George N. McLean

Biographies of Spies and the other seven condemned men. Their birthplace, education and private life. Parsons’ letter to the “Daily News” after the explosion, while a fugitive from justice.

AUGUST SPIES.

August Vincent Theodore Spies was born in Landeck, Hesse in 1855. His father was a ranger. Spies came to America in 1872, and to Chicago in 1873, where for a number of years he worked as an upholsterer. He first became interested in socialistic theories in 1875, and two years later joined the socialistic labor party, and the Lehr und Wehr vVerein. He became connected with the Arbeiter Zeitung in 1880. He succeeded Paul Grottkau as editor-in-chief in 1884. From that time onward he was looked up to as one of the ablest and most influential anarchist leaders. He was educated by a private tutor during his early boyhood days. He afterward studied at a Polytechnic institute.

ALBERT PARSONS.

Albert R. Parsons was born in Montgomery, Ala., in 1848. His parents died when he was young, and his rearing fell to the lot of his elder brother, W. R. Parsons, who was a general in the Confederate army. In 1855 he removed to Johnson county, Texas, taking Albert with him. The latter received some schooling at Waco, and subsequently became a printer on the Galveston News. When the war broke out he ran away from home and became a “powder monkey” in a company of confederate artillery. Subsequently he served successively under the command of his brothers, Richard and William H. Parsons. After the war he edited the Spectator, a weekly paper, at Waco. Much to the disgust of his brothers, he became a Republican, and something of a politician. As such he held one or two subordinate federal offices at Austin, and at one time was secretary of the State Senate. Coming to Chicago he worked for a time in various printing offices, and then became a professional labor agitator. He was at one time Master Workman of District Assembly 24, Knights of Labor, and president of the Trades Assembly for three years. In 1879 he was nominated by the Socialistic Labor party as a candidate for their President of the United States, but declined, as he was not then thirty-five years old. In 1883, at PittsburgPittsburgh, he helped to frame the platform of the International Working People’s Association. He was put forward by the socialists as a candidate for city clerk in 1883. He became editor of the Alarm, the organ of the “American group” of anarchists in Chicago in 1884, which position he held up to the time of the Haymarket riot in May 1886, but on the morning following the explosion, A. R. Parsons was not found in his accustomed place as editor of the Alarm. He had decamped, but many believed he was hiding in Chicago, as on the evening of the 7th of May a letter posted in Chicago at 7:30 was received by the editor of the Daily News, which ran thus:

“Mr. M. E. Stone, Editor Daily News:

“DEAR SIR—I want to speak a word through you to my fellow-workers, just to let them know that I am still in the land of the living and looking out for their interests.

“And further, give a few hints to some of the fellows who desire to live on anarchists, that may be for their welfare. In the first place, I am watching the papers and also the knowing chaps who give the pointers as to my whereabouts, some of whom will make good subjects for the coroner’s inquest one of these days should they persist in their present course. To the public I desire to say that the devil is never so black as you can paint him. I will in due time turn up and answer for myself for anything I may have said or done. I have no regrets for past conduct and no pledges for the future if there is to be nothing but blood and death for the toilers of America. Whenever the public decide to use reason and justice in dealing with the producing class, just at that time will you see me. But, should the decision be to continue the present course of death and slavery just so long will I wage relentless war on all organized force, and all endeavor to find me will be fruitless. Watching my wife and her kind friends is of no use. I am dead to them already. I count my life already sacrificed for daring to stand between tyrants and slaves.

“To show you how well I am kept posted, I know who was sent to La Grange for me to-day. I was not there. I know who put you on the track of Glasgow, and just where to find him. Just say to that man for me that his day of reckoning will come soon. I read all the papers to-day, and will see the Times, Inter-Ocean, and Hesing later.

“Now, as to what must be done to satisfy the anarchists is to stop all these demands for blood and show a spirit of reason and a disposition to put down the oppressors of the people, and enforce laws against rich thieves as readily as you do against the poor. Grant every fair demand of labor. Give those poor creatures enough to satisfy their hunger, and I will guarantee a quiet period in which all the great questions of land and wages, and rights can be put in operation without further bloodshed. But if not, I am already sacrificed as a martyr for the cause. I have thousands of brethren who will sell their lives just as dearly as I will mine, and at just as great cost to our enemies.

“I shall wait as long as I think necessary for the public to take warning, and then you decide your own fate.

“It must be LIBERTY for the people or DEATH for CAPITALISTS. I am not choosing more. It is your choice and your last. I love humanity, and therefore die for it. No one can do more. Every drop of my blood shall count an avenger, and woe to America when these are in arms.

“I have not slept, nor shall I sleep until I sleep the sleep of death, or my fellow men are on the road to LIBERTY.”

“A. R. PARSONS.”

SAMUEL FIELDEN.

Samuel Fielden was born in Todmorden, Lancashire, England, in 1847, and spent thirteen years of his boyhood working in a cotton mill. In early manhood he became a Methodist minister and Sunday-school superintendent in his native place. In 1868 he came to New York, worked for a few months in a cotton mill, and in the following year came to Chicago. For the greater portion of the time since he has worked as a laborer. He joined the liberal league in 1880, where he met Spies and Parsons. He became a socialist in 1883, and has spent much time as a traveling agitator of the International Working People’s association.

We feel sure that Samuel Fielden is to-day serving out a life sentence as the result of forming associations through which he was led to mingle with agitators anarchistic, whose teachings were treasonable. Though not endowed by nature with proclivities whose tendencies were toward violence and bloodshed, yet being full of vanity and of a vacillating nature was led to make speeches of an incendiary and revolutionary character which indentifiedidentified him with those responsible for the result of the fatal bomb, and doomed him to a life of unrequited toil and of penal servitude.

ADOLPH FISCHER.

Adolph Fischer, who was about thirty years old, came to this country from Germany when a boy, and learned the printer’s trade with his brother, who was editor of a German weekly at Nashville, Tenn. For several years Fischer was editor and proprietor of the Little Rock (Ark.) Staats Zeitung. This he sold in 1881, after which he worked at his trade in St. Louis and Chicago. After coming to Chicago he became a most rabid anarchist, and often accused Spies and Schwab of being half-hearted, and of not having the courage to express their convictions. He, like Engel, believed they were not radical enough. At one time he, with Engel and Fehling, started De Anarchist, a fire-eating weekly, designed to supplant the Arbeiter Zeitung.

He entered with all his possible energy into the spirit of socialism and anarchy, so much so, that it became his only theme and the source of happiness to him which he fully expressed in his last words upon the gallows, viz: “This is the happiest moment of my life.” If that were the case, what an unendurable life were his, and the prospect of dissolution offered a rest from the self-inflicted torment of continuing to live.

GEORGE ENGEL.

George Engel was born in Cassel, Germany, in 1836. He received a common school education and learned the printer’s trade. He came to America in 1873, and a year later to Chicago, where he became a convert to socialism, and later a rabid anarchist. He founded the famous “Northwest group” in 1883.

He spoke English very imperfectly, and with great difficulty, he manifested no desire to make progress in anything except in anarchy. The sinister expression of his countenance indicated a dogged stubborn and cruel nature, full of malice and hatred which led him to use this latest breath in a “hurrah for anarchy” upon the gallows. Such men behold nothing beautiful in nature, nor anything to admire in well organized society, under the mad misrule of anarchy controlled by such an element, society would soon lapse back to the days of primitive barbarism and superstition.

MICHAEL SCHWAB.

Michael Schwab was born near Mannheim, Germany, in 1853, and was educated in a convent. For several years he worked at the book-binding trade in various cities. He came to America in 1879.

He was a co-adjutor with August Spies in connection with the Arbeiter Zeitung. He was a pronounced socialist, though of a milder type than Spies, Parsons or Fischer. He was vacillating in his nature, and not calculated for a leader, but capable of being led. Had he chosen for his companions loyal and patriotic associates, he doubtless would have become a trusted citizen and a champion of American institutions instead of a propagator of anarchy which cost him the price of his liberty.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Oscar W. Neebe was born in New York city on the 12th day of July in the year 1850. His parents were German, and in order to give their children an education in German they removed from New York to Germany when Oscar was but a child. His boyhood and school days were spent in Hesse Cassel. But at the age of fourteen years he returned to New York and as he expresses himself, was glad to set foot once more upon the land of the free, where all men were equal regardless of color or nationality, for the war had just closed which had stricken the chains and festering fetters from the limbs of the African slave, which meant the unbarring of the dungeon of the mind, giving them the right to acquire an education which before was denied them, and making them heir to the inalienable rights of citizenship. He says “I saw the sun-browned soldiers of the federal army returning from the South where they had fought for liberty and freedom, and learned to love them as brothers when I heard them say: ‘There is now no more slavery.’”

Catching the inspiration of these words of Horace Greely: “Go West young man,” he accordingly came to Chicago at the age of sixteen years, but returned to New York again where he learned the trade of tinsmith and cornice-maker. But New York, with all its fascinations, failed to constitute him contented and happy, and in February, 1877, we find him again in Chicago where he commenced work for the Adams and Westlake Manufacturing Company. He states that he was discharged July 1, for daring to champion the working man, and at times was reduced to poverty and almost starvation because of his avowed proclivities as an agitator.

He had become identified with the socialistic agitators in 1877, and the active part and interest manifested by him in the socialists was largely responsible for his lack of success in obtaining and holding a situation. In 1878 he obtained a situation as salesman for the Riversdale Distillery Company, selling their compressed yeast.

His financial embarrassment threw him largely among the agitators of the Labor party, and in 1886, after the Haymarket riot, he was arrested and tried for murder or for complicity in the conspiracy which led to the massacre for which he received a sentence of fifteen years in the penitentiary.

LOUIS LINGG,

was only twenty-one years old, and was the youngest of the doomed anarchists. He was born in Baden, Germany, in 1864. He secured a common school education in Germany. He left his native country when very young and went to Switzerland where he remained several years. He came to America in 1885, working at the carpenter trade, at the same time availing himself of every opportunity for the development of his anarchistic proclivities, which seemed to be heighthheight of his ambition. He wrote his autobiography after having received the death sentence, which we decline to publish in consequence of its rabid and treasonable type of anarchy, sufficient in itself to prove his complicity in the foul conspiracy. He was one of the most arch plotters of dark and tragic history.