The Working Class Smells...So Do Roses

On May 4, 1886, in the first days of a nationwide strike for the eight hour workday, a dynamite bomb was thrown into a police phalanx in the final minutes of a labor protest meeting in downtown Chicago. Eight men were brought to trial and found guilty of the murder of Officer Mathias Degan: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were executed; Louis Lingg committed suicide the day before the execution; Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab, after requesting it, received commuted life sentences; and Oscar Neebe received fifteen years of hard labor. Fielden, Schwab and Neebe were later pardoned and released. 

The bombing and the events flowing from it, “The Haymarket Affair”, are not widely known. These events over a century ago have had far-reaching consequences into the present century just as they had causes stretching back the decades before them. While not a detailed or definitive history, this book lays out a general path for clearer understanding through a tour of the major sites related to Haymarket.