August Spies, Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons, William Holmes and thousands of Chicago proletarians tell the President what to do with his 1885 Thanksgiving Day proclamation.

‘Thanksgiving!–Response of the Working People to the Command to Give Thanks–Great Demonstration on Market Square by the Ungrateful–A Thankless Day’ from the Alarm (Chicago). Vol. 2 No. 9. December 12, 1885.

The day set apart by the well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, and well-to-do classes to return thanks for the success that crowned their efforts to exploit the working class during the past year was Thursday, November 26. It was a dreary, cold, wet, and uncomfortable day for the half-fed, scantily-clothed, poorly-housed, and poverty-stricken working class, who had been the victims of the God-and-morality “better classes” the past year.

The working people of Chicago felt the sting of the insult and the hollow mockery conveyed in the chief ruler’s proclamation commanding the people to “return thanks” for the miserable existence they were compelled to endure. The Internationalists therefore arranged for an indignation meeting of the working people, to whom was addressed the following announcement:

Grand Thanksgiving services of the Chicago workingmen, tramps, and all others who are despoiled and disfranchised, on Market square (Randolph and Market streets), Thanksgiving day, Thursday, November 26, 1885, at 2:30 o’clock p. m. Good “preachers” of the gospel of humanity will officiate. Everyone is invited. Learn how turkeys and other nice things may be procured. The Committee of the Grateful.

At the hour named several hundred men and women had assembled at the corner of Washington and Market streets, where a large red flag waved from the top of a pile of salt-barrels which covered the sidewalk. By the time the meeting was called to order some 2,000 persons stood in the mud and slush, and cold, piercing wind, which was the ideal of a raw, chilly Novemberday, when A.R. Parson mounted a pile of salt barrels, and using them as a stand, was introduced as the first speaker. At the conclusion of his remarks he was followed by William Holmes who read the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted:

Whereas, The President of the United States has issued his annual proclamation, calling upon the people as a whole to give thanks for prosperity, of which but few of them have a share, and reiterating the lies so often repeated about the well-being of the nation; and

Whereas, The existence of a vast army of homeless wanderers, scarcity of employment, business depression, and the poverty and wretchedness of a large majority of the people give the lie to the statement that abundant prosperity prevails. No nation can be prosperous and contended where, in the banquet of life, a small number monopolize the general product, while the many are denied a place at nature’s table; therefore

Resolved, By this mass-meeting of all classes of citizens, that we vote our vigorous protest against the above-named proclamation at this time; that it is a lie — a stupid, hollow mockery — a sop thrown out by the ruling classes to tickle the palates of their ignorant dupes and slaves that they may with better security continue to rob them. We reiterate the statement thit only when the people shall have come to their own — when land and the natural resources of the earth shall have become free; when liberty shall have become a practical reality, and when the beast of private property in the means of life shall have ceased to sap the energies of the people; when poverty and the fear of want shall have been abolished from the face of the earth — then, and not until then, shall we have cause, as a people, to give thanks for our abundant prosperity.

Aug. Spies and Mrs. Lucy E. Parsons delivered short addresses. The remarks of the speakers were made from the view of the proletariat. Referring to the proclamation of the president calling on the people to return thanks, the speakers asked to whom the age-workers should offer thanks, and for what?   

Were they to be thankful for the hard times which make the life of the wage-worker an intense struggle for bread, and often times unable to procure even that; were they to be thankful for pauper wages and the miseries which follow a life of drudgery and poverty, and resign themselves and contentedly accept the station of a menial as an act of divine providence? No, perish the thought. Shall the plundered workers return thanks to their despoilers, who give charity to hide their blushes when they look into the faces of their victims? Shall the disinherited, who have by legal enactments been debarred their natural right to an equal and free use of all natural and social forces, return thanks for the soup-houses, poor-houses, wood-yards, and other charitable institutions? Shall the workers give thanks because they receive two hours’ pay for ten hours’ work? Are they to be thankful for the compulsory idleness of over 2,000,000 of their fellow-workmen? Thankful for an employer, a “boss” whose “business” it is to take something for nothing, and force them to accept the terms or starve! Thankful for a republican form of Government which guarantees free speech, free ballot, free press, and free action to the propertied class; a Government with its declaration of independence, constitution, and stars-and-stripes to defend and protect the robbers of labor, while it imprisons, shoots, and hangs the disloyal, rebellious wage-slaves? The First regiment, Illinois State Guards, is at this moment practicing the evolutions of the “street riot drill” in another part of the city for the purpose of murdering in an expeditious and scientific manner the men and women whom the present system has turned adrift to starve. Shall the workers be thankful for that? Shall they be thankful that capitalists the past year have employed the Pinkerton thugs, the police, and military to subjugate the workers in revolt against starvation wages. Shall thanks be returned that the Almighty God blesses the wrong-doer with riches, “making paradise for them out of the hells of the poor? Shall we be thankful for privation, for slavery, for poverty? No. Curses, bitter and deep are hereby and now returned to the author of our woes, be that God or man.

Referring to Chicago, the speakers drew attention to the fact that last winter over 30,000 persons were kept from starvation by the hand of charity. With elevators bursting with food, warehouses groaning with clothing, and houses vacant everywhere, they who produced by their labor these things were made to feel the pangs of hunger and the biting frosts of winter. Beneath the shadow of palaces which they had reared the workers of Chicago, as elsewhere, were huddled together in hovels and huts unfit for human habitation. The wealth produced by the wage-workers of Chicago the past year was sufficient to furnish them with every comfort — yea, even luxury.

The capitalists and their mouthpieces, the press, pulpit, and politicians, declare that the wage class receive in wages all that they earn. By this they mean that we earn only so much as they compel us to accept. The statistics as given in the capitalistic press, showing the productive capacity of labor in Chicago the past year, are the answer to the question why the workers are poor. Let the wage-workers ponder them well and ascertain where the ten and twelve hours’ work for which they receive no pay goes to.

The statistics, showing the profit on labor in Chicago the past year, are as follow:

Or over $857 profit on each laborer. While each wage-worker earned over $1,314, they received on an average $457 each, or less than one third of what they produced.

Each manufacturing establishment averaged a profit of about $40,000. Some bankrupted, it is true; but others, like Phil Armour, made over $3,500,000!

WHERE IT GOES TO

Manufacturers divides this plunder with landlords, usurers, insurance, the Government, lawyers, and other leeches and parasites.

AN ILLUSTRATION

Phil. Armour reduced his 10,000 laborers 25 cents per day, which on 10,000 amounts to $2,500 per day, $15,000 per week, $45,000 per month, and $540,000 per year. Result, a twelve-story palace worth $1,000,000 in two years.

Potter Palmer builds a $600,000 palace. There are ten millionaire club-houses in this city which are used for conspiracy against the liberties of the people. There are miles and miles of fashionable avenues lined from end to end with palaces wherein the enslavers and robbers of labor licentiously and riotously carouse upon the wealth filched from the workers.

Shall we be thankful for this infamy, crime, and murder of the innocents? But the “stars-and-stripes” overshadows and smiles upon and protects it all. Behold the American army, with gleaming bayonets, in long serried line, the American flag at its head leading the column, marching under orders of the President of the United States to protect—what? To protect the rights and liberties and welfare of the people? No. To protect the propertied class in their constitutional right to buy cheap labor—the Chinese coolie slave—and thus reduce the American laborer to the coolie standard of living. The flag of America has thus become the ensign of privilege and the guardian of property, the defender of monopoly. Wage-slaves of Chicago, turn your eyes from that ensign of property and fix them upon the emblem of liberty, fraternity, equality—the Red flag — that flag which now and ever has waved, and ever will remain the oriflamme of liberty, denoting emancipated labor, the redemption of humanity, and the equality of rights of all.

Let us be thankful, then, that there is a large and increasing number of workingmen and women who have acquired a knowledge of their rights and dare to defend them. Let us be thankful for the dawn which is even now breaking, which is to usher in the new era; thankful for the near approach of that period in human affairs when man will no longer govern or exploit his fellow-man: the time when the earth and all it contains will be held for the free use of all nature’s children.

Let us prepare for the recovery of our stolen right to our inheritance of this fair earth, and let us express the devout and earnest hope that ere many Thanksgiving days come round the workers of the world may, by their devotion to liberty and the best interests of man, abolish and exterminate the whole brood of profit-mongers, rent-takers, and usury-gatherers, and on the ruins of the old erect the new order, wherein all will associate and co-operate for the purpose of producing and consuming freely, without let or hindrance.

For three hours the assembled men and women stood in the chilling blasts of this cold November day while the speakers addressed them as above, when, at the conclusion, the Red flag was brought to the front and waving it aloft—there ringing cheers were given by them for the

“SOCIAL REVOLUTION!”

This ended the day of thanksgiving among the proletariat of Chicago.

The Alarm was an extremely important paper at a momentous moment in the history of the US and international workers’ movement. The Alarm was the paper of the International Working People’s Association produced weekly in Chicago and edited by Albert Parsons. The IWPA was formed by anarchists and social revolutionists who left the Socialist Labor Party in 1883 led by Johann Most who had recently arrived in the States. The SLP was then dominated by German-speaking Lassalleans focused on electoral work, and a smaller group of Marxists largely focused on craft unions. In the immigrant slums of proletarian Chicago, neither were as appealing as the city’s Lehr-und-Wehr Vereine (Education and Defense Societies) which armed and trained themselves for the class war. With 5000 members by the mid-1880s, the IWPA quickly far outgrew the SLP, and signified the larger dominance of anarchism on radical thought in that decade. The Alarm first appeared on October 4, 1884, one of eight IWPA papers that formed, but the only one in English. Parsons was formerly the assistant-editor of the SLP’s ‘People’ newspaper and a pioneer member of the American Typographical Union. By early 1886 Alarm claimed a run of 3000, while the other Chicago IWPA papers, the daily German Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers’ Newspaper) edited by August Spies and weeklies Der Vorbote (The Harbinger) had between 7-8000 each, while the weekly Der Fackel (The Torch) ran 12000 copies an issue. A Czech-language weekly Budoucnost (The Future) was also produced. Parsons, assisted by Lizzie Holmes and his wife Lucy Parsons, issued a militant working-class paper. The Alarm was incendiary in its language, literally. Along with openly advocating the use of force, The Alarm published bomb-making instructions. Suppressed immediately after May 4, 1886, the last issue edited by Parson was April 24. On November 5, 1887, one week before Parson’s execution, The Alarm was relaunched by Dyer Lum but only lasted half a year. Restarted again in 1888, The Alarm finally ended in February 1889. The Alarm is a crucial resource to understanding the rise of anarchism in the US and the world of Haymarket and one of the most radical eras in US working class history.

PDF of full issue: https://dds.crl.edu/item/54015