The Plot against the Police—Anarchist Banners and Emblems—Stealing
a Captured Flag—A Mystery at a Station-house—Finding the
Fire-cans—Their Construction and Use—Imitating the Parisian
Petroleuses—Glass Bombs—Putting the Women Forward—Cans and Bombs
Still Hidden Among the Bohemians—Testing the Infernal Machines—The
Effects of Anarchy—The Moral to be Drawn—Looking for Labor
Sympathy—A Crazy Scheme—Gatling Gun _vs._ Dynamite—The Threatened
Attack on the Station-houses—Watching the Third Window—Selecting a
Weapon—Planning Murder—The Test of Would-be Assassins—The Meeting
at Lincoln Park—Peril of the Hinman Street Station-house—A Fortunate
Escape.
IN the numerous arrests and raids made, the police became thoroughly
acquainted with the most notorious Anarchists in the city, the ins
and outs of their resorts, and even the interior arrangement of their
dwelling-places. Not only were suspects arrested, but search was made
for contraband articles. A varied collection of arms, bombs, etc., and
a large assortment of red bunting thus found their way to the Chicago
Avenue Station. In all the public demonstrations made by the Anarchists
in the city they had carried many flags, banners and transparencies as
emblems of defiance, and whenever such were found they were carefully
taken in charge. When the investigations were concluded, the inner
room of my private office was well filled with a most curious display
of these time-worn and weather-beaten ensigns, and the collection is
very interesting as a reminder of a critical period in the history of
Chicago. There are flags of a very primitive and cheap description,
and flags more or less elaborate and expensive. They varied in size
and differed in the degree of their crimson colors. Those belonging to
groups were large and plain, showing frequent handling by dirt-begrimed
hands, and were mounted on plain pine staffs. Those carried by the Lehr
und Wehr Verein were of finer texture and larger in size, its principal
standard, of silk, being a present from the female revolutionists
and gorgeous in the amplitude of its folds. This silken standard was
the pride and joy of the whole fraternity, and at one time it served
to relieve the motley collection with its bright vermilion, but in
some unaccountable manner it disappeared one day from a West Side
police station. The reds had evidently set their hearts on recapturing
it, and by some sort of legerdemain they succeeded. Who it was that
accomplished the deed has never been disclosed, and in whose custody it
is now is a profound secret, carefully kept by the Anarchists.
The men who were always relied upon to carry these flags in the
processions of the reds were Ernst Hubner, Appelman, Paul Otto,
Stohlbaum, W. Hageman, Seliger, Lutz, Gustav Lehman, Paul Lehman, and
Mrs. Parsons, Mrs. Holmes and some other women, and possibly some
of these may know something of the mysterious disappearance of the
Anarchists’ chief standard.
[Illustration: AN INCENDIARY CAN.—FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
This is a tin can filled with petroleum, and provided with a small
powder flask, secured in the center by means of a screw-top, which also
serves to hold the fuse in position. Numbers of these cans were found.
They were intended for setting fire to buildings and other property.]
During the searches by the department for other suspicious and
inflammatory articles, several fire-cans were found in the northwest
part of the city, on the 3d of June, by Officer Whalen. In exterior
appearance these looked very harmless, but an examination of their
contents showed them capable of doing a great deal of mischief. They
each had a capacity of a quart, and were made of medium heavy tin, with
a round hole in the center of the top, about an inch in diameter. This
opening was provided with a threaded neck of tin about an inch high,
with a cover to fit. Underneath the cover was a sort of clasp, into
which fitted the neck of a small vial, and through the cover a small
hole was bored, for the admission of a fuse into the vial. When ready
for use the can would be filled with an explosive or with coal-oil,
and the flask would contain powder. All that then remained would be to
light the fuse, throw the can either into a lumber-yard or under the
stairway of some residence or business block, and no one would know the
perpetrator of a possibly disastrous fire. The cans found by Officer
Whalen were loaded and had evidently been intended for use on the night
of May 4. Fortunately the owner must have become frightened and hid
them to escape arrest.
The suggestion for the manufacture of these cans came from across
the water. A short time preceding May 4, at a meeting held in Thalia
Hall, a few Frenchmen and several Germans, who had passed through the
reign of the Commune in Paris in 1871, gave a general idea of the
important part such cans had played in that city and added that women
at that time did as good work with them as the men. Such fire-cans,
together with glass balls filled with nitro-glycerine, were carried in
baskets, and if the reds wanted to destroy a building they would throw
a can through the window, or if they desired to annihilate a guard of
soldiers they would hurl into their midst one of the glass balls, which
would explode by concussion and tear the men to pieces.
These missiles had created great havoc in Paris, and the members of the
Thalia Hall gathering were urged to adopt them for use in Chicago. At
that time there were enough desperate Anarchists in the city to have
used all that could have been manufactured, but some of the men at the
meeting insisted that the women should be asked to assist in disposing
of them to the destruction of the town. One big, loud-mouthed fellow,
evidently a coward, shouted:
“My wife will do that. She is an Anarchist as good as any one of us.”
No doubt she was an Anarchist, as the city had a great many of these
poor, deluded creatures at the time, who were willing to do almost
anything their husbands might ask, but many of whom have since had
occasion to feel the poverty into which they were finally forced
by men who neglected work, family and all for the sake of talking
revolution.
Many of these men were just cowardly enough to thrust their wives
forward where danger lurked, and while they themselves enjoyed the
safety of a groggery, they would have been pleased, “for principle’s
sake,” to see their poor helpmeets go around and set fire to houses and
other property, so that the dauntless husbands could brag of the brave
achievements of “the family.”
The meeting in question must have set the Anarchists to thinking; and
it is a matter of record that Parsons had fallen into the same idea
when he addressed a secret meeting on the North Side, to which I shall
subsequently refer. It is certain that many of these fire-cans were
manufactured.
Besides the petroleum-cans discovered by Officer Whalen, a lot of the
same kind were taken out of the city by way of West Lake Street on May
7, when the Anarchists were hurrying their ammunition out of town to
prevent detection. According to the statements of some reformed reds,
there are a great many of these cans and bombs still concealed in the
Bohemian settlement in the southwest part of the city.
On the 8th of June, 1886, I decided to have the cans tested, and for
this purpose detailed Officers Rehm and Coughlin. The latter had at
one time been a miner, and was therefore experienced in the use of
explosives. The two officers took one of the cans to the lake shore.
The can was placed on a plot of grass and the fuse lighted. In eight
seconds an explosion followed. The grass burned within a circumference
of five feet. The flame extended four feet in height and continued for
about three minutes. The officers gave it as their opinion that any one
of the cans was sufficient to set a building on fire.
What a blessing it was for our citizens that this devilish invention
did not spread its destructive work before May 4, 1886.
As stated at the outset, the police were brought, in all these raids,
into close acquaintanceship with the malcontents, and often came in
close contact with their families. Some of the sights they saw were
shocking in the extreme, and they had many opportunities to sound the
depths of misery and want entailed upon families by husbands gone daft
on Anarchy. The tales of woe and domestic infelicity poured into their
ears would fill many pages, but the general tenor of all can be judged
by what has been revealed in the statements given in the preceding
chapters.
Anarchy may look extremely inviting when depicted by a plausible
speaker, but its practical side is strikingly brought out in the home
life of its devotees. Any one visiting the homes of Anarchists, and
carefully contrasting the surroundings with those of true laboring men
not affected by the taint of revolution, would give Anarchy a wide
berth. But unfortunately men get their brains turned over sophistical
arguments against capital and madly rush to ruin without thinking of
consequences until it is too late. Read the reports made to me at the
time, and they all tell the same story of want and degradation.
[Illustration: HENRY SPIES. From a Photograph.]
There always has been and always will be a fascination about any scheme
that promises ease without labor. So long as men can be found with
impressionable minds that can be swayed by demagogues into a belief
that Anarchy has in it the elements of comfort, splendor and luxury
with very little toil, so long, no doubt, will dupes be found ready
to sacrifice energy, thrift and independence for the life-degrading
scarlet banner. But such ease can never be attained through blood in
the United States. That fact has been established in Chicago, and the
precedent ought to serve as a terrible warning to all malcontents. If
the abject want of those who constitute the bulk of the revolutionists,
whose very squalor has been the result of their zeal for Anarchy, is
not sufficient to deter men from becoming Anarchists, the fate of the
eight conspirators who were brought to trial in Chicago ought at least
to prevent men from plotting murder, incendiarism and pillage.
With the tremendous odds against them, it is surprising that men could
be found willing to take up arms for the destruction of life and
property, and the action of the reds in Chicago can be explained only
on the theory that they felt they had only to strike one severe blow to
bring thousands of secret sympathizers into line, and cause capitalists
to humble themselves in the dust before the Social Revolution. This
theory is borne out by the statements of the many repentant Anarchists
who came under the displeasure of the police. In their excited
gatherings they had each propped up the hopes and spirits of the
others, and all reason was sunk in the one frenzied, consuming desire
to wreak vengeance upon those who had accumulated more wealth than
themselves. They were bent on wresting away the wealth of others, and
no mercy was to be shown to those who stood between them and that end.
The police, as protectors of wealth in property and property in wealth,
were the immediate objects of their enmity and wrath, and throughout
the Anarchistic conspiracy, as has been shown by the disclosures made,
we were to receive their first and special attention before the grand
onslaught upon capitalists. Crazed by their speakers and dazed with
the glittering prospect held out to them, the human fiends proposed to
exterminate us with dynamite and then vanquish the rich and abolish all
forms of property.
Could anything be more absurd? And yet that is what they sought to
accomplish on the eventful night of May 4th.
It would seem that the scheme to blow up the police stations could only
originate in a lunatic asylum, but the confessions of those arrested
show that men with apparently sound minds—minds at least sane enough
to keep them out of such institutions—actually contemplated it and had
made all the necessary arrangements to execute the plot. Strange must
have been their conceptions of public sentiment when they believed that
the execution of their bloody plan would result in the establishment
of wider and freer social conditions, and strange, indeed, must have
been their hallucinations when they thought that the devastation they
proposed would be seconded and aided by the laboring men whom they
counted upon as secret sympathizers ready to reveal their true feelings
the moment the revolution was generally inaugurated.
The danger of the scheme to themselves did not strike them until the
last moment, when their courage was to be put to a practical test, but,
fortunately for themselves, they went no further than the Haymarket
riot.
That they seriously contemplated more than they perpetrated is beyond
dispute. They saw the intense excitement consequent on the eight-hour
strike and the troubles at McCormick’s factory, and knew that the
police stations would be filled with officers in readiness for
emergencies. They had called the Haymarket meeting for the express
purpose of provoking hostilities, and they regarded it as an opportune
time to strike a terrible blow against the police all over the city.
Their calculations in that respect were eminently correct.
The moment the reds began to incite a vicious mob to deeds of
bloodshed, hostilities were provoked, and they got a dose of their own
medicine. Had it not been for their precipitate flight they would have
fared far worse. All the police stations were full of men, all the
reserves having been called out for duty on the first sign of violent
demonstrations, and these stood ready to make short work of all who
might stand up against them in a conflict. It was fortunate for the
conspirators that they considered “discretion the better part of valor”
at the Haymarket, and doubly fortunate that they received no signal to
commence their bloody operations at the stations.
The loss of life no doubt would have been appalling on both sides, but
the outcome, as far as the triumph of law and order is concerned, would
have been the same. The bomb would have done deadly work at the start,
but the Gatling gun would have come to the rescue had the police been
seriously crippled.
Missiles of dynamite hurled into the stations on that eventful night
of May 4 would indeed have created terrible havoc. In fact, the reds
could not have chosen a time more favorable for their bloody plans. The
East Chicago Avenue Station that night contained a very large force. I
had in reserve and waiting orders one hundred and twenty-five officers.
They were all over the building, up and down stairs, in the court-room,
in the reception-room and in every other available place. Many were in
the office, which is used as a roll-call room, and in which all details
of officers are made. This office is in the center of the building and
overlooks an alley on the east. The officers were organized into five
companies, and all duly numbered. Any company could be called at any
time, and in less than five minutes it would be in marching order.
This precaution was taken in expectation of a call to the Haymarket,
and the Anarchists, in the damnable conspiracies of that evening, had
anticipated such preparations. They were accordingly on the ground.
Fifteen members of the North Side group, as appears plainly from the
confessions of some of the Anarchists, loitered around the station,
waiting for orders or signal, or to abide their own pleasure as soon as
they could see for themselves that the riot had begun on the West Side.
When that time arrived, they were to watch the windows of the roll-call
room from the alley and throw their infernal machines into the midst of
the officers the moment the room was full.
The cut-throats skulked around the station like so many Indians
around the cabin of a helpless settler, constantly dodging around in
the darkness, fearful that they might be discovered. True to their
instincts, however, these Chicago reds could not do without their beer
while awake, and they made frequent trips to neighboring beer-saloons.
About 9:30 o’clock Lieut. Baus and Lieut. Lloyd, each with a company of
officers, returned from the Central Station, where I had sent them as a
reserve during the Haymarket meeting, and when the Anarchists saw them
in the roll-call room of my station, they sneaked around on the dark
side of the alley and selected the third and fourth windows as those
through which their deadly bombs should crash on their destructive
mission. These windows are in the center of the large room. They had
with them a number of bombs, both of the round lead and the long
gas-pipe variety. While they stood underneath those windows, they got
into a whispered quarrel about the kind of bomb that should be used.
Bock had a round lead bomb, and he said:
“I don’t think this will go off. Let one of you throw a larger bomb.”
Then Abraham Hermann became angry and said:
“You d——d fool, what the d——l are you here for, if your d——d
bombs are no good? You are too much of a coward to throw them.”
Just at this point two officers left the station to visit a
cigar-store, and stopped for a moment at the entrance of the alley to
finish their conversation.
The Anarchists saw them, and, thinking that they had been discovered,
they hurriedly made their exit in an opposite direction, running to the
rear of the building on its dark side and then emerging on Superior
Street. Some of them went over to the West Side, to the Haymarket
meeting, and others sought different saloons on Clark Street.
[Illustration: THE LARRABEE STREET STATION.
From a Photograph.]
After frequent libations, some met again on Superior Street in the
vicinity of a wagon-manufacturing establishment, and, under the cover
of numerous wagons standing on the street between Clark Street and
La Salle Avenue, they decided that the men who then had bombs should
proceed to the call-room windows, and the others, with revolvers,
should take position in the alley diagonally across from the entrance
of the station. Then, at the proper signal, the bombs were to be hurled
into the room, and the men across the way were to fire a volley into
such officers as might come out.
While this plan was being formed, I received an order from Inspector
Bonfield to send all my men to the West Side double-quick, ready for
action, with a hurried explanation of the riot and the killing of
officers, and in less than four minutes I had seventy-five men on
the way to the Haymarket. The Anarchists were still standing among
the wagons, and, to their great surprise and dismay, they saw three
patrol wagons passing with a tremendous speed. Their hearts at once
fell into their boots, and they knew that the trouble had commenced.
They repaired to Moody’s church and remained there a few moments
deliberating what should be done. One of them tried to brace up the
flagging spirits of his comrades by saying that “now the time had
arrived when something must be done, but they must never tell of their
being there.” Not one, however, seemed willing to execute the plot
they had agreed upon. On the contrary, they turned up La Salle Avenue
and ran to Neff’s Hall as fast as their legs could carry them. What
occurred at that hall that night I have already shown in a preceding
chapter.
The plan to throw bombs into the roll-call room was afterwards unfolded
to me by one of those in the plot, and, had it not been for the two
officers accidentally stopping at the entrance of the alley, many of
the boys of the Fifth Precinct would have been murdered even before the
commencement of the riot at the Haymarket. The ruffians who hung around
that station were Abraham Hermann, Lorenz Hermann, the two Hageman
brothers, Habizreiter, Heineman, Charles Bock, Heumann, and others from
the North Side group and Lake View.
Another station in great danger that night was that on Larrabee Street,
in charge of Lieut. John Baus, with forty-eight officers. It is located
on the northwest corner of Larrabee Street and North Avenue, and is
a two-story brick building with a basement. This basement contains
a cell-room located in the center of the building, with windows on
the North Avenue side, and that side was chosen for the scene of
operations. The men especially relied upon to blow up this building
were Lingg, Seliger, Muntzenberg, Huber, Thielen and Hirschberger, and
they, together with other members of the North Side group, lingered in
the vicinity, loaded with bombs, and waiting only to see “the heavens
illuminated” or to receive a message from one of the runners. But
before they knew what had transpired at the Haymarket a patrol wagon
dashed out of the station and whizzed by with a load of officers. This
dazed them, and they hurried to Neff’s Hall to learn particulars and
receive new instructions. When they got there Neff told them that they
were all a set of cowards and advised them to go home. They took his
advice and were glad to crawl back into their holes.
Webster Avenue Station, in charge of Lieut. Elias E. Lloyd, with
forty-four officers, also received attention. The building is a
two-story frame located on the north side of the street, near Lincoln
Avenue, and its principal apartment, the roll-call room, is on the
first floor facing the street. The men especially assigned to the
destruction of this station were Ernst Hubner, Gustav Lehman, Otto
Lehman, Jebolinski and Lange, backed by several other frowsy and
low-skulled sneaks, and these hovered around the station, hiding in
dark recesses whenever some one casually passed along the sidewalk, or
dodging into an alley whenever an officer was discovered approaching
them. They all waited for “the signal which never came,” and, getting
tired of stimulating each other with a courage they did not possess,
they finally concluded to adjourn to Neff’s Hall. Whenever, on the
way to that place, one upbraided the other for not throwing a bomb,
each would point to the fact that the area in front of the building
was always occupied by officers sitting in easy chairs and sniffing
the evening breeze, and there was no chance to get near the cell-room;
but they all promised one another that they would go back and blow
the building into smithereens and the officers into shreds of flesh,
regardless of personal consequences, if they should hear “good news” at
Neff’s. But they did not go back. Lieut. Lloyd was not called on for
assistance at the Haymarket until about eleven o’clock, and by that
time the cowards had got their information at Neff’s and were glad for
an excuse to make a “bee line” for home, if the hovels they lived in
can be dignified by that designation.
[Illustration: THE SCHILLER MONUMENT.
From a Photograph.]
There is no doubt that these wretches would have blown up the station
if the police had dispersed the Haymarket meeting earlier in the
evening, but by waiting so long they lost what little courage they
had. There was no patrol wagon attached to this station at that time,
but, as one of them told me afterwards, the Anarchists stood ready to
hurl a bomb into a street-car had the officers come out earlier to
take the cars in order to hasten to the assistance of the force at
the Haymarket. They intended to make their work complete, and they
were all well provided with bombs, even though they were rather short
on courage. This was a part of the gang which had an appointment at
Lincoln Park, only five blocks from the station, and some of them
sought there early in the evening for a large number of recruits who
failed to materialize when danger was in sight.
The spot chosen for the meeting-place in Lincoln Park was at
“Schiller’s Denkmal” (monument). Here it was that a few gathered, but,
not finding as many present as they expected, they separated to the
several localities assigned them for the execution of their plot.
It will be recalled that, at the Monday night meeting preceding the
Haymarket riot, those living on the North Side were ordered to report
at Lincoln Park for definite instructions, and those on the West Side
at Wicker Park, and the order seems to have been obeyed by a few of the
more courageous Anarchists.
The vicinity of the Schiller monument was the place also where those
who had been arrested and had made confessions met, along with other
Anarchists, on the night preceding the taking of testimony in the trial
of the prisoners, and on this occasion, Mr. Furthmann tells me, they
agreed, with one exception, to inform the prosecution that they would
not take the witness-stand to testify to the matters they had revealed
to the State. If they were put on as witnesses, they agreed, they could
swear that all they had told me and Mr. Furthmann with reference to the
conspiracy was pure and unadulterated falsehood. Mr. Waller refused to
be a party to such an agreement, and by his stubborn stand he caused
several of the other witnesses for the State to change their minds and
stick to the truth. Others, however, held out, and, when asked by the
State to appear, refused. Waller proved a very strong witness, and, as
Mr. Furthmann says, not one of the witnesses for the defense dared to
contradict his testimony.
[Illustration: THE HINMAN STREET STATION.
From a Photograph.]
But to return to the contemplated attacks on the police stations.
The Hinman Street house was the fourth one in the list marked for
destruction. This station was in charge of Lieut. Richard Sheppard,
and contained on the night in question thirty-four officers. It is
a two-story brick building with basement, and is situated at the
northwest corner of Hinman and Paulina Streets. The basement is used
as a lock-up for the detention of prisoners, and all the offices are
located on the first floor, facing Paulina Street. The patrol-wagon
barn is situated in the rear of the station, contiguous to an alley,
through which the street is reached. Around this locality between
eighty and a hundred Anarchists gathered for work and to await the
signal. Mende and Sisterer were at the head of this murderous gang.
Some were to exploit with rifles from the alley north of the station
and on the east side of the street; others, with dynamite bombs, were
to look after the officers in the rooms where they might happen to be
most numerous, and those with revolvers were to station themselves in
the alley directly behind the station to shoot down any of the officers
who might come out in the patrol wagon, and also to kill the horses.
Others, again, with revolvers, were to post themselves in front of the
station to kill those who might escape the deadly bombs and seek safety
by rushing into the street. The riflemen were to come as a reserve
force to shoot down any who might have escaped both the revolvers
and bombs. They were a desperate set and appeared determined on the
execution of the plot. The men who composed the gang were Germans,
Bohemians and Poles, all members of the West Side group, and some
outsiders who worked in freight-houses and lumber-yards, and not one of
them had any love for a policeman. This district had been for several
years the scene of numerous strikes, and, as the officers had always
suppressed the rioters, the latter were viciously disposed towards
the guardians of the peace. Some of these reds were very anxious to
see the work of annihilation commence, and they loitered around in
small squads so as not to arouse suspicion until they could learn
whether the revolution had been inaugurated at the Haymarket meeting.
There was no call on this station for assistance at the time of the
explosion, as Inspector Bonfield thought it possible that trouble might
arise at McCormick’s, and the officers in that locality might thus be
required in that direction; and as the diabolical conspirators saw no
officers or patrol wagon move out, they became anxious to know how
the Haymarket affair had terminated, and one by one they sneaked away
from their hiding-places. When they finally learned particulars about
the shooting, they ran home, and, like the cowards they were, kept
under cover for several days. Later in the evening one company was
ordered from this station to guard Desplaines Street, after the wounded
officers had all been brought from the Haymarket. When the wagon
had reached Halsted and Harrison Streets, however, Capt. O’Donnell
halted it and ordered the officers back to the station, as it had been
ascertained that all the Anarchists had sought their homes for the
night.
It was very fortunate that the officers were not called out earlier in
the evening. If Inspector Bonfield had ordered them to report a few
moments after the riot, very few of the men would have escaped alive.
I have since learned that the brigands who were sneaking around that
station that night numbered nearly one hundred, and as one-half of them
were under the influence of liquor, it is very likely that they would
have committed desperate deeds had the occasion offered.