|
no disorder during the meeting. The next day I went to the Times office to go to work as usual, when I found my name stricken from the roll of employees. I was discharged and blacklisted by this paper for addressing the meeting that night. The printers in the office admired secretly what they termed "my pluck," but they were afraid to have much to say to me. About noon of the day, as I was at the office of the German labor party, 94 Market street (organ of the Workingmen's party, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, printed tri-weekly), two men came in and accosting me said Mayor Heath wanted to speak with me. Supposing the gentlemen was down-stairs, I accompanied them, when they told me he was at the Mayor's office. I expressed my surprised, and wondered what he wanted with me. There was great newspaper excitement in the city, and the papers were calling the strikers all sorts of hard names; but, while thousands were on the strike there had been no disorder. As we walked hurriedly on, one on each side of me, the wind blew strong, and their coat-tails flying aside, I noticed that my companions were armed. Reaching the City Hall building, I was ushered into the Chief of Police's (Hickey) present in a room filled with police officers. I knew none of them, but I seemed to be known by them all. They scowled at me and conducted me to what they called the Mayor's room. Here I waited a short while, when the door opened and about thirty persons, mostly in citizen's dress, came in. The Chief of Police took a seat opposite to and near me I was very hoarse from the out-door speaking of the previous night, had caught cold, had had but little sleep or rest, and had been discharged from employment. The Chief began to catechise me in a brow-beating, officious, and insulting manner. He wanted to know who I was, where born, raised, if married and a family, etc. I quietly answered all his questions. He then lectured me on the great trouble I had brought upon the city of Chicago, and wound up by asking me if I didn't "know better than to come up here from Texas and incited the working people to insurrection," etc. I told him that I had done nothing of the sort, or at least I had not intended to do so; that I was simply a speaker at the meeting; that was all. I told him that the strike arose from causes over which I, as an individual, had no control; that I had merely addressed the mass-
|
