The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America. George N. McLean
the meeting at 54 Lake street on Tuesday night. He said: ‘Yes.’ Then he said he made dynamite. I asked him what for. He said: ‘To use then.’ He looked excited. I asked why he disliked the police. He said he had a reason; the police clubbed the men at McCormick’s. He said he was down on the police because they took the part of the capitalists. I said: ‘Why don’t you use guns instead of dynamite?’ He said guns wouldn’t do; that the militia would outnumber the Socialists. I asked him how he learned to make dynamite. He said out of books, and that he made bombs out of gas-pipe and out of lead and metal mixed. He said he got the lead on the streets and the gas-pipe along the river or anywhere he could.”
“What other conversation did you have?”
“Lingg said he made those bombs and meant to use them. Then Mrs. Seliger accused him of making bombs a few weeks after he came to her house. I knew then that he had made a good many. John Thielen was arrested at the same time, and from him we got two bombs. I said to Lingg: ‘This man says you gave him the bombs. What have you to say?’ He looked at Thielen and shook his head, and Thielen said: ‘Oh, it’s no use, everything is known; you might just as well talk.’ But Lingg refused to say anything.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, this trunk here was brought to my office. Under the lining I found a lot of dynamite and some fuse and asked him if that was the kind of dynamite he used. He said it was; that he got it at a store on Lake street. There were three kinds of dynamite. He said he experimented once with a long bomb; that he put it in a tree, touched it off, and that it riddled the tree to atoms. I asked him if he knew Spies. He said ‘Yes, for some time;’ that he was often at the Arbeiter Zeitung office. I asked him how long he had been a Socialist. He said he’d been a Socialist as long as he could think.”
“Did you have any conversation with Engel?”
“Yes, on the 18th, in the evening, I asked him where he was May 3. He said he worked for a man named Koch. I asked him if he made a speech at the meeting at 54 Lake street. He said no, but that he was at the meeting. The second time I talked with him his wife came. She brought him a bunch of flowers. He got excited, and cried: ‘What good are those flowers to me? Here I am locked up in a dark cell.’ Then his wife said: ‘Papa, see what trouble you’ve got yourself into; why haven’t you stopped this nonsense?’ He said: ‘Mamma, I can’t. I am cursed with eloquence. What is in a man must come out. LouisLouise Michel suffered for the cause. She is a woman; why should I not suffer? I am a man, and I will stand it like a man.’ ”
“How many bombs in all did you find?”—Objected to.
“Tell the jury what experiments you made with those bombs.”
“One bomb found in Lingg’s room, which Schuettler said was loaded with a funnel, I put in a box two feet square and buried in the ground three feet deep at Lake View. Officers Stift, Rehm and Loewenstein were there. We touched the bomb off. It blew the box to pieces, fragments carried off the branches of trees, and the ground was torn up for a great distance. This black dynamite, also found in Lingg’s room, was put in a beer keg. Part of this dynamite Lingg gave to Thielen, and this is a fragment of a round bomb I experimented with. On top of this bomb I had a round piece of iron thirty-four inches wide, some heavy planks, a piece of steel forty-two inches wide and weighing 180 pounds; then an iron boiler twenty-two inches wide and fourteen inches high; then on top of that a stone weighing 132 pounds. The stone was burst to pieces, nine holes were shot through the iron boiler, the steel cover was cracked, and the planks were split into kindling wood. Portions of the other bombs I cut off, and gave them to Profs. Haines and Paton.”
There were bushels of bombs before the jury. Coils of fuse was unwound. Dynamite in paper packages and in tin boxes was displayed. The court-room looked like the interior of an arsenal so far as the tremendous character of the explosives were concerned. Pieces of metal, gas-pipe, tin cans, and iron boxes rattled together. Capt. Schaack, pointing to the bombs, said he got two from Hoffman, one from fireman Miller, and one from Officer Loewenstein. He was not allowed to tell how many bombs in all he received until the officers first told where the bombs were found.
“Now about those conversations. Did Lingg say anything about the use of those bombs?”
“He said he intended to use them against the Gatling-guns of the militia; that a revolution was impending. I asked him about that satchel he brought to Neff’s place. He said he saw one there. Then I asked him where he got the moulds to mould the round bombs. He said he made them out of clay; that they could be used about two times, then they were no good. He said he saw the ‘Revenge’ circular on the West side.”
“Who did he say was at his place May 4?”—“He said about six in all, but he only knew the two Lehmans.”
Capt. Schaack was asked by Mr. Ingham whether he experimented with fuse.
“I did. I also experimented with dynamite cartridges. I had one inserted into a stone weighing perhaps thirty pounds. The explosion broke this stone into atoms.”
Cross-examined by Mr. Foster.—“What Lingg said to you, Captain, was substantially this: That there was to be a conflict between the police and the Gatling-guns on one side and the laboring men on the other, and that he was making these bombs to use when that time came?”
“That’s about it, only he said the time had actually come.”
“Those experiments you made were made for your own satisfaction?”
“They were made to enable me to testify to the character of the stuff that was found.”
“As a matter of fact you woke up Engel in his cell after midnight to interrogate him, didn’t you?”
“Well, I don’t remember. If I did, I did, and I suppose I did. I had a right to do it.”
“Do you know of two detectives at your station who went to Lingg’s cell late at night and exhibited a rope saying they were going to hang him?”
“I do not, and I do not believe anything of the kind was done.”
Officer Hoffman, of the Larrabee street station, testified that he found nine round bombs and four long ones under a sidewalk near Clyde street and Clybourn avenue.
“Who was with you at the time?”—“Gustav Lehman.”
Under John Thielen’s house the witness found two long bombs, two boxes of cartridges, two cigar boxes full of dynamite, one rifle, and one revolver.
“What else?”—“Lehman pointed out to me a can holding about a gallon, and this was filled with dynamite.”
“Look at this box of caps. Where did you find them?”—“They were with the dynamite. They were all under the sidewalk on Clybourn avenue, back of Ogden’s grove.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Frank Walker opened the proceedings Friday, July 30, by reading extracts from Parsons’ Alarm, dated May 2d of this year. It was a speech delivered by Parsons April 29, the night the new Board of Trade was dedicated, and that occasion afforded the speaker his subject. The speech was full of rabid utterances, of which the following are samples:
“To-night the property owners are dedicating a temple for the plunder of the people. We assemble as Anarchists and Communists to protest against the system of society founded on spoilation of the people.” In conclusion Parsons advised his hearers to save their money and buy revolvers and rifles, and recommended the use of dynamite.
Under date of December 26, 1885, the Alarm contained a long description of what qualities should center in a revolutionist. “The revolutionist,” it was said, “must dedicate his life exclusively to his idea, living in this world only for the purpose of more surely destroying it. He hates every law and science, and knows of but one science—that of destruction. He despises public sentiment and social morality. All his sentiments of friendship, love and sympathy must be suppressed. Equally must he hate everything that stands in the way to the attainment of his ends. He must have but one thought—merciless revolution; he must be bound by no ties, and must