Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination. Everett Marshall
in his suave, gentle, aristocratic attitudes, deplored the use of bombs, pistol, and knife. Yet who will question that Herr Most has drawn inspiration from this teacher, and this schooling was behind that rabid creature’s utterance, following the assassination of Carnot, when Most said:
“Whosoever wants to undertake an assassination should at first learn to use the weapon with which he desires to accomplish his purpose before he brings that weapon definitely into play. Attempts by means of the revolver are utterly played out, because out of twenty-five attempts only one is successful, as experience has thoroughly shown. Only expert dead shots may thoroughly rely on their ability to kill. No more child’s play! Serious labor! Long live the torch and bomb!”
This is the pupil of the school. Of its tutors, even Kropotkin has been described as a “gentle, courtly, aristocratic patriarch of revolt.” He was wealthy, famous, and furiously aristocratic when, in 1872, studying the Swiss glaciers, he stumbled upon the Geneva convention of internationalists and became an anarchist. He returned to the Russian court. His work on the glaciers of Finland became a classic. His lectures on geology and geography were attracting crowds, even while a red revolutionist, Borodin, was stirring police and military with his utterances to workingmen. One night the police trapped Borodin—and Kropotkin. For three years he was confined in prison until he escaped, making his way to London and to the world, which still listens to his voice.
Louise Michel, even, is described as an eager, enthusiastic old woman of much gentleness of manner. She is credited with an unselfishness and self-abnegation that would fit the character of a sister of charity. Virile and keen of intellect, her presence is said to attract, rather than repel, and yet her cry is for freedom, based on force against the machinery of law.
Johann Most has been recognized as the link between the German and English anarchism and the representative of the “propaganda of action.” He is the avowed patron of the bomb, and in the present case of Czolgosz some of the instructions which he has vouchsafed to readers of his journal, Freedom, may have a bearing, as for instance, the rule that “never more than one anarchist should take charge of the attempt, so that in case of discovery the anarchist party may suffer as little harm as possible.”
France has been especially active in this scrutiny of the followers of the red flag. The government’s spy system is almost perfect. Scarcely a meeting may be held on French soil that a government shadow is not somewhere in the background.
In Russia both the police and military arms keep watch upon suspects. London for years has been a hotbed of anarchistic talk and scheming, and even there the system of secret espionage is maintained. Regent’s Park on a Sunday afternoon may be full of inflammatory speech-making, but it is regarded as a harmless venting of spleen in most cases; the actual movements of dangerous anarchists are closely observed.
The United States government at Washington has a list of names and photographs of all the known anarchists of the world.
No city in America has had more experience in dealing with dangerous anarchists than Chicago. As early as 1850 there were disciples of anarchy among the foreign element there, but no attention was paid to them until as late as 1873, when they formed a political party and were more or less noisy for several years. In 1877, during the great railroad strike, they had their first clash with the police and several were killed, and many wounded. Thanksgiving Day, 1884, under the leadership of Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, Sam Fielden, and others they hoisted the black flag and marched through the fashionable residence district of the city, uttering groans and using threatening language. Subsequently they threatened to blow up the new Board of Trade building, and marched past the edifice one night, but were headed off by the police. Parsons, when asked afterward why they had not blown up the Board of Trade building, replied that they had not looked for police interference and were not prepared. “The next time,” he said, “we will be prepared to meet them with bombs and dynamite.” Fielden reiterated the same sentiments and expressed the opinion that in the course of a year they might be ready for the police.
During all these years the anarchist leaders had openly preached violence, and had taught their followers how to make dynamite bombs. They went so far as to give in detail their plans for fighting the police and militia, and caused more or less consternation among the timid residents of the city.
The local authorities made no effort to stop any of these proceedings. Mayor Harrison believed that repressive measures would be useless and considered that to allow the anarchists to talk would gratify their vanity and preclude the possibility of riot. That such a belief was fallacious, subsequent events proved.
In 1886 came the agitation for the establishment of the eight-hour day, and the anarchist leaders were prominent therein. The first collision between the anarchists and the police came at the McCormick reaper works. There was a sharp fight and the police dispersed the rioters. It was said that many workingmen were killed in that fight, but the story was exaggerated, no one being killed. The anarchists held secret meetings at once and devised a plan to revenge themselves on the police, and to burn and sack the city. As a first step, and for the purpose of demoralizing the police force, a public meeting was called to be held in the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4. The meeting was really held on Desplaines street, between Randolph and Lake streets. Parsons, Spies and Fielden spoke from a wagon in front of Crane’s foundry, until the police came up to disperse the meeting, on account of the violent character of the utterances. Inspector Bonfield and Captain Ward were in charge of the police, and no sooner had Captain Ward called upon the crowd to disperse than a bomb was hurled into the midst of the unsuspecting policemen. It burst with a loud report, knocking down nearly every one of the one hundred and twenty-five men in the detail and badly wounding many.
Inspector Bonfield at once rallied his men, and charged the mob with a resistless rush that carried everything before them. After the square had been cleared the officers began to attend to their wounded comrades. Only one, M. J. Degan, had been instantly killed, although seven died afterward from their injuries. Sixty-eight others were injured, some so badly that they were maimed for life, and incapacitated for work.
Of all the men who were subsequently arrested for this crime, only eight were placed on trial. These were August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Louis Lingg, who were found guilty and sentenced to death, and Oscar Neebe, who was sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. Lingg committed suicide by blowing his head to pieces with a bomb while confined in the jail awaiting execution. The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to imprisonment for life by Governor Oglesby. The other four were hanged in the county jail on November 11, 1887. They were buried at Waldheim cemetery the following Sunday, November 13, and this occasion was made memorable by the honors shown the dead by the anarchist societies of Chicago. It was the last great outpouring of anarchy that the city has seen. Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe were afterward pardoned by Governor Altgeld, and released from the penitentiary.
Looking back upon the work of anarchy in the last fifty years or more its results should be discouraging to any but the most hair-brained of the type. Its violence has not altered or unsettled the course of a single government against which it has been directed. If individuals here and there have been murdered the crimes have reacted upon the tools of butchery, most frequently sending the assassin to a dishonored grave, leaving the name of his kinsman a reproach for all time. The seed of ideal anarchy still is being sown, however, and its crop of crimes and criminals may be expected to be harvested in the future, as in the past, unless, by some concerted, radical efforts of civilization its bloody sophistries are to be wiped from the world.
CHAPTER VII.
SCENES AT BUFFALO FOLLOWING THE ASSASSINATION.
The people of Buffalo and the visitors within their gates behaved admirably during all the weary days and nights after the shooting of the President. That spirit of mob law, which pervaded the multitude that surged about the Temple of Music in the Exposition grounds at the time of the shooting, speedily gave way to one of obedience to law. The knowledge that the President’s life had not ebbed away,