THE ORIGIN OF MAY DAY:The 1886 General Strike
We workers in the United States have not always had the eight-hour day. This, like most progress, was won through popular struggle. In the late 1800s, workers, including children, could suffer 16 or more hours a day under dangerous, stifling sweatshop conditions. They earned starvation wages and lived in cramped quarters. Like today, the bosses and the government kept the working class weak by sharpening the divisions of race, gender, immigration status, and other artificial differences. In 1886, however, workers obliterated these divisions and stood together as a class, beginning the fight that won the eight-hour day.
In Chicago, a strong labor movement pressed for, and was rewarded with, 8-hour legislation in 1867. This was supposed to be enacted on May 1st. When that day came, however, the bosses ignored the law and the government wouldn't enforce it. But when Chicago's militant workers went on strike to protest, the government did send the police to brutally crush the peoples' resistance. The despondent workers returned to their jobs. Nothing had changed for Chicago's toilers except their confidence that change could be achieved through legislation.
In 1886 another more radical 8-hour movement gained momentum, led in Chicago by migrant and other workers of the anarchist International Working People's Association (IWPA). A national coalition of unions called for a general strike for May 1st. A general strike is when all workers, regardless of profession, stop working. By crippling the economy workers demonstrate their power - without the workers, society could not continue; the bosses and the rest of the ruling class, on the other hand, are completely useless and even detrimental to the health of human society.
On May 1st, 1886 750,000 workers went on strike across the country— 400,000 in Chicago alone. Eleven-thousand marched in Detroit, 25,000 in New York City, and 80,000 marched through Chicago's streets. Their demonstration of unity terrified the ruling class. Determined not to concede anything and to greedily hoard all of the wealth they had robbed from the poor, the rich set out to crush the movement with violence.
The workers' momentum continued with strikes and demonstrations. On May 3rd, the striking "lumber shovers" union held a public meeting of 6,000 near the McGormick plant. The police attacked the meeting with guns and batons, killing one worker and wounding more. Outraged, anarchists posted a call in their daily German-language paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers'
Newspaper") for a May 4th protest meeting at Haymarket Square.
That night, thousands gathered at Haymarket to denounce police violence. The crowd listened calmly to speeches by migrant anarchist workers, such as August Spies and Samuel Fielden. Even the mayor of Chicago, who attended the beginninghalfoftherally,said,"nothinglookedlikely to happen to require police interference," and he advised police captain Bonfield to send his forces home. Bonfield didn't. Around 10PM, after the mayor and many attendees left, and as Fielden was calling the meeting to a close, Bonfield's force of 200 officers marched on the rally, threatening violence and demanding it break up. A bomb exploded in the police ranks, killing one instantly and injuring many. In the chaos, police fired indiscriminately, killing seven of their own officers and numerous demonstrators, though they never counted how many workers they slaughtered.
A reign of terror followed while the state prosecutor publicly advised the police to target anarchists: "make the raids first and look up the law afterwards." Police arrested all known anarchists and raided meeting halls, printing offices, and homes. Eight prominent anarchist speakers, newspaper editors, and unionists-August Spies, Sam Fielden, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe—were charged with the Haymarket bombing. Of the 8 men, 7 were immigrants, and only 3 were at Haymarket that night. The state prosecutor handpicked a biased jury and presented no evidence connecting them to the bomb.
As the prosecution argued in court, "Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them. Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of them, Jiang them and you saviour institutions, our society/'l3o they" did." All received death sentences except Neebe, who was given 15 years. A massive international campaign forced the state to commute the sentences of Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment, but on November llth, 1887, Parsons, Engel, Spies, and Fischer were hanged. The fiery young German carpenter, Louis Lingg, cheated the hangman, committing suicide in his cell the day before his execution. Six-hundred thousand attended their funeral.
While the Haymarket incident was initially seen as a set-back for the 8-hour movement, the event radicalized many more, including influential anarchists Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Gleyre. The American Federation of Labor and the anarchist IWPA took the streets again on May Day, 1890, and the movement for the 8-hour day pressed on. Carrying the legacy of the Haymarket Martyrs, organized labor began to make headway. The United Mine Workers achieved the eight-hour day in 1898, as did the Building Trades Council of San Francisco in 1900, printing trades across the US in 1905, and Ford Motor workers in 1914. In 1916, threatening a nationwide general strike, US railroad workers forced the government to pass the Adamson Act, which won them an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime.
Finally in 1938, massive militant movements of workers and unemployed forced the Roosevelt government to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing for many the 8-hour day with extra overtime pay, as well as a national minimum wage and the abolition of "oppressive child labor."
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