Part One: The Haymarket Affair: The Bomb & the Eight-Hour Workday

Margaret sits down with journalist and podcast host Robert Evans to talk about the anarchists who were hanged in Chicago in the 1860s for fighting for the rights of the working class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
which is a podcast about cool stuff that people did
stuff cool. I suppose this is the very first episode,
which means I should probably tell you what the show is. Okay,
So there's there's bad stuff, right, and fighting against bad
stuff is cool. Cool people fight against bad stuff, so
you should be cool. You should fight against bad stuff.

(00:21):
And every week on this podcast, I bring you a
new story about cool people who did cool stuff, like
fight against bad stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
with me today our first guest is Robert Evans. That's right.
I am the opposite of you, and my podcast is
the opposite of yours, and if we were to ever
make physical contact, it would create a nuclear explosion that

(00:42):
would destroy all life in the universe. That's true. Yes,
So okay. So I'm looking at your your bio and
it says that you're a podcaster, a war correspondent, a novelist,
and you're the proud owner of the world's largest collection
of please bleep this out. Yes, yes, it used to
be long to Jay Leno UM, but I I bested

(01:02):
him um in a fight to the death. UM. And
now an impostor lives his life, and I have taken
over that collection. So really really been a good year
for me. Allegedly, sure, allegedly a good year. Um And
that that voice that you'll hear from time to time,
disembodied and commanding, is Sophie, our producer. Hello. Okay, So

(01:27):
today I'm feeling the spirit for a holiday that has
not happened by the time I'm recording this, but will
have happened by the time you listen to this, which
is is May Day. The worker's right stay everywhere in
the world except the US. Today, we're gonna talk about
where that comes from deciding to start the whole podcast
series off of a bang, which is the best punt
I will ever use on this show and hopefully the
last punt I ever used on the show. We're going

(01:47):
to talk about the bomb that brought us the modern
labor movement. Robert, are you familiar with the Haymarket riot, affair,
massacre or tragedy, depending on whatever people want to call it. Yeah, So,
a bunch of like anarchs and other people who didn't
want there to be an eight hour or wanted there
to be an eight hour work day, we're organizing and
there were some cops, and then someone threw a bomb

(02:09):
and it killed some of those cops, and then the
cops arrested a bunch of anarchists, most of whom probably
didn't have anything to do with the bomb, but a
bunch of them got executed, and then we got an
eight hour work day, right. That's the gist. Uh, That
is the rough strokes. Yes, um, yeah, although we didn't
necessarily get the eight hour worked at the end of it,

(02:29):
not to ruin the end of the episode, but that
is that is yes, And we're gonna be talking about
the cool people and the mostly cool people and the
like cool with caveat people who were busy fighting against
capitalism and for immigrants, and they got very and labor
and they got very not cool murdered by the state
for it. We're also talking about a mystery person who

(02:50):
chucked a bomb at some cops a few days after
cops gunned down striking workers, which is a tale as
old as time, or at least a tale as old
as eight six. Yeah, thanks for laughing at my joke. Um.
It's the story of a fight for the eight hour day, Yeah,
But it's also a story about a huge immigrant subculture

(03:11):
that developed in Chicago and started off believing in the
ballot box and wounded up believing only in revolution, And
how the whole thing came crashing down in a moment,
only to grow into something even bigger later. And it's
a story about people who are put on trial for
their beliefs, not their actions or really even their words.
Well that all just sounds cool. Yeah, thus the show. Okay,

(03:34):
I want to start this with a story from folk
singer Utah Phillips. It's about one of the stars of
this week's episode, Lucy Parsons. One time she was speaking
at a big May Day rally back in the Haymarket
in the middle of the nineteen thirties, during the depression.
She was incredibly old. She was led carefully up to
the rostrum a multitude of people there. She had her
hair tied back in a tight white bon her face

(03:55):
a massive, deeply incised lines, deep set, beady black eyes.
She was image of everybody's great grandmother. She hunched over
that podium hawk like and fixed that multitude with those
beady black eyes and said, what I want is for
every greasy, grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife

(04:15):
or a gun and stationing himself at the doorways of
the rich, shoot or stab them as they come out.
And then Utah, describing it, goes on to say, now
I'm a pacifist by admire her spunk. And this wasn't
the first time that Lucy Parson said anything like this.
The first time I'd been like fifty years earlier, in

(04:35):
the eighteen eighties. And she was remarkably consistent her entire life.
There's a there's a park named after her in Chicago,
and in a little bit we'll talk about how she
reached the conclusions that that she reached. Um, she's more
famous than her dead husband, Albert Parsons, but he gets
to steal the show a bunce today because it's the
story about how he died and he becomes one of

(04:57):
the Haymarket martyrs. And sorry, give me a second. M hm. Yeah,
most of the story is not about stabbing or the
shooting of the rich, and it's not even really at
its core a story about violence and the bombs and

(05:21):
the stuff. They just grabbed the most attention. Um. I
would argue that history teachers know that the good ones
newspapers know it, at least at the time, the newspapers
definitely knew that the bombs and the guns got the
most attention, and as a podcaster, I know it. So
that's why I'm starting with some some stabbing and shooting
of the rich. And this is a it's a personal

(05:42):
story for me, right, I wanted to start the whole
series off with this episode because it's so personal to me.
I have a tattoo on my arm of one of
the martyrs, not not our parsons, but George Engle, who
was a toy shop owner and the oldest of the bunch.
He met his hand calmly after a life live trying
to improve the conditions of his fellow workers. And his
last words were in German it was a hawk the

(06:03):
anarchy or herah for anarchy. And there's a there's a
graveyard in Chicago with a big monument to these folks.
And I've been a few times, like a cry every
time I go. There were really nice people, some of them,
most of them. They were cool people. I'll stop saying
cool every single time people saying they're cool people who
did cool stuff. They did actually mostly mostly cool stuff. Yeah, okay,

(06:28):
so now we get to talk about them Lucy Parsons.
She was born Lucy Ella Gonzalez Waller, or maybe Lucy
Elding Gatherings, or maybe Lucia Carter, It depends on who
you ask. Like, she was remarkably cagy about her history.
She was maybe born enslaved in Texas, or maybe she
was born enslaved in Virginia sometime around eighteen eighteen fifty three,

(06:52):
and she was Black, Mexican and Creek. I am. I
actually kind of feel guilty talking. There's so much work
modern historians I've put it into trying to discern her heritage,
and her whole thing was that she did not want
to talk about her heritage. She said itself at one
point she said, I am not a candidate for office,
and then the public has no right to my past.
But because being who she was would have been fundamentally

(07:14):
illegal if she were if she claimed her black heritage,
she maintained throughout her entire life that she was indigenous
in Mexican and not African, though really no one believed
her then or now. And you know, so it's it's
interesting how she becomes like this very important early figure
in black anarchism, and yet you know, because of the
conditions that she was living in or whatever decisions that

(07:35):
she made that I'm not really in a good place
to judge. She didn't really talk about it much. In
eighteen seventy two, she married a traveling journalist named Albert Parsons,
and for fifteen years they were one of the biggest
power couples in the American left. Yeah, it, she gets
to be powerful after that. But you can probably guess
what happens in fifteen years to Albert. Um big spoiler alert,

(07:59):
that has already happened. Okay, technically I spoiled, but that's true.
He spoiled the whole episode. I was thinking we could
just end it there, but you know, a nice people
got married exactly and their marriage wasn't legal. But I'll
get to that. Uh okay, So then there's Albert, and
we have way more information about Albert because he was

(08:21):
really forthcoming, like this guy wouldn't shut up. Um. Honestly,
by the end of all this, I don't actually like
Albert all that much, not because he's like a bad person,
because he just doesn't shut up. But we have a
lot more information about him because his wife wrote his
biography after he died and So he was one of
ten kids born in Alabama to a shoe factory owner.
And the Parsons family goes really far back, you know

(08:43):
that like meme where it's like if you go to
a famous artist's Wikipedia page, all their parents names are
always in blue because their parents have Wikipedia pages too. Yes, yeah,
that's Albert Parsons, only it's not his parents. It's like
his great great every everyone. There's so many parts from
a long line of people who wanted to function up
for the state. Yeah, well yes, and no, I mean

(09:07):
some of them fought in the Revolutionary War, but it
doesn't necessarily come from a line of there was a state.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, Um, his his family definitely was
Southern slave owners at this point. Um and okay, but
but when he was to his mom died, and then
when he was four or five, is his dad died
And this is going to be a running theme for

(09:28):
all of these people, very early parent deaths. He was
raised by his brother, who was like twenty years older
than a running theme for that century too. Yeah, I
get that impression. A lot of these people, even if
they like they lived a long and happy life and
died at fifty seven, and I'm like, huh, yeah, I'm
hoping to do better than that ancient dogged I mean,

(09:49):
if if if you're a parent and your kids make
it to eighteen, uh, you nailed it in this period
of time. That's really the only no matter how drunk
you were, Like, they don't die before they're legally adults.
You have hit it out of the park in the fifties,
or if you survive long enough to see them grow up.
Oh now, that's that's like, yeah, that's a little bit

(10:11):
of an unreasonable expectation. Okay, Well, so when he's eleven,
he moved to a town that you've probably never heard of,
a town called Waco, Texas. Waco, I mean, of all
of the towns in Texas, it is in my bottom three. Okay,

(10:31):
not not the worst because it's not Lufkin, but bottom three. Well,
I mean, I think it's only famous because Albert Parsons
lived there. Right, That's the only thing that's ever happened
in Waco that in the Confederacy fled there when the
war went bad. Um, a couple of other things, but hey,
Waco beats out Amarillo and Lufkin in my Texas list. Well, no,

(10:58):
it's okay, we're gonna get to the Confederacy in a minute.
Oh yeah, I was worried we wouldn't get to the Confederacy,
I know. So when he's twelve, he goes and he
gets an apprenticeship at his local paper, which is the
job that he takes with him the rest of his
life is that he works on newspapers. His employer was
an upstanding leader of the pro slavery movement whose nickname
was Old Whitey. Then the Civil War broke out, and

(11:22):
so Albert Parsons runs away at thirteen years old, lies
about his age to join the Confederate Army. He fought
in the infantry, then the artillery, then the cavalry, like
he was just dumb, young teen, all in on the
whole Confederacy thing. Fought the entire length of the war.
When the war ended, he was seventeen, and he went

(11:43):
back to Texas. Um, which is, you know, a choice
to have made. Yeah, I wouldn't have made that call, Um,
I I didn't make that call. But yeah, okay, interesting, yeah,
but okay. So over the next two years he has
a change of heart and he becomes this like very

(12:04):
active person fighting for the rights of formally enslaved people.
He starts his own republican newspaper called the Spectator, which, um, oh, wait,
is that the same as the Spectator today? I don't know,
and I kind of doubt it. Yeah, it couldn't be.
I feel like newspapers all have the same name as
each other. There's like four things you could call like

(12:26):
and now, although you were the old ship, we used
to like pick a une like. We don't use those
words anymore, but they used to be all over newspapers. Ah,
the good old days, Martin. I just remember that there's
there's multiple newspapers in this story called the Tribune and
the Times, and so there are being a lot of Spectators.

(12:47):
Makes a lot of sense to me. And so it's
it's during this time that he starts to understand how
capitalism is also a problem, right, because he's seen the
people who are formally enslaved are still just totally screwed over.
And so he crews up with a bunch of black
speakers and they tore around Texas teaching tolerance and acceptance
and and you want to guess how popular that made

(13:10):
him in in eighteen sixties Texas, very a lot of
people were paying attention to him, that's true. Uh, and
everyone he knew stopped speaking to him. He was completely
shut out of society, except occasionally they said things to him,
like they said to him, we're going to lynch you.
And then one of them said, I'm going to shoot

(13:31):
you in the leg. Now, actually they might not have
said that, but they did it. They shot him in
the leg. And then, um, a different time, some people
kicked him down the stairs. So people were including him
in society, but not incredibly politely. And he's still like,
I'm going to be this upstanding guy. So he gets
himself elected secretary of the state Senate. He becomes a

(13:52):
tax collector. He's basically had every terrible job like state senator,
tax collector, collector, confess Britts soldier. Yeah. Yeah, though he's
an interesting guy to start with. And then he uh,
and then he serves as an officer in the state militia,
specifically to try and protect black citizens against white harassment. Um.

(14:16):
But then he married Lucy and they their marriage was
not legally recognized because white people weren't allowed to marry
black people in Texas at that time because of anti
MISSI I hate this word so much. Yeah, anti missigenation laws.
I mean, I'm sure were they allowed to marry anywhere
in the US at this point There must have been

(14:36):
some places. So when they moved to Illinois, their marriage
is not legal until the next year. Okay, well that's
something in seventy four, and Texas didn't repeal their laws
until nineteen sixty seven with the Supreme Court made everyone
do it. Hey, it's the same thing with their sodomy laws,
except two thousand three. Well, do you want to guess

(14:58):
what year Alabama finally, the place that Parsons was born,
finally got their ship together and got rid of those laws. Oh,
have they done it yet? The year two thousand. The
year two thousand they held on thirty three years after
they made it out of the twentieth century. Yeah, um,

(15:19):
you know what was By the way, this is random,
but do you remember that period of time after the
year two thousand, but before two thousand one, when a
bunch of very frustrating people were like, well, actually it's
not the twenty first century until two thousand one. That's
the millennium hasn't changed. You remember that being like a
thing that actually played into how I wrote this script
because I most wrote a thing about they made it
into the next millennia. And then I was like, pattants.

(15:42):
I don't want to deal with pattans. I fuck them.
You're wrong, you're wrong. Yeah, I don't care about the
Pluto discourse. Who gives a ship what a planet is?
But like the year two thousand, that's when the millennium changed,
I'm not going to hear anything else about it. The
numbers rolled over. Yeah, you can yell at us on Twitter,
but I will not hear you. Yeah. And so so
even though the it was eventually legally recognized, they were

(16:04):
not socially accepted for for who they were. Right, they
dealt with a lot of ship when they moved to Chicago.
I'm going to guess the year they make it legal
in Illinois is still not the year in which everyone's
fine with it. Yeah, that's yeah, totally um okay. So
in Chicago they find their new cause, um, which they
devote the rest of their lives too, which is labor rights.

(16:25):
And m Albert didn't have as long left to devote
to the rest of the rest of his life to it,
but Lucy got to do it for a long time,
and and I want to bring this back to that
opening quote about by Lucy Parsons about stabbing and shooting
rich people, But this time I'm going to say the
whole thing. Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with
a revolver or knife and lay in wait on the

(16:46):
steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or
shoot their owners as they come out. Let us kill
them without mercy. Let it be a war of extermination
and without pity. Let us devastate the avenues where the
wealthy live, as General Sheridan devastated the beautiful valley of
the and andoah mhm. Because I think this context matters, right.
She was born enslaved, and she saw with her own

(17:07):
eyes that the only way to end slavery was to
run the rivers red with the blood of the people
who thought that owning people was like cool and good. Yeah,
And so this is my opinion, probably a huge part
of how she ended up with this, uh, this framework
that the rich we're not going to give up their
hoarded wealth, um at least without at least the threat
of violence, which is something that hasn't been borne out

(17:30):
by history. So I feel like probably can ignore more
or less what she was saying. Yeah, totally, Yeah, and
that is really important context that, like, because it also
makes the point she's she's looking at like these masses
of like starving and desperate people in this tiny number
of people who have hoarded the resources, and she's saying, well,
this is a system of aequality, just like the system

(17:53):
of an equality that I was raised in. And the
thing that had to end the Confederacy was violence on
a to riff scale, and perhaps that's the only way
to end this system as well. Yeah, yeah, have alter logic. Yeah,
and that logic plays through the whole thing that we're
going to be talking about. Um. And so now let's

(18:17):
give you background on Chicago. Everyone's favorite city. I don't
know if it's anyone's favorite. Actually, it's probably a lot
of people's favorite today. In the eighteen and fifties and sixties,
Chicago is a boomtown and it was mostly German and
Irish immigrant labor. Like it grew from four thousand people
to nine people over twenty years. Yeah, Basically, since all
of the trains coming from the West went through Chicago,

(18:39):
it became a hub where all of the raw materials
that were extracted from the colonial project to the United
States that we're extracted out from the West turned into
goods that could be sent east, right, And so at
first it's like there's some decently high wages in this
particular boomtown, kind of in that way. Have you ever
been to like one of those oil boom towns that are, yeah,

(19:01):
where everything costs a ton of money because everyone who
works there is getting a ton of money. Everybody lives
in trailers. Yeah, it's in Wyoming, Um, yes, yeah. So
that's Chicago, and there's a shanty town that's spreading out
from the city center. I love a good shanty town.
And I want to tell you about the opening salvo
in Chicago labor struggle or class war, whatever you want

(19:24):
to call it, which happened at eight None of our
characters are really on the scene yet, but it's still uh,
it's it's too cool to not include it. And it's
the the logger beer riot, like lagger, not like loggers
who cut down trees. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Like
he takes a whiskey drink, He takes a logger drink.
That that kind of logger, Yeah, exactly exactly have you

(19:45):
heard of this? This political party that was rolling around
at this time called the know Nothings. Yeah, they're basically
kind of it to sort of flatten them in a
way that makes them sensible to kind of modern sensibilities.
They were broadly like the Tea Party of its time. Yeah,
I think that's that's pretty accurate, especially if the Tea

(20:05):
Party started as a secret society, which the Tea Party
might have. Yeah, again, like anytime you're kind of being
like this thing from a hundred years ago, it was
like this thing now, like you're you're losing because there
was also weird specific political grievances that aren't really a
part of modern politics that were important to them. But
like totally they were kind of Tea Party esque for
the time. That's how like people like us back then

(20:26):
would have looked at them. Yeah, totally. Yeah, they got
their name. It took me a while to find out
where they got their name from. It's because it was
a secret society. It's basically like if they were asked
if they were part of this, they're supposed to say,
I know nothing. Um, that's actually kind of based like
not the politics. But like that's a neat like if
you were writing a fictional secret society that would be

(20:47):
like fun that people would enjoy. That. Yeah, totally. But
it also becomes a fitting name for them because I mean,
I don't think that they're very um, that they've made
intelligent choices with their life. Uh, they're anti immigrant. They
specifically hate the Catholic and the Irish, and they're their nativists,
which was a big thing back then, which basically means
they like white Americans who were born in America and

(21:09):
basically nobody else. And they also hated drinking, and well,
these guys are not winning me over, I'm gonna be
honest with you. So they came for the the Irish
and the German immigrants. They worked six days a week,
like fourteen twelve to fourteen hour days, and then on

(21:31):
Sunday is their only day off. So they all go
to the bar and drink and and hang out. And
so what they do is they say, oh, you're not
allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays, um, And it's just
specifically to piss these people off. I'm sure they clouded
it and like it's the Holy Day and this and that,
but it was entirely just because they hated the immigrants.
And so there was this massive civil disobedience where two

(21:55):
people got arrested for alcohol sales. Jesus Christ. Yeah, and
uh and they're like, because I mean they're you know,
like they're this, I'm gonna keep drinking anyway. Um. And
so then on the day of the trial, thousands of
Germans marched downtown and they have like fife and drum
and ship and the cops freak out. And at the

(22:17):
time in Chicago, the river had swing bridges instead of
lift bridges, so the bridges would like swing open like
a door kind of, And so the cops swung them
open while everyone was still on them and then just
opened fire into the crowd. Jesus Christ. Only one person
ended up killed, who apparently for the shitty guns of
that time, I know. Um, and he shot back. The

(22:40):
guy who got killed, he injured a cop. Well that's
good for him. Yeah. And they had like loaded cannons
and stuff ready for all of this. Um. And And
part of the reason I bring this up is because
it's like, this is something that I feel like people
need to understand when we're talk about nineteenth century movements,
is that like, like the cops are just totally ready
to open fire on huge crowds of people open fire

(23:01):
with like artillery, Like when we say cannons, what they're
what they're preparing is a big metal tube that they
fill with shrapnel and gunpowder. It's called grape shot. They're
making like a giant shotgun the size of a car
and and readying to fire that into a crowd of
human beings. That's that's crowd control, um. And so that's

(23:26):
that's the that's the opening salvo in all of this.
And then in one the entire city of Chicago burns down.
Well that was that was really nobody's fault, like right,
every like that is one of those things back in
the days, Chicago just burned down sometimes you know, not
that anyone can do about it. You just every now
and then you're gonna lose a Chicago were too. Yeah,
totally um. And this just sends everything into recession the

(23:49):
or actually not sends everything into recession. They're starting to rebuild,
and then there's a great depression that was called the
Great Depression until we got another one in the twentieth century.
And basically do with a thing. Sometimes I'm about like
that's that style of thing where like there's this moment
in history. That's super well known today, but there was
another very similar moment that went by the same name

(24:10):
until the bigger thing happened. Because the same time I'm
reading about the potato famine in Ireland right now, there
was that killed like nearly a million people. That was
like a generation or so before it that they called
the Great Famine, But then there wasn't even bigger famine,
and so nobody remembers the first famine. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
And which is why, Sophie, if it's all right, I'd

(24:32):
really like us to be sponsored by potatoes. Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean that would be our preferred sponsor forever. But
we have a lot of unfortunate ads from the potato blight,
which we are working to stop, but it is it
is really hard to get them removed, probably due to
their financial partnership with the Washington State Highway Patrol. I'm

(24:53):
definitely pro potato. And here's some ads. So in the
middle of the worst depression in the US history, while
Chicago has just burned down, that's when Lucy and Albert
decided to move to Chicago. And normally that would sound
like a bad deal, but they were coming from the
place where everyone was trying to murder them. So also,

(25:16):
I feel like rents pretty cheap when the whole city
just burned down. There's not a lot of buildings though, Yeah,
but like you could probably camp pretty cheap. Yeah, that's true,
low cost of living. Yeah, And so they moved there,
Albert finds work as a type setter, and it's pretty

(25:37):
quickly they start calling themselves socialists. Um, that's nice of them,
and words like socialism and anarchism get thrown around an
awful lot, including in this particular episode. So I'm gonna
I'm gonna, like really quickly try and say what I
mean by by those things, because everyone's going to use
those words really differently. Yes, Socialism in this case is
like the it's the broader social movement towards worker or

(26:00):
society at large owning the means of production, which is
to say, rather than having a business owner who owns
a factory in hiring the workers, the workers themselves or
society would own the factory. And it basically the difference
between the value produced by the worker and the amount
that the owner sells the product for is the owner's profit.
And so basically they're saying this is theft. This is

(26:20):
like the sort of market stealing it from the people
doing the thing. It's it's this. There's this very frustrating
discourse around anarchism that that hit on Twitter a week
or two ago, where people are like, well, how would
you have in an ericis society? How would you handle
you know, the widespread production of food or the manufacturing
of goods, Like you can't do that with like just
like you and your friends hanging out in an affinity group.

(26:42):
And it's like, well, actually, anarchists have been talking about
this for like a hundred and seventy years and a
number of different and those solutions have been acted on
in places like revolutionary Spain and whatnot, um and and
parts of Korea, and in some cases have have seen
substantial successes. For periods of time, this has all been discussed. Yeah,
it's just about who owns the means of production and

(27:02):
like how decisions are. It's not it's not saying we
don't have factories. It's saying like, perhaps we don't need
the factories to be owned by giant multinational conglomerates that
are able to, for example, build waste disposal plants that
pump poison into the Gulf of Mexico, and because they
lobby the politicians in that area, the people who actually
live there aren't able to complain in any meaningful way,

(27:24):
and several of them get exploded because the natural gas
pipelines run by that company and athy area leak coals,
which since explosive gas up into trailer parks. Perhaps we
don't need that and we could still have ways of
distributing fuel. I don't know, that sounds crazy. You probably
need that distribute fuel. You get out of here with
my radical politics, um and so so socialists in this

(27:46):
case is like the broader word for for what is,
what the goal is, and how people are trying to
actually create. That is kind of unrelated UM so so. Anarchism,
which will come up more soon as our characters more
and more anarchists, is the idea that we can have
a society without state or capitalism, without course of hierarchies.

(28:08):
And lots of different people conceive of this in very
different ways, but in general, the people that we're talking
about today, UM, like my like myself, want to a
socialist society that is also anarchist. And yeah, I mean
a lot of these people would say they were like
working towards communism, which meant a different thing. Like now
you get a lot of fights between anarchists and communists
because communism has become so like tied in with the

(28:30):
ideas of state communism that we saw with like the
uss are. But like back in this day, a lot
of these people would have been happy to just call
themselves communists totally. And like these people like go to
their grave being like, I died for socialism, and then
they're like, yeah, but they're not, like and so unfortunately
so so now sometimes whatever, people get into arguments about
who does and doesn't count for this and that, But

(28:53):
that seems like a decent starting place for where these
people are at. And then in eighteen seventy seven there's
this big funk off railway strike, which at some point
I love to do an episode all about because it
covers the entire country, and by the entire country, I
mean the entire country at the time where people actually
or whatever. It covers like the mid Atlantic, in the
Midwest and all those things. It starts in West Virginia

(29:13):
and Maryland when workers got their third pay cut in
a year, and we're like, funk this, and they went
on strike. It's spread across most of the country. Railways
shut down everywhere, people are riding everywhere. And in Chicago
people went hard as fuck. Uh, and they had all
these banners like life by work or death by fight.
One speaker said, better a thousand of us shot dead

(29:33):
in the streets than ten thousand dead of starvation, because
I mean people were starving, right. This isn't like just
you know, minors. They don't just like want to be
able to afford a new xbox, like they're they're trying
to like not die. People don't deserve nice things too.
But the situation was a lot was quite dire, Yeah, totally.

(29:56):
And so in Chicago the shot dead industries thing was
a little bit prescient. Actually wasn't a lot of cities,
um because after three days of striking, the police in
the military as well as hundreds of deputized civilians of
the middle and upper classes attacked and shot into the crowd,
and in the end they killed thirty workers and like
ten cops were injured. Jesus, And like everywhere else in

(30:18):
the country, the words to the ten cops injured that
that seems like not quite enough. But yeah, you know, yeah,
well well stick with me. Um good, Well no, because
I know where the story goes. I guess it's not
really good either way. Yeah, that is the thing, Like,

(30:38):
it's hard not to cheer on retribute to violence when
like terrible things are being done by people and violence
is visited upon the people doing the terrible things, but
it generally doesn't resolve itself neatly, right, that is absolutely
that is absolutely true. And so the media attacked the
strikers as well, and they basically, of course called for
their extermination, like they used the word extermination this is

(30:59):
ten years or Lucy Parsons used that, like we should
exterminate the rich. And I feel like that that cause
and effect matters, you know, um and uh, I don't know. Basically,
people are trying everything they could think of to get
better conditions, and they were basically just told you should
all be killed. And during all of this, that's also

(31:21):
important because yeah, she didn't, she didn't just like start
at like, well, the only solution is violence. A bunch
of powerful people and influential people were like, the only
solution is violence against you, and she was like okay, yeah,
exactly exactly, all right then, yeah, um, and even during
all of this until this. Basically Albert and Lucy are

(31:42):
both like pretty moderate in their socialism. Like Albert gave
some speeches that's this whole thing at this point, but
he like advocated restraint and that people should avoid sabotage
and that everyone should go vote in the upcoming elections
to make everything better. Um yea. And his his moderate
position got him fired from the Chicago Time where he worked,
and so suddenly he was completely without a job. Um

(32:03):
because and I'm guessing because the Chicago Times thought he
was too extreme, yes, yes, too extreme. Yeah, And at
this point Lucy opens up a dress shop. Yeah, he
gets canceled, and so Lucy Parsons opens up a dress
shop and is supporting her husband and her two kids
at the point, and this kind of rex socialism in

(32:25):
Chicago and the like, especially like party socialism, the kind
of like let's all go vote socialism. They actually tried
to go more and more moderate, not Lucy and Albert,
but like the largest socialist parties, they tried to go
more and more moderate to bring in new members. But
it had literally the opposite effect, and everyone became more
and more radical, and in eight three they all joined

(32:49):
a new anarchist organization called the i w p A
the International Working People's Association, which is a dead boring name, yes,
but name at least is the Working People's Association instead
of the Working Men's Association, which I feel like it's
saying that is pretty that is it actually pretty pretty based.

(33:09):
It was somewhere between a federation and a loose network.
There was no party, there's no membership organization. Different collectives
or which were called clusters, joined just by endorsing a
manifesto that some of them had written in Pittsburgh called
can you guess the really original name of the manifesto
that they wrote in Pittsburgh Working people Association Manifesto close
It was the Pittsburgh Manifesto. Um, yeah, day of Pittsburgh

(33:35):
Manifesto would be all about I don't know, what's the
Pittsburgh sandwiches with a lot of meat in them. Well,
that's that's the seventh point that they considered in the
six point manifesto that they settled on. I think it's
because some people from out of town were there. More
roast beef white a roast beef, that's right, Pittsburgh. Now
I'm just actually wondering how many of these people back

(33:56):
then were actually vegetarian, because there's this whole weird overlap
between the left vegetarianism that goes back hundreds of years.
But we'll talk about that some other time. Okay, So
the six points of this of their program that you
have to agree to in order to join. First, destruction
of the existing class rule by all means, i e.
By energetic, relentless revolutionary and international action on that sounds good. Second,

(34:20):
establishment of a free society based on cooperative organization of production. Yeah,
that would be nice. Third, free exchange of equivalent products
by and between productive organizations without commerce and profit mongery. Sure.
Fourth organization of education on a secular, scientific, and equal
basis for both sexes also sounds fine. Like the both

(34:42):
sexes part. These folks are really really really hit and
hard on that on that part. Fifth, equal rights for
all without distinction to sex or race. Dope, very good.
Sixth regulation of all public affairs by free contacts between
autonomous independent communes and a SoC seations resting on a
federalistic basis. That sounds pretty nice. It would be good

(35:06):
to have that. Yeah, Like I look at this and
I'm like Okay, that's good. Yeah, I mean I don't
I don't particularly disagree with anything there. Yeah, I might
have some additional questions about how to handle the exchange
of goods without commerce thing, because that that's that's a
that's a complicated matter. But I know, I feel like
they've meant something pretty specific there that I just don't

(35:27):
know what is. Yeah, I think there's a number of
ways you could try to do that. You know, there's
like you get your mutualists and your whatnots. But but
I don't know. I'm not a I'm not an economy expert,
but broadly speaking, I don't disagree with any of that.
That all seems like good stuff to to strive for
in a society. And they grew really rapidly, especially in Chicago,
but all over the country, and as the Socialist Party

(35:50):
and especially the sort of more moderate socialists kind of diminished,
Basically everyone's like, oh, no, this sounds Good's hard to
be moderate when they've just shot thirty of you in
the street. Ah, yeah, that makes me not very moderate. Um.
The American branch, because this actually was an international organization,
the American branch was mostly European immigrants. Their newspapers were

(36:12):
like five of the seven newspapers or something, I don't know,
some number. A lot of them were in German, but
then there were other ones, other newspapers in Czech, English
and Norwegian. And they took their inclusive policies really seriously.
At one point a socialist organization wanted to merge with them,
but the anarchists were like, you all exclude Chinese folks
from your organization, and so they refused. And in one

(36:35):
of the papers, the i w p A said, the
i w p A would never feel that it's ranks
were complete if it excluded working people of any nationality whatsoever.
And they went on to say that the socialist organization
was basically serving as tools of the capitalists by letting
racism divide the working class. They kind of ruled, and
all of the different clusters had total autonomy. The Chicago

(36:58):
cluster was really excited it about building a mass movement
through union organizing. Some of the other clusters were more
into like autonomous and individual action UM. In Chicago, each
meeting elected a chairman to facilitate and they rotated it.
The recording secretary and treasurer rotated and but they were

(37:19):
a subculture also, right, and that doesn't get talked about enough.
I I really like subcultures. That's why I'm always pointing
out when this thing's happened in history. But they hung
out in the Chicago beer halls, and that's basically where
they did all of their propagandizing. And to talk about
their subculture, I'm gonna quote the historian Paul Average in
his book The Haymarket Tragedy. Beyond their publishing ventures, the

(37:40):
anarchists engaged in a broad range of cultural and social
activities which enhanced their feelings of solidarity and greatly enriched
their lives. In a relatively short period. They created a
network of orchestras, choirs, theatrical groups, debating clubs, literary societies,
and gymnastic and shooting clubs involving thousands of participants. They
organized lectures, con sort of picnics, dances, plays and recitations

(38:03):
in which children as well as adults took part. Saloons
and beer gardens became bustling centers of radical life. The
International moreover, engaged in mutual aid services, providing assistance to
members and their families and times of need. Badass, I
know and like the thing that I really like about
it is that it's like these were all really poor

(38:23):
people who were like working six days weeks, twelve hour days,
and they they managed to have fulfilling, rich cultural lives.
They had masquerade balls and ship they had shooting contests, um,
and the some of the plays were written by participants.
They wrote like new words to popular songs, and they
basically were like completely punk and I really like them. Yeah.

(38:45):
And they were doing some remix art. Yeah. I mean
everything you've described sounds so like like high end and
and expensive for lack of a better word, so it
just makes it even cooler. Yeah. And they just did
it by actually all just doing it together collected, you know,

(39:06):
teamwork makes the dream work. Yeah. And they would have
these um they would have huge celebrations of the Paris
Commune every every year on the anniversary of the Paris Commune,
which was basically when the city of Paris like stole
itself back from its government for a while. And then
they had protests, and the protests were even more popular
than everything else, and they regularly drew thousands of workers
to march to the streets and their banners were things

(39:28):
like millions labor for the benefit of the few. We
want to labor for ourselves. They would have multiple brass bands,
they had fucking floats, They had carriages drawn by mules
with like allegorical displays like Uncle Sam driving around like
a policeman because he serves the policemen. And the speakers
like kept hitting the same points about including equal participation

(39:50):
by women in the labor movement. And their newspapers were
not just they were like there was like muck raking about,
like this is what the cops are doing. That's bad
and stuff, but they also included like philosophy and translations
of literature from other languages, and there was like fiction
and poetry. And again it's this idea that these like
like some of the people writing this poetry, which I'm
sure some of it was terrible, but whatever was like

(40:12):
written by workers who had never considered literary things before. Um,
and so just I don't know a whole other way
to raise people out of poverty, it seems like. And
you'll be shocked to know their hatred of government and
capitalism was completely mutual. Uh. The media spent a lot
of time villainizing them, and in particular the same as
the anarchist focused on the Paris Commune. So did the media.

(40:34):
Basically it was like, oh you'll like this. They were like,
don't let it happen here, because God forbid people self
organized and rule themselves. If they did, we'd have total anarchy.
Mm hmm um. Oh yeah that that I mean, it

(40:54):
makes sense like they of course they're scared of that,
but you know what, they're not scared of products and services. No,
of course not. Mainstream society was not scared of goods
and services, including the ones that support this podcast. Here's
the ads. Okay, we're back and we are all excited

(41:21):
to talk about people with a bunch of guns and
cool outfits. We're going to talk about the people whose
name I don't know how to pronounce because I cannot
speak German and every time I try to learn, it
goes in one part of my brain and out of
the other. I speak fluent German. I'll figure it out, Okay,
Lear and vir Varian, Yeah, yeah, you get it right. Okay.
The learon ver Verin were a group that we kind

(41:43):
of can't leave out because the labor organizers were organizing
themselves into armed formations ready for community defense or revolution.
Both defensive and offensive action, and at least two of
the labor unions, the metal workers and the Carpenters, had
armed sections that met regularly for drill and instructions and
armed conflked and the American group of the i w
p A had a similar auxiliary, but none of them

(42:05):
could compete in numbers or sheer coolness with the Laron
ver Verin, which was the Education and Defense Association. Because
these are very literal namers here, especially the Germans. It
was a leftist militia movement in response to the right
wing militias that have been forming and in response to
all the strikers getting murdered. And this is how we

(42:26):
get the first real challenges to the at least some
of the first challenges the Second Amendment and gun control
in the United States that that inspires people to want
gun control. Yeah, the state freaked out and banned all
the non official militias and the open carry of rifles.
Lear and Vir fought it to the Supreme Court and
they lost, basically paving the way for states rights to

(42:46):
restrict firearms ownership and militia formations. But that's an exciting
piece of history. UM no comment and so they would
march in anarchist parades, and different historians will describe their
outfits differently, but all of them sound really good. And
I'm going to pick the blue blouses and black pants

(43:07):
and cult revolvers. When the laws wouldn't allow rifles, there
were and they would like march in formation alongside the parades.
There's four companies of them. They had somewhere between four
hundred and three thousand members because I didn't keep really
good membership records for very good reasons. Yeah, And they

(43:27):
drilled weekly and then monthly, all of the companies came
together and drilled. And then also when they had the
anarchist picnics, they'd have these like mock battles where they'd
run around in practice fighting at the picnics. It just
sounds and basically this is like they raised a ton
of money from people who have had no money in
order to buy guns for everyone. During one six month period,

(43:51):
and anarchist quartermaster raised one thousand, two fifty five dollars
for new weapons, which is thirty seven thousand dollars today.
I mean that probably went further than thirty seven thousand
dollars for new weapons would go today. I assume, but
I don't know. I mean, they probably all weren't trying
to get the like two thousand dollar a r s.
You know, this is a real sure, that's still like

(44:15):
eighty weapons. I mean there was you know, probably three
thousand of them. Okay, okay, I see what you can
see what you're going with this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
just assuming it went further than it would today, because again,
that's about like eighty nine guns, you know, more if
you're doing some of your own milling and ship like,
they were all budget workers. So yeah, basically they were

(44:36):
community defense organizations and they perceived the revolution as completely
inevitable also, and they wanted to be ready. They they
thought capitalism was about to collapse under its own weight.
How could it not with all the stuff they were
seeing they were in. I mean, after all, they were
like everybody thinks that and it's never right. Well, but
hear me out. They were in a major depression about
ten years after another major depression. I so, but yeah,

(45:05):
capitalism didn't collapse this time that time, but it will
just now I probably won't collapse this time either. Yeah.
It's it's it's pretty it's pretty durable. It can take
the punches. Look, you've got to give capitalism credit. It's
it's a prize fighter. I feel, take the hits. It
rides away, you know, it could take the hit. But
it's especially good at like dodging, you know. Yeah, it's
just like blobs around your fist and then raises your

(45:29):
rent thirteen times in seventeen months anyway, exactly, Okay, which
brings us quite naturally to the fight for the eight
hour work day, which is you know, promised at the
top of the hour. The fight for the eight hour
work day is what all this is about. But it's
also not what all this is about. But it was
this thing that was happening at the time, and it
was coming to a head around this time. Basically, people

(45:53):
didn't like working from sun up to sundown or sometimes
fourteen hour days regardless of whether or not the sun
was up. And really, but that's ten a whole hours
for them to, you know, have families in sleep. I know,
I feel like that's just greedy. I think. So they're
pretty much stealing from the bosses. Yeah, I mean we don't.
We don't. We don't give our workers that much free time. Yeah,

(46:15):
I didn't spend I didn't. I wasn't up till three
in the morning last night working on this. Um, I
don't know what you're talking about. Okay. So, in city
after city, in trade after trade, basically all of these
people started fighting for Originally, they weren't even fighting for
the eight hour work day. They were fighting for the
like ten hour work day, you know, or even just
please not fourteen hours or whatever. Yea, what if we

(46:38):
had two days for the weekend. And so they had
a whole bunch of strikes all throughout the nineteenth century,
and some of them were one some of them were lost. It.
It went on like that for over a hundred years.
Every every few years, some trade in another city would
or other country would would win the ten hour day
or the eight hour day, and but sometimes they would

(46:59):
win in legislate and it wouldn't do anything. Chicago actually
won the eight hour work day in the eighteen sixties,
but they didn't they want it in legislation, but it
was so full of loopholes that it was never enforced,
and so kind of ironically or maybe fittingly, a ton
of the strikers and socialists and even some of the
anarchists were on some level just actually fighting for the

(47:20):
law to be applied evenly across classes, UM, which obviously
they won because that happens now the law is definitely
applied evenly across classes. I think. I hope it's not spoiler,
it's not okay. So four members of the labor movement

(47:41):
from across the country met in Chicago, which was kind
of the center of a lot of the labor movement stuff,
and they declared two years later May one six they
were going to enforce the eight hour day through strikes
and walkouts just nationwide, all industries, UM. Which I feel
like it's like worth noting that they gave themselves two
years in order to plan a general strike. Yep, that's

(48:05):
probably worth noting the statement of like a really single, singular,
specific goal. I also really like the idea of like
this is a thing we've decided we're getting, and then
we're going to enforce the fact that we're getting that
using that kind of language that the state uses in US,
that like people are very familiar with, as opposed to
kind of the we're agitating for change or we're trying

(48:27):
to like bring electoral change. No, no, no, we are
in the same way that the state enforces things, you know,
through its police. We are enforcing that we get this
eight hour work day through our action. We're organizing to
do that. I think that's a really smart way of
like framing it. Yeah. Yeah, they weren't sucking around. And
even the even like the moderates and the you know,
the less radical among the labor movement, they still knew

(48:49):
what was at stake. Um at the beginning, the Chicago
anarchists were opposed to the eight hour struggle, not because
they were opposed to better conditions for workers, but they
were basically baby ups. What's a baby step? We need
to all seize control the workplaces in our cities and
have a revolution. Um, it's it's that it's that old.
I mean, it wasn't an old argument then that it
is now we still have that like why would you Yeah, anyway,

(49:12):
we don't need to get into that. Yeah, although I
will say it is an argument that people have not
ever resolved though. But but actually I find it interesting
the way they came around to it, which is, on
some level they realized which way the wind was blowing
and maybe that was cynical, and they were like, Okay,
well we better join up with everyone else. But I
kind of think that, like maybe they took some of

(49:33):
their own lessons to heart, because they don't want to
tell other people what to do, and they don't want
to have like a revolutionary vanguard that tells everyone what
they should want. And what people wanted was to fight
for the eight hour work day, and so instead, by
six the Chicago anarchists were all in, and they were
really really good organizers and propagandists and shooting soon. Chicago
is the center of all this struggle. And there's a

(49:54):
quote from another anarchist, Italian anarchist Mala Testa. He wrote
in an essay called reformism that I feel like applies here,
which is we will take or win all possible reforms
with the same spirit that one tears occupied territory from
the enemy's grasp in order to keep on advancing. That's
how I've always seen reformism personally. Honestly, it's like, well,

(50:16):
of course we should get that. It's a good thing,
we should get it. I feel fine about this. So
far nothing well yeah, and so so then they strike
and they win, and everything has been happily ever after,
and slowly we've all adopted the six point platform, and
we live in utopian society which has no inner conflict. Yeah,

(50:36):
that's how it happened. Huh. Yeah, I was wondering why
things were still perfect. Yeah yeah, okay, so uh but
during this build up, Okay, it's important to note the
anarchists weren't alone and thinking there's about to be a revolution.
General Sherman of the U. S. Army wrote, there will
soon come in armed contest between capital and labor. They
will oppose each other, not with words and arguments and ballots,

(50:57):
but with shot and shell, gunpowder and cannon. The better
classes are tired of the insane howlings of the lower strata,
and they mean to stop. Oh, buddy, Sherman. Sherman. Sherman Sherman. Uh.
Problematic faith, not even really a faith, as he competed
my marriage. I mean, he was actually critical to the

(51:19):
invention of concentration camp as a concept because of the
things that he did do Indigenous Americans. It's like it's
like you've got this artist who releases a great album
and then it turns out they were like doing some
sort of horrible crimes too, and it's like, I really
liked it when you were burning large chunks of Confederacy.
But I can't back the rest of your career. Yeah,

(51:42):
it's like with William Henry Harrison, totally supportive of his presidency,
the only really perfect presidency anyone's had. Now, the stuff
he did before that I won't defend. But as a
while he was president flawless, I do not know enough
to come in. Unfortunately, he died thirty days into his
that was him. Okay, he's the one who died. To me,

(52:02):
he didn't get a chance to do anything bad. Yeah,
great precedents, no notes, um Okay. So so during this
build up towards eight six, basically all of America is
like this is also completely unfamiliar to the modern audience.
All of America is like, are we about to have
another civil war? Like? What's about to happen? That is

(52:24):
one of the things that comforts me sometimes is that
we've been asked, we've asked that question pretty regularly, and
we've only occasionally had civil wars. Yeah, that's true. Both
the press and the clergy are basically working really hard
to smear anarchists and spread fear. Uh. They were all
painted as as aliens and mad men, and they're trying
to destroy America's prosperity and freedom, and it it kind

(52:46):
of worked in public opinion started turking, turning against them
as the incarnation of evil, and then the anarchists, for
their part, started saying the same thing back about capitalists
and cops, calling capitalists leeches and cops blood, which is
basically like calling them pigs. And so both both sides
are working to the animal others. Yeah, which Bill brings

(53:09):
it to a head and spring, and the stage was
set for tragedy. On May one, a ton of owners
and a ton of industries across the country actually capitulated
without a strike and granted the eight or nine hour
day to their employees. A ton more did not. Well,
that's not not um So something like three forty thousand

(53:32):
people went on strike on May one, which is impressed.
There were only like three d and fifty thousand people
in the country at this exactly, so there's ten thousand
people not on strike and they're all cops probably, And
in Chicago alone, forty thou people walk off the job,
which is like half the population of Chicago something. It's

(53:53):
not actually half, I'm being hyperbolic, but it's a lot.
It's it's a it's a lot of significant chunk of
the people who did not burn to death in the fire.
And then another forty thou the other half practically joined
um joined them in a march of eighty thousand people
in Chicago. And so this is the first May Day
labor march in history. And it's now are the people
who work with the companies that yielded are they going

(54:15):
on strike as part of the general strike or are
they like not, I'm not certain. I I kind of
my general impression is that probably the workers who yielded
might have been, like, it's Saturday, and I don't know,
we're about to have a war. Let's go code, you
go to your parade. That's my like my gut feeling,
but I don't actually know, okay. And then like in

(54:36):
all the history books, they're always at least the ones
I read, they're like, and it was lad at the
front by Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons and their two kids.
And I kind of want to like point this out
because I'm like, they were probably near the front or
maybe at the front, but it's not like this was
Lucy and Albert Parsons who who did this you know. Um,
they they if they let it, they were not alone

(54:56):
in it. They but they might have been at the front.
And it's also a really nice image to have them
at the front. Um. There are two kids, Um, they're
like I don't remember, they're like seven or something at
this point, one of them, the older one is And
during this big, happy march, you'll be shocked to know
it all happened under the watchful gaze of police, private
security and deputized civilian snipers perched on rooftops all along

(55:20):
the route. Another thing that hasn't happened again deputized civilian
snipers I know. And then this also will totally surprise you.
Out of sight militia waited with gatling guns with gatling guns. Um.
So this all feels pretty familiar to me. But this
all feels like a thing that's happened repeated but nothing

(55:42):
bad happened. And then the next day, but also is
something that's happened before. And then the next day Sunday,
nothing bad happened. There wasn't a strike on Sunday because
they didn't have to, um, because it's but everyone Hateshi Monday,
am I right? Yeah? Worst, So on my day May
three more workers walk off the job, including the lumber shovers,

(56:04):
which is the coolest name of a job but actually
sounds like a terrible job. They're name for a job.
I'm sure it's it's a nightmare of a job, but
it's a very funny thing to call you. Yeah, it
just basically means you like move logs and lumber around. Yeah,
I kind of guess what lumber shoving was from the content. Yeah, okay,
fair enough. And then the seamstress has also went on strike.
I'm sure other ones did, but those are the two

(56:25):
that I like found about and I got excited about.
And then there's the McCormick Reaper Works, which that's a
that's a pretty tough name for a business, the Reaper Factory.
It does it does sound like they make war Christ.
What they did is they automated the jobs of all
the farmers and or fed the world, depending on who

(56:46):
controls the means of production. Basically, yeah, and it it
was the first automated harvesting machine. It like revolutionized farming.
Um and it's factory at this long history of labor struggle,
and they had a union until earlier that year. McCormick
not the original McCormick who invented it, but I think
his kid. Basically, he was like, you know what, I

(57:07):
want to automate your jobs, and I don't like having
a union around. So he fired his entire workforce who
were not out on strike at the time, and then
he just hired non union workers. So and a lot
of anarchists from the metal Workers Union had worked there.
And so every time there was a picket, police and
Pinkerton's arrived armed to the teeth. Pinkerton's for are the
private security of the capitalists at this time? Yeah, So

(57:31):
on May three, at the lumber shover's rally a few
blocks away from the McCormick Reaper factory, they they heard
the McCormick bell strike the end of the day, and
so all the lumber shovers ran over to join the
picket and to throw rocks at the scabs who had
stolen their jobs. The picketers drove the scabs back into
the factory. Then the cops arrived, and then they threw

(57:53):
stones at the cops, and then the cops drew revolvers
and fired into the crowd. Um two people at least
were killed. No cops were so much as injured, and
I wanna I want to give you a sense of
how the media handled this, the mainstream media, that bastion
of neutrality. The New York Times reported it like this,

(58:21):
the eight hour Movements built us first blood today and
Joseph Buttleck, a lumber shover eighteen years old, was fatally wounded,
and a dozen more strikers with bullet holes in their bodies,
representing the result of the first encounter. There was a
collision at McCormick's Reaper Works between a mob of seven
or eight thousand anarchist workmen and tramps maddened with free
beer and free speech, and a squad of policemen. More

(58:43):
than five hundred shots were fired and hundreds of windows
in the works were stoned. There are broken heads and
bruised bodies all through the lumber district tonight. But the
downtrodden masses have risen and had their fun. Yeah. Yeah,
to be fair, New York Times like think it's like
thirty years later came up with the concept of being
a neutral newspaper, and they had not done so at

(59:05):
this time or since. Yeah, well, they came up with
the concept thinking about that time. They had the Dictator
of Turkey right at column or was that the Washington
I forget Okay, So the article goes on at like
a great length that it talks about how heroic the
police are and how includes all these like completely impossible
details like the entire crowd roared in one voice kill

(59:27):
the police, um, and how that does sound dope, I know?
And how But they also claimed that the crowd was
throwing stones and then shooting guns in the air, but
somehow miraculously wasn't shooting at the cops um, even though
they were ostensibly trying to murder the police. Yeah, they
were maybe trying to arc it down, you know, it's
like fielders. Oh yeah, yeah, totally. They were like we've

(59:49):
read about these cans as mortars. Um. So some of
the anarchists who are there runoff and they call for
a demonstration the next day to be called at Haymarket Square.
Most of the flyers just say like, hey, show up,
But then a few of them show say hey, show
up with guns. What the fuck? Because they well, that's

(01:00:12):
that's gonna get you in some trup. Just just knowing
the America, I know that's gonna get you in some trup.
And not judging it, but that's gonna get you in
some trump And so first they printed the show up
with guns one and then actually one of the people
who later dies was like, uh, that's a bad idea. Yeah,
that's gonna get us in some trouble. And so they
reprinted all Unfortunately, they're all they they all work for

(01:00:34):
these newspapers they own, so they like because they all
work for the different anarchists newspapers, so they can print
whatever they want. So then they print a new one
that does not say show up with guns, and but
a couple hundred of the like show up with gun
ones slip out, probably by accident, maybe not by accident,
who the funk knows. So the next day cops attacks
striking workers throughout the city. Some strikers destroyed a drug

(01:00:58):
store that police were using to telephone back to their headquarters.
But the the rally, the one that had some flyers
and hey, show up a guns, was not fierce. It
started off really late. That turnout was like two thousand
people instead of the twenty thou people expected. Probably people
have been frightened off because they were like, oh no,
we don't actually want a war, Yeah, we don't wanna

(01:01:19):
maybe this show up to the gun with guns situation
isn't the right thing to bring my kids. Exactly exactly,
this may not be the one for me. And so
a hundred cops are waiting in the wings and the
mayor shows up, and the mayor is just there to
make sure everything's peaceful. He was this like, he's a
big free speech guy and a big free assembly guy

(01:01:39):
and also a don't invite federal troops to shoot striking
workers guy. Um well, I that sounds fine, it sounds
like your best case scenario in this Exactly, he is
the best case scenario of a mayor absolutely. Um. And
he also but he doesn't actually have control of the police,
which is completely unfamiliar to the modern audience. Um. He
he tells the police what's do and then they think

(01:02:00):
about it and then they do whatever they want. That's
the same. What are you talking about. I've never heard
of a COVID that never happened. Um. Okay. So so
the mayor's friends are like, don't be so conspicuous, and
he's like, no, I'm going to be conspicuous. I want
the people to know their mayors here. Um. Because he's

(01:02:22):
a reasonably stand up guy. You know, he seems he
seems fine. So first this guy, August Species goes up
and he's the runs one of the newspapers. He's actually
the one who canceled the police show up armed thing.
I think, I'm not entirely sure cancel culture. Yeah uh.
And then Albert Parson goes up, and Albert Parsons he
talks for like an hour, and I kind of suspect
I wouldn't actually like Albert Parsons as a person, like

(01:02:44):
who shows up to this. No, you shouldn't ever talk
for an hour at a round, like five minutes. Yeah,
and so okay, So the mayor realizes that everything's fine,
and the speakers are actually kind of toning down. Often
they give speeches where they're like, we're gonna, you know,
find the rich where they live and blow them up
and all this ship Like they're not subtle speakers normally,

(01:03:06):
but they're being a little more subtle tonight because they're
a little bit like, oh shit, oh shit, this is
all about to go really weird. So the mayor realizes
it's fine, and he he focks off and he goes
over the cop shop and he tells the police captain
to stand down. The police captain didn't agree, and then
the third speaker goes on and it says a guy
named Samuel Fielden, and I just feel bad for this

(01:03:28):
guy because he goes on at ten pm. Feel bad
for field Ye. He goes on at ten pm, a
storm is rolling in. Most of the crowd disperses because
the rain is coming, and then Albert parsons the fucking dick.
It's like, hey, everyone, let's go to the beer hall,
even though Fielding is still up there speaking. And that's
gotta be heartbreaking, Like you get all this adrenaline social terms.

(01:03:51):
He really seems like the Donny of the situation. I
once played a show where the main draw was the
band that went on before me, and then everyone left,
and then I just like played for like the person
who booked the show after like a hundred people have
been watching the band before. Um it's like the same
only people end up dead. Um so. But and he

(01:04:11):
he spoke to the two hundred or so people who
are left, and at one point he made a reference
to how the only thing to do with the law
was to throttle it, to kick it, to stab it.
And two detectives who are watching it run off and
tell the police Captain Bondfield that the speech was too naughty,
So the cops come running immediately. Uh Fielding was still speaking.

(01:04:34):
He ended his speech with and I quote, people have
been shot, men, women and children have not been spared
by the capitalists and minions of private capital. It has
no mercy. So are you. You are called upon to
defend yourselves, your lives, your future. What matters whether you
kill yourselves with work and get a little relief or
die on the battlefield resisting the enemy. What is the difference?

(01:04:56):
Any animal, however loathsome will resist when stepped upon our
and less than snails or worms. I have some resistance
in me. I know that you have to. You have
been robbed, and you will be starved into a worse condition.
The captain of the police orders the crowd to disperse.
A light flashes through the air, falling into the crowd
of police, and a bomb explodes. And that's what we'll

(01:05:19):
leave it for today. Okay. I do have a note,
which is that I don't feel like snails and worms
really do do resist much when you step on them.
I feel like biological he wasn't on there. I don't
disagree with the statement and broad but I have stepped
on the odd worm and I did not didn't seem
like they resisted. I'm I'm getting do into the way

(01:05:41):
I have you. Have you checked, um right above your bed,
in the in the rafters and the attic space. Yeah,
it's always filled with worms. Yeah, like it's supposed to
know they're they're they're as organizing revenge. Oh well that's
probably fair, Robert. We're talking about worms now. Yeah, speaking

(01:06:02):
of worms, do you have anything you want to plug
that made no sense? Um? Well, my friend Margaret has
a show called cool People Who Did Cool Things? Um,
so you probably check that out, except that's not the title.
You were really close. I was really close. What what
did we land on? He stuff people who did cool stuff? Right?
We talked about whether or not to use stuff or

(01:06:24):
things for like thirty minutes, didn't we there was there
was a thirty minute combo and stuff was was thee
I think I probably argued for stuff specifically too. This
is great. I'm I'm I'm really see. This is why
you gotta have someone like me as the brains of
this outlet, really keeping everything together. Really, it's like the
time that I changed it could when you wanted to

(01:06:45):
name it could happen here, It can happen here, and
I changed it and then it was just done. That's
good because then I would have been preemptively ripping off
the book by the head of the A D l
It can't happen here. It was published a year and
a half after it could Happen Here came out and
had a similar premise, but wasn't wasn't it all related

(01:07:06):
to my work and was not not at all? Anyway,
It's fine, It's fine. See I always have your back.
There we go, Thanks Sophie, You're welcome. Makes head of
the A d l Um Margaret is there? Is it?
Where can people follow you? You can find me on
Twitter at Magpie kill Joy, and you can find me
on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. And you can listen to

(01:07:28):
my new podcast which is called Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff? Well, and we'll be back on Wednesday with
part two. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts and cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com,

(01:07:49):
or check us out on the I Heard Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts