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The Impact of Haymarket on German-American Radicalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Hartmut Keil
Hartmut Keil
Affiliation:
Amerika-Institut, Munich
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Extract

Over the course of one hundred years Haymarket has provoked a considerable body of personal and historical writing offering a variety of interpretations and evaluations of its meaning. Thus historians have attributed to Haymarket local as well as national significance; they have viewed it as a conspiracy by the ruling elite against the labor movement, as a death-blow to anarchism in the United States, as an attempt at weakening the eight-hour movement, and as a critical watershed for the organization of American labor at large. Before adding yet another view, it may be appropriate to address not only one basic issue underlying any such endeavor but also the assumptions for attributing to this unique historical event important and far-reaching consequences. Claims about Haymarket's wide ramifications certainly cannot be sustained by dealing with it solely on the factual level; such an attempt could justifiably be criticized as a simplistic and reductionistic “cause-and-effect” explanation.

Type
The Haymarket
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 29 , Spring 1986 , pp. 16 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1986

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References

NOTES

1. Letter by Raster, Hermann to unknown recipient, 29 04 1886Google Scholar; Hermann Raster Collection, The Newberry Library; translation by H. K.

2. Raster, to Oglesby, Richard J., 7 11 1887Google Scholar; Hermann Raster Collection, The Newberry Library. Dr. Ernst Schmidt, the prominent German-American Chicago physician who had run for mayor on the SLP ticket in 1879 and was heading the defense association for the Haymarket victims, was one of the men who went to Springfield in November 1887 and pleaded with Governor Oglesby to commute the death sentences. Schmidt asserts that it was the letter of another German radical émigré, the former Lieutenant Governor of Illinois Gustav Körner, who was decisive in influencing Oglesby not to show clemency; cf. Schmidt, Frederick R., trans, and ed., He Chose: The Other was a Treadmill Thing (Santa Fe, 1968) 154f.Google Scholar

3. Coltzhausen, Frederick W.v., Review of the Spring Election (Milwaukee, 1887), 3.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 4. also Cotzhausen, Historic Reminiscences and Reflections, 67.

5. Staats-Zeitung, Illinois, 20 12 1886Google Scholar, quoted in Cotzhausen, Historic Reminiscences and Reflections, 6ff.

6. Reported in Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung (cited as ChAZ), 22 1886.

7. ChAZ, 17 1887.

8. Metzner, Heinrich, Jahrbücher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Turnerei, Bd. 3 (New York, 1894) 254Google Scholar; cf. also Jahresbericht des Vororts des Nordamerikanischen Turnerbundes (St. Louis, Mo), 1 April 1887–1 April 1888 (Milwaukee, 1888), S. 8; cf. also Der arme Teufel, 27.11.1886.

9. Newly founded clubs in Chicago were the Socialer Turnverein, National-Turnverein, Südseite Turnerschaft, Zentral-Turnverein, and Turnverein Freiheit; Chicago und sein Deutschthum (Cleveland, 1901–1902) 90; ChAZ, 31 Dec 1886; 10 Jan., 22 Apr., 19 May 1887; Amerikanische Turnzeitung, 24 Apr, 1 May 1887; Der arme Teufel, 23 April 1887.

10. Detroit Abendpost, cited in Amerikanische Turnzeitung, 18 October 1885.

11. New Yorker Volks-Zeitung, 21 January 1887.

12. ChAZ, 15 Dec. 1886.

13. ChAZ, 18 Jan 1887.

14. Amerikanische Turnzeitung, 13 Oct. 1889

15. “Unter der Seufzerbrücke der Bastille von Chicago,” Der arme Teufel, 28 August 1886.

16. “Noch ein Wort über die Riots,” Sozialist, 15 May 1886.

17. “Haben wir etwas mit den Anarchisten gemein?” Sozialist, 22 May 1886.

18. “Haven wir etwas mit den Anarchisten gemeinsam?” Vorbote, 9 June 1886.

19. “Die Blutbade in Chicago und Milwaukee,” Sozialist, 15 May, 1886.

20. “Noch ein Wort über die Riots,” Sozialist, 15 May 1886; cf. also “Am Vorabend,” Sozialist, 17 April 1886.

21. “Zu den Chicagoer Unruhen,” Sozialdemokrat (Zurich), 13 May 1886; also cited in Sozialist, 17 April 1886.

22. “Die Arbeiterbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1886–1892,” Neue Zeit, vol. 13: 2 (1895), 338.

23. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 18 June 1886; 16 July 1886; 30 July 1886; 18 June 1887.

24. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 16 July 1886.

25. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 18 June 1886; also 16 July 1886.

26. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 30 July 1886; 18 June 1887.

27. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 19 Nov 1887; cf. also 5 Nov 1887.

28. Möbel-Arbeiter-Journal, 19 Nov 1887.

29. “Uber die zukünftige Taktik der Arbeiterbewegung,” Hammer, Sept. 1886.

30. New Yorker Volks-Zeitung, 21 July 1889; ChAZ, 28 July 1888; 27 Dec 1888.

31. Amerikanischer Turnkalender (1889) 100.

32. “Vahlteich's Rede im Turnverein ‘Vorwärts’: ‘Die conventionellen Lügen’ im nordamerikanischen Turnerbund,” ChAZ, 28 Nov 1890.

33. ChAZ, 11 and 29 Febr.; 29 Mar 1889; 30 Apr and 2 May 1890.

34. Cf. list of clubs in ChAZ, 12 Oct 1903; reprinted in Keil, , ed., Deutsche Arbeiterkultur in Chicago von 1850 bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Eine Anthologie (Ostfildern: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1984) 248, 252ff.Google Scholar

35. Letter to Schlüter, Hermann, 4 06 1897Google Scholar, in Kleine Korrespondenz, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

36. Seventy Years of Life and Labor: An Autobiography by Samuel Gompers, revised and edited by Taft, Philip and Sessions, John A. (New York, 1957) 237.Google Scholar

37. Lorwin, Lewis L., The American Federation of Labor: History, Politics, and Prospects (Washington, DC, 1933) 31.Google Scholar

38. Ibid.