----- Original Message ----- From: Downwithcapitalism <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 1:20 PM Subject: [downwithcapitalism] FW: May Day (short course) People's Weekly 28 April2001 Edition. The workers' May Day: Born in the USA. May 1, May Day, is a labor holiday born in the USA and since 1890 celebrated by working people the world over. On June 22, 1835, in Philadelphia, on the Schuykill River coal wharves, the workers paraded in the streets behind banners demanding, "From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals." They won their demand only to lose it in 1841 when the vast majority of workers were forced to return to a workday of 12 to 14 hours, 6 days a week. In 1884 the Order of the Knights of Labor declared their desire, "To shorten the hours of labor by a general refusal to work more than eight hours." But the statement was never followed by any effort to win the eight-hour day. Meanwhile, until May 1, 1886, unions agitated for the eight-hour day through mass meetings and distribution of circulars, one of which, in part, follows: "Arouse, ye toilers of America! Lay down your tools on May 1, 1886, cease your labor, close the factories, mills and mines - for ... a day of protest against oppression and tyranny, against ignorance and war of any kind. A day on which to begin to enjoy "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will." Newspapers speculated on the size of the coming strike and some bewailed the influence of "Communism, lurid and rampant" predicting "loafing and gambling, rioting, debauchery, and drunkenness bringing lower wages, more poverty, and social degradation for American workers." On May 1, 1886 in New York City, Samuel Gompers said, "May First will be forever remembered as a second declaration of independence." Some 11,000 Detroiters marched May 1, 5,000 struck in Troy, N.Y. and 10,000 in Milwaukee. Interracial solidarity reached a high point when 6,000 Blacks and whites marched through Louisville's National Park which was closed to Black people. In Chicago, several hundred striking seamstresses marched May 3. The Tribune called them "Shouting Amazons." The strikers at the McCormick Harvester plant held a meeting to demonstrate against the scabs. Police fired into the crowd. Four died and many suffered injuries. This barbarous act by a police force already hated for its savagery against labor brought forth a May 4 demonstration in Haymarket Square, which ended in a bomb thrown by an unknown person. Several police were killed and the remaining police emptied their guns into the panic stricken protesters. Hundreds were arrested, eight union leaders were accused of murder, but not of throwing the bomb. The evidence never proved their guilt. However, four of them were hanged Nov. 11, 1887. In 1893 Gov. John Peter Altgeld pardoned the rest and stated that the hanged men had not received a fair trial. At the 1888 AFL convention in St. Louis, a call to enforce an eight-hour day by rallies climaxed with a mass strike on May 1, 1890. Labor organizations in England, France, Germany and other European countries supported the U.S. workers by advancing the call for an eight hour day. Samuel Gompers proposed that May 1 be celebrated "as an International Labor Day." The New York World on May 2, 1890 had this headline on its front page: "Everywhere the workmen join in demands for a normal work day." Hundreds of thousands of workers secured increases in their wages and reduced their hours of labor in the strikes on and around May 1, 1890. Despite efforts in our country by the giant corporate media and their subsidized think tanks to negate, substitute, and trash this workers' holiday, it continues, throughout the world, to be a day during which labor's banners affirm their struggle for a better life. SPAM TO FOLLOW Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
