John
Peter Altgeld, the son of a illiterate farm labourer, was born in
Hesse, Germany on 30th December, 1847.
The following year the family moved to the United States and settled
in Mansfield, Ohio. After a brief schooling he started work on the
family farm when he was twelve years old.
Although only sixteen, on the outbreak of the Civil
War Altgeld volunteered to fight in the Union
Army. He fought under General Benjamin
Butler in Virginia until falling ill with Chickahominy Fever.
Many of the regiment died but Altgeld managed to survive but the fever
was to leave a permanent mark on his health.
After the war Altgeld returned to Mansfield and enrolled in the local
high school. After further studies at the Lexington Seminary he found
work as a teacher in Woodville. Altgeld fell in love with a fellow
teacher, Emma Ford, the daughter of a successful Ohio merchant. Altgeld
proposed marriage but Emma's father refused permission as he considered
him too poor for his daughter. Devastated by the news, Altgeld left
town determined to make his fortune elsewhere.
Altgeld became an itinerant worker in Missouri and Arkansas, where
he joined a railroad-building crew. Eventually Altgeld became a school
teacher in Missouri. He continued to study until he qualified as a
lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party,
he developed a reputation for protecting the rights of the poor and
in 1874 was elected district attorney of Andrew County, Missouri.
Altgeld moved to Chicago, Illinois, in
1875, where he wrote his book, Our Penal
Machinery and Its Victims. The book, that argued that the
United States criminal system favoured the rich over the poor, influenced
a generation of social reformers, including the lawyer, Clarence
Darrow and Jane Addams, the founder
of the Hull House Settlement. In 1877
Altgeld returned to Ohio and married Emma Ford.
Over the next few years Altgeld became a successful businessman. Altgeld
specialized in the buying and selling of real estate. One of his most
successful ventures was the purchase of the sixteen-story Unity Block
in Chicago. Despite his wealth, Altgeld
developed a strong sympathy for the plight of the poor. He became
involved in politics and with the support of the Democrats
and the United Labor Party, Altgeld was elected governor of Illinois
in 1892.
Once in power Altgeld's embarked on an ambitious program of social
reform, which included attempts to prohibit child
labour and the inspection of factories. This involved the employment
of Florence Kelley as Chief Factory Inspector
of Illinois. Altgeld also controversially pardoned three men, Oscar
Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael
Schwab, convicted after the Haymarket
Bombing, and introduced a law prohibiting discrimination against
trade union members.
In 1894 President Grover Cleveland
and Attorney General Richard Olney sent
in federal troops to deal with the Pullman
Strike. Altgeld protested against this violation of state's rights,
but the action was popular with industrialists in Illinois. Altgeld
was defeated by the Republican candidate in the 1896 election as governor
of Illinois and a further attempt in 1899 also ended in failure. John
Peter Altgeld died on 11th March 1902.
(1)
Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life
(1932)
Judge Richards, a police judge in Astabula, gave me my first sane
idea of crime and criminals. He gave me a little book, Our Penal
Code and Its Victims by Judge John P. Altgeld, of Chicago, which
was a revelation to me. This book and the author came to have a marked
influence upon me and my future.
(2)
John Peter Altgeld, Forum Magazine (February, 1890)
The question whether immigration shall be encouraged or restricted,
and whether naturalization shall be made more difficult or not, must
be considered both from the political and from an industrial point
of view; and in each case it is necessary to glance back and see what
have been the character, the conduct, and the political leaning of
the immigrant, and what he has done to develop and enrich our country.
If we look at the political side first, and, as our space is limited,
we will go back to 1860, calling attention, however, to the fact that
up to that time, no matter from what cause, the immigration had been
almost entirely to the Northern and free States, and not to the slave
States. These, when carefully examined in connection with election
returns, will show that but for the assistance of the immigrant the
election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States would
have been an impossibility, and the nineteenth century would never
have seen the great free republic we see, and the shadow of millions
of slaves would today darken and curse the continent.
The Scandinavians have always, nearly to a man, voted the Republican
ticket. The Germans, likewise, were nearly always Republicans. In
fact, the States having either a large Scandinavian or a large German
population have been distinguished as the banner Republican States.
Notably is this true of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan,
which has a large Scandinavian population; and of Illinois, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, which have a very large German population.
(3)
Florence Kelley, Autobiography
(1927)
My appointment (as chief factory inspector) dated from July 12,
1893. It was Governor Altgeld's definite intent to enforce to the
uttermost limit this initial labor law throughout his term of office.
He was a sombre figure; the relentless hardship of his experience
as a boy and youth had left him embittered against fate, and against
certain personal enemies, but infinitely tender towards the sufferings
of childhood, old age and poverty. He was an able, experienced lawyer,
and his sense of justice had been outraged by the conduct of the trial
of the Anarchists.
(4)
Brand Whitlock first met John P. Altgeld
while working for the Chicago Herald in 1892.
There was a particular pallor in his countenance, and the face
was such a blank mask of suffering and despair that, had it not been
for the high intelligence that shone from his eyes, it must have impressed
many as altogether lacking in expression. He had been a judge of the
Circuit Court, and was known by his occasional addresses, his interviews
and articles, as a publicist of radical and humanitarian tendencies.
He was known especially to the laboring classes and to the poor, who,
by that acute sympathy they possess, divined in him a friend, and
in the circles of sociological workers and students, then so small
and obscure as to make their views esoteric, he was recognized as
one who understood and sympathized with their tendencies and ideas.
(5)
John Peter Altgeld, statement why he was going to pardon Oscar
Neebe, Samuel Fielden
and Michael Schwab for the Haymarket
Bombing (26th June, 1893)
On 1st May, 1886, a number of laboring men, standing not on the
street but on a vacant lot, were quietly discussing the situation
in regard to the movement (attempts to secure an eight-hour day),
when suddenly a large body of police, under orders from Bonfield,
charged on them and began to club them; that some of the men, angered
at the unprovoked assault, at first resisted but were soon dispersed;
that some of the police fired on the men while they were running and
wounded a large number who were running as fast as they could; that
at least four of the number so shot down died; and this was wanton
and unprovoked murder, but there was not even so much as an investigation.
While some men may tamely submit to being clubbed and seeing their
brothers shot down, there are some who will resent it and will nurture
a spirit of hatred and seek revenge for themselves, and the occurrences
that preceded the Haymarket tragedy indicate that the bomb was thrown
by someone who, instead of acting on the advice of anybody, who simply
seeking personal revenge for having been clubbed, and the Captain
Bonfield is the man who is really responsible for the death of the
police officers.
It is further shown here that much of the evidence given at the trial
was a pure fabrication; that some of the prominent police officials,
in their zeal, not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into
prison and threatening them with torture if they refused to swear
to anything desired but that they offered money and employment to
those who would consent to do this. Further, that they deliberately
planned to have fictitious conspiracies formed in order that they
might get the glory of discovering them.
I am convinced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case for
the reasons already given; and I, therefore, grant an absolute pardon
to Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab, this 26th day
of June, 1893.
(6)
Brand Whitlock was working for
John P. Altgeld when he decided
to pardon the men convicted for the Haymarket Bombers in June, 1893.
He knew the cost to him; he had just come to the governorship of his
state, and to the leadership of his party, after its thirty years
of defeat, and he realized what powerful interests would be frightened
and offended if he were to turn three forgotten men out of prison;
he understood how partisanship would turn the action to its advantage.
It mattered not that most of the thoughtful men in Illinois would
tell you that the "anarchists" had been improperly convicted,
that they were not only entirely innocent of the murder of which they
had been accused, but were not even anarchists.
And so, one morning in June, very early, I was called to the governor's
office, and told to make out pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab.
I took them over to the governor's office. I was admitted to his private
room, and there he sat, at his great flat desk. The only other person
in the room was Dreier, a Chicago banker, who had never wearied, it
seems, in his efforts to have these men pardoned.
The Governor took the big sheets of imitation parchment, glanced over
them, signed his name to each, laid down the pen, and handed the papers
across the table to Dreier. The banker took them, and began to say
something. But he only got as far as "Governor, I hardly"
when he broke down and wept.
I saw the Governor as I was walking to the Capitol the next morning.
The Governor was riding his horse - he was a gallant horseman - and
he bowed and smiled that faint, wan smile of his, and drew up to the
curb a moment. I said: "Well, the storm will break now."
"Oh, yes," he replied, with a not wholly convincing air
of throwing off a care, "I was prepared for that. It was merely
doing right." I said something to him then to express my satisfaction
in the great deed that was to be so willfully, recklessly, and cruelly
misunderstood. I did not say all I might have said, for I felt that
my opinions could mean so little to him. I have wished since that
I had said more, said something that could perhaps have made a great
burden a little easier for that brave and tortured soul. But he rode
away with that wan, persistent smile. And the storm did break, and
the abuse it rained upon him broke his heart.
(7)
John Peter Altgeld, speech made to trade unionists
in Chicago (1899)
Glance over this majestic city, see its workshops, its warehouses,
its commercial palaces, its office temples, and the thousand other
structures that show the possibilities of human achievement and tell
who did all this. You say the laboring men: yes, that is correct.
We are at present in the midst of a great industrial and commercial
depression. Industry is nearly at a standstill all over the earth.
The consumptive power, or rather the purchasing power, of the world
has been interfered with, producing not only a derangement but a paralysis,
not only stopping further production but preventing the proper distribution
of what there is already created; so that we have the anomalous spectacle
of abundant food products, on the one hand, and hungry men without
bread, on the other; abundant fabrics, on the one hand, and industrious,
frugal men going half-clad, on the other.
(8)
Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life
(1932)
On the 12th day of March, 1902, Governor Altgeld went down to
Joliet, about forty miles from Chicago. For many years his heart had
not been good. He had never seemed very strong. Before going to Joliet
he had been in court all day and was very tired that night. He went
directly from the train into a crowded hall and immediately began
his plea for the Boers. He fell and was removed from the stage; and
for several days his frail body was wracked with vomiting and pain.
About midnight he was dead.
He lay in state in the Public Library Building. All day long the people
filed past and lavished their loving looks upon their great and brave
champion, John P. Altgeld. It was the same throng that had so often
hung upon his courageous words from many a forum; the same inarticulate
mass for whose cause he had given his voice and his life.
For the funeral, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, a woman of rare
ideals and intelligence, was asked to speak. Governor Altgeld had
long admired Miss Addams, and was often a visitor at Hull House, and
she had always understood and appreciated the fearlessness and unselfishness
of the man. Her words were simple and sensible, such as she always
uses. I also had the rare privilege of saying a few words of the many
that welled from my heart, overflowing with admiration and affection
and pain for a lost idol.
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