May Day parade and strikesIn 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.[SUP]
[11][/SUP] As the chosen date approached, U.S. labor unions prepared for a general strike in support of the eight-hour day.[SUP]
[12][/SUP]
On Saturday, May 1, rallies were held throughout the United States. Estimates of the number of striking workers across the U.S. range from 300,000[SUP]
[13][/SUP] to half a million.[SUP]
[14][/SUP] In New York City the number of demonstrators was estimated at 10,000 [SUP]
[15][/SUP] and in Detroit at 11,000.[SUP]
[16][/SUP] In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, some 10,000 workers turned out.[SUP]
[16][/SUP] In Chicago, the movement's center, an estimated 30 to 40,000 workers had gone on strike[SUP]
[13][/SUP] and there were perhaps twice as many people out on the streets participating in various demonstrations and marches,[SUP]
[17][/SUP][SUP]
[18][/SUP] as, for example, a march by 10,000 men employed in the Chicago lumber yards.[SUP]
[14][/SUP] Though participants in these outdoor events added up to 80,000, it is unclear if there was ever a single, massive 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.[SUP]
[13][/SUP][SUP]
[19][/SUP]
The first flier calling for a rally in the Haymarket on May 4.
(left) and the revised flier for the rally.
(right)
The words "Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force!" were removed from the revised flier.
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."[SUP]
[20][/SUP] 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 by Spies for the workers to remain calm, gunfire erupted as police fired on the crowd. In the end, two McCormick workers were killed (although some newspaper accounts said there were six fatalities).[SUP]
[21][/SUP] 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."[SUP]
[20][/SUP]
Outraged by this act of police violence, local anarchists quickly printed and distributed fliers calling for a rally the following day at
Haymarket Square (also called
the Haymarket), which was then a bustling commercial center near the corner of Randolph Street and Desplaines Street. Printed in German and English, the fliers alleged police had murdered the strikers on behalf of business interests and urged workers to seek justice. The first batch of fliers contain the words
Workingmen Arm Yourselves and Appear in Full Force! When Spies saw the line, he said he would not speak at the rally unless the words were removed from the flier. All but a few hundred of the fliers were destroyed, and new fliers were printed without the offending words.[SUP]
[22][/SUP] More than 20,000 copies of the revised flier were distributed.[SUP]
[23][/SUP]
[h=3][edit] Rally at Haymarket Square[/h]
This 1886 engraving was the most widely reproduced image of the Haymarket affair. It inaccurately shows Fielden speaking, the bomb exploding, and the rioting beginning simultaneously.[SUP]
[24][/SUP]
The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of May 4. August Spies, editor of the German-language
Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers' Times"), spoke to a crowd estimated variously between 600 and 3,000[SUP]
[25][/SUP] while standing in an open wagon adjacent to the square on Des Plaines Street.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] A large number of on-duty police officers watched from nearby.[SUP]
[6][/SUP]
Paul Avrich, an historian specializing in the study of anarchism, quotes Spies as saying:
"There seems to prevail the opinion in some quarters that this meeting has been called for the purpose of inaugurating a riot, hence these warlike preparations on the part of so-called 'law and order.' However, let me tell you at the beginning that this meeting has not been called for any such purpose. The object of this meeting is to explain the general situation of the eight-hour movement and to throw light upon various incidents in connection with it."[SUP][26][/SUP]
Following Spies' speech, the crowd was addressed by Albert R. Parsons, the Alabama-born editor of the radical English-language weekly
The Alarm.[SUP]
[27][/SUP] The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who had stopped by to watch, walked home early. Parsons spoke for almost an hour before standing down in favor of the last speaker of the evening, Samuel Fielden, who delivered a brief 10 minute address
