Haymarket Riots

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By: Anonymous

Date: May 4, 1886

Source: © Bettmann/Corbis.

About the Photographer: This photograph is part of the collection of the Corbis Corporation, headquartered in Seattle, with a worldwide archive of over seventy million images.

INTRODUCTION

In the late nineteenth century, increasing numbers of confrontations between large employers and labor occurred. They were sparked by the growing power of large corporations and monopolies, the loosening of government regulation on corporations by a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and a large influx of immigrant laborers from Europe, some having Socialist political ideas. Various militant unions agitated for improvements in working conditions, including the eight-hour day. Up to this time, working days of ten or twelve hours or even more were common. The eight-hour day was considered by many intellectuals, economists, and capitalists to be a Utopian, absurd demand that would ruin industry. Nevertheless, by 1886, the movement for an eight-hour day had become powerful.

The American Federation of Labor, a collaboration of labor unions, called for a nationwide strike on May 1, 1886, to be observed wherever the eight-hour day was denied by employers. Three hundred and fifty thousand workers took part in the strike, including 40,000 in Chicago. One of the leading labor organizations in the city was the Central Labor Union, a collaboration of twenty-two Chicago unions; two of the leaders of the Central Labor Union were August Spies (1855–1887) and Albert Parsons (1848–1887). Historian Howard Zinn has noted that the Chicago Mail newspaper said of these two men on May 1, 1886, "Keep them in view. Hold them personally responsible for any trouble that occurs. Make an example of them if trouble occurs."

On May 3, fighting between strikers and temporary workers (non-union replacement workers or strikebreakers, known derogatively as scabs) took place in front of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. Police protected the strikebreakers attempting to enter the factory. When fighting erupted between strikers and strikebreakers, the police beat strikers and fired into the crowd, injuring several strikers and killing one. The flier shown here was part of the outraged response to this killing. It called for a mass meeting at Haymarket Square on the next day, the evening of May 4.

The gathering was smaller than expected, due to rain and cold; only about 1,500–2,000 people attended. Speakers addressed the crowd from the back of a wagon. A contingent of 180 police arrived when the meeting was almost over and only a few hundred protestors were left. Against the mayor's orders, the police approached the wagon platform and ordered the meeting to disperse. Someone—it has never been discovered who—threw a homemade pipe bomb into the midst of the police. Over sixty police officers were wounded and eight died. The police fired on the crowd, killing four workers and injuring 200. This incident became known as the Haymarket Riot.

PRIMARY SOURCE

HAYMARKET RIOTS

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The police, who had no suspects for the actual bomb-thrower, essentially attacked the entire labor movement in Chicago, shutting down Socialist and labor-oriented presses, seizing records, and arresting eight leaders of the anarchist movement. (Anarchists are persons who advocate a society lacking institutions that use force, such as armies and police forces; they have often been associated in popular imagery with bomb-throwing, but very few anarchists have actually advocated terrorism.) Among the arrested leaders were Spies and Parsons. Only one of the eight arrested leaders, a man named Fielden, had been present in Haymarket Square when the bombing occurred, and Fielden had been speaking from the wagon at the time the bomb exploded. Nevertheless, all eight were tried for murder on the grounds that their "inflammatory speeches and publications" (in the words of the state court that tried the case) had incited the bomb-throwing.

The Chicago Mail's pre-Haymarket call to "Make an example of them if trouble occurs' was fully heeded: all eight leaders were found guilty of the crime. Seven were sentenced to death and one to fifteen years in prison. The sentence was upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, saying it did not have jurisdiction. In November 1888, four men—including Spies and Parsons—were hanged; one committed suicide in prison by lighting a dynamite stick in his mouth.

Radical and labor movements were ignited by sympathy for the cause of the Haymarket martyrs, as they came to be known. Sixty thousand people signed a petition asking the new governor of Illinois, John Altgeld, to pardon the three surviving Haymarket prisoners. Altgeld re-examined the evidence and pardoned the three men.

A monument to the Haymarket Riot was erected in 2004. It was paid for by $300,000 in state funds and was greeted with mixed reviews. Although city police and organized labor leaders shook hands at the statue site on dedication day, a local anarchist protested, "Those men who were hanged are being presented as social democrats or liberal reformers, when in fact they dedicated their whole lives to anarchy and social revolution. If they were here today, they'd be denouncing this project and everyone involved in it."

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Green, James R. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. New York: Pantheon, 2006.

Periodicals

Kinzer, Stephen. "In Chicago, An Ambiguous Memorial to the Haymarket Attack." New York Times (September 15, 2004).

Web sites

Chicago Public Library. "1886: The Haymarket Riot." <http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/timeline/haymarket.html> (accessed May 22, 2006).