The local authorities made no effort to stop any of these proceedings. Mayor Harrison believed that repressive measures would be useless and considered that to allow the anarchists to talk would gratify their vanity and preclude the possibility of riot. That such a belief was fallacious, subsequent events proved.
In 1886 came the agitation for the establishment of the eight-hour day, and the anarchist leaders were prominent therein. The first collision between the anarchists and the police came at the McCormick reaper works. There was a sharp fight and the police dispersed the rioters. It was said that many workingmen were killed in that fight, but the story was exaggerated, no one being killed. The anarchists held secret meetings at once and devised a plan to revenge themselves on the police, and to burn and sack the city. As a first step, and for the purpose of demoralizing the police force, a public meeting was called to be held in the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4. The meeting was really held on Desplaines street, between Randolph and Lake streets. Parsons, Spies and Fielden spoke from a wagon in front of Crane’s foundry, until the police came up to disperse the meeting, on account of the violent character of the utterances. Inspector Bonfield and Captain Ward were in charge of the police, and no sooner had Captain Ward called upon the crowd to disperse than a bomb was hurled into the midst of the unsuspecting policemen. It burst with a loud report, knocking down nearly every one of the one hundred and twenty-five men in the detail and badly wounding many.
Inspector Bonfield at once rallied his men, and charged the mob with a resistless rush that carried everything before them. After the square had been cleared the officers began to attend to their wounded comrades. Only one, M. J. Degan, had been instantly killed, although seven died afterward from their injuries. Sixty-eight others were injured, some so badly that they were maimed for life, and incapacitated for work.
Of all the men who were subsequently arrested for this crime, only eight were placed on trial. These were August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Louis Lingg, who were found guilty and sentenced to death, and Oscar Neebe, who was sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. Lingg committed suicide by blowing his head to pieces with a bomb while confined in the jail awaiting execution. The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to imprisonment for life by Governor Oglesby. The other four were hanged in the county jail on November 11, 1887. They were buried at Waldheim cemetery the following Sunday, November 13, and this occasion was made memorable by the honors shown the dead by the anarchist societies of Chicago. It was the last great outpouring of anarchy that the city has seen. Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe were afterward pardoned by Governor Altgeld, and released from the penitentiary.