As with other ‘days of’, May 1st is not a celebration . Labor Day (or Labor Day, or Labor Party, or May Day) is a great tribute to one of the most important union struggles in historythanks to which workers have rights that today are considered as basic as a eight hour work day. The year 1886 may seem distant, but the truth is that it was not that long ago since those protests that made eight hours of work a constant.
To understand why the Labor Day every May 1 You have to travel to Chicago at the end of the 19th century. On May 1, 1886, numerous workers, anarchists, unionists and socialists agreed to call for a series of protests in order to demand a reduction in long working hours, which in the United States only had a prohibition: at that time, a person could not work more than 18 hours in a row without justified cause.
On May 1, 1886, more than 35,000 workers left their jobs and they went out into the streets; Thousands of others joined in the following days. But it was at the McCormick combine plant protest where violence broke out May 3: to counter the protests, the Police opened fire on the strikers, in order to protect the scabs who wanted to resume work. In that police operation at least two people diedaccording to the Chicago Encyclopedia.
Police brutality prompted a coordinated response by unions and workers, who called for a demonstration in Chicago’s Haymarket Square for May 4th. The city’s mayor, Carter Harrison, declared this a peaceful protest, and even attended as a mere spectator.
Now, when Harrison and a large part of the protesters spread out, a police team of about 200 officers arrived to disperse those who remained. It was at that moment that someone, an as yet unidentified individual, launched an explosive device which caused the instant death of a police officer. The police reaction did not take long to arrive: they opened fire on those present: it is estimated that around 60 officers and between 30 and 40 civilians were injured, and that between four and eight protesters died.
From the Haymarket protests to the Chicago martyrs
After this, the Police arrested hundreds of people, although The identity of the person who threw the bomb was never found out. in the protest. Among all the detainees, they were eight prominent anarchists those who were judged. The judge in charge of the case, Joseph E. Gary, read the sentence decided by the 12 members of the jury: eight guilty, seven sentenced to death. To this day, the Haymarket anarchist trial is considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American history.
Over time, two of the convicted men had their sentences commuted, but they remained in effect. capital punishment for five other defendantswho went down in history as the Chicago martyrs: George Engel (50 years), Adolph Fischer (30 years), Albert Parsons (39 years), August Vincent Theodore Spies (31 years old) and Louis Lingg (22 years). All but Parsons were German; Fischer, Parsons and Spies were journalists, while Engel was a typographer and Lingg a carpenter.
I protest against the death penalty imposed on me because I have not committed any crime
The youngest of all, Louis Lingg, preferred not to wait and he committed suicide the day before his execution. On November 10, 1887, around 9:00 in the morning, Lingg lit a cigarette in his cell and everything exploded: The cigarette contained explosives. After several hours of agony, Lingg finally died. The most widespread hypothesis is that it was a suicide; However, there are also those who believe that he was murdered.
One day later, on November 11, the rest of the condemned were hanged. The bodies of the four anarchists were handed over to their families and friends so they could be buried. The then mayor of Chicago, John A. Roche, allowed a funeral procession to be held to the graves of the anarchists, as long as there were no partisan demonstrations, music, or flags. The restrictions imposed on the funeral procession, however, were not followed: during the burial there were red ribbons and the soundtrack of the service was the Marseillaise.
In 1893, a monument honoring the martyrs of Chicago, which represents a woman on top of a fallen worker. Below them, you can read a quote attributed to Spies, who would have said it shortly before being executed: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voice you are strangling today.“.
From Haymarket to the true origin of May 1
From the Haymarket protests to the commemoration of Labor Day it did not take long. In 1889, it was the Second Internationala federation formed by coordinated socialist and labor parties, which designated May 1 as a day of support for workersin memory of everything that had happened in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.
The first countries to adopt May Day as Labor Day were, logically, the United States. communists, among them the USSR itself. In the United States, for its part, it was considered a day of communist celebration, so in 1955 the then president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, designated May 1 as Loyalty Day; There, Labor Day takes place every year on the first Monday in September; Yes, it is one of the few holidays that all states enjoy, without exception.
In Europe, where the May 1 had historically been linked to the celebration of the arrival of spring, this seasonal character was replaced by the tribute to Workers’ Day thanks to the impulse of the labor movements. In Germany, Labor Day became a national holiday in 1933, after the rise to power of the Nazi Party, as stated in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ironically, the next day the German country abolished free unionsputting an end (then) to the German labor movement.
