Celebrating Labor History 2000
By Don Rittner

When I was wee boy in the 60's, the first week in May was always frightening On the old Black and White TV, I would see parade after parade of Soviet tanks, missiles and troops marching across the tube. May Day symbolized all the evils of the Soviet Empire and how they wanted to do away with my way of life.

That kind of propaganda is less likely to occur again thanks to the rapid access of information over the Net. In fact, May 1, or International Workers Day, so feared by Americans for years, originated here in the good old red, white, and blue America. It's a true blue American tradition!

The origins of May Day have roots to the 19th century struggle to have an 8 hour work day. Few people today realize that there was a time when working 15 hours a day, six days a week was the norm. Working conditions were brutal and dangerous for men, women and even children who had to work in unsafe factories across our nation.

Today we take the 8-hour day for granted, but getting it was not easy. Many workers gave their life or were seriously injured in the attempt to shorten the work day. In the United States, a ten hour day movement began as early as 1791 when Philadelphia carpenters struck. In 1835, workers in that city organized a general strike, led by Irish coal heavers. Their slogan was "From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals." Earlier efforts to get the work day to 10 hours were successful in England in 1847.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886. To promote it, a national strike was urged on that day to demand an eight hour work day. More than 350,000 workers across the country responded. And many of the major cities were affected. The city of Chicago was brought to a standstill as railroads, stockyards, and other businesses were forced to close. Two days later, local police shot randomly into crowds of fleeing strikers, killing four and wounding many more.

The killing continued the floowing day when police tried to disperse a peaceful rally in Haymarket Square. An unknown person tossed a bomb, killing and wounding nearly 70 officers. The police responded by firing into the crowd, killing and wounding another 200 citizens.

Eight local labor leaders were arrested, even though seven of them had not been near Haymarket at the time. The other was on the speaker's podium. The "Chicago Eight" were tried with no evidence of involvement in the bombing, were convicted, and all but one were sentenced to die. Three were executed. One died by suicide.

Six years later, Illinois Governor John Atgeld freed the remaining three
and posthumously pardoned the five deceased men, admitting that much of the evidence at the trial was made up. However, by then, May 1st had become associated with the violence and later the socialist movement of that period which adopted it.

To avoid those negative associations, national politicians and some labor leaders here decided to move the traditional day of recognizing labor to September, instead of May 1, and now we now celebrate it in the Fall. In 1894, Congress finally recognized an official Labor Day as the first Monday of each September.

In Troy, we have a unique reason to celebrate Labor Day as our own Kate Mullany, a young Irish immigrant, organized more than 200 women into the first female union, the Collar Laundry Union in 1864, and led three successful strikes for better working conditions for women. She later went on to become the first women to hold a leadership position in the National Labor Union.

And to help celebrate Kate Mullany and all the workers of the Capital District, The Hudson-Mohawk May Day Committee invites you to celebrate the International Worker's Holiday on Sunday April 30, at Peebles Island State Park, and Monday, May 1, at the Cohoes Music Hall. We have planned an outdoor festival of music, speakers, poetry, oral history workshops, food, and a historic bus tour for April 30. On May 1, the traditional May Day, a panel of historians and labor leaders will discuss issues that will affect workers in the coming millennium at the Cohoes Music Hall. All events are free to the public.

If you want to see the schedule of events, surf over to http://www.albany.edu/history/mayday/

Other Labor Related Web Sites to visit this week are:
A Short History of American Labor
http://www.unionweb.org/history.htm
Their May Day -- And Ours
http://garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/EDINlist/.labor/.labororg/ifw/ifwwe/ ifwwe04.html
May Day, The Workers' Day
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/26/016.html
Labor Day: How It Came About; What It Means
http://www.netm.com/party/laborday.htm