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Old 02-05-2009, 02:24 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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Default Lest we forget

May 1, 1886

The Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day

May Day parade and strikes

In 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.[10] When May 1, 1886
approached, American labor unions prepared for a general strike in
support of the eight-hour day.[11]
On Saturday, May 1, rallies were held throughout the United States.
There were an estimated 10,000 demonstrators in New York[12] and 11,000
in Detroit.[13] In Milwaukee, Wisconsin some 10,000 workers turned
out.[13] The movement's center was in Chicago, where an estimated 40,000
workers went on strike.[14] Albert Parsons was an anarchist and founder
of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). Parsons, with
his wife Lucy and their children, led a march of 80,000 people down
Michigan Avenue.[14] Another 10,000 men employed in the lumber yards
held a separate march in Chicago.[15] Estimates of the total number of
striking American workers range from 300,000[14] to half a million.[15]


The first flier calling for a rally in the Haymarket on May 4.


The revised flier for the rally. The words Workingmen Arm Yourselves and
Appear in Full Force! have been removed.
On May 3, striking workers in Chicago met near the McCormick Harvesting
Machine Co. 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
"scabs" who 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."[16]
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).[17] 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."[16]
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 at the time was a
bustling commercial center near the corner of Randolph Street and Des
Plaines Street. These fliers, which were printed in both German and
English, 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 wouldn't 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.[18] More than 20,000 copies of the revised flier were
distributed.[19]
------

Progress always comes at the cost of a struggle.
--

- Billy
"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being
is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the
moment of conception until death." - Rachel Carson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI29wVQN8Go

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html
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