Communist Left 48

The 8 Hours Movement Is Back

The reduction of working hours had been for many years the main objective of the workers, or at least the only objective really able to make them fight together. As early as the 1830s and 1840s, reformers’ associations had lobbied for laws to be passed for the working day of ten hours first, and then eight‑hours; but even in cases where these laws were passed, they remained dead letters, or almost dead letters. Even in industries where, thanks to strikes and negotiations, the hours were reduced, the bosses had taken back the concessions at the first opportunity; on the other hand, if the eight‑hour system had not been adopted everywhere, the companies that had accepted it would have been at a disadvantage compared to the others.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, an organization that would later become the American Federation of Labor, adopted a resolution saying, “From May 1, 1886, the eight‑hour time shall be the legal working day”.

A resolution passed by the Federation itself in December 1885 recalls that the idea of the eight‑hour general strike was born from the failure of other methods. The resolution recalled that it would be futile to expect the introduction of the eight hours by legislation, and that the unified demand to reduce working hours, supported by a solid and decisive organization, would be more effective than any law.

The call for a general strike was based on the concept that “in their attempt to reform the dominant economic situation, workers must rely only on themselves and their power”.

There was little support from existing organizations for the May 1st strike movement. The federation that had set the date of May 1 as the deadline was so weak that when it came to having a response from members on the project in question, only about 2,500 voters voted. Powderly, leader of the Knights of Labor, opposed the May Day strike from the outset. In a secret circular of December 15, 1884 he had proposed that instead of striking, members would be invited to write a brief composition on the eight‑hour problem at all Knights meetings, which was to be sent to the newspapers on the occasion of Washington’s birthday on February 22, 1885!

The anarchists initially claimed that the eight‑hour turmoil was a compromise with the wage system. Their newspaper, the “Alarm”, declared: “It is a lost battle and… even if the eight hours were accepted the wage‑earners would not benefit from it”. In the end, however, the anarchists, especially in Chicago, understood that they had to stay with the struggling workers and made a fundamental contribution to the movement.

However, the idea of the eight‑hour general strike had struck the imagination and awakened the hopes of hundreds of thousands of workers and, despite opposition from national leaders, the unrest spread from one place to another throughout the country. Local Knights of Labor organizers, despite the center’s protests, formed new local sections based on the eight‑hour question; as we have seen, given the poor connection between center and base, the negative attitude of the leadership was not felt at the base, and the eight‑hour unrest was one of the components of the KL’s resounding success between late 1885 and the first half of 1886.

Powderly himself will also complain about it later:

In the first half of 1886 many of the new sections began to approve motions in which they invited the central assembly to fix the date of the strike for the eight hours on May 1, 1886; then they sent them to the Grand Master Workman of the Order, who immediately realized the serious danger for the organization that was represented by the ignorance of the new members gathering so quickly in the new sections. They had been induced by unfounded assertions to subscribe; and many organizers contributed to feed the illusionin order to obtain ‘great advantages’”.

At this point Powderly deliberately tried to sabotage the movement. In a secret circular to the local sections of the Knights of Labor he wrote: “The direction of the Order has never fixed May 1st as the date of a strike, and it never will. On the first of May, no section of the Knights of Labor must strike for the eight hours with the idea to obey the orders of the direction, because such an order has never been, and will never be, given”.

All the excitement represented a kind of class conflict that Powderly abhorred. The hostility of the KL leaders did not succeed in stopping the strike, nor was it able to prevent the wide participation of the local sections of the Order in it, but it was of very serious damage to the unity and effectiveness of the movement.

The activity in preparation for the strike became massive in March and reached its peak in April. There were a considerable number of strikes for the eight hours in advance of the set date, the request for the eight hours was also included in the struggles that had other objectives and there were massive demonstrations throughout the country. The movement had its strengths in major industrial cities, Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Milwaukee; to a lesser extent in Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Washington.

Already before the end of April, almost a quarter of a million workers were involved in the movement; about thirty thousand had now obtained the eight‑hour day or at least a time reduction. At least 6,000 were already on strike in the last week of April, and in the same month it was estimated that no less than one hundred thousand were ready to go on strike to impose their demands.

However, the movement actually proved to be more extensive than expected. By the second week of May, participation had reached 350,000 workers, 190,000 of whom were directly affected by the strike. 80,000 struck in Chicago, 45,000 in New York, 32,000 in Cincinnati, 9,000 in Baltimore, 7,000 in Milwaukee, 4,700 in Boston, 4,250 in Pittsburgh, 3,000 in Detroit, 2,000 in St. Louis, 1,500 in Washington, and 13,000 in other cities. It has been calculated that nearly 200,000 workers managed to get the eight‑hour day without wage reduction after the big strike on May 1; but the others also got a substantial time reduction.

In Milwaukee, well in advance of May 1, a vast worker’s agitation began. In February 1886 the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor, against the will of the direction of the Order, organized the League for the eight hours, which the local unions joined the following month. The pressure was reinforced by a mass gathering of three thousand people.

As May 1 approached, the struggles extended to all industrial categories. The agitation led to a work of deterrence against all the factories, and soon a peaceful crowd had gathered in the streets of the city. The governor, alarmed, sent three militia companies, which were obviously welcomed with stones. The next day, May 3, the troop confronted the crowd, and after a warning that no one heard, fire was ordered, following an explicit order from the governor. The crowd dispersed, leaving six dead on the ground; it was the end of the eight‑hour movement in Milwakee, and the workers returned to work under the same conditions as before.

But in those days not in all cities had the result been so tragic, despite the acrimony of the bosses. In general the agitation was a success: in New York, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, St. Louis, Washington, etc. the strikes had a very large participation, even if often the workers took the opportunity to include salary increases in the demands.

In Troy, New York State, there were 5,000 strikers for the eight hours, including 2,000 stove factory workers and all construction workers. 300 railroad workers of Italian origin went on strike for the increase in wages, and, “once stopped working, they tied red handkerchiefs to picks and shovels and marched all together along the railroad to the place where another team was working, whom they persuaded to join the strikers”.

In several cities, of course, the eight‑hour movement failed to expand, as in Boston.

Although in many cases in the following years the bosses unleashed offensives to recover what was then granted, often with success, the general strike of May 1, 1886 represents a turning point for the American workers’ movement, especially for the consciousness acquired on that occasion of the strength that the united class can express and exercise; this gave rise to an unprecedented push for affiliation to trade unions. Those struggles, because of the Haymarket events, remain a historical reference point for the entire working class worldwide, a warning about how ruthless and unscrupulous the bourgeoisie can be when frightened by the force expressed by the united class in struggle.

The movement of May 1, 1886 produced an extraordinary echo throughout the world. In just a few years the first of May became an international working class day.

Haymarket

The heart of the movement was Chicago. The Knights of Labor as well as trade unionists and anarchists in the city, having abandoned the primitive hostility, all supported the Association for the eight hours that led the unrest for the strike. Throughout the month of April there was a series of major demonstrations. Everyone was certain that, with the combativeness shown by the workers and the excellent organization, the movement would be successful.

But also the opposite side was prepared. More than a year earlier, newspapers had already reported that the city’s businessmen had set up paramilitary groups by arming their employees, and that the National Guard had been expanded. “In just one of the large companies there is an organization of 150 young men armed with Remington breech-loading rifles, who conduct regular exercises. And this is certainly not an isolated case”.

On the eve of the strike, a “Times” correspondence from Chicago said:

In the last forty‑eight hours various members of the Commercial Club have paid almost two thousand dollars in order to equip the First Regiment of the National Guard of Illinois with a machine gun; the idea had been proposed Tuesday evening during the exercises and the inspection to the regiment. This was immediately adopted when it was pointed out that in case of revolt such a weapon would be valuable in the hands of the soldiers.

By May 1, in Chicago, the movement had managed to obtain large concessions: one thousand brewers had reduced their hours from sixteen to ten, and as many bakers, who previously worked from fourteen to eighteen hours, had obtained the ten‑hour day. A good part of the workers in the furniture factories obtained the eight hours with an increase of twenty‑five percent in the hourly wage; 1,600 textile workers got a ten hours salary, working eight hours. A reduction in hours had also been imposed in some companies producing shoes, canned goods, tobacco and cold cuts, but many more were the workers who were preparing for a very bitter struggle: among them 4,000 bricklayers and labourers, 1,500 brick kiln workers, 1,200 metalworkers, slaughterhouse workers, carpenters, coopers, woodworkers for building, shoemakers, upholsterers and mould makers.

On May 1, 30,000 workers went on strike, and perhaps twice that number participated or attended the demonstrations. About 10,000 Bohemians, Poles and Germans employed in sawmills and lumber yards paraded through the streets of the city with the band and flags preceding them. Perhaps because of the number of demonstrators there were no violent clashes with the police.

By May 3, more and more groups of workers had joined the strike. A correspondent from “John Swinton’s Paper” wrote jubilantly: “It’s the real eight‑hour boom and we’re getting one victory after another. Today all the canned meat factories of Union Stock Yards have surrendered… The workers are mad with joy at this great victory”.

That day, locked out McCormick employees held a mass assembly in front of the factory. The workers had already been out of work for three months. They were desperate. August Spies was haranguing the crowd on the movement for eight hours when the factory siren sounded and the scabs came out, having finished their day’s work. Immediately a field battle broke out, with stones, bricks, fists, sticks. A few shots were fired. Then the police arrived and, opening fire on the crowd, killed four workers in a few minutes and wounded even more.

The atmosphere became again hot, and the next day there were several clashes between the demonstrators and the police. The anarchists invited the workers to arm themselves, with an inflamed flyer entitled “Revenge!”. Many mass meetings were scheduled that evening, including a rally at Haymarket Square to protest against police violence.

At the Haymarket rally on May 4 there were only about 1,200 people present, actually peaceful and apparently had not followed the warlike invitation of the anarchists; when it started raining only 300 remained. The last speaker was finishing his speech, when to everyone’s amazement a squadron of 180 policemen entered the square; the crowd was ordered to disperse. While the speakers were getting off the stage, a bomb was suddenly thrown that exploded in the middle of the policemen, killing one of them and wounding almost twenty (five of them died shortly after). The police closed ranks again and opened fire on the crowd, killing several bystanders (it is not known exactly how many) and wounding at least 200 of them.

A period of popular hysteria followed. Excited by the press, ordinary citizens attributed all the blame to the workers’ agitators, anarchists, socialists. The “New York Times” wrote:

Since the times of the war of rebellion (the Civil War) no disturbance of peace has ever moved the feelings and public opinion at this point as much as the murder of policemen perpetrated by anarchists in Chicago on Tuesday night. We use the word murder with the perfect awareness of its meaning. It is foolish to call this act of crime “tumult”: everything proves that it is a calculated murder, deliberately planned and carried out in cold blood”.

The wave of anger and fear caused by the Haymarket events was used against the workers’ movement in general. Thanks to a still naive and gullible public opinion, the enemies of the workers’ movement had a free hand in the repression of what until then had been a winning and non‑violent offensive, if not defensively so. The mayor of Chicago Harrison issued a proclamation in which he declared that, since the gatherings, marches and other such things were “dangerous” in the conditions of the moment, he had ordered the police to disband all meetings or gatherings. The police set up their nets, and within two days no less than fifty alleged radicals’ gatherings were raided and those who were even vaguely suspected of affiliation to radical groups were arrested.

Most of the arrests had taken place without a warrant and for some time no specific charges were even filed against the accused. Years later, the chief of police admitted that the police had used all the most traditional equipment to persecute representatives of the workers’ movement: invention of secret societies, confessions extracted with the third degree and torture, finds of fake guns, dynamite, bayonets, various bombs, etc..

Of the hundreds of workers arrested, eight were chosen for trial, chosen not for the political profession (they were all anarchists), but for the fundamental role played in the success of the struggle: eight workers’ leaders who were tried and sentenced to death; four were later hanged (a fifth died in prison, officially for suicide), although there was no evidence that they had anything to do with the incidents. Sorge thus recalls their torment:

They died as men on November 11, 1887. None of them, except one who was speaking from the stage, was present in the square when the bomb was thrown. The chronicle of the trial is that of a shameful farce, in which judge and jury did nothing but satisfy the demands of the city bourgeoisie who demanded a bloody revenge on the protagonists of the eight‑hour struggle. In 1893, the remaining prisoners were pardoned by Governor John Peter Altgeld. In the reasons for the pardon it was recognized that: “the documentation of this case shows that the judge conducted the trial with malicious ferocity… page after page the judge’s insinuating notes were made with the intention of leading the jury to their own prejudice… there is no such episode in the whole story”.

The organized labor movement itself did not know how to behave, and the most reactionary lines prevailed: the KL came to publicly attack the defendants, the AFL asked for clemency only for aversion to capital punishment, and not to make martyrs of the anarchists.

The Reaction

The movement was faced with a very harsh reaction, which took its cue from the hysteria over the Haymarket events and used the techniques already tested against the strikes in the Southwest System. In fact within a week the unrest ceased and the workers returned to work while the bourgeoisie deployed all its police and militia forces.

The formation of employers’ associations aimed to keep under control, or rather to make the union practice disappear, became a rising tide. In September, one of the most valuable journalists in the field of workers’ struggles wrote: “Since last May, many large companies and employers’ associations have resorted to all kinds of exceptional expedients to break up the workers’ organizations, which had acquired so much strength in the last two or three years. Thomas Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, said, “Give the workers and strikers a bullet diet for a few days and then you’ll see how they welcome this bread.

To take just two cases among the many, the association of shirt manufacturers in Jamesburg, New Jersey, suspended two thousand employees after they had been found to be members of the Knights of Labor, and for the same reason the silverware manufacturers in New York, Brooklyn and Providence formed an association and suspended two thousand workers. Thousands of them were not only fired but also put on blacklists to prevent them from finding employment elsewhere. The Iron‑Clad Contract (later known as “Yellow‑Dog Contract”), which forced workers to swear that they would never join a workers’ or trade union organization, became a widely demanded requirement for employment.

Lockouts became a common costume. The entrepreneurs who in 1885 and in the first months of 1886 had given in to the claim of the 8 hours hastened to re‑establish the working days of 10‑12 hours. Those who protested were branded as anarchists, and therefore “murderers”, in the light of the propaganda financed in the newspapers by the bosses. The most affected were the trade union activists, who invariably ended up on blacklists.

Naturally, the most devastating effects were felt on the Knights of Labor, who at the beginning of 1886 had, according to some sources, more than a million members: a fifth of them dissolved in a few months, beginning a decline that would soon be accomplished, as we have already seen. A decline due to the attacks of the employers, in part, but above all due to the contradictions within the Order, which had proved to be absolutely unsuitable to lead great workers’ struggles. All the strikes conducted by the KL after the Haymarket events were resolved in failures.

For some time the movement for solidarity and defense of workers was silenced, but within less than ten years it would rise again, demonstrating its unstoppable strength. For years a new organization, which had learned the lessons of KL’s failures, was already developing and would take its place, not as a short-lived phenomenon as had happened to previous national trade union federations, but as an organization destined to remain, for better or for worse, in the history of the American workers’ movement to the present day, the American Federation of Labor.