What is the Connection Between Labor Day and May Day Or International Workers Day?<



By Professor Bruce Ewen <



WCCCD <


Mayday, or International Workera Dav. is colebrated ae an affaial Amazingn da cweat atatarie corn. heane and sauash, holiday in 66 countries and unoffcially celebrated in many more. but rarely is it recoonized in this country, where it began. Much of the information presented here comes from William Adelman's research,<


"The Haymarket Affair" published by the Illinois Labor History Society, and the PBS video, with Adelman serving as the narrator. And from my own knowledge of labor and industrial history.


"Haymarket Riot," Most people living in the United States know little about the events in Chicago, at Haymarket Square, in May of 1886 that led to the establishment of the 8 hour day; those who are aware of the Haymarket Affair are led to believe by most textbooks that this mass demonstration that resulted in a dynamite bomb being thrown into the crowd was led by violent anarchists holding an illegal demonstration.


^ To understand the background of the Haymarket Affair, it is important to understand the working conditions in factories, mines, slaughterhouses and mills in the U.S. during the industrial revolution of the 19th Century; especially after the end of the Civil War, which saw the rapid development of monopolies in almost every industry, with control centered more and more in the financial sector of the economy, where J.P. Morgan reigned supreme. It was the era of brutal exploitation of workers throughout the economy - child labor, below subsistence level wages for all, especially for women and children, 12-16 hour workdays, 6-7 days a week, dangerous working conditions, the absence of health and safety regulations - an era spoken to by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Jack London's The Iron Heel and Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais' Labor's Untold Story, among others.


It was the era of the Robber Barons, as spoken to in Matthew Josephson's popular book of the same title. Of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, of the American Tobacco Trust, of the Steel Trust under Carnegie and Morgan, the Railroad Trust, etc. Of the rape of the Appalachian Mountains biodiversity by lumber and coal monopolies. Of the paying of coal miners in scrip that was only accepted in the Company Store that raised prices 20 percent on payday. "I owe my soul to the company Store."


Without government support for the right to unionize or strike for higher wages and safe working conditions, workers organized strikes, demonstrations, petitioned government for protection, and realized that public support was absolutely necessary to improve the brutal working conditions that existed.


Out of this set of conditions came the organizing behind the 8-hour day movement. And the organizing was met with violent reactions by the police, ordered by elected officials under the influence of the Robber Barons to attack peaceful demonstrations and strikes.


In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), called for May 1, 1886 to be the beginning of a nationwide movement for the 8-hour day. This was not a very radical idea, because both Illinois workers and Federal employees were supposed to have been covered by the 8-hour day since 1867, but the federal government failed to enforce this law, and in Illinois, employers forced workers to sign waivers as a condition of employment. Two years of planning and organizing, including the attempt to get employer agreement, led up to the Haymarket Affair. Two of the organizers of these demonstrations, questionnaires, petitions, etc. were Lucy and Albert Parsons. Lucy had been born a slave in Texas in 1853. Her heritage was African American, Native American and Mexican. She worked for the Freedman's Bureau after the Civil War. She organized women sewing workers in Chicago and wrote labor pamphlets. Her husband Albert was a printer, a member of the Knights of Labor, and one of the founders of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly.


Labor rallies were happening all over the nation around the 8 - hour demands. Things turned from peaceful to violent on May 3, 1886 when the Chicago police attacked and killed picketing workers at the McCormick Reaper Plant. This provoked a protest meeting planned for Haymarket Square on the evening of May 4.


The pro-labor Mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, gave permission for the meeting. When this peaceful and legal meeting was almost over and the number of workers had dwindled down to about 200 people, 176 police officers carrying Winchester repeater rifles attacked the crowd. Then someone, unknown to this day (probably an agent-provocateur - common in U.S. history), threw the first dynamite some of their own as well as injuring and killing workers.<



bomb ever used in the peacetime history of the U.S. The police panicked, and opened fire into the crowd, killing the world used the incident to crush local union movements.


The next day, martial law was declared in Chicago and throughout the nation. Anti-labor governments around "ir Labor leaders were rounded up, houses entered without search warrants and union newspapers were closed down. Eight men, some who could prove they were not there when the bomb was thrown, were arrested and put on trial, including Albert Parsons and Samuel Fielden, a pro-labor clergyman. Seven of the eight were found guilty by an all-businessmen jury (the Chicago Tribune offered to pay money to the jury if it found the eight men guilty) and sentenced to hang. Four - Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hung. Louis Lingg reportedly committed suicide in his cell, under mysterious circumstances. In 1893 Governor John Altgeld pardoned the 3 men still alive and condemned the entire judicial system that allowed this injustice.


This reminds me of the "Molly Macguires" - Irish coal miners convicted and hung after the prosecutor accused them of being Irish terrorists, but had little or no proof of their involvement in destroying coal property that was actually done by agents provocateurs who later became part of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the forerunner of the FBI.


The real issues of the Haymarket Affair were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to free assembly, the right to a fair trial by a jury of peers and the right to organize and fight for things like the 8-hour day.


The reason that we do not celebrate Mayday as International Workers Day in the U.S. is that the government, under the leadership President Eisenhower, proclaimed that May ist was Law and Order Day, and moved Labor Day to the first Monday of September to obscure the history of these martyrs and what they were fighting for.


They were protesting the wage slavery of the time. Employers supported what they called the "Tron Law of Wages." That meant supply and demand, not value added, determined the wages offered to workers. The higher the level of unemployment, with no safety net for workers, the greater the number of workers forced to accept below subsistence wages - In 1890, the average annual wages for a family of 4 was $380.


The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the subsistence income for a family of 4 was $530. Women and children working to supplement their household income became absolutely necessary, and there were no public schools for children.


They were protesting alienation at the workplace - the elimination of skilled craft jobs, replaced by mass production through automation, speeding up the line for the de-skilled single tasks that removed workers from not only the satisfaction of exercising their skills to produce a whole product, but also from the rest and leisure required to exercise their "human essence" - spend time with their family and community.


Mass production also eliminated far more jobs than it created, throwing increasing numbers of workers into the "reserve army of unemployed," taking away the dignity of work and the ability to work. At the same time, pitting the unemployed against those at work to keep wages down.


The attempt to organize unions, pass laws that protect worker dignity, the right to a job, health and satety on the job, and a living wage is at the foundation of ethical and moral interpretations of the Creator's Fatwahs by Imams and other Islamic scholars, the writings of the Talmud, referred to by the Jewish Labor Committee, and statements by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, all sound very similar in their support of the dignity of work and workers, fair and timely compensation, the responsibility of employers to provide jobs, a safe working environment, to make sure that workers have time for themselves and their families; the prohibition against the use of child labor, the provision of maternity benefits for women in their employment, the right to form labor unions, and the right to strike over unjust conditions.


For example:


(1) "All workers should be paid a just and living wage." -- Matthew 20:1-16. (2) "Those who become rich by abusing their workers have sinned against God." - James 5:1-6


But not just religions have stressed the moral and ethical imperative to treat workers with dignity and justice. Adam Smith, the so-called "father" of Economics and apologist for the capitalist industrial system, stated in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 - Book 1, Chapter 8: "Those who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."


"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. President Franklin Roosevelt, in his speech about the Economic Bill of Rights, stated that no business that is unwilling to pay its workers a living wage has a right to exist in America, and discussed the connection between growing unemployment and poverty as one root cause of the rise of fascism - what Karl Marx referred to as the growing reserve army of unemployed, pitted against workers by employers.


So, friends and neighbors, we should celebrate these martyrs who stood for justice, who were met with violence when they organized peacefully and legally. We should celebrate the need for economic justice - meaningful work, living wages for all, regulation protecting health and safety conditions at work, limiting the length of the working day, the right to rest and leisure, equal pay for equal work, and a production process that protects rather than destroys the environment.


Professor Bruce Ewen, WCCCD, Economics and Diversity and Inclusion Program Participant