Note—I just wrapped up thirty straight days of epic
poetry posts with repeats or reposts. I
am exhausted! Glad May Day is here and I
can take a rest. I’ll put on my red
shirt and black tie and go abroad in the world singing Solidarity Forever and The
Internationale. And it will be
good. In the mean time, I glad to share
my annual post about why May First
is the only and authentic International Labor 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 Germans, 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Side where strikers had been replaced by scabs under police protection and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 8,000 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!” as inserted by a militant typesetter. 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. Five officers were 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 smuggled 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
four 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.
The base of the Haymarket Martyrs Memorial in Forest Home Cemetery is inscribed with the words of August Spies from the scaffold. |
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 unionists 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 American 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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