Richard T. Ely

"We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservatism, or radicalism, is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth. Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what, they call socialism."

"They have two distinguishing characteristics. The vast majority of them are laborers, and, as a rule, they expect the violent overthrow of existing institutions by revolution to precede the introduction of the socialistic state. I would not, by any means, say that they are all revolutionists, but the most of them undoubtedly are... The most general demands of the social democrats are the following: The state should exist exclusively for the laborers; land and capital must become collective property, and production be carried on unitedly. Private competition, in the ordinary sense of the term, is to cease."

"Even before Haymarket, ordinarily sober observers of the political scene, such as the economist Richard Ely, responded to the anarchists with alarm. In an article written just before the bombing but not published until shortly after it, Ely characterized the philosophy of the anarchists as one of "gunpowder, petroleum, and dynamite, and their cry is away with religion, away with the family, away with the state." Warning his readers that "doubtless two or three hundred thousand" men and women in the United States were either committed anarchists or sympathizers (an estimate surely inflated by fear), Ely concluded anxiously that "in times of excitement or restlessness, when men in a frenzy of anger are looking about for someone to lead them, those who have been trained in this party may do great damage." Ely and others greatly exaggerated the terrorist nature of anarchism."