Monument to the Haymarket Martyrs in the Forest Home Cemetery
American Workers Need to Reclaim May Day
by
John J. Dunphy
(Originally published in the 5–19–09 edition of The [Alton, IL] Telegraph)
For most of us, May Day brings to mind old newscasts of stone-faced Soviet leaders at Red Square reviewing parades of goose-stepping soldiers, plodding tanks and lethal-looking missiles. Even politically astute area residents are unaware that May Day was born here in Illinois over a century ago as a celebration of labor solidarity.
Many 19th-century Americans worked 10, 12 and even 14-hour days in factories, mills and mines under horrendous conditions. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada passed a resolution in 1884 proclaiming that, after May 1, 1886, an eight-hour shift would be the new standard workday. The resolution called for a general strike if the eight-hour day was not implemented.
About 500,000 workers around the nation went out on strike in 1886. Chicago was a hotbed of labor activism, and workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. Plant joined the general strike. McCormick strikers on May 3 clashed with scabs who tried to cross the picket line, and police opened fire. Four strikers were killed and several wounded. Labor activists called for a mass meeting the next day at Chicago’s Haymarket Square to protest the killings.
The crowd at the Haymarket rally was peaceful. August Spies, one of the speakers, stated that organizers of the rally did not advocate violence. Samuel Fielden, another labor activist, was still speaking when police moved in and ordered the crowd to disperse. A bomb was thrown at the police and exploded. The officers opened fire, and some workers evidently returned fire.
Seven policemen were killed and about 60 wounded. At least four rally participants were killed, while an unknown number were wounded. Scholars believe that the bomb blast killed only one officer, while wounding a few more. The panic-stricken police began shooting indiscriminately and caught one another in their crossfire.
Spies, Fielden and six other men were tried for the murder of the police officer who had been killed by the bomb. The prosecution couldn’t identify any of the defendants as the bomb-thrower but insisted they had encouraged the lethal act. Newspapers covering the trial emphasized that all eight men were anarchists.
The Haymarket Eight were convicted. One was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, while the others were condemned to be hanged. After appeals to both the Illinois and U.S. Supreme courts failed, Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby commuted two of the condemned men’s sentences to life imprisonment.
On the eve of their July 11, 1887 execution, one of the men committed suicide using a dynamite cap that has been smuggled into his cell. The state of Illinois bungled the execution of the remaining four. Eyewitnesses reported that the condemned men slowly strangled to death while dangling on their ropes. A new Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld, would sign pardons for the remaining three men in 1893 after concluding that the Haymarket Eight had been framed.
The American Federation of Labor called for a nationwide strike on May 1, 1890 to demand an eight-hour day. AFL President Samuel Gompers contacted the Paris-based Second International to propose that all workers unite to fight for this reform. The Second International agreed and suggested that the appointed day also serve as a commemoration for the Haymarket martyrs.
Workers in Europe as well as North and South America took to the streets in solidarity on May 1. The event proved so successful that May Day became an annual International Workers Day in many countries. Washington, however, was never comfortable with International Workers Day’s radical origins. Congress in 1958 enacted legislation, signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower, that made May 1 Loyalty Day.
It’s time for American workers to join their sisters and brothers around the world in observing International Workers Day. Let’s commemorate our victory in winning an eight-hour day and the sacrifices of those who made this possible. More importantly, let’s build a truly internationally labor movement that will help secure and protect workers’ rights the world over in the age of globalization.
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John J. Dunphy’s works include Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945–1947 and Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois.