August Spies, who was afterward executed for his alleged complicity in the Haymarket riots, was at this time a prominent member of the party. He used anarchism and socialism as synonymous terms. He said:
“Anarchism, or Socialism, means the reorganization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime.”
George Engel, who shared the same cruel fate, said:
“Anarchism and Socialism are as much alike, in my opinion, as one egg is to another. They differ only in their tactics. The anarchists have abandoned the way of liberating humanity which Socialists would take to accomplish this. I say: Believe no more in the ballot, and use all other means at your command.”
These differences in tactics alluded to by Engel not only created violent dissensions in the party, but resulted in the withdrawal of the anarchists into groups of their own, followed later by the execution and imprisonment of their leaders because of their alleged participation in the Haymarket riots.
But with all the difficulties that confronted it on every hand and the fierce factional contention within its own ranks, the Socialist Labor Party, composed of thoughtful, intelligent men, aggressive and progressive, of rugged honesty and thrilled with the revolutionary spirit and the aspiration for freedom, became from its inception a decided factor in the labor movement. It first appeared upon the scene when the country was seething with discontent, the result of the prolonged period of financial and industrial depression that began in 1873 and like a scourge spread rapidly over the country, leaving desolation and gloom in its wake. To the working class it was an ordeal of fire, but the suffering and sacrifice were not in vain. Economic necessity determined the course of events and the workers, some of them at least, had their eyes opened to the cause of their misery and were thus impelled to action looking to the abolition of the existing industrial disorder, based upon wage-slavery, rather than giving themselves wholly, as they had hitherto done, to the fruitless task, as it now appeared, of ameliorating its effects and consequences. It was these men, led by the foreign radicals, who had long before been scourged by the capitalist masters in their own lands, who rallied to the revolutionary standard of the new working class party.
