Arbeiter-Zeitung (Chicago)

Last updated
Arbeiter-Zeitung
Arbeiter Zeitung masthead.png
Chicago Arbeiter Zeitung newspaper 1886.jpg
The masthead for the May 4, 1886, edition of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, presented as evidence in the trial for the Haymarket affair
TypeDaily German-language newspaper
Founded1877
LanguageGerman
Ceased publication1931
Headquarters Chicago

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, also known as the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, was a German-language, radical newspaper started in Chicago, Illinois, in 1877 by veterans of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. [1] It continued publishing through 1931. It was the first working-class newspaper in Chicago to last for a significant period, and sustained itself primarily through reader funding. The reader-owners removed several editors over its run due to disagreements over editorial policies. [2]

Contents

The Arbeiter-Zeitung was initially edited by German-American émigrés Paul Grottkau and August Spies. Grottkau travelled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1886 and changed the name of the local socialist weekly, then called Arminia, to the Milwaukee Arbeiter Zeitung. The paper was also made a tri-weekly. [3] Influential American socialist Victor Berger became editor of the Milwaukee Arbeiter Zeitung in 1893 and changed the paper to the daily Wisconsin Worwaerts. [3] The Chicago paper was left in the hands of Spies, who was officially named editor in 1884. [4]

In the early months of 1886, membership in Chicago Internationals (militant unions) swelled to record levels while the Arbeiter-Zeitung and the anarchist publication The Alarm (edited by the Parsons) unleashed a steady stream of editorials railing against capitalism. Labor leaders focused on the eight-hour work day as the means to a better life for working people. The newspaper complained that as wealthy businessmen lived opulently, workers suffered, and unemployment rose. Even in companies where profits rose sharply, employers cut wages. Strikes became more common — and some led to violence.[ citation needed ]

As a result of the Haymarket Square bombing of May 4, 1886, police arrested and investigated staff members of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Its offices were raided, and speeches and writings published in the paper were part of the evidence used to convict and hang the anarchists who were arrested in its wake. Its editor, August Spies, and a typesetter, Adolph Fischer, were executed after a widely publicized, six-week trial; business manager Oscar Neebe and chief editorial assistant Michael Schwab were sentenced to death, but later pardoned. [5]

Prosecutors showed that, the night before the bombing, Fischer had proposed that the paper should publish the word ruhe ('peace') — a call for armed men to assemble. The word did appear, highlighted in the May 4 edition. A staff member testified ruhe was written in the hand of Spies. [6]

At his sentencing, Spies denounced the police and prosecution witnesses. He also charged that one witness, Gustav Legner, could prove his alibi but was threatened by police and paid to leave Chicago. Legner later sued the Arbeiter-Zeitung for libel for repeating Spies' claim of bribery, denying he was told to leave town. Legner said he asked Spies before leaving the city if he should testify and was told he would not be needed. The Arbeiter-Zeitung agreed to print a retraction. [7]

In the early 1900s Hippolyte Havel, a Czech anarchist from Austria-Hungary edited the newspaper. He had met Emma Goldman in London and returned with her from Europe. In Chicago, he lived in her household shared with Mary and Abe Isaak for a while. [8] He later moved to New York, where he continued to edit anarchist papers.

The library of the University of Cincinnati has several years' holdings of the Arbeiter-Zeitung on microfilm in its German-Americana Collection. [9]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Political Wars in Chicago, 1873 to 1886". Roosevelt University. Retrieved 12 September 2010.[ permanent dead link ]
  2. ↑ "Politics and the Press". Encyclopedia of Chicago. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  3. 1 2 Wachman, Marvin. History of the Social-Democratic Party of Milwaukee 1897-1910. 1st ed. Vol. XXVIII. Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 1. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1945, p. 10, https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheSocial-democraticPartyOfMilwaukee1897-1910.
  4. ↑ Messer-Kruse. The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists. pp. 12–13.
  5. ↑ Douglas O. Linder (2006). "The Haymarket Riot and Subsequent Trial: An Account". Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  6. ↑ Messer-Kruse. "The Prosecution". The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists. pp. 59–60, 72–73.
  7. ↑ Messer-Kruse. "The Elements of a Riot". The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists. pp. 108–09.
  8. ↑ Alexander, Doris (2005). Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays: Separating Art from Autobiography. University of Georgia Press. ISBN   0-8203-2709-3.
  9. ↑ "Index of the Microfilm Collection of German-Americana" (PDF). German-Americana Collection. University of Cincinnati Library System. Source 30. Retrieved 12 September 2010.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Parsons</span> American socialist and anarchist newspaper editor

Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneering American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist. As a teenager, he served in the military force of the Confederate States of America in Texas, during the American Civil War. After the war, he settled in Texas, and became an activist for the rights of former slaves, and later a Republican official during Reconstruction. With his wife Lucy Parsons, he then moved to Chicago in 1873 and worked in newspapers. There he became interested in the rights of workers. In 1884, he began editing The Alarm newspaper. Parsons was one of four Chicago radical leaders controversially convicted of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police remembered as the Haymarket affair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Spies</span> American anarchist (1855–1887)

August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. An anarchist, Spies was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder following a bomb attack on police in an event remembered as the Haymarket affair. Spies was one of four who were executed in the aftermath of this event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolph Fischer</span> German-American anarchist (1858–1887)

Adolph Fischer was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Schwab</span> American anarchist (1853–1898)

Michael Schwab was a German-American labor organizer and one of the defendants in the Haymarket Square incident.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Lingg</span> American anarchist and trade union activist

Louis Lingg was a German-born American anarchist who was wrongfully convicted as a member of the criminal conspiracy behind the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing. Lingg was sentenced to die by hanging, but shortly before his execution, he committed suicide in his cell using an explosive. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld granted Lingg a posthumous pardon, stating that he and the other seven men who had been convicted were innocent of the charges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Neebe</span> American anarchist (1850–1916)

Oscar William Neebe I was an anarchist, labor activist and one of the defendants in the Haymarket bombing trial, and one of the eight activist remembered on May 1, International Workers' Day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Fielden</span> American anarchist (1847–1922)

Samuel "Sam" Fielden was an English-born American Methodist pastor, socialist, anarchist and labor activist who was one of eight convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing.

The Union Labor Party or United Labor Party (ULP) was a labor party created in 1884 by labor activists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was moderately successful, and key organizers within the party helped create the People's Party, into which the ULP was merged.

<i>Illinois Staats-Zeitung</i> German-American newspaper

Illinois Staats-Zeitung was one of the most well-known German-language newspapers of the United States; it was published in Chicago from 1848 until 1922. Along with the Westliche Post and Anzeiger des Westens, both of St. Louis, it was one of the three most successful German-language newspapers in the United States Midwest, and described as "the leading Republican paper of the Northwest", alongside the Chicago Tribune. By 1876, the paper was printing 14,000 copies an hour and was second only to the Tribune in citywide circulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haymarket affair</span> 1886 aftermath of a bombing in Chicago, US

The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The rally began peacefully in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after the events at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, during which one person was killed and many workers injured. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing retaliatory gunfire by the police caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Rosenberg</span> American dramatist

Wilhelm Ludwig "William" Rosenberg was a German-American teacher, poet, playwright, journalist, and socialist political activist. He is best remembered as the head of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1884 to 1889.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Grottkau</span> American journalist

Paul Grottkau (1846–1898) was a German-American socialist political activist and newspaper publisher. Grottkau is best remembered as an editor alongside Haymarket affair victim August Spies of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, one of the leading American radical newspapers of the decade of the 1880s. Later moving to Milwaukee, Grottkau became one of the leading luminaries of the socialist movement in Wisconsin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Van Patten</span> American architect (1852–1918)

Simon Philip Van Patten (1852–1918) was an American socialist political activist prominent during the latter half of the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s. Van Patten is best remembered for being named the first Corresponding Secretary of the Workingmen's Party of the United States in 1876 and for heading it and its successor organization, the Socialist Labor Party of America, for the next six years. In 1883 Van Patten mysteriously disappeared, with his friends reporting him as a potential suicide to law enforcement authorities. He later turned up as a government employee, however, having abandoned radical politics in favor of stable employment.

Timothy F. Messer-Kruse is an American historian who specializes in American labor history. His research into the 1886 Haymarket affair led him to reappraise the conventional narrative about the evidence presented against those brought to trial. He has also written on banking history and race relations in the United States.

Der arme Teufel was a leading German-American anarchist magazine, published in German at Detroit, Michigan from 1884 to 1900, and edited mainly by the Detroit anarchist Robert Reitzel from 1884 until his death in 1898.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Labor Party of America</span> American political party

The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) is a political party in the United States. It was established in 1876, and was the first socialist party formed in the country.

The Alarm was an anarchist newspaper published in the American city of Chicago during the 1880s. The weekly was the most prominent English-language anarchist periodical of its day. The paper was famously edited by Albert Parsons, who was controversially tried and executed in response to the Haymarket affair of 1886.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Working People's Association</span> International Political party (1881–87)

The International Working People's Association (IWPA), sometimes known as the "Black International," and originally named the "International Revolutionary Socialists", was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England.

"Anarchism or Communism?", better known as the Most–Grottkau debate, was a nationally advertised, public debate between America's foremost revolutionary anarchist Johann Most and Paul Grottkau in Chicago on May 24, 1884. The session consisted of two statements and two rebuttals and was published by the Chicago International Working People's Association as a 48-page pamphlet.

The Congress of Socialists of the United States, better known as the 1881 Chicago Social Revolutionary Congress, was a meeting of anarchists and socialists in Chicago in October 1881 to organize the new social revolutionary groups splintered from the American Socialistic Labor Party.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.