44 ChaPter^1
that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat
it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I
have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, “if you cannonade us, we shall
dynamite you.” You laugh! Perhaps you think, “you’ll throw no more
bombs”; but let me assure you I die happy on the gallows, so confident am
I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember
my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then—mark my words—
they will do the bomb throwing! In this hope do I say to you: I despise
you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang
me for it!The media and political officials jumped on the anti-labor bandwagon,
accusing labor organizers of being foreign-born radicals and terrorists. This
political atmosphere encouraged the bosses, who went on a brutal counterof-
fensive against labor, with lockouts, injunctions, spies, troops, and frequent
violence. Although Powderly condemned the bombing, the K of L, which had
little to do with strike, lost membership rapidly and the dream of a national
union seemed dead. Almost immediately, however, a national organization did
emerge, though with a much different vision than the K of L. Samuel Gompers,
a cigar maker, helped organize the first national union that would endure, the
American Federation of Labor [AFL], in 1886. The AFL included crafts unions
only—labor groups of skilled workers like Masons, Tailors, Hatmakers, or
Cigarmakers who were easier to organize because they made more money
and because their skills could not be easily replaced if they were to go on
strike. Gompers, unlike the K of L or later labor leaders like Eugene V. Debs,
had no conception of a larger class solidarity, and believed the AFL would be
better served politically and economically by focusing on “bread and butter
issues” like higher wages rather than try to restructure society. Thus unskilled
workers—like the men who worked in steel mills, iron foundries, on the rail-
roads, or in the mines—were not allowed to join the AFL, nor were “radicals”
like socialists or anarchists particularly welcome; it was an organization of
skilled workers only and industrial workers would have to wait a half-century
to be organized.
Haymarket remains one of the better-known events, but it is important to
remember that labor uprisings took place across the entire nation—some