24 years after their martyrdom and Seattle remembers the Haymarket dead, with Jay Fox, a witness and participant, telling the story.

‘Twenty-Fourth Anniversary of the Chicago Martyrs’ by Jack Wood from The Agitator. Vol. 2 No. 2. December 1, 1911.

Seattle, Nov. 12th, 1911. Notwithstanding boisterous weather, and a wet night, five hundred women and men got together in the headquarters of the I.W.W. Fellow-Worker F.R. Schleis in the chair, opened the meeting with remarks clenching its object and paid a fervid tribute to the lives. and deaths of the Chicago Martyr.

The choice of the Russian Workers’ Society sang several pieces, including the “Marseillaise,” and were accorded encores which their spirited singing well merited.

Frank Chester Pease was the first speaker. In a scholarly and brilliant analysis he showed the basic principles at stake, and for defending which Parsons, Spies, Engel, and Fischer were hanged. A high tribute was paid to Lingg, who, in his hatred of production for profit, had said, “I despise you, I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!”

Lingg, however, cheated the gallows of its glut–and he, with the hanged, still lives! And will, till their work be accomplished, to be re-enshrined amongst the world’s immortal Emancipators.

Floyd Hyde (organizer I.W.W.) made a telling speech. He went into details as to the hard times of 1884, reaching its industrial climax in 1886; of the organization and activities of the Knights of Labor, and of the Federation of the Trades Unions agitating for the 8-hour day. He told of the McCormack Binderwork’s lock-out, and how three hundred Pinkerton’s were employed at those works to protect the blacklegs.

Hyde told of the packing of the jury; of the commuting to imprisonment for life of Schwab and Fielden, and how they, with Neebe, who was sentenced to 15 years, were all liberated by Governor John P. Altgeld in June 1893, to the everlasting honor of John P. Altgeld, who thus made what amends he could for the blood-thirsty brutality of Capitalistic Chicago in particular, and Capitalism at large.

M. Dux spoke in Russian. His manner and tone carried conviction, even to those who could not understand the language of one, who escaping from the barbaric Czar of Russia, had discovered there were other Czars to be found in the land of the free.

Jay Fox (Editor Agitator) made the closing talk. An eyewitness of the tragedy, minus part of a finger by police-gun. He had walked in the funeral train of those “who had high honor,” but whose last rites were denied the right of music, sympathetic or triumphal. Never was a keener nor truer example of the reality of a witness. Jay Fox might well have re-echoed the words of Wesby, who having been chased nearly to his death by an English mob in Southampton, wrote:

“What we have seen and felt,
And publish to the sons of men,
With confidence we tell,
The Signs infallible.”

Infallible! Yes! Certain! The signs of Greed, and Exploitation. With burning pathos Jay Fox held his hearers spell-bound. He told of the 3rd of May meeting of the Lumber Union where 75 Pinkerton’s shot on the crowd, killing six, and wounding many. Of the meeting of the 4th, two thousand in the crowd, the mayor present, and satisfied, that no disorder was premeditated by the workers, as to know when the meeting was nearing its close two hundred police were marched upon it. The Bomb was thrown and one policeman killed. (Never proven against the Chicago Martyrs.) And then a battle, not unlike the massacre of Peterloo in Manchester in 1819.

And there on the old historic Haymarket Square fell seven police, and some seventy wounded–and of the workers (as figures go) four killed and fifty wounded. Inter-Direct Action with a vengeance! Parsons had brought his wife and children down that night. He did not meditate murder. Fischer and Engel were at home. Schwab, Ling, and Neebe, had not been notified of the meeting, yet the press had to be obeyed, the police must act, and good men and true must hang, and go to prison. So! “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

“But That Scaffold Sways the Future, and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch upon his own!”

Not the orthodox God, but the principle of Justice inherent in Nature’s laws. Shelley’s “Spirit of Goodness,” which is at the core of things, and will come to view from out the shadow, when Solidarity of the workers be accomplished. No wonder Shelley wrote “We learn in suffering what we teach in song.”

Parsons, Spies, and their confreres suffered, that we might have life. See to it!

It was a great meeting. Big literature sales, big collections, and pledges.

“To fight the cause that lacks assistance, at the wrong which needs resistance, for the future in the distance, and the good that we can do.”

Read the book “Live Questions” by J.P. Altgeld, he knew.

The Syndicalist began as The Agitator by Earl Ford, JW Johnstone, and William Z Foster in 1911. Inspired by the revolutionary syndicalism of the French CGT, they felt they were political competitors to the IWW and in early 1912, Foster and others created the Syndicalist Militant Minority Leagues in Chicago with chapters soon forming in Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They renamed The Agitator The Syndicalist as the paper of the Syndicalist League of North America with Jay Fox as editor. The group then focused on the AFL. The Syndicalist ceased publication in September 1913 with some going on to form the International Trade Union Educational League in January 1915. While only briefly an organization, the SLNA had a host of future important leaders of the Communist movement. Like Foster, Tom Mooney and Earl Browder who were also members.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/agitator/v2n02-dec-01-1911-agitator.pdf