How many Americans know that May Day is celebrated world wide to honor the sacrifices of American labor heroes?
If you don't know the history of the eight-hour day, the five day workweek, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, etc., please do some research. Do you think corporations did any of the above out of altruism? Here is your first assignment. Google Haymarket Square
Here is a start.
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/haymarket.htmDuring the nation-wide strike for the 8-hour workday, which began May 1, 1886, a mass meeting was held in the Chicago haymarket to protest a police action of the previous day in which workers were killed. When police ordered the protest meeting to disperse (peaceful though it was), a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, killing several officers. This became known as the "Haymarket Riot." The 8-Hour Day Movement was destroyed in the nation-wide hysteria which followed.
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"There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!"
August Spies, Haymarket Martyr
Five score years so soon are gone
That crown that fateful hanging day,
Yet still the years live on and on
And never will they go away!
Eight doomed martyrs spoke their dreams:
An eight-hour day, their modest hope;
For such effrontery it seems
Four lives were snatched by hangman's rope!
But by a miracle of fate
The voices still ring loud and clear;
The voices stilled by cruel hate
Are heard today, this hundreth year!
So many years have passed them by,
Yet louder still the timeless call
Rings 'round the world, a battle cry
For workers' rights, for peace for all!
Raise high the flag, you workers brave,
March strong and steady, side by side,
On First of May this hundredth year,
So not in vain those martyrs died!
by Susan Kling
May, 1990
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