Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

(Avrich 1984, 219). Yet some radicals looked back on anarchism and the Haymar-

ket event with nostalgic admiration. Notabl e anarchists, like Ni cola Sacco and

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, vi ewed the ideas and events surrounding the Haymarket

Square Riot fondly (Avrich 1991, 55). Thus, anarchism shaped the direction of

the labor movement and future anarchist ideas and actions.

—Daniel E. Karalus

Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Avrich, Paul. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1991.

Green, James. Death in the Hay market: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and

the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Anchor, 2006.

Bombings

Bombings are one of the more sensational symbols of anarchist activity. They sat-

isﬁed the major objectives of anarchism: the implementation of direct action, the

use of violence, and the creation of a dramatic impression intended to awaken

the working class and strike fear in the capitalist system (Green 2006, 93). The

Haymarket Square Riot i n 1886 stands out among other conﬂicts in the history

of the labor movement, partly due to the bomb that rose out of the crowd and

helped incite the confrontation. Moreover, the in famy of the Haymarket events

helped create a public association between the labor movement, bombi ngs, and

anarchism.

The use of bombs in the labor movement derived from political failure and

anarchist ideology. The inability of the Socialistic Labor Party to make headway

for workers through legislation and political ofﬁce in the 1880s convinced some

labor radical s to take another approach. The anarchis t philosophy of propaganda

by deed was the most appealing option for overthrowing capitalism, and bombings

promised dramatic success. They offered enough of a defense against armed

oppressors, as well as enough ﬁrepower to defeat an army (Avrich 1984, 159;

Green 2006, 141).

Dynamite became the bomb of choice for anarchists in Chicago. Johann Most, a

German ac tivist who hel ped found the Inte rnational Working P eople’s Ass ocia-

tion, assured a successful revolution if followers a dequately stockpiled handheld

dynamite bombs in his pamphlet Revolutionary War Science: A Little Handbook

of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun

586 Haymarket Riot (1886)

Cotton, Fulminating M ercury, Bombs, Fuses, etc. etc. (Green 2006, 140–141).

Dynamite also offered a sense of courageous manliness and became known as

the “great equalizer in class warfare” (Green 2006, 141).

When the bomb exploded in Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886, it helped for-

ever intertwine the labor movement with anarchism and militancy. The dra ma of

the incident experienced a brief moment of its intended effect by inciting general

chaos, but the revolution failed to occur. Police and courts quickly reafﬁrmed their

power through the convictions of the Haymarket trial and attacks on non-anarchist

laborers (Green 2006, 203). If anything, the Haymarket bombing failed to live up

to expectations, as authorities clamped down harder on the working class.

Although one Haymarket defendant, Louis Lingg, openly declared that he made

bombs and would use them given the opportunity, none of the defendants admitted

to throwing the bomb, and the bomber’s identity is still unknown (Avrich 1984,

159). Perhaps because of the ongoing mystery, the Haymarket bombing remains

a popular symbol for anarchism in the visage of the anarchist bomb thrower

(David 1958, 528). Despite the Haymarket affair’s immediate negative impact on

the labor movement, bombings retained vitality as a means of working-class insur-

rection. In 1920, Mario Buda responded to the court-ordered deaths of noted anar-

chists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti by bombing Wall Street (Avrich

1991, 205). Explosions continue to occasionally send shockwaves through society,

but bombings remain largely symbolic.

—Daniel E. Karalus

Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Avrich, Paul. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1991.

David, Henry. The History of the Haymarket Affair: A Study in the American Social

Revolutionary and Labor Movements. New York: Russell & Russell, 1958.

Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and

the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Anchor, 2006.

Eight-Hour Workday

The demand for an eight-hour workday was one of the driving forces behind the

strikes and discontent that led to the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in 1886.

Founded in the 1860s by Ira Steward, a self-taught machinist from Massachusetts,

the eight-hour movement promised workers emancipation from industrial life,

Haymarket Riot (1886) 587

giving them increased leisure time and a chance to transform themselves into bet-

ter citizens and laborers. Steward believed shorter workdays would beneﬁt both

workers a nd employers by increasing worker production and, in turn, creating

higher wages, employment levels, and economic prosperity.

Workers latched onto Steward’s ideas quickly and the eight-hour workday

gained widespread support. Several states passed eight-hour workday legislation

by 1867, and a year later, Congress extended the eight-hour workday to federal

employees. Federal and state ofﬁcials, however, rarely enforced the new laws,

and local politicians and authorities quashed workers’ attempts to strike in protest

(Avrich 1984, 43). The legislative failure helped fuel the atmosphere of restless-

ness that grew to surround the Haymarket Square Riot (Green 2006, 38).

The early eight-hour movement also inﬂuenced some anarchists involved in the

Haymarket affair. Albert Parsons, one of the leaders of the International Working

People’s Association (IWPA) and defendants in the Haymarket trial, campaigned

with Steward for an eight-hour workday in the 1860s. Anarchists distanced them-

selves from labor demands until the 1880s when Parsons and August Spies,

another IWPA leader and Haymarket defendant, saw the eight-hour movement

as an opportunity to agitate more workers and spread their ideology of armament

and direct action (Avrich 1984, 183). By 1886, Parsons and Spies took leadership

of the eight-hour struggle, linking anarchism to the labor movement. The same

year, the Fe deration of Organized Trade and Labor Unions declared May 1 as

the start of the eight-hour system, a nd workers struck across Chicago and the

nation demanding shorter working hours (Avrich 1984, 184).

The Haymarket Square Riot stymied any momentum in favor of an eight-hour

workday. The confrontation created public fear of the labor movement, and blame

for the incident centered not just on anarchists, but also on all eight-hour-workday

advocates and strikers (Green 2006, 203). Any gains workers achieved largely

vanished as employers refused to offer an eight-hour workday and many strikers

went back to work (Green 2006, 204). Although the Haymarket affair struck a

blow t o the labor movement, it also brought the eight-hour workday to the fore-

front of workers’ demands, initiating a long struggle for shorter working hours.

The str uggle ended decades later whe n Congress requir ed an eight-hour day in

the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (Green 2006, 309). In all, the Haymarket

Square Riot marked a downward turning point in the battle for an eight-hour

workday.

—Daniel E. Karalus

Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Green, James. Death in the Hay market: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and

the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Anchor, 2006.

588 Haymarket Riot (1886)

May Day

May Day, or International Workers’ Day, is a holiday that celebrates the lives and

work of the working class on May 1. The ﬁrst May Day celebration in the United

States in 1890 honored the victims of the Haymarket Square Riot for their dedica-

tion to labor solidarity and advocacy of the eight-hour workday (Green 2006, 286).

Public outrage and sympathy for the Haymarket martyrs reached across the globe,

making May Day, and by association the Haymarket affair, an international event

and symbol of freedom. It evolved into a commemoration and political tool of both

the labor movement and the broader working class (David 1958, 540).

Although May Day retains some signiﬁcance dating back hundreds of years, its

modern form took shape when the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor

Unions proclaimed May 1, 1886, as the launch of the eight-hour workday across

the United States. When employers refused to abide by the declaration, workers

went on strike across the nation in protest. Chicago was the center of the move-

ment, where more than 40,000 workers struck and 80,000 marched and parade d

through the c ity. Ma y 1 arguably marked the peak of the eight-hour movement,

when uniﬁed workers presented a formidable force against capitalism (Avrich

1984, 186).

May 1, 1886, also symbolized the solidarity and working-class power that char-

acterizes the ideal vision of May Day. The demonstrations across the nation joined

skilled and unskilled workers, multiple trades, and varying ethnicities together for

a common cause and remained largely peaceful (Avrich 1984, 186–187). The vio-

lence at the McCormick Reaper Works and the Haymarket Square Riot just days

later put a stain on the nonviolent prote sts of May 1, but remained linked to May

Day in conventional memory due to the sensational nature of the Haymarket

events and transformation of the Haymarket martyrs into working-class icons

(Green 2006, 276–286). Early May Day celebrations subsequently commemorated

the Haymarket martyrs as symbols of freedom and solidarity in an effort to assert a

working-class presence in society (Green 2006, 286).

Workers, activists, and others continue to celebrate May Day across the world,

but its focus broadened since the Haymarket affair. With the passage of an eight-

hour workday i n the United States in 1938 and the extensive decline of a strong

labor movement, May Day celebrate s general worker demands and international

peace, rather than speciﬁc issues (David 1958, 540). The Haymarket Square Riot

and trial undoubtedly provided useful imagery and symbolism for the working

class on May Day, but more signiﬁcantly, May Day serves as a reminder of wide-

spread worker solidarity regardless of trade or ethnic differences.

—Daniel E. Karalus

Haymarket Riot (1886) 589

Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

David, Henry. The History of the Haymarket Affair: A Study in the American Social-

Revolutionary and Labor Movements. New York: Russell & Russell, 1958.

Green, James. Death in the Hay market: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and

the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Anchor, 2006.

McCormick Harvesting

Machine Company

One of the ingredients for the Haymarket Square Riot in 1886 derives from events

occurring at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, also called the

McCormick Reaper Works, one day earlier on May 3, 1886. Strikers and strike-

breakers confronted each other, and police opened ﬁre to protect the scabs, killing

at least six men and prompting leading anarchists to organize the rally in Haymar-

ket Square that eventually led to the famous riot (Green 2006, 171). Moreover, the

McCormick Company’s use of replacement workers and general treatment of

employees adde d to the restlessn ess that pervaded the labor movement and con-

tributed to violence between workers and police during the 1880s.

Owned by Cyrus and Leander McCormick, the McCormick Harvesting

Machine Company moved to Chicago in 1847 and became a leading manufacturer

of farm machinery. By the 1880s, it was one of Chicago’s most proﬁtable and

respected factories despite a history of labor negotiations and strikes (Green

2006, 104). Union molders employed at McCormick repeatedly struck for higher

wages and succeeded. Amicable relations ended at McCormick when Cyrus’s

son, Cyrus Jr., took over the company in 1880 and installed machinery to replace

workers, speed up production, and increase proﬁts. Other industries also turned to

mechanization, making such a strategy emblematic of the period (Green 2006, 105).

The McCormick Company imposed a wage cut in 1885, leading union molders

at the plant to strike. Workers won the bitter dispute, but over the next year, Cyrus

Jr. replaced molders with more new machinery and completely locked out union

workers in favor of nonunion labor by 1886 (Avrich 1984, 188). Union workers

responded by turning to anarchist leaders for support. Both found common ground

over their concerns about the replacement of men by machines (Avrich 1984, 188).

Workers also fought back. Their ensuing clash with scabs ended with police gun-

ﬁre and bloodshed. It also led August Spies, one of the Haymarket martyrs, to draft

590 Haymarket Riot (1886)

a leaﬂe t calling for the fateful rally in Haymarket Square and all but t hreatening

revenge (Green 2006, 171).

The incident at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company played a mostly

secondary role in the Haymarket Square Riot, marking just one episode of a larger

manifestation of labor unrest ( Green 2006, 149). The skirmish undoubtedly

increased the level of anxiety among police and workers. It had its largest effect

on the H aymarket trial, making the defendants appear guilty by creating the

impression that the circular distributed was part of a conspiracy to commit vio-

lence (Avrich 1984, 191). Despite its checkered history, the McCormick Company

continued to be one of the premier manufacturers of agricultural equipment, even-

tually merging into the International Harvester Company in 1902. When the labor

movement won the right to an eight-hour workday in 1938, unions were still trying

to organize the company and undo the changes from several decades earlier.

—Daniel E. Karalus

Further Reading

Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and

the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Anchor, 2006.

The Circular of Anarchist August Spies (1886)

On May 3, 1886, po lice fired into a crowd of strikers as they confronted strikebreakers at the

McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago. Several strikers were killed, leading anar-

chist labor leader August Spies to issue the following circula r to rouse strikers to anger at the

deaths. The following day, a t a protest meeting held at Haymarket Square, someo ne threw a

pip e bomb at the police; seven police officers and four other people were killed by the bomb.

Although there was no direct evidence that he had anything to do with the bomb, Spies was tried

and convicted for murder, and was eventually hanged.

Workingmen! To Arms!

Your masters sent out their bloodhounds—the police—they killed six of your brothers

at McCormick’s this afternoon. They killed the poor w retches, because they, like you,

had courage to disobey the supreme will of your bosses. They killed them because they

dared ask for the shortening of the hours of toil. They killed them to show you “free

American citizens” that you must be satisﬁed and contented with whatever your bosses

condescend to allow you, or you will get killed!

You have for years endured the most abject humiliations; you have for years suffered

immeasurable iniquities; you have worked yourselves to death; you have endured the

pangs of want and hunger; y our children you have sacriﬁced to the factory lords—in

short, you have been miserable and obedient slaves all these years. Why? To satisfy the

Haymarket Riot (1886) 591

insatiable greed and ﬁll the coffers of your lazy thieving masters! When you ask him now

to lessen your burden, he sends his bloodhounds out to shoot you, to kill you!

If you are men, if you are the sons of your grandsires, who have shed their blood to

free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster

that seeks to destroy you.

To arms, we call you, to arms!

Your Brothers

Source: H. David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936),

191–192.

Excerpts from the Merritt Conspiracy Act (1887)

To support the prosecution theory that the circular of anarchist August Spies and other labor agi-

tators had led to or incited the deadly Haymarket Square bombing of May 4, 1886, the Illinois

legislatu re passed the Merritt Conspira cy Act in 1887. As the following excerpt i ndicates, the

Act made anyone whose spoken or written words incited an act of violence or revolution that

led to deaths equally guilty with those who actually committed the act. The Merritt Act was

repealed in 1891.

Sec. 2. If any person shall, by speaking to any public or private assemblage of people or in

any public place, or shall, by writing, printing or publishing or by causing to be written,

printed, published or circulated any written or printed matter, advise, encourage, aid,

abet, or incite a local revolution, or t he overthrowing or destruction of the existing

order of society by force or violence, or the resistance to, and destruction of, the lawful

power and authority of the legal authorities of this State, ...or advise, abet, encourage,

or incite the disturbance of the public peace, and by such disturbance an attempt at rev-

olution or destruction of public order, or resistance to such autho rities shall therefore

ensue, and human life is taken, or any person injured or property destroyed, every per-

son so aiding, etc., shall be deemed as having conspired with the person or persons

who actually commit the crime, and shall be deemed a principal in the perpetration of

the same, and shall be punished accordingly, and it shall not be necessary for the prosecu-

tion to show that the speaking was heard or the written or printed matter was read or

communicated to the person or persons actually committing the crime, if such speaking,

writing, etc., is shown to have been done in a public manner.

Source: 1887 Illinois Laws 168, repealed May 28, 1891.

592 Haymarket Riot (1886)

Seattle Riot (1886)

By the 1880s, Chinese immigrants, prima rily men, had been coming to the West

Coast for decade s, looking for work and t o make their fortune from the “Golden

Mountain” that was their name for the United States. Although the ﬁrst Chinese

to arrive in the West came in 1849 as a result of the California Gold Rush, within

little more than a decade, signiﬁcant Chinese communities had been sprung up in

many large and small urban centers. Chinese immigrants began arriving in Seattle

in 1860, and the size of the community quickly grew to over 300 in Seattle itself

and over 3,000 in Washington Territory, with the opportunities presented by the

construction of the Northern Paciﬁc Ra ilroad. Approximately two-th irds of the

workforce on the Northern Paciﬁc was Chinese, though not all of them found their

way to Seattle. In addition to railroad work, at which the Chinese immigrants had

already proven their adeptne ss during the construction of the Trans-Continental

Railroad, mining and salmon canning had also seen the inﬂux of signiﬁcant num-

bers of Chinese workers.

Much like in other cities, whites in Seattle welcomed the help that Chinese

workers represented to the development of their city. However, as jobs became

scarce with the onset of the Panic of 1873, opinion quickly turned against the

Chinese. What were once welcome allies in urban development became competi-

tors for jobs. The “Golden Mountain” quickly lost its luster as whites across the

West began to seek both legal and extralegal ways of ridding themselves of their

“Coolie” populations. B y the early 1880s, Western politicians had convinced

Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, the ﬁrst and only law banning a spe-

ciﬁc ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. In addition to suspending

further Chinese immigration, the Chinese populations that were already in the

United States were declared ineligible for citizenship.

By 1885, the Washington territorial legislature followed the precede nt set in

California by prohibiting the Chinese from owning property. Popular (white) opin-

ion in the region , whipped into a frenz y by the local Knights of La bor chapter,

believed that this was not going far enough. Like many of the Chinese immigrants,

the leader of the Knights in Seattle, Daniel Cronin, had moved to Seattle from

Cal ifornia to organize a Knights chapter in 1885. Seeing anti-Chinese sentiment

as a tool he could use to increase the size and inﬂuence of the Knights, Cronin took

his chapter of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) in a far more

593

militant direction than the national Knights organization. By later that same year,

Cronin had encouraged Seattle workers to organize a Liberal League to coordinate

efforts to oust the Chinese (LeWarne 1995, 15–16).

Cronin’s chief ally in the Seattle city government was city attorney George

Venable Smith. Like Cronin, Smith was a recent arrival from California, and like

Cronin, Smith thought that the Chinese were nothing but a problem and should

be deported. Like Cronin, Smith was essentially socialist in his outlook, and saw

his position as a means to help create the new city as a social utopian experiment.

The more established city leaders, such as Mayor Henry Yesler and Judge Thomas

Burke, though less ideologically motivated than Cronin and Smith, agreed that the

Chinese had to leave the city, and led the effort to create legal means by which the

goal could be accomplished.

Yesler and Burke’s approach was not enough to mollify Smith and Cronin, so

they whipped up a mob to take t he action that their government would not. On

February 7, 1886, a mob of ordinary workers, their ﬁre fueled by rhetoric of

groups like Cronin’s Knights and Liberal League, stormed through the city’s red

light district where most of the Chinese population lived, rounded up every

Chinese person they c ould ﬁnd, and herd ed them d own to the city docks, w here

they had arra nged for a s hip to come and take them all away. The mob was met

by a force of police and Home Guard volunteer soldiers at the pier, where they

were prevented from taking the Chinese away. A stalemate ensued until the next

morning, when approximately 200 of the Chinese boarded the ﬁrst ship heading

for San Francisco, leaving about 150 still in the clutches of the mob.

Unfortunately for those who remained, the next ship to San Francisco was not

scheduled to arrive for six days. The riot worsened when the Home Guard soldiers

attempted to escort the remaining Chinese home. In response, one soldier ﬁred into

the crowd, killing one and wounding four. The violence grew so bad that President

Grover Cleveland declared martial law in the city. After the state militia and federal

troops arrived from Fort Vancouver, the riot quieted down. The fact that nearly all of

the remaining Chinese population of Seattle left satisﬁed the protesters.

The violence made headlines in China, and the U.S. Congress eventually paid

$276,619.15 to the Chinese government in compensation for the rioting, while

the victims of the riots did not receive anything but a one-way ticket out of town.

—Steven L. Danver

See also all entries under Molly Maguires (1870s); Great Railroad Strikes (1877);

Haymarket Riot (1886); Homestead Strike (1892–1893); Pullman Strike (1894); Lattimer

Massacre; Black Patch War; Ludlow Massacre; Boston Police Strike (1919); Battle of Blair

Mountain (1921); Bonus Army (1932); Toledo Auto-Lite Strike (1934); World Trade

Organization Protests (1999).

594 Seattle Riot (1886)

Further Reading

Burke, Edward. Seattle’s Other History: Our Asian American Heritage. Seattle, WA: Pro-

fanity Hill Press, 1979.

Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Wood bridge, CT: Twayne Pub-

lishers, 1991.

Chew, Ron, ed. Reﬂections of Seattle’s Chinese Americans: The First 100 Years. Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1994.

Chin, Art. Golden Tassels: A History of the Chinese in Washing ton, 1857–1977. Seattle,

WA: Art Chin, 1992.

LeWarne, Charles Pierce. Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885–1915. Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1995.

Schwantes, Carlos A. “Protest in a Promised Land: Unemployment, Disinheritance, and

the Origin of Labor Militancy in the Paciﬁc Northwest, 1885–1886.” Western Histori-

cal Quarterly 13, no. 4 (October 1982): 373–390.

Seattle Riot (1886) 595