Albert
Richard Parsons
was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on 24th June,
1848. Orphaned at five years old, he was raised by Esther, an African
American slave. In the Civil
War he served as a member of the Confederate
Army under the commanded by his brother, Major General William
Parsons.
After the war Parsons condemned slavery
and became a Radical Republican. Now
a socialist, Parsons began publishing the
Spectator,
a journal that advocated equal rights for African-Americans.
In 1873 Parsons married Lucy
Waller, the daughter of a Creek Indian and a Mexican woman. Mixed
marriages in Texas was unacceptable and so under pressure from the
Ku Klux Klan, the couple moved to Chicago.
Parsons became a printer but after becoming involved in trade
union activities he was blacklisted.
Parsons and his wife joined the Socialist
Labor Party in 1876. They were also founder members of the International
Working People's Association (IWPA), a labor organization
that supported racial and sexual equality. Parson also became editor
of the radical journal, Alarm.
On 1st May, 1886 a strike was began throughout
the United States in support a eight-hour day. Over the next few days
over 340,000 men and women withdrew their labor. Over a quarter of
these strikers were from Chicago and
the employers were so shocked by this show of unity that 45,000 workers
in the city were immediately granted a shorter workday.
The campaign for the eight-hour day was organised by the International
Working Peoples Association (IWPA). On 3rd May, the IWPA in Chicago
held a rally outside the McCormick Harvester Works, where 1,400 workers
were on strike. They were joined by 6,000 lumber-shovers, who had
also withdrawn their labour. While August Spies,
one of the leaders of the IWPA was making a speech, the police arrived
and opened-fire on the crowd, killing four of the workers.
The following day August Spies, who was
editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung,
published a leaflet in English and German entitled: Revenge!
Workingmen to Arms!. It included the passage: "They
killed the poor wretches because they, like you, had the courage to
disobey the supreme will of your bosses. They killed them to show
you 'Free American Citizens' that you must be satisfied with whatever
your bosses condescend to allow you, or you will get killed. If you
are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires, who have shed their
blood to free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and
destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms we
call you, to arms." Spies also published a second leaflet calling
for a mass protest at Haymarket Square that evening.
On 4th May, over 3,000 people turned up at the
Haymarket meeting. Speeches were made
by Parsons, August Spies and Samuel
Fielden. At 10 a.m. Captain John Bonfield and 180 policemen arrived
on the scene. Bonfield was telling the crowd to "disperse immediately
and peacebly" when someone threw a bomb into the police ranks
from one of the alleys that led into the square. It exploded killing
eight men and wounding sixty-seven others. The police then immediately
attacked the crowd. A number of people were killed (the exact number
was never disclosed) and over 200 were badly injured.
Several people identified Rudolph Schnaubelt as the man who
threw the bomb. He was arrested but was later released without charge.
It was later claimed that Schnaubelt was an agent provocateur
in the pay of the authorities. After the release of Schnaubelt, the
police arrested Samuel
Fielden, an Englishman, and six German immigrants, Engel,
August Spies, Adolph
Fisher, Louis Lingg, Oscar
Neebe, and Michael Schwab. The police
also sought Parsons but he went into hiding and was able to avoid
capture. However, on the morning of the trial, Parsons arrived in
court to standby his comrades.
There were plenty of witnesses who were able
to prove that none of the eight men threw the bomb. The authorities
therefore decided to charge them with conspiracy to commit murder.
The prosecution case was that these men had made speeches and written
articles that had encouraged the unnamed man at the Haymarket
to throw the bomb at the police.
The jury was chosen by a special bailiff instead of being selected
at random. One of those picked was a relative of one of the police
victims. Julius Grinnell, the State's Attorney, told the jury: "Convict
these men make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions."
At the trial it emerged that Andrew Johnson, a detective from the
Pinkerton Agency, had infiltrated
the group and had been collecting evidence about the men. Johnson
claimed that at anarchist meetings
these men had talked about using violence. Reporters who had also
attended International Working Peoples Association meetings also testified
that the defendants had talked about using force to "overthrow
the system".
During the trial the judge allowed the jury to read speeches and articles
by the defendants where they had argued in favour of using violence
to obtain political change. The judge then told the jury that if they
believed, from the evidence, that these speeches and articles contributed
toward the throwing of the bomb, they were justified in finding
the defendants guilty.
All the men were found guilty: Parsons, August
Spies, Adolph Fisher, Louis
Lingg and George Engel were given the
death penalty. Whereas Oscar
Neebe, Samuel
Fielden and Michael
Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On 10th November,
1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth.
The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel mounted the gallows.
As the noose was placed around his neck, Spies shouted out: "There
will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices
you strangle today."
(1)
Albert Parsons,
Autobiography
of Albert Parsons (1887)
My brother, Major General W. Parsons was in command of the entire
cavalry outposts on the west bank of the Mississippi River from Helena
to the mouth of the Red River. I was a mere boy of 15 when I joined
my brother's command at the front on White River, and was afterward
a member of the renowned McInoly scouts under General Parsons' orders,
which participated in all the battles of the Curtis, Canby and Banks
campaign.
(2)
Albert Parsons, speech at his trial (September, 1887)
The labor question is up for settlement. It demands and commands a
hearing. The existing disorders threaten not only the peace, but the
destruction of society itself. The movement to reduce the work hours
is intended by its projectors to give a peaceful solution to the difficulties
between capitalists and laborers. I have always held that there were
two ways to settle this trouble-either by peaceable or violent methods.
Reduced hours- or eight hours - is a peace-offering. It is for capitalists
to give or laborers to take. I hold that capitalists will not give
eight hours. Why? Because the rate of wages in every wage-paying country
is regulated by what it takes to live on; in other words, it is subsistence
wages. This subsistence wage is what political economists call the
'iron law of wages', because it is unvarying and inviolable. How does
this law operate? In this way: A laborer is hired to do a day's work.
In the first two hours of the ten he reproduces the equivalent of
his wage; the other eight hours is what the employer gets and gets
for nothing. Hence the laborer, as the statistics of the census of
1880 show, does ten work for two hours pay. Now, reduced hours, or
eight hours, means that the profit monger is to get only six hours
instead of, as now, eight hours for nothing. For this reason employers
of labor will not voluntarily concede the reduction. I do not believe
that capital will quietly or peaceably permit the economic emancipation
of their wage-slaves. It is against all the teachings of history and
human nature for men to voluntarily yield up usurped or arbitrary
power. The capitalists of the world will for this reason force the
workers into armed revolution. Socialists point out this fact and
warn the workingmen to prepare for the inevitable.
(3)
Albert
Parsons, speech at
his trial (September, 1887)
My ancestors came to this country a good while ago. My friend Oscar
Neebe here is the descendant of a Pennsylvania Dutchman. He and I
are the only two who had fortune, or the misfortune, as some people
may look at it I don't know and I don't care-to be born in this country.
My ancestors had a hand in drawing up and maintaining the Declaration
of Independence. My great great grand-uncle lost a hand at the Battle
of Bunker Hill. I had a great great great grand-uncle with Washington
at Brandywine, Monmouth and Valley Forge. I have been here long enough,
I think, to have rights guaranteed at least in the constitution of
the country.
(4)
Albert Parsons, letter to his wife, Lucy
Parson (14th September, 1887)
Our verdict this morning cheers the hearts of tyrants throughout the
world, and the result will be celebrated by King Capital in its drunken
feast of flowing wine from Chicago to St. Petersburg. Nevertheless,
our doom to death is the handwriting on the wall, foretelling the
downfall of hate, malice, hypocrisy, judicial murder, oppression,
and the domination of man over his fellowman. The oppressed of earth
are writhing in their legal chains. The giant Labor is awakening.
The masses, aroused from their stupor, will snap their petty chains
like reeds in the whirlwind.
We are all creatures of circumstance; we are what we have been made
to be. This truth is becoming clearer day by day.
There was no evidence that any one
of the eight doomed men knew of, or advised, or abetted the Haymarket
tragedy. But what does that matter? The privileged class demands a
victim, and we are offered a sacrifice to appease the hungry yells
of an infuriated mob of millionaires who will be contented
with nothing less than our lives. Monopoly triumphs! Labor in chains
ascends the scaffold for having dared to cry out for liberty and right!
Well, my poor, dear wife, I, personally,
feel sorry for you and the helpless little babes of our loins.
You I bequeath to the people,
a woman of the people. I have one request to make of you: Commit no
rash act to yourself when I am gone, but take up the great cause of
Socialism where I am compelled to lay it down.
My children - well, their father
had better die in the endeavor to secure their liberty and happiness
than live contented in a society which condemns nine-tenths of its
children to a life of wage slavery and poverty. Bless them; I love
them unspeakably, my poor helpless little ones.
Ah, wife, living or dead, we are
as one. For you my affection is everlasting. For the people. Humanity.
I cry out again and again in the doomed victim's cell: Liberty! Justice!
Equality!
(5)
The Chicago Daily News, report on the execution of Albert Parsons,
August Spies, Adolph
Fischer and George Engel
(12th November, 1887)
Seldom, if ever, have
four men died more gamely and defiantly than the four who were strangled
today. Every eye was bent upon the metallic angle around
which the four wretched victims were expected to make their appearance.
A moment later their curiosity was rewarded. With steady, unfaltering
step a white-robed figure stepped out from behind the protecting metallic
screen and stood upon the drop. It was August Spies. It was evident
that his hands were firmly bound behind him underneath his snowy shroud.
He walked with a firm, almost stately tread across the platform and
took his stand under the left-hand noose at the corner of the scaffold
farthest from the side at which he had entered. Very pale was the
expressive face, and a solemn, far-away light shone in his blue eyes.
Nothing could be imagined more melancholy, and at the same time dignified,
than the expression which sat upon the face of August Spies at that
moment.
Last came Parsons. His face looked actually handsome, though it was
very pale. When he stepped upon the gallows he turned partially sideways
to the dangling noose and regarded it with a fixed, stony gaze - one
of mingled surprise and curiosity. Then he straightened himself under
the fourth noose, and, as he did so, he turned his big gray eyes upon
the crowd below with such as look of awful reproach and sadness as
could not fail to strike the innermost chord of the hardest heart
there. It was a look never to be forgotten. There was an expression
almost of inspiration on the white, calm face, and the great, stony
eyes seemed to burn into men's hearts and ask: "What have I done?"
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