by James Green
AS MAY 1 approached, thousands of working people took heart from the radical notion that wage earners could unilaterally cut the length of the workday by making one unified show of solidarity instead of relying upon a frustrating legislative strategy. Many of the workers who flooded into the new assemblies formed by the Knights of Labor said they were joining the union so they could prepare to strike on the great day to come. The “mushroom growth” of the union worried its national leader, Terence Powderly, who strongly disapproved of strikes—the very actions that had brought about the order’s great revival—arguing that if the eight-hour day was to be achieved, it must come through legislation, not through aggressive job actions or boycotts and not through the general refusal to work more than eight hours on May 1.28
Grand Master Workman Powderly found himself on the horns of a dilemma as May 1 approached. A small, slender man with magnificent mustachios, the Knights’ leader looked to one Chicago labor writer “more like a college professor than a man who swung a hammer.” Yet Powderly was a gifted orator, a charismatic personality who captivated his audiences and who won thousands of recruits to his order. A man of soaring ambition, he hoped that, as master of the order, he would become one of the leading men of his time. Under his guidance the Knights had begun to realize William Sylvis’s dream of a unified national labor movement that extended itself to women, blacks, immigrants and other sympathetic members of the producing classes. A Catholic reformer who embraced a moralistic idea of socialism, Powderly sought to take the high road; that is, he hoped to create a reform movement and ultimately a new social order in which class conflict would be replaced by cooperative enterprises and collaborative solutions to workplace conflicts. So, like many union leaders of the day, he feared strikes and regarded such job actions as desperate measures to be employed only as a last resort.29
Terence V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman, Knights of Labor, 1886
However, the rank-and-file Knights, including many who had been inspired by Powderly, were in a radically different mood, especially in Chicago, where militant local leaders showed no qualms about striking McCormick’s and boycotting hundreds of “rat” employers. The unions waged two effective boycott campaigns against prison-made shoes and “rat made” boxes produced by the Maxwell company; both efforts promoted the growth of the Knights, according to the Tribune—so much so that nearly every local assembly needed to find larger meeting halls to accommodate new members, who now poured in at a rate of 1,000 per week.30
The anarchists viewed the Knights’ new power as “a very favorable development” and hoped the eight-hour movement would lead union members “in the right direction toward radicalism.”31 Like the Knights, anarchist union organizers were using the eight-hour issue to recruit thousands of new members in 1886. Albert Parsons, the most effective labor agitator in the city, spoke at numerous venues and did everything in his power for the eight-hour movement. Meanwhile, August Spies and Oscar Neebe of the Arbeiter-Zeitung organized hundreds of butchers, bakers and brewers. All three groups won shorter hours at increased pay from their employers, mostly small-time German entrepreneurs.32
Anarchist organizers like Louis Lingg also succeeded in efforts to organize German and Bohemian carpenters into new unions, some with “armed sections.” Other carpenters of various nationalities responded to the agitation for the eight-hour day by rushing into the Knights of Labor’s five trade assemblies. The original craft union in the trade, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, was riddled by defections to these two new bodies. In spite of their rivalries, all three union groups unified around the demand for shorter hours. They formed a tripartite United Carpenters’ Committee, opened negotiations with the Contractors’ Association for an eight-hour day and quickly achieved success. With prosperity around the corner and spring construction projects set to get under way, the contractors quickly acceded to the United Carpenters’ demands.33
By the end of April more than 47,000 Chicago workers had gained a shorter workday, some of them without a corresponding reduction in wages. The City Council had approved an eight-hour day for public employees with Mayor Harrison’s warm endorsement. It looked as though the movement was unstoppable. 34 Albert Parsons was so encouraged that he allowed himself to hope that the culmination of the eight-hour crusade on May 1 would not lead to violence. “The movement to reduce the work-hours” was not intended to provoke a social revolution, he informed the press, but to provide “a peaceful solution to the difficulties between capitalists and laborers.” 35
After establishing beachheads in the stockyards, the breweries and the bakeries, the anarchist-led Central Labor Union reached out to unorganized groups like tanners and saddlers, masons and wagonmakers, grocery clerks and sewing girls, Russian tailors and Bohemian lumber shovers. CLU organizers and IWPA agitators spoke at meetings almost every night in the city’s industrial districts, addressing various groups of unskilled workers in German and Czech, as well as Danish and Norwegian; and, for the first time, Polish agitators appealed to their countrymen, the largest and lowest-paid group of unorganized workers in the city.36
One of the CLU’s greatest accomplishments came in the fast-growing furniture-making industry, where a small organization of 800 mainly German craftsmen in smaller custom shops extended its benefits to men who operated woodworking machines in larger factories. In the third week of April these allied furniture workers walked out of two large firms, demanding eight-hour workdays and increased pay.37
These actions by unskilled workers marked a turning point in the eight-hour movement. It was now clear that common laborers would take disciplined action for a demand that had been initially conceived of by skilled workers. The craftsmen who launched the movement had proposed a simple bargain to their employers: if the men were granted a shorter working day, they would accept pay that was reduced accordingly. Even if they lost two or more hours of wages each day, the eight-hour men believed they would achieve their initial objective. The “eight-hour system” would serve as a first step toward reducing unemployment and inducing a desire for a higher standard of living among tradesmen with more leisure and more desire to consume. But as the eight-hour movement in Chicago broadened, this incremental strategy disintegrated. Low-paid butchers, bakers, brewers and lumber shovers were unwilling to accept a pay cut to achieve what they now regarded as a legitimate right. And so they rallied to the new demand raised by the anarchists in April: eight hours’ work for ten hours’ pay.38
The anarchists’ cry of “eight for ten” appealed to the soldiers in Chicago’s huge army of common laborers. These were people who had endured long hours and frozen wages, as well as pay cuts, for two years; now, with prosperity returning and city industry booming, they refused to accept another loss of income as the price of winning the eight-hour day. George Schilling and the leaders of the Eight-Hour Association objected to this radical demand, however, because they knew it would provoke outrage among their supporters in the press and among employers who were willing to consider shortening the workday as long as wages were reduced accordingly.
The militants’ goal of winning shorter hours without losing pay also called for a more unified, more militant movement. While craft unionists could attack one employer or a few contractors at a time and use their skilled training as leverage, unskilled laborers needed to act together to wage mass, industry-wide strikes. And so, the logic of solidarity espoused by the Knights and the International made sense to them.39 As common laborers and factory operatives joined the eight-hour movement, the anarchists took heart. This was the breakthrough Albert Parsons had dreamed of when he linked up with the old eight-hour philosopher Ira Steward six years earlier: the skilled and the unskilled mobilized together in a “class movement” ready to take militant action to achieve a common goal. 40
ON APRIL 25, 1886, after Chicago’s employers and their families attended Easter services in the city’s Protestant churches, some of the churchgoers gathered along downtown streets to watc
h a spirited march of 15,000 workers to the lakefront organized by the Central Labor Union. The column extended for two miles and passed 50,000 people who lined the route to the lake. 41 The marchers started out from the West Side, where red banners floated over hundreds of buildings, and paraded slowly and merrily through the deserted streets of downtown until they reached the lakeshore. There, in a festive atmosphere, Parsons and Fielden spoke in English while Spies and Schwab spoke in German to what one reporter called “a multitude of discontented workingmen.” Moved by the occasion, Schwab reverted to the imagery of Easter he recalled from his Catholic boyhood in Bavaria. He told the crowd that their ancestors had been celebrating this day as the springtime revival of nature since ancient times, just as their fathers and grandfathers had celebrated the Redeemer’s resurrection. “Today, the workers of Chicago are also celebrating their resurrection,” Schwab proclaimed. “They have risen from their long indolence and indifference; they have seen what they can accomplish walking hand in hand.”42
The ebullient mood on the lakefront that Sunday contrasted with the impatient mood the business press expressed on Monday. Boycotts, lockouts, strikes and labor actions had interrupted the city’s newfound prosperity, the Chicago Journal complained. Every form of business and industrial enterprise had been “attacked or threatened” by eight-hour strikers. Employers who were willing to accept shorter hours at reduced wages were now faced with more than 20,000 strikers demanding ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work. The Tribune labeled this fresh demand a “simple impossibility” and blamed it on the “Communistic element fermenting among the laboring classes.” There was no doubt now that the crisis lay ahead: Chicago businessmen had better prepare for the worst.43
Chief Inspector Bonfield agreed, telling the press he expected “a great deal of trouble” on May 1 and issuing an order that would place the entire force on duty come Saturday morning.44 The First Cavalry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard had already conducted an impressive drill and full-dress parade at the request of the Commercial Club, a group that had been formed after the Great Uprising of 1877. After reviewing the cavalry, the club members, led by Philip Armour, raised funds to equip the First Infantry militia with better arms, including $2,000 to “furnish the regiment with a good machine gun, to be used by them in case of trouble.”45
Editors focused their attention more than ever on the anarchists, who were, despite their denials, accused of plotting to use the May Day strike as an occasion to precipitate a riot. The Chicago Mail singled out Parsons and Spies as “two dangerous ruffians” who had been “at work fomenting disorder for the past ten years.” They should have been driven out of the city long ago, said the editorial. Now they were taking advantage of the excitement generated by the eight-hour movement to instigate strikes and to cause injury to capital and honest labor in every possible way. Spies and Parsons did not have one honest aim in mind, said the Mail. They should be marked by the police and held personally responsible for any trouble that came to the city.46
Even under these circumstances, Spies and Parsons betrayed no fears; indeed, they wrote and spoke with more assertion and conviction than ever. Privately, however, they may have shared the anxiety of their comrade William Holmes, who feared that when this great test between the labor movement and the “money power” reached its climax on May 1, “desperate days” would follow very soon.47
Chapter Ten
A Storm of Strikes
APRIL 30, 1886–MAY 3, 1886
ON THE EVE of May Day, Chicago throbbed with excitement as workers met and rallied all over the city. Leaders of the Upholsterers’ Union, for example, organized what they claimed was the largest meeting of upholsterers ever held in the United States. The members voted to take Saturday off and to return to work Monday on the eight-hour system. Minute instructions were issued to members on how to act in case any shop refused to accede to the new system. 1 Freight handlers on the city’s major railroads also gathered and rallied to support men who had already struck for eight hours. Their leaders called a “monster mass meeting” of all warehouse workers on the morning of May 1 at the Harrison Street viaduct. Chicago, the nation’s freight handler, was on the brink of paralysis.
The Tribune feared the worst trouble would come in the lumber district, where 12,000 workers had demanded “reduced hours and advanced pay with no probability of getting them.” The German section of the Lumber Workers’ Union met at Goerke’s Hall and decided to walk out if yard owners refused to accept their demand for eight hours’ work for ten hours’ pay and double pay for overtime. The Bohemian branch, which added 400 new members in one day, was expected to do the same. “The Lumber Workers Union is not a branch of the Knights of Labor but of the notorious Central Labor Union,” the Tribune explained, adding that the majority of the men employed in the lumberyards followed the anarchists. The lumberyard owners called these demands “very impudent and imperative” and vowed to reject them. That meant that a strike by the lumber shovers, chiefly Germans and Bohemians, would completely paralyze the vital lumber trade. An unidentified anarchist told the paper that these two groups of immigrant workers were ready to do the aggressive work and to defend themselves with arms if necessary. But this leader did not expect serious trouble because he believed employers would give in rather than allow their competitors in other cities to steal their business.
ON THE MORNING OF Saturday, May 1, the Arbeiter-Zeitung’s headline shouted THE DIES ARE CAST! THE FIRST OF MAY, WHOSE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE WILL BE UNDERSTOOD AND APPRECIATED ONLY IN LATER YEARS, IS HERE.2 Even “the businessmen’s newspaper” expressed excitement over the momentous events about to unfold. THE GREAT DAY IS HERE, announced the Tribune—LOUD CRY HEARD FROM WORKINGMEN ALL OVER LAND. The first five pages of the paper were crammed with detailed reports from hot spots all over the city. Telegraph messages poured in from other cities, where the general strike had begun, but by noon it was clear that Chicago was hardest hit. At least 30,000 laboring people were on holiday from work of their own accord. A “storm of strikes” affected almost every segment of the workforce, from the men who handled freight in the railroad warehouses to the girls who sewed uppers in the shoe factories. “The streets were thronged with people, the manufactories were silent, and business in general was almost at a standstill,” recalled one reporter. For once, the dark, sooty sky over the city was clear. “No smoke curled from the tall chimneys of the factories, and things assumed a Sabbath-like appearance.”3
The great refusal of May 1 quickly transcended boundaries that separated Chicago’s polyglot working class. Craft workers, who had reached agreements with their bosses, took actions to support workers already on strike. More generally, workers and consumers boycotted sweatshops and bought eight-hour cigars and wore eight-hour shoes.4 Meanwhile, certain groups of strikers revived an old ritual of solidarity prominent in the uprisings of 1867 and 1877—the strikers’ march, “a moving torrent of men, women and children closing every workplace in its path.”5
At one shop, sheet metal workers agreed to remain at work because the proprietors answered their demands with a proposal that the firm share a certain percentage of the profits with the men, who would set their own hours at eight or more. “The proposition, when presented to the men, was received with cheers and expressions of confidence which were very gratifying to the firm.” Packinghouse owners decided to avoid a strike at the stockyards by letting the men “have their way in the matter of fixing hours.”6 Concessions like these emboldened other strikers. Spurred on by the anarchist leaders of the Central Labor Union, some workers, like a group of Bohemians on the lumber docks, began to act on the audacious demand of eight hours’ work at ten hours’ pay. In other places, laborers wanted not only more freedom from work, but more freedom at work. The German brewers and maltsters insisted on the eight-hour day achieved by other members of the Central Labor Union, but they also desired more free time to rest, eat their dinners, enjoy conversation and drink free beer. They propos
ed that two hours a day be set aside “for visiting the tap room and for meals,” meaning that a brewery worker could take “the whole two hours for food and drink or divide up the time as he chooses.” The Tribune was aghast at the demand and about the news that the owners might comply “with the terms and conditions of their thirsty Communistic hands.”7
Amid these surprising events, the most amazing development of all unfolded at the McCormick works, where locked-out union molders continued to harass the employees who kept the foundries and molding machines running under the protection of a police garrison. The workers inside the plant could not be quarantined, however, and as eight-hour marchers swept through the factories on the South Side, even loyal McCormick employees were infected. Half of the newly recruited replacement workers suddenly joined the strike movement. Management, now desperate to hold the loyal employees at work, promised the strikebreakers an eight-hour day if they would return, but made no such concession to the strikers, who remained locked out of the plant.8
Workers at Horn Brothers Furniture Company just prior to the May 1, 1886, strike
The Great Upheaval was frightening to employers for many reasons, and not simply because it aroused militancy among loyal workers or because it propelled anarchists into leadership roles. The insurgency was largely nonviolent, so it could not be branded a civil insurrection; indeed, it was planned, coordinated and mobilized by a new kind of labor movement. It was a movement that pulled in immigrants and common laborers, as well as artisans, merchants and even populist farmers in Texas, where the Farmers’ Alliance was regarded as “the spinal column” of a great people’s war against railroad king Jay Gould. What happened on May 1, 1886, was more than a general strike; it was a “populist moment” when working people believed they could destroy plutocracy, redeem democracy and then create a new “cooperative commonwealth.”9