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In the spring of 1886 the United States witnessed a mass proletarian campaign for the eight-hour working day (see Note 581). Up to 65,000 people went on strike in Chicago in the first days of May. Workers clashed with police at a meeting held on 3 May. During the following day's protest meeting in Haymarket Square an agent provocateur threw a bomb which exploded and killed seven policemen and four workers. The police opened fire on the crowd, as a result of which a number were killed and over 200 wounded. Mass arrests were carried out and the leaders of the Chicago Labor Union brought before the court. Despite the broad campaign in defence of the accused in the United States and a number of European countries, four of them — Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel— were hanged on 11 November 1887 on the decision of the US Supreme Court. In memory of the events of 1886 in Chicago, the International Socialists' Congress held in Paris in 1889 resolved to proclaim 1 May International Workers' Day.—
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"The Knights of Labor" (The Noble Order of the Knights of Labour) is the name of an American workers' organisation founded in Philadelphia in 1869 and constituting a secret society until 1881. The bulk of the members of the 'Order' were unskilled workers, including a large number of Blacks. Its aims were to set up cooperatives and organise mutual assistance, and it took part in a considerable number of working-class campaigns. However, the leadership of the 'Order' to all intents and purposes rejected the idea of workers' taking part in political struggle and advocated cooperation between classes. In 1886 the leadership worked against the general strike, forbidding its members to take part. Rank-and-file members of the 'Order' nevertheless did so, and after this the 'Order' began to lose influence among the working masses, falling apart by the end of the 1890s
Friedrich Engels
Letter to Sorge
29. April 1886
(excerpt)
Theoretical ignorance is an attribute of all young nations, but so is speedy practical development. In America as in England no amount of exhortation will help until the need is really there. And in America it is there, as is a growing awareness of it. The entry of the indigenous working masses into the movement in America is for me one of the great events of 1886. As for the Germans over there, let the presently prosperous kind gradually assimilate with the Americans — they'll still be a step or two ahead of the latter and a nucleus will nevertheless remain which will still retain a theoretical grasp of the nature and progress of the movement as a whole, will keep the process of fermentation going and, eventually, rise to the top again.
Friedrich Engels
Letter to Bernstein
22. May 1886
(excerpt)
The anarchist follies in America may prove advantageous; it is undesirable that the American workers, given their present wholly bourgeois level of thinking — high wages and short hours — should win victories too quickly. That might unduly reinforce the biassed TRADES UNION spirit.
