HISTORY MATTERS
A Very Brief History of May Day vs. Labor Day
Ever wonder why the U.S. celebrates Labor Day, the first Monday in Sept, while May 1 is generally recognized around the world as a workers’ holiday, a day of solidarity amongst workers of all nations? The answer is bound up with the 1880s struggle for the eight-hour day, at the time a demand of major political significance for the working class. ‘Eight hours for work — eight for rest — eight for what we will.’
Already at the opening of the 19th century workers in the United States made known their grievances against working from “sunrise to sunset,” the then prevailing workday. Fourteen, sixteen and even eighteen hours a day were not uncommon. The 1820s and 1830s are full of strikes for a reduction of hours of work. Demands for a 10-hour day were put forward in many industrial centers — the Mechanics’ Union of Philadelphia, led a strike of building trade workers in Philadelphia in 1827 for the 10-hour day. Lowell’s female cotton mill workers did much the same a few years later.
The 8-hour movement, which directly gave birth to May Day, is connected to a broad-based movement initiated in the U.S., when on August 20, 1866, delegates from over 50 craft unions formed the National Labor Union. At its founding convention the following resolution dealt with the shorter workday: “The first and great necessity of the present, to free labor of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which 8 hours shall be the normal working day in all states in the American union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained.”
A short time later the First International adopted the Eight-Hour Day in Sept. 1866 at their Geneva Congress. “The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive….The Congress proposes 8 hours as the legal limit of the working day.” The Second International, held at Paris in 1889, designated May First be set aside as a day upon which the workers of the world, organized in their political parties and trade unions, were to fight for the 8-hour day. The Paris decision was influenced by events in the U.S. three years earlier, where there’d been a call for a general strike on May 1st, 1886, for the 8-hour day.
Strikes and lockouts in 1885 increased to about 700 and the number of workers involved jumped to 250,000. In 1886 the number of U.S. strikes more than doubled. On May Day, 1886, 90,000 marched in Chicago, in New York, 10,000 marched to Union Square. Eleven thousand marched in Detroit. May Day rallies in Louisville, Ky., and Baltimore were remarkable for their Black-white unity. In NYC, labor leader Samuel Gompers, told the crowd, “May 1st would be remembered as a second declaration of independence.”
But the event that guaranteed May Day a place in the history of the working class took place 3 days later at Haymarket Square in Chicago. In that city an 8-hour Association had formed long in advance of the May 1, 1886, strike. Events of May 3 and 4, which led to what is known as the “Haymarket Affair”, were an outgrowth of the May 1 strike. A demonstration on May 4 at Haymarket Square was called to protest a deadly attack by the police on a meeting of striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works on May 3, where six workers were killed and many wounded. The meeting was peaceful and ending just as a light rain began to fall. Into the Square came the police intent on dispersing the gathering. From an alleyway, a bomb launched into the police lines killed a police sergeant. Shots followed, and seven policemen and four workers were dead.
A hunt against militant workers, especially anarchists, followed. Eight men were arrested. The trial produced no evidence that any of them threw the bomb, nor that any of them had conspired to throw it. Prosecuting Attorney Julius Grinnel argued in his closing remarks, “Law is upon trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the grand jury and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands that follow them. … Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and save our institutions, our society.”
Seven were sentenced to death; two petitioned for clemency and had their sentences commuted to life in prison; 21-year-old Louis Lingg exploding a dynamite tube in his mouth while in jail. The five were executed on November 11, 1887. One year after the hanging of the Chicago labor leaders, the American Federation of Labor voted to rejuvenate the movement for the 8-hour day. They selected May 1st, as the day to re-inaugurate the struggle for the 8-hour day.
However, leaders of the A. F. of L. sought to limit the strike movement. Even as May Day picked up momentum across the world, it lost steam in its country of origin. In 1905 in a seriously punk move the AFL disavowed May Day altogether, celebrating Labor Day, the first Monday of Sept., which by then was a national holiday sanctioned by the federal government in 1894. May Day in the U.S. was still celebrated. In 1910 the Socialist Party brought 60,000 into the streets of New York City for May Day, including 10,000 women of the Shirt Waist Makers’ Union. Slowly though, workers in the U.S. forgot their roots.
