[lbo-talk] A. Parsons: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haymarket/autobiography1.html

[c b]

 I at once became a member of Typographical Union No. 16 and "Subbed"
for a time on the Inter-Ocean, when I went to work under "permit" on
the Times. Here I worked over four years holding a situation at "the
case". In 1874 I became interested in the "Labor question," growing
out of an effort made by Chicago workingpeople at that time to compel
the "Relief & Aid Society" to render to the suffering poor of the city
an account of the vast sums of money (several millions of dollars)
held by that society and contributed by the whole world to relieve the
distress occasioned by the great Chicago fire of 1871. It was claimed
by the working people that the money was being used for purposes
foreign to the intention of its donors, that rings of speculators were
corruptly using the money, while the distressed & impoverished people
for whom it was contributed, were denied its use. This raised a great
sensation and scandal among all the city newspapers which defended the
"Relief and Aid Society" & denounced the dissatisfied workingmen as
"Communists, robbers loafers," etc. I began to examine into this
subject & I found that the complaints of the working people against
the Society were just & proper. I also discovered a great similarity
between the abuse heaped upon these poor people by the organs of the
rich & the actions of the late Southern slave-holders in Texas towards
the newly enfranchised slaves whom they accused of wanting to make
their former masters "divide" by giving them "40 acres & a mule" that
it satisfied me there was a great fundamental wrong at work in Society
& in existing social & industrial arrangements.
>From this time dated my interest and activity in the labor movement.
The desire to know more about this subject led me in contact with
Socialists & their writings they being the only people who at that
time had made any protest against or offered any remedy for the
enforced poverty of the wealth producers and its collateral evils of
ignorance, intemperance, crime & misery. There were very few
Socialists or "Communists" as the daily papers were fond of calling
them, in Chicago at that time. The result was the more I investigated
& studied the relations of poverty to wealth, its causes & cure, the
more interested I became in the subject. In 1876 a workingmens
Congress of organized labor met in Pittsburgh, Pa. I watched its
proceedings. A split occurred between the conservative & radicals, the
latter of whom withdrew & organized the "Workingmen's Party of the
United States," as a distinct protest against class rule & class
domination. The year previous I had become a member of the "Social
Democratic Party of North America." This latter was now merged into
the former. The organization was at once pounced upon by the
monopolist class who through the capitalist press everywhere denounced
us as "Socialists, Communists, robbers, loafers," etc.
2 minutes ago · Like