Parsons was not there, how he didnât even know about the meeting. As a matter of fact, Sam Fielden didnât know about the Haymarket meeting either.
âBut to get
âThey say the plant called for reinforcementsâthat would take a little time, wouldnât it? But, within minutes, a patrol wagon filled with police dashed up, and behind them, on the double, came a detail of two hundred armed men.
âWell, it was the kind of a sight one would see in the old country, not here. The workers dropped like men on a battlefield. When they tried to stand fast, the police rushed them and clubbed them apart; when they broke and ran, the police followed them, clubbing them from the rear. It wasnât nice to see; it wasnât kind; it was a brute thing that made you want to go away and vomit. Thatâs what it made me do, but it made Spies rush back to the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and send out a wild call for a meeting at Haymarket Square to protest this thing. Thatâs how it began; it began because we were quiet and orderly on our day, May Day, and because it didnât satisfy them to have us that way. Better with gunsâwith guns they could make real trouble, and people would scream revolution.
âBut the point is that Parsons was not there, just as Parsons was not at Haymarket when the bomb was thrown. It wasnât only McCormick and the lumber shovers on strike; Pullman was on strike too, and Brunswick and the packing houses, and not only Chicago, but St. Louis, Cincinnati, New York, San Francisco. Parsons was everywhere he could be, but not here; Parsons was tired and sick; he would come home and collapse into bed. A labor organizer isnât a life to grow old with; first the stomach goes, then the legs, then, when youâve been beaten and clubbed enough, the head, the mind.
âSo they got up the meeting at Haymarket for the next day. They picked Haymarket because of its size; you see, Spies was like a man gone crazy when he came back from the McCormick plant, his head full of the wounded, the dying. He thought that the workers would come out by the tens of thousands to protest; but McCormick was only a small part of a giant struggle, and already the workers were being defeated. Everywhere, they were being smashed and broken, and what would one more meeting change? But donât underestimate Spiesâa brilliant man and honest, too; with the foreign-born workingmen, he was like Parsons with the Americans. He saw this as a chance not to be missed; if twenty thousand workers packed Haymarket Square, the whole trend of the eight-hour struggle might be reversed. PerhapsâI donât know; as I said, I donât agree with these men. To talk revolution is not to promote my fight, but to hinder it; that is the way I feel.
âBut twenty thousand men did not appear in Haymarket the next night. When Spies arrived, as you know, there were very few, and as the evening went on, the greatest size of the crowd was less than three thousand. And because the crowd was so small, they moved the meeting from Haymarket to Desplaines, between Lake and Randolph. But I am telling you about Parsons; that is my only reason for wasting your time this morning. I am telling you how Parsons was not there, how he didnât even know about the meeting. As a matter of fact, Sam Fielden didnât know about the Haymarket meeting either.
âBut to get
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