1 янв 1886 г. - Haymarket Square violence

Описание:

The May 4, 1886, conflict in Chicago in which both workers and policemen were killed or wounded during a labor demonstration called by local anarchists. The incident created a backlash against all labor organizations, including the Knights of Labor. (p. 538)

Just as the Knights reached this pinnacle of influence, an episode of violence caused their movement to falter. In 1886, a protest at the McCormick reaper works in Chicago led to a clash with police that left four strikers dead. (Three unions, including a Knights of Labor assembly, had struck, but the Knights had reached an agreement and returned to work. Only the machinists’ union remained on strike when the incident occurred.) Chicago was a hotbed of anarchism, the revolutionary advocacy of a stateless society. Local anarchists, many of them German immigrants, called a protest meeting the next day, May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square. When police tried to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb that killed several policemen. Officers responded with gunfire. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists were found guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy. All were convicted, despite lack of definitive evidence that one of them threw the bomb (the bomber’s identity remains unknown). Four of the eight were executed by hanging, one committed suicide in prison, and the others received long sentences.


Seizing on resulting antiunion hysteria, which was heightened by Chicago policemen’s claims of a vast anarchist conspiracy, employers took the offensive. They broke strikes with mass arrests, tied up the Knights in expensive court proceedings, and forced workers to sign contracts pledging not to join labor organizations. The Knights of Labor never recovered from the damage, which impacted the whole American labor movement. In the view of the press and many prosperous Americans, labor unions were tainted by their alleged links with anarchism. Struggles between industrialists and workers had created bitter divides.

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