On this day in 1886, workers across the United States began a general strike for an eight-hour work day. The strikes were peaceful, with estimates of participation across the country ranging from 300,000 to half a million. In New York City the number of demonstrators was estimated to be 10,000. In Detroit , 11,000. In Milwaukee, 10,000. And in Chicago, the movement's center, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 workers went on strike, and there were perhaps twice as many people out on the streets participating in various demonstrations and marches. The strike date had been set in October 1884 by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, and was well planned, coordinated, and largely nonviolent. However, on Monday, May 3, outside a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant on the West Side of Chicago, workers surged to the gates to confront strikebreakers when the end-of-the-workday bell sounded. The police fired on the crowd, and at least two (and possibly as many as six) McCormick workers were killed.
Three days later, workers, local organizers, and anarchists rallied at Haymarket Square to protest the police gunning down protesters at the behest of moneyed business interests. The rally began peacefully, but long into the evening, as the meeting was winding down, and police arrived in force and ordered the crowd to disperse. The police advanced. Someone (to this day no one knows who) threw a bomb that killed one police officer and wounded several others. There was an exchange of gunfire and in all, seven policemen and at least four workers were killed. Which is how the Haymarket rally turned into the Haymarket Massacre. This was followed by a brutal police crackdown on all union activity. Warrantless searches. Baseless arrests. Union halls were ransacked.
The trials that followed were a gross miscarriage of justice. On June 26, 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned three of the four men wrongly convicted for the bombing (the fourth had committed suicide in jail) calling them victims of "hysteria, packed juries, and a biased judge" and noting that 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". Altgeld also faulted the city of Chicago for failing to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for repeated use of lethal violence against striking workers.
On the one hand, Altgeld's pro-labor, pro-justice stances were used to defeat him in the next election. On the other hand, Altgeld has a street, a park, several buildings named after him, and a lovely statue in Lincoln Park depicting him defending Labor.
Finally, from Wikipedia: "In 1889, AFL president Samuel Gompers wrote to the first congress of the Second International, which was meeting in Paris. He informed the world's socialists of the AFL's plans and proposed an international fight for a universal eight-hour workday. In response to Gompers's letter, the Second International adopted a resolution calling for "a great international demonstration" on a single date so workers everywhere could demand the eight-hour workday. In light of the Americans' plan, the International adopted May 1, 1890, as the date for this demonstration."
So Happy International Workers' Day everyone! And for your listening pleasure today, Dropkick Murphys' "Take 'Em Down".
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