A coincidence of anarchy

At 9:30 AM on the first of May, 1906, the workers in Montréal's Bargain Clothes Company called a strike. They wanted a half-holiday on Saturdays, reducing their work week from 60 hours to 55; management had agreed in principle, but would not sign a contract. So the workers walked out, freeing themselves for Montréal's first-ever May Day parade.

At 11:45 AM on the first of May, 1906, Andrew Carnegie arrived by train from Ottawa to collect an honorary degree from McGill University. Carnegie was the richest man in the world, a former steel baron who gave away millions to various philanthropic endeavours, and believed that the rich had a moral duty to give their excess wealth to the poor.

Sometimes, the historical process deconstructs itself.

Carnegie moved through Montréal by way of a series of clubs and speeches. The Canadian Club. The Saint James Club. The Saint Andrews and Caledonia Society. He was well received everywhere, and why not? He was a Scot by birth, and so fit in naturally with the Anglo-Celtic élite of Montréal. He was a generous man. The one blot on his record was a big one, though. Fourteen years before, his factory in Homestead, Pennsylvania had become notorious when the chairman of the board, Henry Clay Frick, had ordered armed Pinkerton men to fire on strikers. Carnegie himself had always claimed to believe in the right of workers to unionise.

Anyway, that was a long time gone in 1906. In Montréal Carnegie's speeches were avidly recorded by the media. Like any good speaker, he worked his audience. At the Canadian Club, to about four hundred or so of the French and English upper class, he stated that "I would like to speak for the small minority of my race which you French people have surrounded and captured. Be kind to them. Remember even minorities have rights and don't press them too hard. They mean well." He went on to tell Montréalers that if we "would only unite more and intermarry oftener, you would make a race better than the French, better than the British - why, I do not hesitate to say, better than the elect, the Scotch themselves." The Montreal Star duly recorded that Carnegie had talked on the subject of 'race fusion'.

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Carnegie spoke again at McGill, when he received his formal LL.D. "Socialists," he said, to the applause of his auditors, "cry against wealth, but, bless their poor hearts, they don't know what they're talking about. There could neither be a church, nor a bank, nor hospital, nor university, nor anything of what was called civilisation without it."

Meanwhile, the May Day parade was getting underway.

The Empire Hall stood at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Catherine in those days; people had been milling about inside it for most of the afternoon. The organiser of the festivities was one Comrade Dorman, according to contemporary descriptions a "short, dark man, with a black beard, and a clay pipe." He would have seen about three hundred people circulating around, listening to speeches in English, Russian, and Hebrew. By 6:30, a crowd had gathered outside the hall. At about 7:30, the crowd inside came out to join them. About four hundred, all told; just the same number as had listened to Carnegie speak at the Canadian Club. One presumes there was little overlap.

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The Socialist crowd was younger, and almost certainly more ethnically diverse. Newspaper accounts sedulously noted the racial composition of the Socialist crowds - Italians and Germans; Belgians and Irishmen and French-Canadians; and Russians of various types, for "the majority of Hebrews who figured in it are former citizens of Russia." There seem to have been a surprisingly large amount of women present, some escorted by husbands or boyfriends, and some unattached. One pretty young thing sold decorations outside Empire Hall, leaving her station only when the diverse parade began to move slowly along Saint Catherine.

The red flag was held high in the front rank, white letters in English and French calling out "Workers of the World Unite". In the middle of the crowd the United Garment Workers had a banner proclaiming "Knowledge is Power"; there were other banners, in Yiddish and Esperanto. The parade moved by torch-light to the sound of an Italian band which alternated 'L'Internationale' and 'The Marseillaise'. Nor was it an orderly procession. May 1 was to Montréalers then what July 1 is now: moving day. We must imagine an already-chaotic parade of anarchists moving through increasing gloom, now streaming along and now gathering in clumps, first on one side of the street and then on the other and now marching ten abreast, shouting, laughing, hissing at the priests of Laval University, all the while "dodging street cars, drays loaded with furniture, an ambulance, and other vehicles."

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The procession wandered along Saint-Catherine to Saint-Denis, down Saint-Denis to Craig Street (as Rue Saint-Antoine was then called), then back to Saint-Laurent and up again to the Empire Hall. The march took an hour and a quarter. Then there were more speeches, in French, English, Esperanto, Yiddish, and Italian. Still the night ended early, at nine-thirty. But at least some of the Socialists would unite again some days later.

History, as noted, plays odd tricks. On the thirteenth of May, 1906, Emma Goldman spoke on the Champ-de-Mars. Goldman was an Anarchist agitator who would denounce Lenin's tyranny, a fighter for women's rights and suffrage, a committed revolutionary often unaccountably left out of history textbooks. In Montréal that May she did not attract a large audience. Two, three hundred, maybe. Dorman introduced her, clay pipe in hand, and in fact much of the audience seem to have been passers-by drawn by his oratory. Goldman was at first hesitant to speak. Too few listeners? Or was she uncharacteristically agitated for another reason? In a few short days fellow-Anarchist Alexander Berkman, the love of her life, would be let out of prison. Berkman had been jailed in 1892. He'd tried to kill a noted industrialist - Henry Frick, the man responsible for the massacre at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead plant.

Sometimes history deconstructs itself. Sometimes it simply provides an odd net of coincidence in which may be ensnared anarchy and industry, philanthropy and assassination.

Written by: Matthew Surridge