WITH LIBERTY AND
LEISURE FOR ALL
in 1867. “The first fruit of the Civil
War was the eight hours’ agitation,
that ran with the seven-leagued
boots of the locomotive from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, from New
England to California.”
By 1868, eight states had passed
eight-hour laws, and Congress gave
eight-hour days to federal workers — though Roediger and Foner
write that these measures were
largely ineffective. Most people
still worked longer than 10 hours a
day, and on Saturdays, too.
Labor leaders called for a general
strike on May 1, 1886, in support of
the eight-hour workday, and local
unions across the country pushed
for the new limit. A Wisconsin official later wrote that eight hours
“was the topic of conversation in
the shop, on the street, at the family table, at the bar, in the counting
room, and the subject of numerous
able sermons from the pulpit.”
Hundreds of thousands of workers joined days of strikes across the
country. In Chicago’s Haymarket
Square, however, things got ugly.
On May 4, somebody — the person’s identity remains unknown
— threw a bomb at police trying to
disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters. Seven officers and at least
four civilians died from the explo-
HUFFINGTON
10.13.13
sion and the ensuing gunfire. In the
days that followed, police arrested
hundreds of people, and eight were
prosecuted for conspiracy and sentenced to death. The government
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
IS OUR HOLIEST GHOST,
AND SLACKING IS DOWNRIGHT
UN-AMERICAN.
eventually hanged four of them.
Today, international May Day
celebrations mark the anniversary of the strike. But at the time,
public opinion in the U.S. sided
with the police. Labor activists
considered the event a huge setback for the eight-hour movement,
and largely moved away from
mass strikes as a tactic for winning shorter workdays. Congress
declared Labor Day a national holiday shortly after a similarly tragic
crackdown on rail workers in 1894.
NOT ALL ECONOMISTS and historians link the shortening of hours
to labor agitation. In a 1995 survey
of 178 members of the Economic
History Association, a majority
agreed that the shortening of hours
was a result of economic growth.
Some industrialists considered
it good for business. Henry Ford,