was the one that led to the Haymarket Incident (I am not gonna call it a riot)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Here's one of my "brain cell destroying rants" that I posted about that incident
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/47
a few disagreements about Haymarket and Debs
Posted by hfojvt in General Discussion (1/22-2007 thru 12/14/2010)
Sun May 13th 2007, 12:00 PM
although alot of what I 'know' about it comes from fiction. The book "The American" by the Communist Howard Fast, tells the story of John Peter Altgeld, governor of Illinois, who posthumously pardoned all of the Haymarket 8.
"Just picture the scene, some six thousand striking members of two unions holding an outdoor mass meeting, and within sight of them, scabs leaving a plant. I saw what happened. The McCormick strikers began to move toward the plant. No one urged them; no one harangued them; they stopped listening and moved away toward the gates. Maybe they picked up some rocks; maybe they said things not nice to hear - but before they did anything, the plant police started to fire. My god, it was like a war! The strikers were unarmed, and the police stood like men on a range, pistols at arms length, rifles too, potting, potting away.
They say the plant called for reinforcements - that would take a little time, wouldn't it? But, withing minutes, a patrol wagon filled with police dashed up, and behind them, on the double, came a detail of 200 armed men.
Well, it was a kind of sight one would see in the old country, not here. The workers dropped like men on a battlefield. When they tried to stand fast, the police rushed them and clubbed them apart; when they broke up and ran, the police followed them from the rear. It wasn't nice to see; it wasn't kind; it was a brute thing that made you want to go away and vomit."
It was after that that August Spies, who was speaking at that meeting, rushed back to his printing office and wrote a paper with a headline that said "WORKING MEN TO ARMS! TO ARMS!" and called for the May 5th rally where the bomb was thrown. 8 anarchist leaders, the original Chicago 8 were arrested and sentenced to death. Only 7 of 8 faced the gallows because Louis Lingg was found in his cell with his head blown off by dynamite. It was called suicide, Fast hints that some people say he was murdered. The other 7 were Robert Parsons, August Spies, Michael Schwab, Sam Fielden, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Oscar Neebe.
The near killing blow to the labor movement and the socialist party though, was not so much a red-scare, the Russian Revolution not occuring until 1917, but it was US entry into WWI and the jingoism and repression of anti-war activists, many of whom were labor leaders and leftists, like Eugene Debs and Scott Nearing. Even Baptist minister and seminary professor Walter Rauschenbusch was villified and harrassed for his opposition to the war. It probably did not help that he was a German speaker and a social gospel author. Eugene Debs was sent to jail the final time, not for labor activities, but for speaking against the war. In 1920 he was in a Federal prison, but still ran for President. As Convict 9653, he got 913,693 votes, or 3.41% of those voting. It was the 3rd time he had run as the Socialist candidate. 1912 was the high point as he got 901,551 which was 5.99% of those voting. He got his highest percentages in states like Oklahoma and Idaho and Montana, where he got 16%, 11% and 13% of those voting. Aged and in poor health, he was pardoned by President Harding and died soon after.
With the suppression during the war and the prosperity of the 1920s, the labor movement was hit hard. Another problem was that Gompers and his AFL took the lead, and sold out IMO. No longer did the unions ask for more respect and seek to change the system. Under Gompers, they asked for primarily a bigger slice of the pie - more money and benefits. Thus union workers became an elite of the working class instead of lifting up all of the working class. Workers were divided and conquered.
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