The Haymarket Square bombing and after accentuated the country's division on economic class and status. The police reacted to the bombing by rounding up men considered foreign-born radicals, yet also considered valuable labor organizers in other quarters. Eight of the men were also subsequently sentenced to death under the charge that they were anarchists. These charges led to widespread public questioning of their guilt as the public interrogated many questions that rendered their trial and sentencing, baseless, and founded on false allegations. This especially agitated the working class who projected their frustrations with the system on the absurdity of the whole affair.
