Original article, subtitled Elizabeth Schulte tells the history of May Day, a socialist holiday founded to honor the Haymarket Martyrs and celebrate international workers' solidarity, via Socialist Worker (US):
"THERE WILL be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." Those were the last words of August Spies, one of four innocent men executed for an explosion at Chicago's Haymarket Square in May 1886.
Today is Loyalty Day in the US. It was set up to counterbalance May Day, which is celebrated as International Workers' Day in much of the rest of the world. Our day to honor workers is Labor Day in September. It's interesting that International Workers' Day was set up, in part, to honor those who were executed after the Haymarket affair, and that this day is barely recognized as such here in the US.
The real "crime" for which Spies and his comrades were condemned was being labor militants fighting for workers' rights and the eight-hour day. The national strike for the eight-hour day that they organized was called for May 1, 1886--it was the first May Day.
What? You thought the eight hour work day was something the bosses gave us out of the goodness of their hearts? If you do/did, check your propaganda susceptibility meter.
U.S. LABOR history is filled with examples of the employers' willingness to use any weapon in their arsenal--from the courts to police billy clubs to the gallows--to put down working-class rebellion. But the fight for the eight-hour day in the 1880s also shows workers' determination to resist--and the leading role that left-wing ideas can play in the struggle.
Struggle is what we will always face when dealing with the corporate/financial oligarchy. You struggle for what you get from them, while they reap the rewards of your labor. And, if situations occur where the bosses need some cash from the government, you as a worker are expected to get your pay and benefits cut (if not your job), while the government cash spigot is opened to save the bosses backside.
The eight-hour movement began in 1884 when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the predecessor to the American Federation of Labor) passed a resolution at its Chicago convention that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886."
I'll allow you to read the rest of the article. Schulte writes well, and covers the history of Haymarket and it's aftermath quite well. She ends with a quote from August Spies before he was executed:
If you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement...the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery expect salvation--if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.
Amen!