In
Chicago the freight handlers struck, and some 60,000 workmen
stopped work in sympathy. On the 3d of May, at the McCormick
Harvester Works, several strikers were wounded in a tussle with
the police. On the following day a mass meeting held in Haymarket
Square, Chicago, was harangued by a number of anarchists. When
the police attempted to disperse the mob, guns were fired at the
officers of the law and a bomb was hurled into their throng,
killing seven and wounding sixty. For this crime seven anarchists
were indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. The
Knights of Labor passed resolutions asking clemency for these
murderers and thereby grossly offended public opinion, and that
at a time when public opinion was frightened by these outrages,
angered by the disclosures of brazen plotting, and upset by the
sudden consciousness that the immunity of the United States from
the red terror of Europe was at an end.
Powderly and the more conservative national officers who were
opposed to these radical machinations were strong enough in the
Grand Lodge in the following year to suppress a vote of sympathy
for the condemned anarchists. The radicals thereupon seceded from
the organization. This outcome, however, did not restore the
order to the confidence of the public, and its strength now
rapidly declined. A loss of 300,000 members for the year 1888 was
reported. Early in the nineties, financial troubles compelled the
sale of the Philadelphia headquarters of the Knights of Labor and
the removal to more modest quarters in Washington.
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