The Haymarket Affair and the Norwegian Immigrant Press

Abstract

4 The Haymarket Affair and the Norwegian Immigrant Press by Arlow W. Andersen On November 11, 1987, a graveside ceremony will undoubtedly take place at Waldheim cemetery in Oak Park, on the western edge of Chicago. There lie the remains of four men whose direct guilt in the Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, has never been established. They were among those charged with inciting to violence in a bomb-throwing incident which brought death to seven policemen in downtown Chicago. Imprisonment and trial followed, ending with their hanging in the Cook county jail on November 11, 1887. One can only surmise who will be present to observe the centennial of this gruesome historical event. To the majority of their contemporaries the victims were dangerous socialists and anarchists whose punishment was well deserved. Others regarded them as genuine martyrs to the twin causes of reform and justice, seeking to benefit an oppressed working class. Their immediate goal was simply an eight-hour day for all industrial workers. While the antipodal points of view suggested above do not lend themselves to reconciliation, it is safe to say that the judgment of the twentieth century would be more concerned with the punitive atmosphere and the questionable procedures in the trial than with the social and economic aims of the accused. Radicals in their day, were these dead to rise and 97 98 Arlow W. Andersen look about them they would find comfort in learning that their nineteenth-century vision for the lower ranks of society , including unskilled immigrants, was not completely askew. In fact, their dreams have in large measure been fulfilled. The labor question was not new in the 1880s. But the rise of the modern factory had created a human robot, paid, to be sure, but nevertheless committed to long hours of tedious work under unpleasant and often hazardous conditions. Fringe benefits were unheard of. Hardly any segment of the western world escaped this dehumanization. Tolstoy painted the picture correctly when he remarked that people he saw on the streets of St. Petersburg seemed to be walking along a wire that drew them unwillingly toward their factory jobs. From the first days of the Christian era, and probably much earlier, the laborer was said to be worthy of his hire. Unfortunately , that worthiness was lost sight of in the impersonal drive for profits. American labor retaliated by organizing its forces. Among its first nationwide efforts was the founding of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, the name itself suggesting both secrecy and grandeur. Its beginning in 1869 received little attention in the Norwegian- American press. A decade later Bikuben (The Beehive), the voice of Mormonism for Scandinavian converts in Utah, denounced the yearning for profit but turned its attention more toward allegedly dangerous social and economic philosophies. The editor declared socialism to be "an unmerciful enemy" in European countries. He saw the same red color and the identical destructive pattern in the French Commune of 1871, Russian nihilism, and American railroad strikes. Bikuben took seriously the rumors that anarchists were storing ammunition in American cities, and spoke out for gradual reform of working conditions within the law.1 The early 1880s brought an unusual sharpening of tension between dissatisfied laborers and adamant employers. Norwegian-American editors and correspondents surveyed The Haymarket Affair 99 the world of manufacturing much as the general public did. Some played the "plague on both your houses" game, scolding the contending parties for ignoring the welfare of the people. Others added that labor's right to organize was not in question, but that unions should not resort to sabotage or drive away "scabs," the non-union strikebreakers. Too bad, they thought, that the Knights of Labor, embarrassed by their large membership - 700,000 in 1886 - and handicapped by the demands of disparate interest groups among them, could not control their rebellious and violence-prone factions. Agitators from France and Germany further aggravated the problem.2 A few journalists spoke more positively on behalf of the exploited laborers. Rapid industrial development had produced an unprecedented impulse toward progress, something in which labor would have no share unless capital came to the rescue. Had a larger...