Chicago and the First May Day

4.8

May Day, the international day of labor and of workers’ solidarity was born in Chicago in 1886.

Today, Chicago is the second largest city in the United States, after New York. It lies on the banks of Lake Michigan, About one in four citizens of Chicago is a black American.

Chicago is the largest industrial center, the most important port on the Great Lakes and a railway center. Machines of all kinds are made in Chicago. Chicago is the most proletarian of all American cities, and was the center of class wars at the end of the nineteenth century.

As in New York and other large American cities, there are two different parts in Chicago: the center, with its skyscrapers and rich houses on the banks of Lake Michigan, and the districts with old houses where the workers live.

The struggle for the eight-hour working day began in the United States in the 1860s and continued for thirty-five years. This struggle was very important. All over the United States and in other countries too, the workers had to work very many hours a day. On May 1, 1886, Chicago became the center of the fight for the eight-hour day in the United States. On that day 400,000 workers of Chicago plants and factories went on strike. At one big plant, six striking workers were killed by the police. A mass meeting for May the 4th was called in one of the squares. Suddenly somebody threw a bomb. Seven policemen and four workers were killed, and many were wounded. Eight workers’ leaders were arrested. Later four of them were hanged. After that the American trade unions and the Socialist International decided, in 1890, to organize May Day demonstrations every year.