The Haymarket Massacre, or, Why most of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1 and you don't.

If you think it's hard out there for a populist, you don't know Jack about the Haymarket Massacre--and your ignorance is no accident.

The Haymarket Massacre is sometimes referred to as the "Haymarket Riots," the "Haymarket Bombing" or the uber euphemistic "Haymarket Affair."

No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today. Although the rally is included in American history textbooks, very few present the event accurately or point out its significance.

Labor Day (Labour Day in Canada) in the United States is a public holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country.

Labor Day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who organized the first parade in New York City. After the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago on May 4, 1886, U.S. President Grover Cleveland feared that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the affair. Therefore, in 1887, the United States holiday was established in September to support the Labor Day that the Knights favored.

Background

Following the Civil War, particularly following the Depression of 1873–79, there was a rapid expansion of industrial production in the United States. Chicago was a major industrial center and tens of thousands of German and Bohemian immigrants were employed at about $1.50 a day. American workers worked on average slightly over 60 hours, during a six-day work week.[12] The city became a center for many attempts to organize labor's demands for better working conditions.[13] Employers responded with anti-union measures, such as firing and blacklisting union members, locking out workers, recruiting strikebreakers; employing spies, thugs, and private security forces and exacerbating ethnic tensions in order to divide the workers.[14] Mainstream newspapers supported business interests, and were opposed by the labor and immigrant press.[15] During the economic slowdown between 1882 and 1886, socialist and anarchist organizations were active. Membership of the Knights of Labor, which rejected socialism and radicalism, but supported the 8-hour work day, grew from 70,000 in 1884 to over 700,000 by 1886.[16] In Chicago, the anarchist movement of several thousand, mostly immigrant, workers centered about the German-language newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers' Times&quot , edited by August Spies. Other anarchists operated a militant revolutionary force with an armed section that was equipped with guns and explosives. Its revolutionary strategy centered around the belief that successful operations against the police and the seizure of major industrial centers would result in massive public support by workers, revolution, destroy capitalism, and establish a socialist economy.[17]
May Day parade and strikes

In October 1884, a convention held by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard.[18] As the chosen date approached, U.S. labor unions prepared for a general strike in support of the eight-hour day.[19]

On Saturday, May 1, thousands of workers went on strike and rallies were held throughout the United States, with the cry, "Eight-hour day with no cut in pay." Estimates of the number of striking workers across the U.S. range from 300,000[20] to half a million.[21] In New York City the number of demonstrators was estimated at 10,000[22] and in Detroit at 11,000.[23] In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, some 10,000 workers turned out.[23] In Chicago, the movement's center, an estimated 30,000-to-40,000 workers had gone on strike[20] and there were perhaps twice as many people out on the streets participating in various demonstrations and marches,[24][25] as, for example, a march by 10,000 men employed in the Chicago lumber yards.[21] Though participants in these events added up to 80,000, it is disputed whether there was a march of that number down Michigan Avenue led by anarchist Albert Parsons, founder of the International Working People's Association [IWPA] and his wife Lucy and their children.[20][26]

On May 3, striking workers in Chicago met near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. Union molders at the plant had been locked out since early February and the predominantly Irish-American workers at McCormick had come under attack from Pinkerton guards during an earlier strike action in 1885. This event, along with the eight-hour militancy of McCormick workers, had gained the strikers some respect and notoriety around the city. By the time of the 1886 general strike, strikebreakers entering the McCormick plant were under protection from a garrison of 400 police officers. Although half of the replacement workers defected to the general strike on May 1, McCormick workers continued to harass strikebreakers as they crossed the picket lines.

Speaking to a rally outside the plant on May 3, August Spies advised the striking workers to "hold together, to stand by their union, or they would not succeed."[27] Well-planned and coordinated, the general strike to this point had remained largely nonviolent. When the end-of-the-workday bell sounded, however, a group of workers surged to the gates to confront the strikebreakers. Despite calls for calm by Spies, the police fired on the crowd. Two McCormick workers were killed (although some newspaper accounts said there were six fatalities).[28] Spies would later testify, "I was very indignant. I knew from experience of the past that this butchering of people was done for the express purpose of defeating the eight-hour movement."[27]

They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.