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

In part two of this episode, Margaret continues her discussion 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):
Welcome to Cool People Who did cool stuff. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoyan. Each week I take you way back into
history and find people who were cool, who did stuff
that was cool because they were cool, So the difficol stuff.
This is part two of a two part series about Haymarket,
the bomb that brings us the modern labor movement. So
if you haven't already, you might want to do yourself
a favor and go back and listen to part one.
But I'm not the boss of you. Do whatever you want.

(00:23):
And my guest this week is none other than Robert Evans. Robert, Hey,
what's the best way to describe you here? I am
the boss of you. And if you listen to this
one before listening to the first one, I will wreak
a terrible vengeance upon your soul. Hell, And that's who
I am. That's all I am is a force, a

(00:43):
force for revenge of content. It's unclear what I am, Margaret,
but I'm here to talk with you about this story
and other people who were forces for revenge in their
own right. That's right, that's right, And the fact that
revenge can sometimes lead to people being harmed that you
didn't intend to harm because once the consequences of actions

(01:05):
can be unpredictable exactly. And we also have our producer
Sophie here, So if do you want to say hi, Yeah, Robert, Sophie, Sophie,
Margaret Hi, Hi. Okay. So we're gonna get back to
it where we last left our heroes two d folks

(01:26):
were at an anarchist rally in Chicago. Cops had shown up,
someone had thrown a bomb, and I was pretty proud
of that. Cliffhanger, Yeah, great first week Cliffhanger, also solid
Sylvester Stallone film Cliffhanger, good movie. Not enough mountain climbing

(01:46):
thrillers these days. Were their bombs in it? I think
there might have been. Actually, there's definitely like terrorists and stuff.
My memories of it are fuzzy. I haven't seen it
since I was like twelve or so, but probably I
think probably so much like the bomb in the movie Cliffhanger,
which I've definitely seen this, probably, Yes, Yes, his bomb

(02:08):
shattered windows for blocks around and one cop was killed
immediately on the spot. The explosion was so loud that
the mayor heard it from his bed. He had like
ritten home on his horse and then he got undressed
and went to bed, and then he heard the explosion.
And then they went to the window and he heard gunshots.
So we ran back out. The cops drew revolvers and
they started firing wildly. Six more cops were killed. All

(02:33):
of them were killed by other cops. Awesome critical support.
And so because some of the anarchists were armed, right, Uh,
the anarchists at the time were often armed, but and
some of them might have even shot back. But like
all the forensic evidence of all of the bodies and
all of the scene is like really strongly on the

(02:54):
side that probably all of the cops were killed by
all the other cops who were overreacting. And one light
post was entirely full of bullet holes that were all
coming from the direction of the cops, so they like
removed it and tried to destroy the evidence immediately. Um,
that's just all such cops shit. I know. This is
like the it's not the origin of cops at the

(03:14):
origin of cops shit. Well, actually you covered very well, um,
but it ties into origins of the origin. This is
pretty early on in the concept of copshit being a thing. Yeah,
these guys were really breaking new ground in terms of
shooting each other to death. There's a mutual friend of ours.
I think Molly Conjure goes through like the websites that

(03:36):
are like end of Watch for cops, and like, boy howdy,
a lot of cops die because other cops shoot them
when they're doing like training in rooms and they're not
like practicing proper gun safe. It's like not an uncommon
way for a cop to go aft. Yeah, oh god.
And that's how six of them went out or eventually

(03:56):
I think seven. One of them died like two years
later from the wounds, well one of them, so he
gets called a riot, but it wasn't a riot. It
was either a short and bloody massacre or at best
it was a short and bloody pretty much one sided battle.
There was no rioting at any point really yeah yeah,
um yeah. It was all over within like five minutes,

(04:18):
and there was no records of civilian casualties because basically
everyone who was shot there was like I'm not saying
ship and they like dragged their friends bodies away and
like some of them went to the hospital, but most
of them just went off to go find somewhere else
because they all knew what would happen if they showed
up and said I was at this thing. Okay, So
Samuel Fielden, the speaker who was already having a rough night,

(04:38):
you know, he's like going last, he's following a blowhard. Yeah, boy,
this is it as a as a public speaker. This
is definitely a rough, rough, rough gig crowd. I know. Although, okay,
I'll go ahead and spoil that he actually has the
best result of any of these people, of any of
the people who get arrested. Um by he gets shot

(05:00):
in the knee right away, and then as far as
I can tell, a detective like snuck up and tried
to assassinate the earlier speaker, August Species, and then August
Species was saved by his brother Henry, who like got
in the way or whatever and got shot in the
groin for for his trouble of saving his brother's life.

(05:21):
And yeah. So one of the things that's kind of
wild about it is that if the cops, if they
had waited a few more minutes, the medium was basically over.
It was raining. Fielding was basically done. They were speaker
up there like people are done. Yeah. Yeah, And it's
kind of weird to try and think about it doesn't
do you any good but to try and think about

(05:42):
how differently the history of Chicago in the U s
would have been if the cops had waited like a
few minutes um. But the thing is that they probably
weren't going to um some folks back then. And now
I think that the cops were going to attack the crowd.
Whether or not they were going to like rolling with truncheons,
or whether or not they were going to just like
open fire is kind of anyone's guests. But the guy

(06:03):
who was in charge, Captain Bonfield, he had been itching
to stamp out the anarchists like once and for all
since earlier that day when he had like a council
of war, and he basically he waited until the mayor
was gone and the crowd was at its weakest and
then attacked his His nickname was Blackjack because he liked
beating people so much with his his black Jack his
billy club, that it became his name for him. Yeah,

(06:24):
he had such a reputation of beating people that at
one point, some like owners of a gas works were like, Hey,
could you stop beating up our employees even when they're
on strike. We actually need them. We need them to
be able to many of their boats. Yeah. So it
might have wound up a massacre either way, whether or
not the bomb was thrown, but it's it's hard to say.

(06:44):
Um oh. And then one witness who was pro cop
said that Bondfield during the wild every cop shooting every
which direction, grabbed a second gun off of a fallen
cop and just started duel wielding into the crowd. That's
so this guy is believests that he dropped a couple
of them guns. Guns don't work great when you use

(07:07):
them that way. Yeah, um okay. And so none of
the anarchists who stood trial had thrown the bomb, but
it's not like they were shy in the advocacy of dynamite. Yeah.
In the years building up to Haymarket, one anarchist professor
from New York wrote into one of the Chicago Anarchist
papers saying that he carried a bomb around in his

(07:29):
pocket all of the time to dissuade cops from approaching. Um.
Just always be a potential suicide bomber. That's how you
avoid arrest. Yeah, which seems like it would work, but
eventually backfire. You know, it seems like it would work. Briefly. Yeah.
His quote was, you can learn to make tri nitro glycerine,

(07:52):
and if you carry two or three pounds of it
with you, people will respect you much more than if
you carry a pistol. Oh my god. Um. In another letter,
another one, another person advocating for the use of dynamite, wrote, dynamite,
of all the good stuff, this is the stuff. A
pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots,
all hollow. Wow. Yeah. And so I bring this up

(08:18):
because it's like, there's a lot of things that I
love about the Chicago anarchists, but I think they were
kind of just wrong about dynamite. That's probably a little bit. Look, yeah,
will dynamite stop you from getting mugged? Perhaps? Will it
stop people from fucking with you? Perhaps? Yes? Is the

(08:39):
best way to stop people from getting funk with with
you carrying a tool that indiscriminately would destroy large chunks
of the neighborhood have detonated. Perhaps not right exactly. You
just need to work on threat modeling a little better.
I feel like that's what they wanted to go at.
I would say like it would be a little bit
like I mean, I I do intend to one day
chop at twenty millimeter anti tank gun down to something

(09:00):
that's legally a pistol and concealed carry it in case
I get robbed by badly fighting vehicle on my way
home from the grocery store. But I don't pretend that's good,
like a good idea, right, And I think at some
level some of these people knew that they were like
participating in radical rhetoric because they liked radical rhetoric because

(09:20):
it's fun, because it's it sounds cool as shit. Like
that's definitely a character you want to put in a
novel or like a movie's like the guy who's just like, yeah,
I mean you you introduced him. He's like walking home
in the early morning, and it's like cops sees him
and like notices that he's some sort of like weirdo
radical or or even ideally someone else is getting like
fucked with by the police or by like some militia

(09:41):
chuds or something, and he like walks in and they're like, well,
what are you gonna do about it? Then he opens
his jacket and he's just strapped with dynamite. Absolutely, you
can totally like definitely an intriguing character. But exactively maybe
not the best idea, and so anam. I had actually
been used in labor struggle before this, but no previous

(10:03):
time had it targeted people at all. A couple of
times I was used to destroy property, including once in
the Washington Territory where someone dynamited the empty house of
a guy who was foreclosing people out of mortgaged homes
and evicting tenants from their rental homes. Oh. You know,
I was just talking with um for it could happen
here with Jake Hanrahan about the riots and Cyprus he

(10:25):
was at. And they're doing a version of this where
they're destroying, like using incendiaries to destroy people's vacation homes
because it's like making the cost of living untenable, like
bombing vacation homes. You know, all right, Yeah, I have
no issue with that. You don't notice that I'm not
condemning that that tactic. Yeah, but this is the first

(10:46):
time that a bomb is thrown in a labor struggle
that I'm aware of, at least in the United States,
and and it uh so this causes America's very first
red scare, which we have a long and proud tradition
of and all across the country. Everyone freaks out and
it's like these damn anarchists and their dynamite and something
must be done, don't you know, And conspiracies go wild.

(11:06):
The anarchists are going to level the city. It's it's
kind of hard to overstate how unhinged this whole frenzy was.
And um, and this is actually where the reputation of
anarchists in the US comes from. Basically, the not picnics,
not mutual aid, society is not supporting one another, and
labor struggle just bombs bombs. That's all an anarchist is
is a walking bomb, which I guess is kind of

(11:29):
like today and like smashing windows. In total fairness, some
of the anarchists were not We're not doing anything to
dissuade that attitude. It's true. Well I am literally a
walking bomb. I always have to in case I need to.
It's true and okay. So, to quote Paul Average, the

(11:52):
historian about how the The New York Times and other
newspapers handled all of this, the New York Times offered
the following prescription. In the early stages of an acute
outbreak of anarchy, a gatling gun, or if the case
be severe, too is the sovereign remedy Later on, hemp
and judicious doses has an admirable effect in preventing the
spread of the disease. The Philadelphia Inquirer recommended a mailed

(12:16):
hand to each of the anarchists that America was not
shelter for cutthroats and thieves, while the Louisville Courier Journal
insisted that the blatant cattle should be strung up. The
sooner the better. Judge Lynch is a tremendous expounder of
the law. It is no time for half measures, agreed
the Springfield Republican, urging the authorities to make an example

(12:37):
of the ringleaders. There are no good anarchists except dead anarchists.
The St. Louis Globe Democrat chimed in Globe is another
one of those things that every newspaper had to be
called Globe. It was like one of the five. They're
talking about hemp, they're talking about like hanging people, right.
They're not saying yes, giam stoned right, Okay, yes, yeah, no, yeah,

(12:57):
I mean that would probably work if I was nervous
about a bunch of anarchists who were threatening me, I
might just buy them all weed. Yeah, I feel like
they would anywhere. Not a bad way to get anarchists
on your side. Yeah. In Chicago, the cops rated everywhere.
They rated like fifty gathering places. They rated people's homes.

(13:17):
They never had any kind of warrants. They didn't bother.
The prosecutor who later tried the case gave the cops
permission by saying, make the raids first and look up
the wall laws later. In one house, they confiscated a
kid's pillow cases because they were read Okay. Yeah. Hundreds
of people were arrested and tortured. Many of them were

(13:40):
offered bribes for information, but almost everyone refused to cooperate.
Some people living in their heads rent free until you
talked about all the folks that they tortured. Yeah. For
two months, all constitutional rights for everyone in Chicago were
dropped based illegally like now was opened. Papers were shut down,
union gatherings were dispersed, public other rings were banned. It

(14:01):
just there was no rule of law in Chicago. It
does kind of seem like historically an awful lot of
people are willing to end the concept of civil rights
as soon as someone says there's anarchists about, right, which
has some deep irony. Right. The anarchists are like, law
is bad, and they're like, no, we think laws really bad,

(14:21):
and that's why we're going to suspend it to co
around and beat you all up and arrest you. And
they arrested basically all the editors of all the anarchist
papers except Albert Parsons, who fucked off to Wisconsin. And
then Lucy Parsons managed to get arrested four times in
the ensuing weeks. And you'll be shocked to know that
they said racist and sexist sip to her when they

(14:42):
arrested her. Cops, I know at one point, this one's
kind of bad. Take my thin blue line flag down. Well,
they broke into her house, tied up her six year
old kid on the floor, and then started spinning him
around while screaming basically, where's your dad? Were going to
hang him? Oh my god, Jesus fucking Christ. Wow wow. Yeah.

(15:08):
In the end, a grand jury indicted ten of them
to stand trial. Ten of the anarchists, one of them
went state's evidence. Uh. Most of the rest were editors
and printers at three of the newspapers, which was the
English language, the alarm, the German language Arb tongue, which
means worker paper because again really really literal naming schemes.

(15:32):
Yeah again in your pronunciation was perfect as a as
an expert of the German language, I feel and uh.
And then the third paper dar anarchist, which means the anarchists.
You can probably figured that part out. The remaining people
who got indicted, one of them was a young firebrand,
and one of them was a guy who just took off.
He just was like, I'm gone. They arrested him for like,

(15:55):
his name was Rudolph Schnab and a lot of people
say he's the one who threw the bomb. I actually
don't believe this, and I'll get it more into that later. Um,
he was arrested in the aftermath of all of this,
and then like but he spent like ten hours in
the sweat box. They ended up calling it the police
where they put everyone in the sweat box, and that's
where they tortured them. He refused to talk. He was released.

(16:16):
He completely just fucked off. He he politely went and
told his boss that he wasn't going to come into
work for a bit, and then he just disappeared. Um
a gentleman, I know. He he left Chicago, he made
his way across the border into Canada, and then like
some indigenous folks and then later international anarchists smuggled him
to Europe and then South America, where he lived out
the rest of his days in peace. And yeah, and

(16:40):
he basically everyone was like, oh, this is the guy
who threw the bomb. And I think actually, in some
ways it kind of worked out for people to have
everyone think it was this guy. But yeah, yeah, but
it wasn't him, and he just didn't want to stand
trial and he got to live a long and happy
life for having made that decision. So they went to
trial and it was a complete eight of them did
and it was a complete sham. None of the eight

(17:01):
defendants were accused of actually throwing the bomb. It was
a murder trial and none of them were actually, I mean,
they were accused of doing it, but they weren't. They
didn't say you threw the bomb, but they said you're
guilty of murder because you're you, because you're an anarchist.
And the judge who oversaw it was completely committed to
conviction rather than obeying the law witnesses for the prosecution
were usually paid by the prosecution. The jury was selected

(17:22):
specifically in order to convict them. And we know all
of this because later the governor of Illinois wrote a
pardon for everyone who was left and he just it's
a seventeen thousand word pardon that he wrote, being like
Jesus Christ, everything that happened in this in this trial
was wrong and basically a crime. That's like three and
a half episodes of Behind the Bastards for a part. Yeah,

(17:46):
so it's basically one of the most rigged trials in
American history, which is saying something. I feel like they
really went the extra mile here, and they had to
find a lawyer to defend them, and everyone was like,
I'm not going to defend these people. I will never
work again. But they found this guy who's I think
really cool. He's one of my cool people. He was
not an anarchist, he was a moderate, and his name

(18:08):
was Captain William Black. He had been born a Southerner
and then he betrayed his family as a teenager to
volunteer for the Union Army. So already he's kind of
I know, it's pretty based from the start, Yeah, and
he was just this like he was like a rising
star corporate lawyer, but he believed in the law. And
they came to him and they were like, look, no one,

(18:28):
also take our case and you're a really good lawyer,
and we're not guilty and it's so obvious, and he
like did some soul searching. He's like, all right, I'm
gonna tank my entire career to defend you for barely
any money. Um. And he spent like two years of
his life working on their case and tanked his career.
It didn't recover for decades afterwards. What a fucking hero.

(18:51):
Good for him, I know, I like this guy. And
then Albert Parsons turned himself in. I think it was
like the first day of trial or something that was
very early on. He just is like, okay, I need
to show up and stand in solidarity with these people.
But also he he thought he was gonna win because
it was so obviously a bullshit case against him, and
so I think for some at the core of his heart,

(19:11):
he still actually believed in the American legal system, which
was entirely naive. Um. After a few months of trial,
and they proved the defense proved beyond the shadow of
a doubt that none of the defendants had made or
thrown the bomb in question. The jury took three hours
to return with a guilty verdict. Seven of them were

(19:32):
sentenced to hang. One man, Oscar Need, was sentenced to
fifteen years in prison. I think, I think only a
tiny handful of people, maybe a few lawyers in the
rare politician like, actually believe in law. The judge and
the prosecutor and the jury clearly didn't. It was just
a tool to be used to achieve their goal. The
prosecutor and his final address to the jury said, they

(19:53):
are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them.
Gentlemen of the jury, convict these men, make examples of them,
hang them. And you say, our institutions, our society, our
institutions are valid because we are happy to violate every
tenant of them in order to blame these people to
protect our institutions which are valid. Yeah, exactly. Uh. It

(20:18):
really makes you feel for black as like a guy
who believes in institutions. Like, really, I am curious to
learn more about what was going on in this dude's
soul as this this all shook out. It could not
have been an emotionally easy thing to handle. It was,
it was really hard for him. The Paul Average book
talks about him a lot, actually, and talks about how
like hard on it was on him, on him and

(20:41):
his wife, and like just how society treated him and
all of these things, but how he ended up basically
like friends with these people. Even he was like, I
don't I don't agree with them what they want, but
I believe that they're like honest and upstanding people who
are doing what they believe is right. And there's a
lesson there too for anarchists in the the value of

(21:03):
speaking to moderates, um and and sometimes they wind up
torpedoing their entire life to defend you. You know. Yep,
that's also a nice message to take up. Totally. Um Okay.
So before the sentencing, they were each the judge allowed
each one to make a speech, and the speech has
lasted for days, mostly because Albert Parsons was there. Um, right,

(21:27):
but this guy, Yeah, I feel bad making fun of
this dude. He's like he's gonna die. He's gonna die. Yeah. No,
I mean, look, no speech at a protest should last
more than five minutes, but I think days is the
right amount of time for this sort of speech to last. Yes,
you can sit with it, you know. And if you

(21:50):
want to read these these speeches, then they are the
The Haymarket Martyrs are the advertisers who support this show
because they're still alive and with us. And here are
the ads that that they are providing to us for
you to hear. Are you walking down the street with
three to four pounds of dynamite on your body? Why not? Oh, No, one,

(22:11):
eight hundred dynamite today to buy enough dynamite to protect
yourself from anything except for dynamite which you'll be much
more vulnerable to. Exactly. Here's the rest of the ads. Okay,

(22:31):
we're back, and if you want to hear the rest
of the speeches besides the ones that advertise on this show,
I recommend that you go. If there's one thing that
you follow up and read about Haymarket. The speeches are
really beautiful pieces. And now I get to introduce you
all the defendants and it's kind of fun. They're kind
of interesting people. They're mostly German. Fortunately I can pronounce

(22:53):
most of their names. So August went first. We met
him some already and he was the editor of the
our there's a tongue um. He was the oldest of
five kids. He was born in central Germany. He was
a Sagittarius. He was a happy childhood. He was raised
to be a forester for the government like his dad,
until his dad died. And then he left school and
emigrated to the US, and then he became a upholsterer.

(23:14):
He opened his own shop. He saw someone give a
lecture on socialism and he was like, oh, that actually
makes some sense. And then the eighteen seventy seven strike
happened and he was like, oh, that really makes some sense.
And soon enough he found himself an anarchist and he
joined the Larunda Verin and kind of ironically for the
fight for the eight hour work day. He works like
twelve to sixteen hour days at his German paper, and

(23:39):
that mean that, I mean, that's the thing with anarchists.
It's like, no, we don't want to work an eight
hour work day, but if I'm the thing I want
to do, then I will work for like nineteen hours
a day of course, yeah, exactly exactly. And he's this
guy and he actually keeps a circle bomb on his
desk in his office, and we don't know whether or
not the circle bomb was actually like one of those

(24:01):
old timey bombs circle and as little fused coming out
of it, that was probably the type of bomb that
was thrown at the cops. Um we don't know whether
or not the bomb in his office had any had
any dynamite in it or not, And the historical record
would really like you to know that Augustes was fucking hot.
That's good, you know, I was. I was going to
ask because I'm incapable of actually caring about people. If

(24:23):
they were not hot, right, well, you're in luck. Actually,
that's why I have created a new hot or not
that is specifically for the victims of war crimes, so
you can tell if you need to feel bad about
a specific war crime by knowing if they were hot
or not. That's excellent. I look forward to using this service.
It's sponsored by Microsoft. Um So, Augustes was was known

(24:46):
as a ladies man. He's one of the only people
who wasn't already married at the start of all this thing,
and he was, but he was also he was he
was sardonic and haughty, but he also refused to lie,
and he basically just like walked around and he threw
around his charisma and charmed women and men, and and
he once spoke in front of Congress about socialism and
he just like went and he was like, yeah, we're

(25:06):
gonna have a revolution. And he was like, you get
this guy's number. He was like, we're we're not going
to make the revolution. We're anticipating the revolution. We are
His quote was birds of the coming storm, and it
was oh, you know, and that's good. Someone in Congress

(25:27):
is like, well, why do you hate the individual with
your socialism or whatever? And he's like, are you kidding me?
It's the capitalists who treat workers like they're just cogs
in the machine. Um And to quote from his final
address to the court, not to Congress, but when he's
sentenced to death. If you think that by hanging us
you can stamp out the labor movement, the movement from
which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live

(25:49):
and want in misery, the wage slaves expect salvation. If
that is your opinion, then hang us here you will
tread upon a spark. But here and there, and behind
us and in front of you and everywhere, the flames
will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot
put it out. Holy ship, that's I know, that's that's

(26:10):
hot girl ship. Yeah, that's some hot girl ship. Oh
my god, did he write? Did he do his own
like writing? Is this all him or does he have
like you know, yeah, he's that's kind of his thing
is he's he's one of the the editors of these papers.
They're also like publishing their own ship a ton. These
people have been giving speeches and like writing propaganda. That's

(26:31):
like there their thing, you know, Which is why I
think that they're both leaders of the movement and not
is because they were actually more the propagandists who got
put on trial in this trial rather than like necessarily
to people who are organizing and like planning actions and stuff. Okay,
so Michael Schwab goes and gives his speech next. And
this guy is not as much of a talker. He's
just a quiet, thoughtful man behind a big dark beard.

(26:53):
He's married, he's a father of two. He's like just
a hard worker for the revolution. He's a reporter and
editor for the Arbiters a Tongue, and he ran the
w p As Library. He was just basically seen as
a very gentle. He was thirty two at the time
of the bombing. He was born in Germany with a
peasant mother and a tradesman father, and he had a

(27:13):
happy childhood until and this feels like a pattern. Maybe
it's just the nineteenth century. His mom died when he
was eight and his dad died when he was twelve. Well, yeah,
they made you know what, they made it a decent
chunk at time. Yeah, it's true, kid, you're gonna have
to carry yourself across that finish line. Yeah. And so
when he's like, I don't know, thirteen or something, any

(27:34):
apprentices to a book binder and he started to working
thirteen to seventeen hour days. Yeah. And then he joins
a book binding union and then the Social Democrat Party
and then uh, and he decides that political liberty without
economic freedom is a mocking lie. Is like his big thing. Um,
he moves to Chicago. He quickly learns that American capitalism

(27:57):
is no better than European which actually happens to a
lot of people. A lot of imigrants are like, oh,
land of opportunity, and they're like what, but no, this
is just as bad. I feel betrayed and shortly enough
he becomes an anarchist. In his speech is sentencing, he
said violence is one thing and anarchy another. In the
present state of society, violence is used on all sides,
and therefore we advocate the use of violence against violence,

(28:20):
but against violence only as a matter as a necessary
means of defense. Then you get oscar neb He was
another worker at the arbiter's a tongue. Really wasn't a
good time to be in the newspaper business, and he
was the only one who wasn't sentenced to death. He'd
been born in the US to German immigrants, and he
worked basically every kind of job from cook to tin smith.

(28:41):
So then he was unemployed for a while, and at
the time of his arrest he was a yeast peddler.
He I don't even know what kind of yeast, but
he would go around with the cart in the street,
just like get your yeasts for sale, used for sale, Yeah,
like I said, with your dynamite, Robert. The main thing
that he wanted people to know it is very short speech,

(29:02):
was that he wanted to be hanged too. His quote
is for I think it is more honorable to die
suddenly than to be killed by inches, I have a
family and children. If they know their father is dead,
they will bury him. They can go to the grave
and kneel down by the side of it, but they
can't go to the penitentiary and see their father who
was convicted for a crime that he has had nothing

(29:23):
to do with. Well yeah, you know, you know, hard
to argue with the logic though too. And then his
wife died while he was in prison, and he wasn't
allowed to go to our funeral. Jeez. And then we
get at alf Fisher. Adolf Fisher not a common name
anymoos to being a bad name. Yeah. Um. He edited

(29:48):
their Anarchist, which was the more radical paper than Arbiters
of Tongue, and he advocated less for a mass movement
and more for autonomous actions by individuals and collectives. He
was born in Germany. He was a second generation so List.
He moved to America worked as a typographer, and then
as soon as he moved to Chicago, he joined the
la Verre in the militia, and when he was arrested

(30:10):
he was armed. He had a presumably legally both a
revolver and a dagger, and then one cop took his
revolver out, pointed at his head. Another cop put the
dagger to his chest, and they only didn't kill him
when the lieutenant intervened because they wanted him to stand
trial instead. And in prison two of his co defendants
who didn't speak English and trusted him to translate their autobiographies.

(30:32):
And basically he was this like he just worked constantly
and to give money to the cause, and he was
really looking forward to the revolution. And he gave the
shortest speech of them all, which included, I was tried
here in this room for murder, and I was convicted
of anarchy. I protest against being sentenced to death because
I have not been found guilty of murder. However, if

(30:53):
I am to die on account of being an anarchist,
on account of my love for liberty, fraternity, and equality,
I will not remonstrate it. Death is the penalty for
our love of freedom of the human race. Then I
say openly I have forfeited my life, but a murderer
I am not. I just really like all these speeches,
really really good lines. All right, Then we get to

(31:14):
Louis Ling. Louis Ling is a crowd pleaser. He he
was the youngest, he was twenty one when the bomb
was thrown and he had a watertight alibi, There's no
way he could have thrown the bomb. Do you know
why he couldn't have thrown the bomb? Was he making
he was? He was he was too busy at home
making bombs. Incredible, you know. And when the cops came

(31:39):
to arrest him, he tried to go down fighting, and
he almost killed one officer with his bare hands before
the other one like knocked him down. Unbelievable, what what
a what a what a chat? And then The New
York Times, which was completely untrustworthy of a source at
the time, especially back then, says that while he was
on the carriage on the way to jail, he basically said,
it all would have been worth it if only I've

(32:00):
been able to kill that police officer, which frankly he
might have said, Yeah, I I look looked based on
the man you've described, I don't think the police maybe
lied about that one. Yeah exactly. That sounds in line
with our boy. Yeah, okay, So he had he had

(32:21):
just shown up in the US ten months earlier before
all this ship happens. He had been born in Germany
and then he had a happy childhood until you'll be
shocked to know. Well, first, his dad was thrown out
of work for a workplace accident, and then he died
shortly thereafter, and he and his sibling and his mother
fought starvation every single day. He fled Europe to avoid

(32:42):
the draft, and then he joined the Carpenter's Union soon
found work as an organizer. People liked him. He was
really scrupulously honest and upfront, which was basically universal among
all the Chicago anarchists, which I think fucking rules, because
if you're going to be all about something, just be honest.
I mean, sometimes you go lie to avoid certain situations,

(33:03):
but it's it's like, it's like what it was Bob
Dylan that said that to live outside the law, a
man must be honest. I forget where that came from,
but yeah, yeah, that's that's what these people are doing. Okay,
And I know you're you're wondering where Louis Ling lays
in the relative hotness of the various defendants, literally not

(33:24):
incapable of caring about this story emotionally until I learned, Okay, well, uh,
if he wants, you should google Louis Ling. It's two
gs and Ling and don't use the photo from Wikipedia
as the example. Find one where his hair is shorter
and he doesn't really have a beard. He kind of
looks like Elijah Wood. Yeah, that's true. He's got a
little bit a little bit of a like, kind of

(33:45):
a broader chin, but like a little bit of that
Elijah Wood vibe his teeth zone. You could like cast
Elijah Wood to play this guy and it would work
pretty well. I would I would love to watch that. Okay.
And in case you're wondering whether I wonder whether any
of the Haymarket folks were queer, I want to read
you this description of Louis Ling, written by William Holmes,
another anarchist in their circle. Ling was one of the

(34:07):
handsomest men this writer has ever met. His well shaped
head crowned with a wealth of curly chestnut hair, his
fine blue eyes, his peach and white complexion, and straight
regular features made him a fit model for a Greek god,
while his athletic form and general activity showed him to
be possessed of an abundance of physical vigor and health. Well,
that just sounds straight as hell to me, Margaret, Yeah, totally. Yeah,

(34:29):
And unfortunately was kind of super straight. Yeah, describing the
straightest situation in the world. Um. And to be fair,
like heterosexuality and homosexuality like didn't exist as concepts at
this point, um, and so homosexuality the word was invented
by a German dude in like the eighteen nineties. Yeah,

(34:49):
that sounds about right. Um, But I've got my head
canon and that's that's what matters here. But he was
also he was a sex symbol in the anarchist scene.
Like younger men adopted his haircut and his quote live
way of walking around the ballroom at all the anarchist balls. Uh.
To get called his name was like the highest compliment
you could give someone. And his speech was the fieriest

(35:12):
of the bunch. He delivered it in German, and he
ended it with I'm not gonna do the whole thing
in German. I'm not gonna do any of it. In German.
He ended it with I repeat that I am the
enemy of the order of today, and I repeat that
with all my powers, as long as breath remains in me,
I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly,
that I'm in favor of using force. I have told

(35:34):
Captain shack, and I stand by it. If you can
innate us, we will dynamite you. You laugh, you think
you'll throw no more bombs. But let me assure you
that I die happy on the gallows. So confident am
I in the hut that the hundreds and thousands to
whom I have spoken will remember my words, and when
you should have hanged us, then mark my words, they
will do the bomb throwing in this hope. I say

(35:56):
to you, I despise you. I despise your order, your laws,
your force propped authority. Hang me for it. He wasn't
actually right about the everyone else doing the bomb throwing
part is kind of for better or worse. I'm not
actually sure one way or the other. But now we
get George Engel, who have a tattoo of on my arm.

(36:17):
I'm gonna show you the tattoo even though no one
else can see it. So you're saying you really really
don't like this person. Yeah, this is definitely my least
favorite person, this stick figure drawn on my arm. But
the tattoo I have of Roger Stone, Yeah, exactly, Jesus,
that's cute. Okay, So George Engle is the oldest of

(36:38):
them all much like Robert's Roger Stone and he's about
fifty years old and he owns a toy shop with
his wife, and he works for the anarchist And he
was he was born in Germany. Will be shocked to
notice he was orphaned young, oh whoa, And he was
taken in by a painter apprenticed him. He came to
the US, he found the US justice. Back at his Germany,

(37:01):
he first joined the Socialists, but he grew disillusioned by
all their politicking, the maneuvering, the opportunism, the rigged election,
the compromise of principle, So he joined the anarchists. And
he wasn't a speaker or a writer. He was just
this guy who supported the movement with absolute sincerity. But
he was also one of the most radical in his
beliefs of the whole bunch. Like he'd probably the night
before the Haymarket rally, he'd probably been meeting in a

(37:22):
bar with some other of the more radical people like
not Parsons and Species and all those to figure out
how with the like two thousand armed men they had
that if they needed to, they could take the city,
like which places they would raid to get more guns?
And ship Um and which you know you've just watched
everyone get shot in the middle of the Big Uprising.
He also hated Schwab and Species because they weren't radical enough,

(37:45):
and he hadn't been on speaking terms with Species, and
I just I I kind of love hate the idea
that you have to like go face the death penalty
with people you have like really serious scene drama with.
I mean I would I would hope he would be
like at that point, like, well, okay, maybe we had
to agreements before, but clearly we're all committed to the
same degree now that we're about to get executed, Like,

(38:06):
I can't really hit them for not being committed enough
as we're all about to die together, right, I think
I think so. I think he like didn't like he
doesn't like super trust them, but he's like, yeah, okay, like, yeah,
we're all about to die together, so I probably shouldn't
fetch too much um. When they arrested him, they just

(38:26):
literally showed up at his house and disappeared him and
his family didn't know what happened to him for days
until his daughter went to the jail and then heard
him like singing distantly down the cell block. And in
his final address to court, he said, we see from
the history of this country that the first colonists won
their liberty only through force, that through forced slavery was abolished.

(38:47):
And just as the man who agitated against slavery in
this country had to ascend the gallows, so also must we.
He who speaks for the working men today must hang.
And then Samuel Fielden, this is the guy who couldn't
get a break, got shot in the knee, spoke last
the rally. He wasn't German, which is a big break

(39:08):
from everyone else. He was born a parents survived to
see him hit the right old age of eleven. I
think so. Actually, Um, he's kind of the kind of
comes out this whole thing the winner, as much as
you can win. This particularly is like a wass, It's
like a squid games thing, and he wins. Um. He's
born a poor weaver in England, Like he starts working

(39:30):
at the age of eight, So I feel like you
can say you were born a weaver at that point,
and he works in the cotton mills that Karl Marx
and George Angle based their whole analysis of how the
how shitty the English working class have it like on
the cotton mills in his town. Um. And he cuts
his political teeth in England, speaking on behalf of the
Union in the States and against slavery. Then he moves
to the US and he takes whatever work he can,

(39:52):
and he's like a Methodist traveling preacher, and he travels
the South until and becomes dismayed by the conditions of
black folks. Uh there, Um, he's white. He settled in
Chicago and then he started working twelve to fourteen hour
days as a stone cutter. And then he found himself
as a speaker for the anarchists again, kind of like
the c list one. And he's the treasurer for the
i w p A. And when he speaks in the

(40:14):
courtroom apparently it actually he kind of pulls it off. Actually,
uh a list speaker today. Um. It brings the entire
courtroom to tears, and the prosecutor laughs and says, it's
a good thing the jury hadn't been here to hear
this speech before they made their verdict. Jesus, what a goblin. Yeah,

(40:36):
he really is in his speech field and says, we
feel satisfied that we have not lived in this world
for nothing, that we have done some good for our
fellow man, and done what we believe to be in
the interest of humanity and for the furtherance of justice.
If my life is to be taken for advocating the
principles of socialism and anarchy, as I have understood them
and honestly believe them in the interest of humanity, I

(40:59):
say to you that I gladly give it up, and
the price is very small for the result that has gained.
I will now read the entire speech of Albert Parsons. No,
I'm just kidding. Albert Parsons goes up. He's last. He
speaks for eight hours over two days. Uh yeah, it

(41:20):
kind of just loses his way and rambles a lot
like like vamping a bit. Yeah, and I get the
impression that this whole ordeal actually breaks him harder than
it breaks the other folks, or he breaks in a
different way maybe. And he has very few like Baller
lines that are worth repeating. But near the end he said,

(41:41):
I have nothing, not even now to regret. Well, speaking
of regrets, here the ads that support this show. Okay,
So the appeals go on for over a year, they
reach all the way to the Supreme Court, who decides
against the anarchists, and Lucy Parsons and a bunch of

(42:02):
the other people from the id w p A spend
the whole time traveling the country giving talks about the
trial and the defendants. And this is happening in the
middle of all this hysteria, right, Lucy's arrested like multiple
times over the course of this, and her events are
shut down everywhere she goes, but it's still largely successful.
The moment of panic recedes, and then popular opinions starts
to shift back towards the defendants and the rest of

(42:22):
the labor movement. It manages to find its spying again.
At the beginning, the labor movements like whoa, we don't
know these guys, even though like they were all involved
in all levels of the labor movement, And then eventually
the labor movements like okay, okay, maybe we know these guys.
And it led to this peak in and people paying
attention to what's going on, and people becoming anarchists. The
the Arbiters a tongue. That newspaper goes from four thousand

(42:44):
subscribers to ten thousand as more and more people see
the hypocrisy of the government and adopt socialist and anarchist views,
and there's rallies across the country in the world, and
and then kind of again ironically are fittingly some of
the most art and supporters at this time end up
being people who hate their politics, but hate even more
so to see the US legal system be like just

(43:06):
made a mockery of by this trial. And now the
prisoners are all celebrities. They're they're doomed celebrities. But I
will tell you about what August Species gets up to
while he's a celebrity, because he couldn't be fun to
get married before. But he finally marries once he's in jail. Yeah,
and he marries a woman he had never met who
just started coming to the trial. And she's an heiress,

(43:36):
Nina Nina van Zandt is an heiress to a fortune
and as a member of high society. And this is
like crazy scandalous through all the papers and apparently some
of the other defendants are like, don't do this, this
might affect the case or whatever, and he's like, no,
I'm marrying this lady. Yeah, but he wasn't allowed to
attend his own wedding, so his brother, the one who
got shot in the groin defending him is a stand

(43:59):
in as a proxy for the wedding. Uh. And they
they basically got married so that she could keep visiting
him in jail. And I actually think these were not
conjugal visits. I think that they never got to do
more than once kissed through the bars in a very
dramatic and romantic way. I know. She's she's kind of interesting.
She gives up like a four hundred thousand dollar inheritance,

(44:20):
which because her family is piste off about this, which
is twelve million dollars today, Um Jesus, and she wow.
So it's definitely not like poverty tourism. She actually like
makes it sacrifice. She moves to poverty. That's she's like,
I like this town. And she she keeps her name
The Common People's song, Yeah exactly. I love that song.

(44:45):
It's a really good bitter song. To listen to the song. Um, yeah,
so so because Nina Species keep Now. Now, Nina Species
keeps her name even after her husband dies, and she
even like gets remarried and then divorced, and then she
goes back to the name Species because she's now committed.
I presume anarchist and she lives in poverty. She ends

(45:06):
up an old lady who collects stray cats and dogs,
and she marches in labor demonstrations and she's still alive today. No,
but that would rule, like if you got to like,
that would be amazing. So the Supreme Court says, no,
funk these guys. So then they moved to a strategy
of trying to get the governor to give them clemency
and commute their sentences to life in prison. And they

(45:27):
get thousands of letters from support from all walks of life,
radicals and moderates, and there's still probably more Americans who
hate them, but it's like, well, this is something that's
totally unfamiliar to modern society. Society was very polarized by this,
and a lot of the moderates instead to end up
taking radical positions on one side or another. The son

(45:47):
of John Brown writes them a letter and sends them
a fruit basket, and he he says, basically, I support you,
and my my father would have supported you, and that
had he had the chance, John Brown would have been
a socialist too, since what he believed in was the
quote community Plan of cooperative industry. The fruit basket is

(46:08):
a nice touch. The first basket is a nice touch.
I hope that they were. Like there's always that debate
about like what John Brown have been like problematic today
because he was, you know, he was also a religious
extremist totally, which is the thing that can go a
couple of ways. But no, I think his kids probably right.
I think he I think being on the right side
of slavery to that extent at that time means he

(46:28):
probably would have been on the right side of a
lot of things. Yeah, and you know who who would
know better than the kid whose name John Brown Jr.
You know, m um. And in the end, only three
of the but okay, so they do all of this
work to get clemency and only three of them end
up actually writing the government for clemency. Because there's a
big problem. To write the governor for clemency. You have

(46:49):
to say you're sorry. Oh they are not sorry, um so,
so Fielding and Schwab are like or whatever, We're sorry,
Hey man, could you not kill us? And then Spees
says I'm sorry too, But then Spies freaks out, has
this moment of like everyone gets calls him a sell

(47:12):
out and he's like, no, no, I take it back,
and he writes the governor's second letter and he's like,
now I'm just kidding. Not only am I not sorry,
but you should kill only me and leave, like leave
everyone else. Go. Um, that's a man who values values
The Cloud original Cloud Chaser August Species Yeah, okay, and

(47:35):
then I mean it's not fun, but honestly, anything you
do in that situation is fine. Um. I agree. Would
never judge anybody for being like, well, I will say
I'm sorry to not get murdered. Um. Fine. At the
same time, I also respect heavily anyone who would be like,
funk that ship. I ain't sorry. Yeah, like you can
hang my ass. Parsons ended up actually the most torn

(47:56):
because he's the one who's like really, like, you know,
he's kind of broken at this point, but he's a
true believer, right, and and he's basically like asking all
his friends for advice. He's like, what do I do?
What do I do? And then one of his friends,
this guy named dire Lum's like, honey, Albert, what you
should do is die. And Albert's like, thank you. You're

(48:19):
the only one willing to tell me that. Thank you.
I know, So he decides to die. Um, and so
he writes an open letter to the governor, and his
open letter says, look, if I'm innocent, let me go,
and if I'm guilty, kill me. So the governor grants

(48:40):
clemency at like the final hour to field In and
Schwab and the five who refused to say they're sorry, Uh,
We're to die. And now I'm going to tell you
who threw the fucking bomb. Yeah, okay, because the anonymous
bomber comes back into play at this point. Uh, we
don't know for sure, but historian Paul Average has done

(49:01):
more work than anyone who I actually trust about this.
And and Albert Parsons was convinced a cop did it,
was like a Pinkerton did it. He's like, oh, it's
a false flag attack. But basically, probably while all this
is happening, the bomber was probably this guy named George
Schwab who was completely unrelated to Michael Schwab, and he

(49:22):
fox off to New York after the bomb is thrown.
And then when they're sentenced to die and everything, like
the Supreme Court thing fails and all this ship, he's like, a, hey,
should I come forward? Will that save these people's lives?
If I say I'm the one who did it, will
they be let go? And they all kind of think
about it. And when I say they all not, everyone,
like the defendants don't know this except the two autonomous

(49:44):
ones who are more not actually lewis Ling, but the
two autonomous ones who ran Dair anarchist. They end up
knowing about it. And they finally they sit down and
they're like, no, if you come forward, you're just going
to die too. It's just one more victim of capitalism
if you come forward. So the bombers like a right,
and he does not come forward. That's a lot to
live with. And then louis Ling not only did he

(50:07):
not write for clemency, he actually had his name taken
off the Supreme Court case because he was he was,
I'm done with capitalist justice. I have nothing to do
with any of this. Wow. So a week before the execution,
guards find bombs in his cell, his four bombs, and
I always thought that they were there to like affect

(50:29):
a prison prison break, but apparently the fuses were like
a set a second or two long, so they were
almost certainly there so he could kill himself. But they
find the bombs, so he doesn't get to kill himself
in a nice, clean, exploding way. And instead, the day
before the execution, Louis Ling has somehow got ahold of
a blasting cap. There's a lot of different claims about
how he got it there. He puts it in his

(50:51):
mouth and he blows himself up, takes his own life.
But because it's only a blasting cap, it takes six
hours for him to bleed to death. Jesus. And and
since this is his exit from from history, I'll say
that a few days before he died, his mother and
aunt had had written him letters, and his mother wrote,
I will be as proud of you after your death

(51:13):
as I have been during your life, and his aunt wrote,
whatever happens, even the worst, show no weakness before those wretches. Um.
So that supportive family, that's good. The one person whose
family wasn't dead, I know exactly, m hmm. And then
the night before the execution, all the condemned men they're

(51:35):
sitting around, they're smoking cigars, and they're talking with jailer's
apparently somehow very friendly. Parsons keeps like singing and reciting
poetry every chance he gets I'm pretty sure Parsons has
lost his mind, which I do not blame him at all.
I am searching entirely lose my mind in this in
this environment. I've lost my mind on like five hour
long flights before. Yeah. Yeah, George Engle my my favorite.

(51:59):
He talks with the priest who comes to offer him
his last rites. And I'm going to say quote what
he said to the priest in the shadow of the gallows.
As I stand, I have done nothing wrong. I have
not done everything right during my life, but I have
endeavored to live so that I need not fear to die.
Monopoly has crushed competition, and the poor man has no show.
But the revolution will surely come and the working men

(52:20):
will get his rights. Socialism and Christianity can walk hand
in hand together as brothers, for both are laboring in
the interests of the amelioration of mankind. I have no
religion but to wrong no man and to do good
to everybody. And I just it's a cool guy. He's
being nice to the priest that he didn't even call for.

(52:41):
He like, as the priest is leaving, He's like, look, hey,
I know that that was weird, but I didn't even
call for you, okay, the execution. On the morning of
the execution, there's three cops in reguarding the prison like
it's a fortress, and there's once again gatling guns laying
in wait. And and for once, the media is right.
The media is on about an army of anarchists is
going to descend on the place and free them all.

(53:03):
But actually the anarchists had come up with a plan
like that, and actually it was the condemned men who
are like guys, is over. It's fine, let us just
get this over with, um. And so that's why there's
no massive last minute jailbreak. Lucy Parson shows up to
see her husband. She has her two kids in tow,
and an officer tries to stop her. She says, you're

(53:26):
gonna have to fucking kill me, and then she just
like pushes her way through the police line. Um. However,
they then arrest her, strip her naked, leave her in
a cell with her kids until after her her husband
was hanged Jesus with a noose around their neck. Each
man shouts their last words. Spies says, there will come

(53:46):
a time when our silence will be more powerful than
the voices you strangle today. Angle shouts in German hawk
the anarchy or her raw for anarchy. Fisher shouts also
in German her rafer anarchy, this is the happiest day
of my life. And then Parsons he says, I feel

(54:06):
bad making fun of him right now, but I'm just
gonna do it. I'll just quote him and who make
fun of himself. I'm sorry, Parsons, you were a great guy.
Parsons says, will I be allowed to speak? O, men
of America, let me speak, Sheriff Matson. Let the voice
of the people be heard. Oh and then the trap
opens and the hanging was done wrong, and they took long,
like they took minutes to strangle. I think it took

(54:28):
seven minutes for the last one to die. Sure that
was an accident, Yeah, I'm sure. You know, classic whoops
have been doing this my whole life, and I just
somehow slipped up and didn't break their necks. Um. Their
funeral march had twenty participants and two hundred thousand onlookers.
And again I actually should have looked up the population
in Chicago at the time, but two people, it's a

(54:53):
lot of people. Yeah, it's the largest funeral that had
ever been seen in Chicago and and basically unions and
radicals across the world commemorate their deaths and still do
on May one, and which is the workers holiday, like
I said at the top, in every country of the
world except the US, where they can't handle the radical stuff. Um. Yeah.

(55:16):
But but to close out the rest of our characters,
you want to know what happened to Captain Blackjack Bonfield, right,
the cop who charged the crowd. Well, yes, he was
caught taking bribes and among the stolen goods he was
storing was the personal effects of Louis Ling. Everyone had
been like, hey, where's Louis link stuff, and the cops like,

(55:36):
I don't know. And it's because this dude had stolen it.
He gets fired, which is actually that might be a
sign of the times having changed in a bad way.
He actually gets fired for this, and um, and that's
actually the impetus to get started getting the part and
pushed forward. Is there, Like, look, the main guy for
the prosecution was a piece of ship, corrupt cop and

(55:57):
and they get pardoned a progress It is elected governor
of Illinois in and he once again he's in. He
tanks his entire career. He it costs him the re election,
but he pardons the remaining He frees the remaining three
who are still in prison, and he posthumously pardons the

(56:18):
five who died. Um And he never managed to get
back into office after doing that, but he actually cared
about justice. Good for him. Yeah, another another moderate who
made a sacrifice for these people. That is nice to
see a couple of times, in addition to all of
the ones who stood by and did nothing. But yeah, yeah, Okay.

(56:40):
Then there's the fun of the cops statue. In eight nine,
the police put up a statue in Haymarket Square in
honor of the fallen officer, the only one who would
actually that they oh, the one who didn't get killed
by other copy Yeah, exactly. For some reason, they didn't
do one of all the people have been murdered by officers,
and that it wasn't a picture of dual wielding and

(57:01):
blackjack shooting down other cops. A monument to the cops
killed by other cops. It's called critical support the monument. Yeah,
all right, So the model for this cop, they don't
use the actual dead cop as the model. They take
a living cop, a guy named Birmingham and he's crooked,

(57:23):
as ship was the Dead Cop ugly where they're just
like that guy's not sexy enough for a statue. Yeah,
I gotta assume um. So they pick a crooked cop
who then gets fired for fencing stolen goods. Incredible, an
amazing monument. And then in three someone steals the crest
of the city off the statue in a street car driver,

(57:47):
probably on purpose, jumps the tracks with the street car
and plows down the statue. It gets moved to a
place called Union Park. On May four, it is defaced
with black paint. The next year, the Weatherman, who are
the radical fact part of a radical faction, the anti
war movement, they just fucking blow up the statue. Ah,

(58:09):
nice to hear they got one of those bombs, right, Well,
they get two of them, right because then yeah, they
got a couple, right, Well, they get at least to them,
right Because that they rebuilt the statue. And then a
year later the weather men blow it up again. Excellent,
And then it was rebuilt once more, and now it's
in the lobby of the Chicago Police headquarters where every
day every cop can see a statue of a crooked
cop m and and it this didn't win another cop statue,

(58:36):
but Haymarket, it didn't win them the work eight hour
work day. But as far as I can tell, it
didn't actually delay it as much as sometimes people say.
The labor movement in the US and especially worldwide actually
grew and eventually with this and basically, one by one,
various trades and unions one better hours by seven, the
Fair Labor Standards Act finally won it for more or

(58:58):
less everyone Nationwide's anarchism in Chicago kind of faded after
the trial, but anarchism worldwide grew, and basically everywhere you
would go across the world, in any kind of labor hall,
you would see the Haymarket martyrs, you see pictures of them.
It leaves me with this really complicated takeaway, right, because
their rhetoric of violence is kind of what got them

(59:19):
into this mess on some level. Yes, and certainly all
of the dynamite had an impact on all of the dynamite,
but it's really hard to say whether the end result
was positive or negative for the labor movement, for anarchism,
for any of these things. It's like it's it's almost
impossible to parse out. And then and one of the
things that I'm left thinking about with this is that

(59:41):
like a lot of the stories of Haymarket that you'll
read in sort of more mainstream papers will be like, oh,
there was this good protest movement and some anarchists came
and sucked it all up by throwing a bomb, and
and that leaves out the fact that it was the
anarchist who organized not the whole thing, but a huge
chunk of it in the first place, and certainly the
thing that got sucked up by I'm on throwing a bomb.
And and I feel like that happens a lot, is

(01:00:03):
that people like radical people end up organizing this, and
then that that work has forgotten about. And then my
final note is that Lucy Parsons, who I opened the
story up with, she she stayed involved her entire life,
and she ended up helping form the union the Industrial
Workers of the World, who probably wanted to get thrown episode,
and she used the lessons of Haymarket to teach young

(01:00:24):
radicals in the twenties. The Chicago Police Department declared that
she was quote more dangerous than a thousand rioters. And
that feels like something to aspire to. Yeah, yep, So
Robert how are you feeling about Haymarket. I mean bad,
it doesn't I mean on on the whole bad time.

(01:00:47):
I feel good that a lot of people came around
to the fact that it was bullshit went in terms
of talking about the long term value of something like this,
It's not bad that the kind of inherent tradictions and
and and fast illness of the system and how um
it exists primarily not to achieved justice but to do

(01:01:10):
violence against people who threatened power like that. That that's
not bad. Like it's useful that that was done. UM.
I don't know how much comfort that was for the
families of the deceased, but it seems like it was
some comfort for most of the deceased. UM. And May
Day is a good holiday. It is a good holiday.

(01:01:31):
Dare say, cool people who did cool stuff? I hope. So, yeah,
it's pretty pretty cool, you know. I went to my
favorite May Day that I've I've been to was UM
in Berlin. And in Berlin, one of the things they
do on May Days is all of the bars kind
of like move out into the streets. UM, Like they'll

(01:01:53):
just set up like kiosks and stuff with their beer
and for one night it's allowed to just like throw
your bottles everywhere. So there's just like snow drifts of
shattered glass all over the streets and it's fine. Apparently
this one night you can break glass all all you want,
all over the damn place. And I had this very
fun moment of just like shattering god knows how many

(01:02:13):
brea bottles over the street. And then at one of
the s Bahn stations, my friend like stopped to piss
in like a corner. And when you get immediately ticketed
by the jermy, that's just taking it too far. There's
kids hooking bottles at the street side just like all right,
but this isn't okay. Yeah, we have laws here, we

(01:02:35):
have rules here. We have one less rule tonight, but
we have rules here. Um. Anyway, thank you, Margaret. This
has been a hoot. Yeah, thanks for coming on. And
dare I say a holler? No, that's too much. Do
you have anything you want to plug? Robert Evans? Never
never heard of you, Robert Evans, you have anything? I've

(01:02:57):
certainly never heard of me. Do you host any podcasts?
I do the Dynamite Cast, where we talk about the
health benefits of a dynamite enriched diet, which are none
there are well, actually it would probably help with certain
heart conditions, right, because nitroglycerin is literally used in one
form as a heart medication. So I guess there are

(01:03:19):
some ways that ingesting dynamite might potentially help you. But
I doubt it would. I doubt it would work if
you just were to take the form used as an
explosive as a heart medication. But I don't actually know
you're using it wrong. I don't know, Like, Okay, have
you read a headache? Okay, now if you don't want
to have a headache, you could explode your entire body. Well,

(01:03:42):
now that's that's you see, This is this is you're
you're really getting onto the subject of my new self
help book, The Explosion Driven Life. So so so from
what I got from what Robert just said, he was saying,
listen to it could happen here. Uh and and by
his book After the Revolution, and and check out my
new book The four Dynamite Work Week and the four

(01:04:03):
Dynamite Body both go great together, and we'll teach you
how to change your life with just four sticks of dynamite. Amazing, Margaret,
Where can people follow you? People can follow me on
the internet on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy and on
Instagram at Margaret Killjoy who utally do Well. We'll be
back next week on Monday with an allegedly allegedly with

(01:04:26):
another cool person who may have done in fact something cool,
with lots of caveats. As always, cool people are coming up.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media, but more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check

(01:04:46):
us out on the I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.