The Alarm (newspaper)

The first issue of The Alarm appeared on October 4, 1884 in Chicago, Illinois as the weekly voice of the International Working People's Association (IWPA).

[4] A pioneer member of the American Typographical Union as well as the Knights of Labor, the gifted orator Parsons soon emerged as among the leading English-speaking radical trade unionist in the city of Chicago, a position even more firmly established with the launch of The Alarm.

Financing came in the form of a publishing society which sold benefactors "shares" of the paper in addition to a stream of fundraisers, including picnics and benefit evenings.

[6] The Alarm styled itself as the official English-language voice of the International Working People's Association and very frequently reprinted the political platform of the IWPA in its pages.

[6] The paper inceasingly railed against private ownership of productive capital and the system of wage labor — depicted as the root cause of a wide range of social maladies.

[6] The paper consistently argued that the state was a mechanism for the perpetuation of this unjust social order as well as an instrument for the suppression of individual political liberty.

"[11] This political orientation and practical advocacy would make the paper itself a target in the aftermath of a fatal bombing in Chicago on May 4, 1886, remembered to history as the "Haymarket affair."

The Alarm was suppressed on May 4, 1886, a period during which Albert Parsons was still in hiding prior to his voluntary surrender to the Chicago police for trial in the Haymarket affair.

Nameplate of The Alarm, Chicago anarchist newspaper issued from 1884 to 1886 under the editorship of Albert Parsons . After having been suppressed by law enforcement authorities, the paper reemerged briefly in 1887 and 1888 with Dyer D. Lum manning the editorial chair.
Albert Parsons, editor of The Alarm, was among those executed in retaliation for a fatal anarchist bombing in Chicago on May 4, 1886.