Haymarket Affair

Haymarket Affair (1886).On 1 May 1886, workers throughout the United States struck to win the eight‐hour day. On 4 May in Chicago, the strike's center, workers gathered in Haymarket Square to protest a police attack on strikers the previous day that had left at least two dead. The meeting was called by anarchists affiliated with the revolutionary International Working People's Association. The rally was ending when a police squad under Inspector John Bonfield commanded the crowd to disperse. Suddenly someone threw a dynamite bomb into the ranks of the police. One officer died instantly and seven later succumbed, most as a result of bullets fired by panicked policemen.

Many Americans, including preeminent ministers, journalists, and conservative politicians, saw the bombing as part of a conspiracy by anarchist‐inspired immigrants designed to overthrow the republic. Responding to public hysteria, Chicago officials banned public meetings and processions. Eight anarchist leaders stood trial for conspiracy to commit murder. Although the identity of the bomb thrower remained unknown, a court convicted the anarchists of murder. On 11 November 1887, August Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer were hanged; Louis Lingg had earlier committed suicide. Illinois governor John P. Altgeld (1847–1902) commuted the sentences of the other three in 1893. The novelist William Dean Howells was one of the few prominent figures to protest the executions.

The Haymarket tragedy was part of a reaction by business leaders and public officials to labor's “great upheaval” of the mid‐1880s, including the rapid growth of the Knights of Labor. Despite repression, skilled workers made significant progress in organizing unions and winning trade agreements after Haymarket. The American Federation of Labor sponsored another nationwide eight‐hour strike on 1 May 1890 and in Paris the Socialist Second International adopted 1 May as an international labor day. Revolutionary anarchism, meanwhile, evolved into the syndicalism that flourished at the margins of the labor movement in the early twentieth century.
See also Gilded Age; Labor Movements; Radicalism; Socialism; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

Paul Avrich , The Haymarket Tragedy, 1984.
Richard Schneirov , Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864–97, 1998.

Richard Schneirov