The most massive and numerous May Day demonstrations in living memory
will sweep the United States and be
echoed internationally. The Occupy Movement has called for a General Strike and filling the streets
with creative actions.
“We call upon people to refrain from shopping,
walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms
of resistance disrupting the status quo,” an official call said.
The Occupy movement reports plans
for action in at least 114 cities and towns across the nation. There will also be actions by labor groups,
immigrations rights advocates, and allied groups pushing the total number of
reported actions to over 300.
While no one expects a true
General Strike that would completely shut down production and the economy,
clearly this will be an unprecedented event.
The always creative working class is developing new
institutions, tactics, and forging new alliances. And that is in the historic tradition of May
Day.
***
Chicago was a-boil with labor turmoil in 1886. The burgeoning city
had become a major manufacturing center and tens of thousands of immigrants had
poured into the city since the Civil War
to join displaced American born farmers and former independent craftsmen in
giant factories. Hours were long,
working conditions hard and dangerous, bosses harsh, and pay cuts
frequent.
Since the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 tensions had been building. And so had a labor movement—craft unions
loosely organized under a city central labor body, and the Knights of Labor, officially a benevolent society whose national
leadership was opposed to strikes. But
unlike the craft unions, the Knights would enroll all workers—skilled and
unskilled alike. In addition immigrant
communities had their own radical leadership and press. None was as vigorous as or developed as the German, who were not only the largest
immigrant community in the city, but had a highly educated leadership steeped
in European radicalism. Many of these leaders identified with the
growing international anarchist
movement.
There were several major strikes
ongoing in the city that spring. The
largest was at the giant McCormick
Harvesting Machine plant on the South
Side where strikers had been replaced by scabs under police protection and
daily clashes were occurring at the factory gates.
On May 1st workers responded to a
call for a General Strike for an 8 Hour Day which had been called
nationally by the Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions (ancestor of the American Federation of Labor.)
In Chicago the International
Working Peoples Association (IWPA)
organized a march by 80,000 workers led by Albert
and Lucy Parsons, the main English language figures in the
anarchist labor movement. The General
Strike got so much support that even half of the scabs at McCormick lay down
their tools to join.
Employers were in a panic at the
turn of events. They met with city
officials demanding suppression of strikes and demonstrations and agreed among
themselves to redouble their own efforts to violently suppress strike through
the use of the Pinkerton Agency and
bands of thugs and criminals hired off the streets.
On May 3 a rally in support of
striking McCormick workers was addressed by German anarchist leader August Spies. When strikers confronted scabs emerging
from the plant after the 4 PM end shift, police opened fire killing six workers
and wounding scores. Outraged Spies
rushed to the North Side where his
daily newspaper, Arbeiter-Zeitung
was published. He and his associates
decided to call a protest meeting at the Haymarket
just west of downtown for the next day.
Flyers in German and English were hastily printed and rushed into
distribution. Spies noticed that the
flyers contained the words “Workingmen
Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!”
He ordered the copies destroyed and new ones printed without those
words. Spies had consistently counseled
non-violence. Most of the thousands of
flyers distributed omitted the words, but a few hundred of the first run were
circulated before they could be recalled.
The evening of May 4, a huge crowd gathered at the Haymarket in a
drizzling rain to hear speakers orate from the back of a wagon. Mayor
Carter Harrison stopped by and observed that the crowd was orderly and
peaceful. He ordered police massed near
by not to interfere. The last scheduled
speaker of the evening, English born
Samuel Fielden, a Methodist lay preacher as well as a
labor activist, was addressing a thinning crowd when the police officer in
charge Inspector John Bonfield, who
was getting “supplemental” income and support from a coalition of major
employers, decided to act. He ordered a phalanx of 175 officers to advance
through the crowd from the rear. Captain William Ward addressing Fielden
on the wagon ordered the crowd to disburse.
Fielden protested that the assembly was peaceful and he was nearly
finished anyway. Ward issued a second
warning. Fielden said, “All right.”
Then someone—it has never been
determined who—threw a bomb from a side ally into the massed police. One officer was killed and others
injured. Police responded by firing
wildly, wounding many of their own.
About 60 officers were wounded—most by friendly fire, but so were dozens
of workers, including Fielden.
The crowd ran away and Fielden
limped away.
The press went, predictably,
berserk. The offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitung
and regular meeting places and
haunts of anarchists and unionists were raided.
Police quickly rounded up much of the German leadership.
A warrant was out for Albert Parsons, who had spoken at the rally
earlier but was gone when the attack occurred, but Parsons disguised himself
and fled to Wisconsin. He later decided to turn himself in and stand
trial in solidarity with his German comrades.
In addition to Spies, Parsons and Fielden authorities charged Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg,
Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe. Some of the defendants had not been at
the Haymarket that night at all, and Neebe was out of town. 21 year old Lingg was known to be an advocate
of propaganda of the deed and had
written a provocative article in the Arbeiter-Zeitung advocating the use of dynamite. But he was not at the rally.
The trial began on June 21 and was presided over by Judge Joseph Gary who made no attempt
to conceal his animus to the defendants.
Although no evidence could be brought forward linking any defendant to
the bomb, prosecutors argued that they were in a conspiracy and that the
defendants were guilty because they had not actively discouraged the unknown
bomber. All eight men were convicted by
the jury. Seven were sentenced to death
and Neebe to 15 years in prison.
Before sentence could be carried
out, Lingg committed suicide in his cell by biting a blasting cap.
After appeals had been exhausted,
Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby
commuted Fielden’s and Schwab’s sentences to life in prison on November 10,
1887. The next day, November 11, the
five remaining condemned men were led to a scaffold in a courtyard of Cook County Jail and hung. Their execution drew outrage and protest from
the labor movement around the world.
In 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld, a liberal Democrat, signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab and
concluded all eight defendants were innocent. The pardons and his opposition to
calling in Federal troops to
intervene in the Pullman Strike ended
his political career.
In 1898 Samuel Gompers, head of the newly reorganized AFL petitioned the First Congress of the Second International (socialist) to designate May 1 to
commemorate the Martyrs of Chicago
and support a new general strike call for an 8 hour day scheduled more May 1,
1890. The International enthusiastically
agreed calling for “a great international demonstration” on that date. Huge crowds responded around the world
including a march by tens of thousands in New
York City. The event was so successful that it was made annual the
next year and has been celebrated globally ever since.
But in the United States, where May Day was born, the holiday was
officially abandoned within a few years.
Samuel Gompers stuck his historic deal with the employer’s organization,
the Civic Federation, which gave
craft unionist a “place at the table.”
Part of that deal was the abandonment of May Day, now associated with
Socialism in exchange for recognition of a non-ideological Labor Day in September around
the time of a local New York City building trades celebration.
Industrial and militant unions
like the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) kept May Day, as did
socialists of all stripes. Large
celebrations persisted in many cities until the post World War II anti-Communist hysteria when the press
successfully identified May Day with
military parades in the Kremlin.
In recent years, even
conservative unions have revived the May Day tradition. The
Chicago Federation of Labor funded a new Haymarket Memorial featuring a speaker on a wagon at the exact
location of the original and hold annual commemorations. For the past several years Hispanic and immigration activists have staged huge marches for immigration
reform on May Day, increasingly with the support of the labor movement.
So Happy May Day, Fellow
Workers!
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