May Day - History, Reflection, Analysis

Imagine if your work week consisted or 12 hour work days, five to six days a week. Doesn't sound very pleasant, does it? Thanks to the blood, sweat, tears, and deaths of workers, we now enjoy 8 hour work days, 5 days a week. It is the struggle for the 8 hour work day, and more specifically, the struggle in Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886, that the modern May Day celebrates.

First, a bit of history of the original May Day. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation web site:

"May Day rituals in Britain cropped up with Saxon and Celtic celebrations of the first spring planting.

Only from medieval times, however, did they take on an anti-establishment tone. As May Queens and young bucks danced around the Maypole, local jokers poked fun at priests, lords and local government. (editor's note: Sounds like the roots from which Monty Python's Flying Circus sprung had been firmly planted many centuries before!)

London was at the hub of the action with Mayfair, as the name suggests, playing home to a bawdy 15-day fair surrounding Brookfield Cattle Market. It seems the party surrounding the heifer hawking got pretty wild.

Seventeenth century writer Ned Ward was shocked to find prostitutes doing good business and various booths staging comedies.

The authorities were not amused and a halt was called to proceedings in 1708, although celebrations carried on regardless."

Now, moving forward to the average work week in USA non-agricultural industries in the 1880s. The average was between 60-65 hours, without the perks we take for granted today - paid sick days, paid vacations, Social Security, pensions, health plans, et cetera.

As early as 1866, the USA's first national labor union, the National Labor Union (NLU), had listed as its primary demand the eight hour work day. The NLU's President, William Silvis, died suddenly in 1869, and the NLU followed shortly thereafter.

In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (later known as the American Federation of Labor) called for a nationwide strike on May 1 for the 8 hour work day. The strike was peaceful and mostly successful. Those were two reasons that certain owners of certain industries decided to take action.

On May 3, 1886, a rally was being held by striking workers of the McCormick Harvester Works on the south side of Chicago. A nearby lumber company had also been shut down by a strike, so the workers there decided to walk the quarter of the mile to join the rally near the Harvester plant. The purpose was to confront strike-breakers as they left the plant. At the end of the shift, Chicago police, with pistols drawn, ran into the crowd of striking workers. The strikers turned and ran. Six strikers were shot in the back and killed; uncounted others were wounded.

This set the stage for the May 4 rally in Haymarket Square, located just northwest of Chicago's downtown business district. Here again is a description from the British Broadcasting Corporation web site:

"The turnout for the rally at Haymarket Square consisted of some 3000 people, including the then Mayor of Chicago, who wanted to ensure that the rally remained peaceful. There was also a force of 180 police officers mobilised, ready to break up the rally at the first sign of violence.

The first speaker was August Spies, who took the police department to task as murderers. Then Albert Parsons spoke. Near the beginning of his speech, he made it clear that he was not calling on anybody to take any action that night, but was planning on simply stating the facts of the previous day's events. The Mayor made his way out of the crowd and told the police captain that the rally was peaceful and that the mobilised police officers should be put back onto regular duty. After Spies and Parsons had spoken, other, less charismatic, speakers took the platform. It was now about 10 o'clock at night. While Samuel Fielden was speaking, the 180 police officers, with clubs drawn and in military formation, closed in on the remaining participants of the rally. The police captain commanded that the rally 'immediately and peaceably disperse'.

As Fielden was protesting that the rally was peaceful, a bomb exploded in the ranks of the assembled police officers, killing one immediately and wounding 65 others, seven of whom later died of their injuries. The remaining police officers drew their revolvers and fired into the crowd, wounding 200 and killing an unknown number." click here to read more

The farcical trial that followed created mass hysteria in the USA against anarchists, trade unions, and the 8 hour work day.

It wasn't until unions recouped their strength and influence that the 8 hour work day began to be realized. The United Mine Workers fought for, and got, the 8 hour work day in their 1898 contract with the mine owners. Other unions fought tooth and nail to get the 8 hour work day with no cut in pay. Many non-union workers also were given the 8 hour work day by business owners in order to prevent their workers from forming unions.

Amazingly, the 8 hour work day did not become the law of the land (expanding the classes of workers to be covered) until a popular Democratic President, Franklin Roosevelt, and a Democratic Congress, passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938!

And it wasn't until 1962, when a popular Democratic President, John Kennedy, and a Democratic Congress, passed the Work Hours Act, that provided for time and a half pay for work in excess of either 8 hours in one day, or 40 hours in one week.

May 1 has been celebrated around the world as the International Worker's holiday to commemorate the struggle for worker's rights, triggered by the events in Chicago in May, 1886. Why has the country in which those events took place officially shunned the celebration, instead choosing the first Monday in September?

You can 'thank' President Grover Cleveland, who, in 1894, days after he had sent federal troops into a company town south of Chicago, built by George Pullman of the Pullman company (manufacturer of railway passenger cars) to break a strike by workers who were upset that their wages had been repeatedly cut, but the prices in the company stores and rents for their apartments (the only stores and apartments available to them) had not been reduced. Strikebreaker Cleveland choose to separate workers in the USA from the rest of the world's workers by choosing the first Monday in September, rather than May 1 as their Worker's Holiday.

As a personal note, I spent many an hour in Haymarket Square over the years on May 1. When the weather was bad, I was alone. Other years, I saw tourist buses carrying people from many other countries who wanted to be at the spot that is so important in labor history. It made me feel sad that our memories are so short. Sometimes I would close my eyes and imagine I heard the voices of that fateful May 4, 1886. Many think that an agent provocateur, hired by an industry owner who wanted to discredit the 8 hour work day movement, threw the bomb. The actual bomber was never found.

I have also had the privilege of visiting the south side Chicago neighborhood known as Pullman. Old George would have been quite upset to know that his company town, built to be very far away from the wicked Chicago, had finally been incorporated as part of the city. I knew a family who lived in the (now) historical landmark area of Pullman apartments. It was small, but neat. Each apartment shared a wall with its neighbor. As a matter of fact, the owner had an extensive model train set in his basement. Ironic, no? But when I walked alone past the open fields where the factory buildings once stood, I had the eerie sensation that I had been there before. I quickly opened my eyes, got back in my car, and drove home.

So take a moment and reflect upon what workers have sacrificed in the past so that we can have what we have today. Our benefits were not handed to us on a silver platter. Men and women fought and died for them. Let's never forget.