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May 1st, International Workers'
Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world,
and is recognized in most countries. The United States of America and Canada are
among the exceptions. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s
in the USA, linked to the battle for the eight-hour day, and the Chicago
anarchists.
The struggle for the eight-hour day began in the 1860s. In 1884, the Federation
of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, organized
in 1881 (and changing its name in 1886 to American Federation of Labor ) passed
a resolution which asserted that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's
work from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labor organizations
throughout this district that they so direct their laws as to conform to this
resolution". The following year the Federation repeated the declaration that an
eight-hour system was to go into effect on May 1, 1886. With workers being
forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, support for the eight-hour
movement grew rapidly. In the months prior to May 1, 1886, thousands of workers,
organized and unorganized, members of the organization Knights of Labor and of
the federation, were drawn into the struggle. Chicago was the main center of the
agitation for a shorter day. The anarchists were in the forefront of the Central
Labor Union of Chicago , which consisted of 22 unions in 1886, among them the
seven largest in the city.
During the Railroad strikes of 1877, the workers had been violently attacked by
the police and the United States Army. A similar tactic of state terrorism was
prepared by the bureaucracy to fight the eight-hour movement. The police and
National Guard were increased in size and received new and powerful weapons
financed by local business leaders. Chicago's Commercial Club purchased a $2000
machine gun for the Illinois National Guard to be used against strikers.
Nevertheless, by May 1st, the movement had already won gains for many Chicago
workers. But on May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of strikers at the
McCormick Harvester Machine Company, killing at least one striker, seriously
wounding five or six others, and injuring an undetermined number. Anarchists
called for a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square to protest the
brutality.
The meeting proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on
the platform, the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only about two
hundred people remaining. It was then a police column of 180 men marched into
the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. At the end of the meeting a bomb
was thrown at the police, killing one instantly, six others died later. About
seventy police officers were wounded. Police responded by firing into the crowd.
How many civilians were wounded or killed from police bullits never was
ascertained exactly. Although it was never determined who threw the bomb, the
incident was used as an excuse to attack anarchists and the labor movement in
general. Police ransacked the homes and offices of suspected radicals, and
hundreds were arrested without charge. A reign of police terror swept over
Chicago. Staging "raids" in the working-class districts, the police rounded up
all known anarchists and other socialists. "Make the raids first and look up the
law afterward!" publicly counseled the state's attorney.
Anarchists in particular were harassed, and eight of Chicago's most active were
charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the Haymarket bombing. A
kangaroo court found all eight guilty, despite a lack of evidence connecting any
of them to the bomb-thrower, and they were sentenced to die. In October 9, 1886,
the weekly journal Knights of Labor published in Chicago, carried on page 1 the
following announcement: "Next week we begin the publication of the lives of the
anarchists advertised in another column." The advertisement, carried on page 14,
read: "The story of the anarchists, told by themselves; Parsons, Spies, Fielden,
Schwab, Fischer, Lingg, Engle, Neebe. The only true history of the men who claim
that they are condemned to suffer death for exercising the right of Free Speech:
Their association with Labor, Socialistic and Anarchistic Societies, their views
as to the aims and objects of these organizations, and how they expect to
accomplish them; also their connection with the Chicago Haymarket Affair. Each
man is the author of his own story, which will appear only in the "Knights of
Labor" during the next three months, - the great labor paper of the United
States, a 16-page weekly paper, containing all the latest foreign and domestic
labor news of the day, stories, household hints, etc. A co-operative paper owned
and controlled by members of the Knights of Labor, and furnished for the small
sum of $1.00 per annum . Adress all communications to Knights of Labor
Publishing Company, 163 Washington St., Chicago, Ill." Later this journal and
the paper Alarm published the autobiographies of the Haymarket men.
Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer and George Engel were hanged on
November 11, 1887. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison. The authorities
turned over the bodies to friends for burial, and one of the largest funeral
processions in Chicago history was held. It was estimated that between 150,000
to 500,000 persons lined the route taken by the funeral cortege of the Haymarket
martyrs. A monument to the executed men was unveiled June 25, 1893 at Waldheim
Cemetery in Chicago. The remaining three, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and
Michael Schwab, were finally pardoned in 1893.
On June 26, 1893, the governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, issued the
pardon message in which he made it clear that he was not granting the pardon
because he believed that the men had suffered enough, but because they were
innocent of the crime for which they had been tried, and that they and the
hanged men had been the victims of hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.
He noted that the defendants were not proven guilty because the state "has never
discovered who it was that threw the bomb which killed the policeman, and the
evidence does not show any connection whatsoever between the defendants and the
man who threw it."
It is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union
officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day. In its
attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States
government declared May 1st to be "Law Day", and gave the workers instead Labor
Day, the first Monday of September - a holiday devoid of any historical
significance.
Nevertheless, rather than suppressing the labor and anarchist movements, the
events of 1886 and the execution of the Chicago anarchists, spokesmen of the
movement for the eight-hour day, mobilized many generations of radicals. Emma
Goldman, a young immigrant at the time, later pointed to the Haymarket affair as
her political birth. Instead of disappearing, the anarchist movement only grew
in the wake of Haymarket.
As workers, we must recognize and commemorate May Day not only for it's
historical significance, but also as a time to organize around issues of vital
importance to the working-class, i.e. the people, of today. |
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