In Chicago , Parsons obtained a job as a newspaper reporter for the '' Chicago Times . '' In 1874 Parsons became interested in the labor politics as a byproduct of grassroot efforts to force the Chicago Relief and Aid Society to account for millions of dollars of relief aid raised by the group on behalf of victims of the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 . Commercial newspapers came to the aid of the Relief and Aid Society , denouncing its working-class critics as , among other things , " Communists " — a term given new currency after the rise and fall of the Paris Commune during the first half of 1871 — prompting Parsons to begin to study the essence of the charges . Parsons later recalled that this study had convinced him that " the complaints of the working people against the society were just and proper " and led him to draw parallels between the treatment of poor people in both the urban North and the Reconstruction South . " It satisfied me there was a great fundamental wrong at work in society and in existing social and industrial arrangements , " he later declared
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
Albert Parsons