Justice does not come to those who ask for it. It must be demanded, seized, through persistent protest, peaceful or otherwise. For, injustice is the outgrowth of greed, opportunism and the hunger for power, dark desires which create societal inequities that are much more easily engendered than eliminated. After all, what person, what race, what class, would knowingly, willingly and unreservedly surrender the privileges of power to the powerless? Who, having fought to carve out an advantage, would choose to forego that advantage in the name of fairness? Justice must be seized and it is this potent lesson which underpins Mr. Green's riveting history of a turning point in the history of American labor.
On May 4th, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, protesters and police clashed in a violent incident that deeply influenced the politics and the ideology of 20th century American labor. After years of organized strikes, many of which were violently dispersed by industrial titans and their for-hire paramilitary muscle, tempers in the city were deeply frayed. The protesters, a collection of unionists, socialists and advocates for the eight-hour work day, had been bullied, beaten up, and shot at in their attempts to strike for improved wages and working conditions. The police, meanwhile, obligated to maintain the peace in the face of a movement willing to shut down the industrial heartbeat of the midwest in order to achieve their aims, were stressed by numerous encounters with protesters, pressured by powerful interests to impose order upon them, and fearful of the chaos that imposition might reap upon the factious and immigrant-heavy Chicago of the 1880s. The protesters, riled up by the police firing into a crowd of strikers just a day before, were angry and looking to make a statement. The police, tired of being thwarted in their many attempts to force peace, refused to back down. It was a powderkeg just waiting for its fuse to be lit.
We may never know who hurled the bomb into the crowd of police on that fateful day. Was it an agent provocateur trying to give police the excuse they needed to suppress the protesters, or was it a radicalized sympathizer who thought to strike a blow for the rallyers? Time has likely robbed us of proof of his identity and, consequently, his motivations, but we know this much. When that dynamite-packd explosive detonated amidst the police, grotesquely killing one of its officers, it unleashed a response from law-enforcement that lead to the deaths of seven other officers, an unknown number of protesters and a huge, city-wide crackdown on socialists, foreigners and anarchists, all in the name of finding the cop-killer who, with one bomb, with one flick of the wrist, changed the course of history. For within a year, eight of the protest's leaders would be executed by the state for their association with the crimes committed that day, crushing any hopes for their movement's success, as they envisioned it.
Death In The Haymarket is a compelling recount of a turning point in American history. Mr. Green, an American historian, skillfully and concisely details the socioeconomic forces that animated the protesters, the political and industrial interests that opposed them, the corrupted judicial system that convicted them, and the pro-industrial press that was so eager to condemn them. Though this account undoubtedly favors the laborers, portraying their leaders as honorable advocates for equality who might well have succeeded in their shared dream had they not been ground under the bootheels of powerful interests, the author does not demonize the movement's foes. But for a few magnates and trigger-happy cops,Mr. Green reserves his black hat for institutional corruption. More over, the author laments the extent to which the Haymarket Affair put an end to the hopes of millions of workers fighting for a fair deal. For, in many ways, it would take nearly 50 years for their reforms to take hold under the aegis of Roosevelt's New Deal.
This is wonderful work that captures an all-but-forgotten United States. This is not the America of airplanes and iPads. It is an America of impoverished immigrants and industrial titans, an America before the welfare state, before labor laws, before 20th century social activism instilled into American culture sympathy for the urban worker. This is an America where life is cheap, where corruption is rampant and where the wilds of the western frontier are right outside the door. It is an America to be remembered for the lessons it can teach us about justice and the extent to which violence will erupt when a fair deal is denied to any subset of a society's citizens. Vivid work. (4/5 Stars)
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