During the depression of 1873, groups of unemployed workers organized to ask for government assistance, particularly for programs of public works which would create jobs for them. In New York City such a group, calling itself a Committee of Safety, was established in December 1873; among its members were socialists, reformers, and trade unionists. When this group petitioned the city government for aid, local officials refused to meet with them. The Committee then planned a march from Tompkins Square to City Hall, but the police refused to issue a permit for the march. “You have the same rights as any body of men,” they were told, “but we want to avoid … annoyance to the business community and the public.” The Committee then asked for a permit to hold a demonstration in Tompkins Square. The night before the meeting the police officials decided to refuse this permit also, but they did not so inform the Committee until the next morning. On a sub-freezing January day small Tompkins Square Park was jammed with over 7,000 workers, most of them immigrants, many women and children. At 10:30 a detachment of police appeared and began clubbing the demonstrators; mounted police charged the crowd repeatedly.
The response to the event reflected the fears that had been aroused by the Paris Commune. Commissioner of Police Abram Duryee was elated: “It was the most glorious sight I ever saw the way the police broke and drove the crowd. Their order was perfect as they charged with their clubs uplifted.” The press was equally pleased, in New York and across the country. Editors advocated complete suppression of radicals and the unemployed. Should a communistic spirit emerge again, said one editor, the city should “club it to death at the hands of the police or shoot it to death at the hands of the militia.” The attempt of the unemployed to organize and propose a program of public works ceased shortly afterwards.
The following description was written by Samuel Gompers, who was present at Tompkins Square, and who concluded from what happened there that radical methods of protest would not succeed: Gompers: Seventy Years of Life and Labor (1925). See Herbert Gutman: “The Tompkins Square ‘Riot’ in New York City on January 13, 1874: A Re-examination of Its Causes and Its Aftermath,” Labor History, VI (Winter 1965), 44–70.
Next morning people began assembling early in the Square. I reached the Square a little after ten. It had been a drill field and playground and, though a bit out of repair, was commonly used by the working people for general gatherings and speeches. A high iron fence surrounded the park with wide gate entrances. Soon the park was packed and all the avenues leading to it crowded. The people were quiet. There was nothing out of harmony with the spirit of friendly conferences between the chief public official and workless and breadless citizens. The gathering was planned as visible proof of suffering and destitution among New York unemployed. A paper was edited for this special meeting by Lucien Sanial and P. J. McGuire. The paper, widely circulated among the unemployed, the working people, and the city authorities, contained the program proposed by the workers. The Volcano was also conspicuously for sale. Tom-ri-John, everybody in New York in the early ’seventies will remember as a Communist or Socialist or a reformer of some kind. Tom was also a journalistic reformer. He ran a newspaper called the Volcano. It was printed on bright yellow paper and its articles set up in red ink. In accord with their distribution of family responsibility, it was Mrs. Tom-ri-John’s business to sell these papers, and her working dress (masculine garb) served to attract attention, while the big stick she always carried was her rod and staff of defense and support. The couple had three children Eruptor, Vesuvia, and Emancipator.
It was about 10:30 when a detachment of police surrounded the park. Hardly had they taken position before a group of workers marched into the park from Avenue A. They carried a banner bearing the words “TENTH WARD UNION LABOR.” Just after they entered the park the police sergeant led an attack on them. He was followed by police mounted and on foot with drawn night-sticks. Without a word of warning they swept down the defenseless workers, striking down the standard-bearer and using their clubs right and left indiscriminately on the heads of all they could reach.
Shortly afterwards the mounted police charged the crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality. I was caught in the crowd on the street and barely saved my head from being cracked by jumping down a cellarway. The attacks of the police kept up all day long—wherever the police saw a group of poorly dressed persons standing or moving together. Laurrell went to Tompkins Square and received a blow from the police across his back, the effect of which remained with him for several months.
The next few days disclosed revolting stories of police brutality inflicted on the sick, the lame, the innocent bystander. Mounted police and guards had repeatedly charged down crowded avenues and streets. To this day I cannot think of that wild scene without my blood surging in indignation at the brutality of the police on that day. They justified their policy by the charge that Communism was rearing its head.
The Internationals replied with the ugly charge that they had been sold out by George Blair and others of the Workingmen’s Union who they said had told the authorities that they were dynamiters trying to organize a Commune, a charge that never died until it was thrashed out in the Central Labor Union years later and Blair exonerated. Blair was a boxmaker by trade and was then operating a co-operative establishment. He was an ardent Knight of Labor which then, of course, was a wholly secret body. I always thought him honest and loyal to the best interests of labor. He did not look with friendliness upon any attempt to turn the labor movement into opera bouffe. He may have asked for police protection to have the workers properly protected—but I am perfectly confident he betrayed no trust.
The Tompkins Square outrage was followed by a period of extreme repression. The New York police borrowed continental methods of espionage. Private indoor meetings were invaded and summarily ended by the ejection of those present. The police frustrated several meetings held to protest police brutality and in defense of the right of free assemblage for a lawful purpose.