Haymarket Through the Anarchists' Eyes

The Haymarket bombing had an affect on the Labor movement, even more so it was a symbol. In Carl Guarneri's review on the book The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich it was, "a focal point for the passionate struggles of a generation over radicalism, immigration, urban miseries, and respectable middle-class citizens drew different lesson from the episode, but virtually all realized that they had seen lit in a flash, as it were, the dark side of American's difficult passage to urban-industrial capitalism" (76). Guarneri believes that this event was a lot more than just a strike gone wrong and improper brutal force by the police. he insists that it was a way of showing the working class how corrupt the everything was for the hard working lower class. An example Guarneri gives about the situation is that only one officer was actually killed by the dynamite thrown into the crowd of people men and that the other 6 police casualties were all done by other police officers in cross fire. He uses this point to show how it is unjust to blame all of the death on the thrown bomb because they were actually caused by their own men, but it was easier to blame the explosive to get the offenders in more trouble. Guarneri also talks about the trial and how it was complete unfair. There is no other way to put it other than it was completely tilted in favor of the prosectution and it didn't give these completely innocent men a chance at freedom or justice.
Guarneri continued by saying that anarchist promoted violence as the answer to their problems. Avrich claimed, "that urging workers to arm they were simply warning of inevitable revolution to come; and in any case 'their humanitarian outlook shrank from the methods that in theory they justified and professed'"(175). Guarneri is saying that because the anarchists pushed violence so hard on themselves that there was going to be some kind of revolution in the workforce out of fear by employers and the anarchists would feel justifed when that day would occur.